My kids were too afraid of him retaliating to tell me what he was doing.
Calling my 7 year old daughter a b#tch, throwing my 4 year old son across the room into his bed making him hit the wall, picking my children up by their throats and holding them against the wall while screaming profanities in their face, telling my son he's stupid and a ratfink, knocking my son in the back of his head, grabbing my daughter by her bad wrist to pull her from room to room, not feeding my kids when I was at work and making them go to bed hungry because he was too busy smoking weed and playing video games.
The poor dears practically had a nervous break-down when I thought we were going back to MI, they begged me not to make them go - the absolute opposite of what I thought would happen, cause I didn't know what was happening to them. I thought the abuse was only to me and that they knew nothing about it. When asked why they didn't tell, it was because when they had told me in the past I would confront him because I was not going to allow it - but then when I wasn't there he'd punish them for telling me.

Calm and consistent - I enjoy that now in my life too!