TIFU by not fighting for custody

Not my regular account for legal reasons.

This FU has been years in the making and the full implications only recently came to light.

So, in case you can't guess from the title, I'm divorced. What's more, I'm divorced in an area where fathers rarely win custody battles. During the divorce I took this into account and, while there's little doubt either from me or from anyone who knows both my ex and me that I'm the better parent I decided that it was best not to put my kids through the stress of a custody fight that I'd probably end up losing anyway. That was the FU.

Could I have won? Possibly. I could have brought in a parade of people to say I was the better parent. Friends, teachers, scout leaders, you name it. Some of the people offering to testify for me didn't even like me. That should probably have been a clue. There were even a few incidents of her bad parenting where the police got involved, but they never threatened to take the kids or anything.

But I didn't fight because I thought the odds were that I'd lose. And, if I'm being perfectly honest, my self-esteem wasn't the greatest at the time (years of being told how awful you are will do that) and I doubted I was the better ANYTHING, let alone parent. So I settled for getting them on the weekends.

So fast forward 5 years to now. The authorities found out that her boyfriend, who had been living with her and had been with my children unsupervised, was a fugitive fleeing a sexual misconduct with a minor charge in another state. After he was arrested and she learned this, she put an app on my children's' phone (they share one) so that they could keep in contact with him.

Let me reiterate that: She allowed and encouraged my children to keep in touch with her convicted pedophile boyfriend after she found out about that conviction.

And that's just the start of this whole mess.

A few days later they arrested her because they think she aided and abetted him and the kids were placed with me. Once I officially had custody, they started telling me things they'd been afraid to before. Things like how they offered my youngest money to try alcohol, and how my oldest (still too young to drive) got into their "special" brownies (which she thought were just brownies, and bear in mind that cannabis is still completely illegal in this state). And they offered to let the youngest (barely into double digits now) have any 5 toys he wanted if he let them tase him, and then they fucking tased my kid! (Ok, so that story came from the kid, and I think it more likely that it was a stun gun, but that's really not much better).

They've been living with me full time for a little over a month and more and more horror stories just keep coming out. I'm kicking myself for it. I knew their mother wasn't a very good parent, but I thought she at least wanted what was best for them. I never dreamed that she would actively put them in danger.

TL/DR: I tried to spare my kids the stress of a custody fight only to find out years later than my ex was putting them through hell.