Is it normal for a father to treat his own daughter this way?

My father is a Filipino accountant who is now in his 70s. He has always been rather strict and unforgiving and has a temper. But as I was growing up that "temper" has escalated to his calling me a "spawn of the devil," to his referring to me as "not his daughter," that he is ashamed to call me his daughter, and had resorted to hair-pulls, stomach-kicks, and sometimes I think he intentionally aims for my vagina. He would hit my face sometimes but mostly my head because at least the bumps and bruises will be hidden if he aims for the latter. Once I broke the piano when I got carried away during practice (I think the piece was "Tarantella") and he decides it was because I was possessed by the devil and he made me pray the rosary while walking around the house on my knees, all the while berating me in front of the piano repairman. That was when I was 8. The earliest abuse I can recall was when I was 4 and broke the house phone when using it as a prop enacting a tv drama. Again, he called me the spawn of the devil, and continued calling me that and abusing and berating me in front of the phone repairman. I remember the repairman, a skinny young man, feeling extremely uncomfortable and avoiding looking at me directly. When I was 11 I was arguing rather boisterously with a friend during a party at our house and he just walked over and threw a glass of water at my face for being "too loud." When I was 14 and started getting my period I would throw the used napkins in the trash cans in the guest bathroom downstairs; when he found that out he grew ballistic, took the trash, and threw it to my face, and told me that from hereon then I should throw all my used napkins at once in the garbage can outside so it wouldn't stink up the house. One time he came home, found the bathroom needing cleaning, found me studying in my bedroom, and basically dragged me across the floor to clean it. I shrugged my shoulders and took a bucket and a big brush and some soap and started scrubbing, when he decided I should use a smaller brush (basically a used toothbrush) instead so the bathroom tiles will get a closer clean. This is sometime when I was around 9, and is when I started realizing my father isn't like any other fathers I know, and began nurturing a murderous hatred towards him. He would exercise some form of abuse towards me every week, whether telling me that I would end up like the villainess we see on tv because I am as headstrong and willful as the actress playing her, or finding an excuse to physically abuse me by hitting me on my stomach, my legs, my face, or my head for the smallest infractions, such as a light bulb burning off when I try to turn on the table lamp.

All these little abuses I can now bring up to mind number in the hundreds or possibly thousands from my earliest recollections when I was 4 till the present day. The latest "episode" happened yesterday when I was helping my mom put in the new table covers I got her, when the s.o.b. came over to where we were and very irately demanded that we put back the place mats in the exact same spot; I think he resents the fact that my mom and I are even talking. I think he just wants my mom all to himself, especially now that they are getting older. I don't know if that is normal or not, but I suppose that would have been for another topic.

I am now in my 30s, and had convinced myself that I had managed to put all of these behind me when I suddenly started having nightmares of my father -- who along with my mother is alive and well living in Lancaster, California -- pummeling me with his fists and verbally abusing me, and I would wake up shaking, freezing, and in tears thinking I am back to being 8 again. When I started seeing a therapist, per her instructions, I confronted my mom about it. My mom simply brushed all these aside and said my father isn't really very different from most fathers of his generation (he was born in the early 40s) and a lot of women my age had suffered worse, from being raped to being actually mutilated and such. She would claim that at least since my father had been more or less a good provider, and had never really had any affairs or gambling or drinking problems, then he has been more or less a good father and husband, and that I should focus on that instead and just live my life in the present.

But I did, and I had, except I suddenly started having these horrific nightmares from which I would wake up, and this is the chief reason I began dredging all these up. Clearly there are many unresolved issues from these episodes in my childhood and early adult years that needed to be confronted.

If I am honest with myself, I think deep inside, some part of my soul demanded restitution, or at least some recognition that I had indeed been abused, and have every right to feel sad and wronged about it. I feel like I need to exact some sort of revenge against my father, or at least tell the whole world about the real monstrosity beneath the veneer of civility of what on the surface is a simple, aging family man enjoying his twilight years. He really clearly is NOT a good man.

Every statement I'd made right here is true. I wouldn't even hesitate revealing names if it comes to that. My father's initials are JLJ. He was born on August 15, 1942, and grew up in Boac, Marinduque, Philippines, then settled his family in Novaville, Novaliches, Philippines. He moved to California in 1995, where he found sporadic work as an accountant. He now lives in Lancaster, California, with his wife, had had 3 sons and a luckless daughter (me), a grandson and a granddaughter, and spends his time puttering in the garden and abusing his wife, who remained good-natured throughout. In the past few years he developed an especially evil scowl that gave him this menacing air, and seems to take a malignant pleasure in abusing store clerks.

I have taken to carrying a heavy hammer-mallet to bed and pulling it up from underneath and bashing the air with it each time I had these nightmares. I really do not relish being a victim. I think there would come a time when -- to keep the nightmares from getting a firmer hold on me -- I'd drop in on their house one night and bash the evil s.o.b.'s head in while it's still sleeping. It's actually getting more and more real the more I think about it. Or perhaps it's just the sleep deprivation talking. I don't really know anymore.