It's a matter of disbelief, not failing to care. OP "sees the abuser looking at her through her daughter's eyes". In the daughters experience, she was the embodiment of abuse, imprisonment, torture and all sorts of things she never did. How is she supposed to know that her father actually did these things? If he is just like her, he could never be capable of something so horrific. When she met him, and he seemed to love her, she believed him.

Notice that no where in here does she suggest OP ever loved her daughter. I don't believe she was ever loved. She was "protected" from one thing, but the lifetime of laying in the bed that this man made.... That's not really protection. That is emotional abuse.