This has been weighing on me since last night so I figured I’d post about it if for no other reason than that sometimes makes me feel a little better.
So last night after dinner I played some volleyball with my niece while my parents sat and spoke to my sister. She had asked if they would be available to look after her daughter this summer so she could work a part time job. This is when they told her they’d be leaving for Canada to see my brother, his wife and their new born child for a couple of weeks.
My sister won’t let her daughter see her other uncle at all. This is because he abused the two of us sexually in his very early teens. She had never spoken of this until I brought it up in my early 20’s to my parents and they went and asked her about it. I’ve since forgiven my brother for this but my sister who already has issues about being adopted (she’s actually my cousin) can’t seem to forgive him in any capacity and is convinced he’s a dangerous pedophile. While this is not the case whatsoever, I can’t for the life of me put myself in his shoes at the age of 13 as I can’t comprehend what would make someone use his siblings (or anyone for that matter) in the way he used us.
But I still love my brother and have forgiven him as I said. The only ill feelings I still have towards him are for the fact that he made it out of that house of hell as it was at the time and went on to live a charmed existence traveling the world, earning his phd etc. without even an emotional ouchy along the way. But as for the abuse, it’s in the past as far as I’m concerned.
This is not the case with my sister, not that she has to forgive him for what he did, but what she’s doing keeping my niece from seeing him is tearing my family apart. My niece really wants to see her other uncle and doesn’t understand why she hasn’t seen him since she was very young. Now she’s going to have one and probably more cousins who she’ll never get to see in her childhood the way things are going.
It’s like I’m stuck between two extremes here, on one side is my sister blowing this out of proportion believing our brother is a dangerous pedophile because of what he did to us and on the other side is my dad dismissing what he did as “normal kid stuff”.
I don’t know, I spoke to my parents last night at length about it, took some pills and fell asleep waking up with a headache but feeling better having discussed it even though it stirred up some uncomfortable emotions. Who knows if this will ever be resolved, we may have to live with the fact that my brothers actions as an adolescent permanently destroyed any hope of a unified family.
I agree with your sister. My brother did the same when we were children and I didn’t have anything to do with him as an adult. Your sister’s primary responsibility now is to protect her child…regardless of what effect it has on the rest of the family.
well…she’s also “protecting” her child from her own dad the “monster” who’s actually really nice guy. Hasn’t seen her own dad since she was three. You see my sister is also not well shall we say. But yes it is her choice to dictate her child’s life for better or worse.
But you don’t know if it’s for the worst, because you don’t know if your brother has or has not maintained a deviant sexuality. It’s too much of a gamble…it isn’t worth the risk.
Yeah,I don’t know much about pedophiles, but can they really change their behaviur and control their urges? It’s a disturbing subject but who knows what your brother did in Europe when he was free to do and go where he wanted. They’re tricky, look at that Jimmy Saveille guy in England. Normal kid (well not really normal) stuff is two 5 or 6 year olds looking at each other naked. Not a TEENAGER molesting two young females REPEATEDLY. Anyway, who am I to interfere with your relationship with your brother? I’m just the average poster who stumbled onto this thread.
second of all, I never said anything about how far apart in age we are. My sister and I are the same age (like I said she was adopted) and we are not far from my brothers age.
And while as I said I cannot comprehend what was driving my brother to do what he was doing, sexually abusing your siblings, as sick as that is, does not mean somebodies a pedophile. If that were the case, there’d be a heck of a lot more pedophiles than there are as sibling sexual abuse is far from as rare as some people may assume it is.
Are you saying what happened to your sister wasn’t traumatic?
You think by pressuring her to forgive and forget that it wipes the slate clean?
By the sound of you and your family’s treatment of the situation, your sister is being punished for feeling violated and your brother behavior is considered acceptable.
As long as this attitude is present, there is no way in hell your sister would take the chance on letting the same mistake happen with her daughter.
No one protected your sister, so why would she think you’d protect her daughter?
Not a chance in hell.
Consider yourself lucky that it’s only the brother she cut out of her life and not all of you.
in my opinion anyone who commits incest, rape, against children, or is a paedophile should be chemically castrated, have to be paraded through there local town…and then dropped on a remote island with the rest of the degenerates…children are innocent and should always be protected at all cost.
if society can not protect the vunerable be they mentally ill, children…etc then it is not a society i want to live in…
take care