That could have been written about my older brother. He’s not the firstborn, but he definitely didn’t like me when we were kids. I don’t think he acted out as badly as the child in the article, but he was vicious towards me. He’d break my toys, and when no one was looking/listening he’d scream abuse at me.
He’s in his 50s now and he still breaks my stuff and screams abuse at me, but these days he doesn’t care if someone is listening or not.
He has a history of failed long term relationships in his life - I can think of 8 girlfriends that he’s had, and I’m pretty sure all of them dumped him. He blames me for several of these break ups even though we don’t live in the same country.
Just after our father’s funeral he went completely ballistic at me, and even my mother (who’d always smiled indulgently and said “boys will be boys”) admitted that she was frightened of him.
He has, thankfully, kept his distance since then - I hope because he heard third hand that I’d reported him to the Gardaí.
He has a child, who is now old enough to have a Facebook account, and knowing that I’m online searched and found me on there. I use my real name and had my online handle in brackets. I was asked what the name in brackets meant and told them, and that if they Googled it they’d find sites I was on (none of which are NSFK).
What I didn’t know was that said child was at my brother’s house using a laptop, and he saw this conversation. And he Googled my username. The kid texted me to tell me “by the way, Dad saw us chatting online”.
He rang me one evening and suggested that we meet up [next time he was in Ireland] to “discuss your behaviour”, he wanted me to go for a drive “somewhere out the country” with him.
I refused to.
I have a genuine fear that he will either kill me or do me serious injury if he gets the chance. Not necessarily because he’ll actively approach me with the intent of killing me, but will loose his temper because I looked at him the wrong way, or breathed too loudly, or left a speck of dust on the mantelpiece, or whatever traumatises him, and he take a swing at me and either hit me in the ‘right’ place, or cause me to fall and injure myself.
I hope that studying children like the boy in the article brings about something that will separate these malignant meat bags from the rest of us, so no one else has to live in fear of them.