Have you ever suspected sexual abuse in your family, but have no way to prove it? And don't want to?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is something I’m posting somewhat reluctantly, because I’m posting on vague notions and “clues” gathered over the course of decades.

And let me state up front, before I continue, that I was never the victim of sexual abuse from a family member, and, to the best of my knowledge, neither were either of my younger sisters.

But … I remember my father being completely outraged at the idea that I had seen my sister (the older of the two) naked when we were teenagers. And I recall an incident when my youngest sister (eleven years younger than me), three years old at the time, saw my father naked (he’d just stepped out of the shower), pointed at his penis and asking, “what’s that?” and my dad completely blowing up at the question (Okay, that was too tame. The fact is, she pointed at his dick and said “what’s that” and he slapped her in outrage.)

Complete overreaction, IMO. But I started to wonder about my dad’s overreactions on this topic.

I had two aunts (still have one; the other passed last year - spinal cancer), both my dad’s younger sisters. And both of them were morbidly obese. At some point I learned about sexually abused girls deliberately gaining weight in order to make themselves less attractive to their abusers, and wondered if that’s what my aunts had done. My aunts were both still teenagers when I was born, and all of my earliest memories of them tell me that they were always obese.

Mind you, this isn’t theories I’m putting together all at once, this is stuff I’ve thought about for a few decades.

So recently, on Facebook, I’ve made contact with a couple of my great-aunts. These great-aunts are the daughters of my grandfather’s brothers.

So, some backstory/history. My great-grandfather (I would call him a “Godly, devoutly religious man”, based on what I’ve heard of him, but I was 4 years old when he died and I have only the vaguest memories of him) migrated from West Virginia to Washington, very early in the 20th Century. He settled here in Washington, in a small agricultural town, and raised his four sons, who also grew up there. There is a road here named for my family.

All of the houses on that road were built by my family. The house right next to my grandparents was built by on of my grandfather’s brothers.

But, in my entire life, even to this day, I have never met that particular great-uncle. Well, yeah, he’s long-dead by now, but he wasn’t dead when I was a child. He lived right next door to my grandparents.

I didn’t even know this until I got talking to one of my great-aunts on Facebook, the daughter of the great-uncle in question. I mentioned that I didn’t recall ever meeting her father, despite the fact that I’d met all of his other brothers.

And I’m left with the feeling that this particular uncle was somebody I’d been “protected” from.

2

To be frank it sounds (seriously) like you’re on the edge of some sort of mental issue akin to paranoid delusions. Nothing in your narrative, absurdly overreacting as your father’s response was, remotely corresponds to a valid indication of rampant inter-family sexual abuse. You appear as if you’re weaving together random strands of memories looking specifically for this behavior.

You sound like one of my crazy aunts insisting my father was a CIA agent based on the fact he was ex-army, spoke French, worked for Agency for International Development, and was in Vietnam in the early 60’s teaching the Montagnards to maximize rice yields. All true individually but hardly any true indicator he was a spy.

3

Most sexual abuse is committed by family members or people that are close to the family. The stats are 15% to 25% of females are sexually abused in North America and around 8% for males. So out of 10 females you can guesstimate that 1 or maybe to of them have been sexually abused. And I don’t think you are delusional.

I know one female that confided in me that she had been abused by at least 25 people.

4

I don’t really know what to make of the connections you see in your family story.

In particular, I think you’re overplaying the “gaining weight in response to sexual abuse” link. Approximately 60% of the adult population is obese and at most about 20% of females have been abused in some form (and that’s all types of abuse, not just family members). Obesity tends to follow family lines just like abuse does, so it seems like this “fact” has a pretty poor correlation with abuse. (I put fact in quotes because I agree that weight gain is one possible outcome from abuse, but I’m not sure how prevalent it is, or whether the weight gain is particularly likely to be a life-long problem rather than a temporary coping mechanism.) Even if the weight gained happened suddenly (like you’d expect for an abuse victim), that kind of weight gain can result from thyroid problems, certain medications, depression, etc.

As for your father’s reaction… I don’t know that I see any link to abuse there either, not without knowing a lot more. It is an extreme reaction, but maybe he was pissed off because he couldn’t even take a shower without munchkins underfoot?

Kind of the same thing for your uncle. Based on what we know, I just don’t see enough evidence. Are you sure he wasn’t just a drunken, foul-mouthed old man? That’s plenty of reason to keep away from the kids.

You asked about my family. My father had a “repressed memory” that “surfaced” during some New-Agey, self-helpy group therapy sessions he and a bunch of his friends did with no actual mental health professional involved. I know they liked to throw around pop-psych buzzwords and they loved to be able to one-up each other on stories of trauma. Knowing what I know of my father, it would not be out of character to make up such a story for the attention and/or sympathy, and I also know that repressed memories have been pretty well trounced by real research. (He once ran for public office and his official bio could only be considered true by Obi-Wan Kenobi standards: “from a certain point of view.” Like, he was a “widower” only if you ignore the divorce with my mother before she died, and he was a “single father for 8 years” only if you ignore his second marriage for 5 of them.)

5

Every family has its skeletons in the closet. What good does it do to bring it to the forefront?

Unless its a current living relative who has access to potential victims I dont see the point.

There was an interesting Dear Abby column once years ago where a woman who had been abused by her father didnt know what to do now that she had daughters. Abby told her that if she didnt want to go public on her father’s abuse she should at least confront her father and tell him straight up that if he so much as blinks wrong at her daughters she would call the cops and from then on, keep a close eye out whenever they are around “Grandpa”.

Its a tough thing to deal with. A friend of mine had to deal with finding out her father had abused her younger sister and now he is sitting in jail. Its a tough thing to tell her kids.

6

No, I’m rather looking for an explanation for other behavior I’ve seen.

I mention my aunts’ obesity because the rest of my family is, and has been, relatively slender. My dad was apparently a bit “chunky” as a youth, but took it off as an adult, and his older brother was always slender. But my aunts were always downright morbidly obese. Kind of “standouts” in my family in that regard.

It was rather the difference in his reaction compared to his typical reactions to other things. I realize it’s one of those “you had to be there” kind of things. He was very reasonable with regard to most behavior, but would flip out at any hint of family+sex. It just suggests to me that, when he was growing up he knew “something” was going on.

I was clearly kept away from my maternal grandfather when I was growing up, because he actually was a “drunken, foul-mouthed old man”. I only saw him when he happened to be sober when we visited. The great-uncle in question, though, was never even acknowledged when I was a kid. I always knew that my [paternal] grandfather had three brothers; it was only recently that I realized I’d only ever met two of them.

I totally agree, and it’s not something I plan to bring up with my family. I mainly posted out of idle curiosity as to whether other people had had similar suspicions about the past.

7

Why don’t you ask your aunts, at the next family get together? Not if they were abused, of course, but how the family was like where they and your dad grew up. They would probably welcome the question and you will get more info. Or are you not interested in your family beyond stories of abuse?

8

Was that really necessary?

9

Not all families have get togethers, and sometimes refuse to speak about much less stigmatized skeletons than sex abuse.

I think the OP is way off base with the aunt thing, but I admit the dad’s reaction seems strange to a modern sensibility.

EDIT:I sympathize with the OP because most of what I know about my own family is through detective work and piecing things together. I’m talking about basic, basic stuff like how my brother died.

10

As to the heading - no. Never. It’s pretty rare, although if it occurs and brought to light it’ll be on every 24-hour news channel for a week.

To me the OP’s father’s reaction was a bit much, but that could just be a personal issue he has. Maybe a previous girlfriend pointed and laughed, maybe he has erectile difficulties, maybe he has some sexual preferences he can’t carry out because of strict morals.

I have several aunts I’ve never met, because of bullying when they were living together. Dad won’t talk about them, and never sees any of them apart from one (out of 8 sisters). He’s stubborn. It’s an issue he’s had for 50+ years, I expect he might attend some of their funerals but not all. I wouldn’t ‘confront’ him about that because I wasn’t there when he was growing up. Families can be complicated.

11

Yes. Same reasons - noticing someone exhibits behavior associated with abuse, a few supporting facts, a few odd events and comments.

12

Well, he fathered three of us, so I doubt that he had “erectile difficulties”, especially given that he eventually left my mom for a younger woman (my stepmother is only nine years older than me) because Mom was never “in the mood” (what he told me was, “I told your mother, ‘you get up at 5AM to read the Bible, and then every night you’re ‘too tired’ to make love?’”) My dad was apparently randy as all get out.

That said, I don’t talk with my dad much these days, for unrelated reasons (not the least of which is that he’s an unrepentant racist, and I get tired of hearing him slip his racist remarks into every conversation).

God, now I’m defending my dad’s dick. Kill me now.

13

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14

I think she was just trying to make the point that there is a much bigger picture beyond what some people call ‘the juicy stuff’. In a way, maybe she meant to say that there was a lot going on over time; there was this and this and this and this.

Those people (and their memories) won’t be around forever. Putting together a full family history might be rewarding… and may even lead to a book/novel.

15

I see nothing in the OP that would cause me to suspect sexual abuse.

16

Nothing seems suspicious to strongly suggest abuse. Also, the hidden great-uncle may have just been a hermit.

These ‘great-aunts’ are actually your first cousins once removed. A great aunt would be the sister of one of your grandparents.

17

I suspect my aunt was sexually abused as a child by her uncle by marriage. According to my grandmother, aunt spent the night at their home, was very withdrawn when she came home, and never visited alone or overnight again. The uncle was known to have sexual issues, namely being uninterested in his wife.

I brought this up with her sister, who is a therapist. She agreed with the possibility but neither of us took this speculation further. Since she’s now in her eighties, there’s really no point.

An addendum, her daughter stated that her father had abused her. This was revealed a few years after he died.