Good point. I was assuming that she’s content to be away, as she’s not been in contact with her mother. If that’s not the case, it changes things.
Without any more information, I would assume that the reason she didn’t want her father to know was shame, not necessarily because she didn’t want to go to his.
If it had been something more, wouldn’t CPS have removed at least one of the kids from the home though? Assuming they had the full story, that is.
With all of the inconsistencies that the OP is telling us (especially two years of counseling for the stepson and daughter), I am starting to believe that even the OP doesn’t even know the scope the molestation. Maybe the stepson did much more to the daughter than the daughter disclosed to mom? It would explain the 2 years of counseling, and maybe also the father’s alleged overreaction from the OP’s POV. Maybe dad did get the full story through duress (and the OP didn’t) of what happened and that he took appropriate measures by taking her to the hospital for the rape kit. That could explain dad’s “overreaction”.
If I was the OP, and my daughter told me not to talk to my ex, I would also begin to consider that maybe even I don’t have all the facts from my daughter either. The daughter’s counselor is obligated to tell me nothing about the sessions with the daughter, nor stepson. Maybe the daughter told the OP just enough to get some breathing room between her and the stepson, get some counseling, but yet not turn the family totally upside down…sounds good to a minor on paper, but maybe she’s not able to think about the long term effects and possibilities (like another son shooting his mouth off 2 years later). That’s why the parents should be working together (or at least on the same page) to help raise the daughter and making crucial decisions that affect her life as a minor. OP totally dropped the ball on that count, and in turn betrayed the trust of the father in the process. Some say that the victim has rights regarding whether or not to tell dad…maybe yes, maybe no…but the end result now is much worse with a very fractured/broken family dynamic which will affect them for years because of a minor’s need to control her secrets and a mother who “feels” that this is “right”.
TKOCC, you lost a truckload of trust by one careless act by another relative. You now probably wished that you told the father once you knew about it. Maybe both of you would have gotten the full story and be on the same page and make some clear and rational decision on how to handle the situation 2 years ago instead of butting heads and not knowing the full story. You took a gamble to lie to him through omission, and lost.
As others have said, get a lawyer…but consider it as a tourniquet for a massive hemorrhage.
It sounds proportionate to me - it’s making sure nothing like that ever happens again, while not throwing either kid out of their home.
OP, I can understand why you went with what your daughter wanted you to do - after all, it was her body that was violated, so her choice, right?
But the thing is, she is still a child. Her father has a right to know. I’m not surprised he’s ‘overreacted’ now to something which was told to him as a big dark secret that had been kept from him for years. Rape kits are very unpleasant but odds are he was checking that she hadn’t been more seriously abused recently.
Lawyer up is good advice, but better is to find some way to talk to your ex and explain, calmly, why you didn’t tell him and what steps you took to protect your daughter. Odds are he doesn’t know about those, and if he doesn’t then all of his actions are totally justified. And apologise for not telling him.
If child protection services were involved, why didn’t they tell him?
Especially if he is legally (on paper) the custodial parent. . . that doesn’t make sense.
Until we get precog tactical units underway, CPS still has to rely on someone reporting abuse to them. Considering the OP didn’t feel like telling her ex, I doubt she’d report the incident to anyone official.
The school counselor is a mandated reporter, though. According to the OP, the school counselor was told.
elfkin477, from the OP:
This quote is what prompted my question.
Seriously? You think a proportional reaction to a 12 year old boy touching a 12 year old girl’s chest is to quit your job and make both children go through 2 years of counseling?
yeah, I think this part is pinging a lot of people’s radars.
Especially the two years of counselling, for what the OP claims was a one time swipe - sounds like either an over-reaction or there are some massive parts of the story missing.
$20 on this option…
What would you do, if they were your kids? As I said before, if you just kick to the boy to foster care, that’s a tremendous injustice to what could have just been 12-year old stupidity. If you downplay the issue, you risk exposing your daughter to future assaults from a sexual predator. Furthermore, I promise you that child services would not have been happy with any arrangement that left the kids together unsupervised.
As far as the counseling goes, you put the boy in because there is a not-insignificant chance he’s a sexual predator in the making, and if there’s EVER a chance to avert that, it’s got to be when he is 12. You put the girl in just so that if there are future incidents, there’s a chance she will tell someone. If all is going well, you don’t pull them back out, because when is the danger over? Certainly not after two years. I mean, better to keep him in for too long than for not long enough.
Or you ask them to go for 8-10 visits and then do another assessment then if more is needed.
Or you make arrangements for the girl to stay at a friends house for a coulpa months until mom gets home.
What it sounds like you’re saying that the danger is now never going to be over until one or the other leaves home - so they are going to be in counselling forever?
I don’t know much about counselling, but it would seem to me that if it goes on for two years, either something is there to talk or somebody is being ripped off.
Provided the boy touched her sexually: i.e, he wasn’t just trying to piss her off, he just really wanted boobs and didn’t care what she thought–I think that would be an under-reaction. Understand that if the boy starts again in 6 months or a year, it is almost certain that the girl will not say anything, even if/when it begins to escalate. Twelve year olds can’t really distinguish between “mom wishes this wasn’t true” and “mom wishes I hadn’t told her”, and the lesson she will move forward with was that she caused a bunch of strife, embarrassment and awkwardness by confessing, and it didn’t help anyway. There is no way I would risk letting my daughter go through years of such behavior because the last time she spoke up, it didn’t help. I’d keep her seeing a therapist just so that if it did start, there was a good chance she’d tell them, and I’d stay home until they graduated just to minimize the opportunities.
Would it suck? Yes. But I am a pretty reasonable person, and I would do the same thing, so I don’t see the mom’s call, in and of itself, to be suspicious. I agree there may be a LOT more to this story. But the decision to stay home and keep the kids in counseling is not odd to me.
I don’t know what I would do in that situation, which is giving me pause with regard to the OP. I think that the mistake was not telling the father. His reaction seems understandable since he doesn’t know what occurred or is occurring. What he knows is that he wasn’t told of something that appears to be significant (even if it ultimately isn’t).
That’s the mistake, IMO.
That said, I have a son and a daughter (both are under 4 years of age) and I’m not sure what I would do in this situation with regard to how to handle the children. One thing I most certainly would do is to inform my wife (even if we divorced). She’s their mother. If I thought the situation warranted therapy and staying home, then I would have to think that she should also know.
So, one the one hand we’re giving free condoms to 11-year-olds, we have one school where 1 in 8 kids is pregnant, and another where girls are in a contest with each other to see who can get pregnant first, organizations like Planned Parenthood and many of our schools are handing out free condoms and birth control pills to kids, and then on the other hand we’re going ballistic and quitting jobs and hiring lawyers and absconding with daughters getting rape kits and making a family full of kids and adults hate each other and creating all sorts of sexual trauma for these kids that might impact the rest of their lives, all because a curious barely adolescent kid brushed his stepsister’s chest with his hand.
I weep for our future schizophrenic generation.
And I weep for the present day lunacy that has brought us to this point. Is it really all that shocking that when you have children being taught about sex in school and how to perform it safely, and when magazines and cable television and DVD movies show nothing but sex, sex, sex, that kids are going to start trying to experiment with it? They are getting “sex is cool” messages from every corner with apparently adult approval, which, at school anyway, usually comes in the form of “Don’t do it, but hey, if you do, be sure to use these condoms.” It would be extraordinary if kids weren’t trying to have sex with each other. Why punish and treat them like vile perverts for actions that every bit of societal input they get encourages? On second thought, I don’t think “schizophrenia” begins to describe the mindset these kids are going to develop.
P.S. - I’m NOT being critical of the OP. She has certainly tried to do everything she could to handle this situation in the way she felt best. Unfortunately she’s living in an era where kids are ipso-facto being encouraged to engage in sexual activity, while at the same time acting like anyone who touches a kid - even if it’s only another kid of the same age - is a vile pervert, a predator, and not to be trusted for a minute for the next who knows how many years. So she reacted accordingly and it’s blown up in her face. I feel as sorry for her as I do anyone involved in this whole sorry affair.
What should have happened is the boy gets a talking to where it’s explained that he’s at an age where he’s going to be developing curiousity about sex and the female body and that it’s perfectly natural, but, touching his step-sister or any other young girl in a sexual way at his age and their ages is out of bounds and he is not to do that again. And the girl should have been told that boys of that age are beginning to become aware of girls and sex and that they are going to try to experiment with her to try to find out more, that it’s natural for them to do so, but that she is not to let them do that, and if they persist, she should come and tell you about it.
This was a very minor and common occurance. Kids that age have been playing touchy-feely with each other since time immemorial. People who are acting like this kid is a pervert or a predator are being ridiculous. He’s acting like normal kids on the cusp of sexual awakening act. He just needed instruction, not hysterics.
Yes, if quitting the job is the best way of making sure the kids aren’t left alone together. It’s safer and it’s also demonstrating to CPS that you are taking the problem seriously, so they won’t take either child away.
Counselling is definitely a good idea; whether two years is necessary is another thing, but I doubt the OP said ‘I’m going to send you to counselling for two years.’ Rather, it started and is still being beneficial, so why stop?
Starving Artist, are you for real? One example of one family’s reaction to events on which we are not totally clear, and it’s a referendum both on EVIL PLANNED PARENTHOOD and helicopter parents, and the modern liberal age?
Take it to the pit, or step off. This hijack is pathetic.
I also think people are focusing on the “quitting the job” part and not the part where the OP said she quit the full-time schedule and turned it to flex hours to be home. It’s not like she said, “OMG! Lockdown!! I am staying in this house and never leaving.” She may have worded it clumsily but it sounded to me as though she changed her schedule to demonstrate her commitment to preventing future incidents.
And I agree that counseling for 2 years was probably for other issues in addition to the ones here. Especially since it sounds like the boy in question is her stepson and has neither of his bio parents around. That’s definitely something to chat about.
I was going to say the same thing.