My response is pretty much exactly what SnakesCatLady just posted. your wife should try to convince Grandma to make the call as soon as possible, and should do it herself if Grandma won’t.
The closer the caller was to the event, the more credible the report will be. A call from someone who has witnessed the cousin and the girl spending long hours in the locked room will be much more credible than someone who heard from someone who heard from someone who witnessed it.
My thoughts and prayers are with your wife and her family, especially the little girl.
You and your wife should go pick up the girl and take her to the ER. Make Grandma come along. There will almost certainly be a police officer available int he ER to listen while you talk to the admissions nurse. Get a rape kit, and don’t take “no” for an answer.
Proof is necessary. Without it, you have alerted him and he could take her out of state before the authorities can act.
Report it. Tell them what you know - don’t say that he IS molesting her, tell them what you know. Give them granny’s contact info so they can follow up directly with her if they want to. Tell her what you did and encourage her to cooperate. Who knows, they might raid this evening.
Again, there is no proof, but this is suspicious. Reporting is the right thing. Let them investigate. If it turns out that it was a false alarm, you can know that you did the right thing, and that now you KNOW that nothing bad is happening, and maybe improve family transparency.
If for some reason a call is not made immediately, grandma might be more prone to calling PD the next time he locks themselves in the room.
tell her not to inform him she is doing so, let PD in as quietly as possible, let PD knock on the door and demand access, since its grandmas house she can most likely permit them to break in the door without warning if she is so inclined. This also makes it so there is less chance of ‘grandma is (exaggerating/doesent understand what she saw/lying/drunk/smokes crack)’ defense.
Perv’s wife works a lot. Perv is apparently a perpetually-unemployed couch potato who has mooched from his wife for years. Wife wanted children but I guess they had fertility issues because after many years of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant they decided to adopt.
In a way, my wife’s line of work is a significant source of cynicism; she knows how the system works and the limitations of reporting someone who knows someone who might be molesting their daughter to CPS. I don’t know why grandma didn’t report it; I guess its the classic self-doubt “I’m not certain whats going on and dont want to jump to conclusions about this”. Or she’s really naive and doesn’t connect the dots (she is unaware of perv’s past skeevy behavior because my wife and her immediate family aren’t super close with that side of their family and seldom talk to each other).
I agree with the consensus that this needs to be looked into.
The only things I’m wondering about are 1) whether CPS has the legal right to pry into people’s lives based on this type of vague report, and 2) whether they are likely to find the abuse if it exists.
Still, certainly worth a shot, at any rate.
ETA: my understanding is that step/adopted daughters (or daughters of girlfriends) are among the most common victims of abuse.
Another vote for REPORT, right now, right away. Please.
You are not crazy, if the situation is just as you’ve posted, then fuck family drama or backlash. That is 100% secondary to the very real possibility that this child is being abused.The behaviour you describe is neither innocent nor normal. Grown men do not, ever, spend a single minute of time locked in bedrooms with young girls.
If grandma is being truthful, then there is utterly no question that this needs to be stopped, now. NOW. Quit dithering about and do it.
They have every right to come by and ask a few questions, but my .02 is police. They will be far more likely to respond quickly, once there, if they think anything fishy is going on, they call in to dispatch and CPS will be on it fast if PD is already standing by and requesting them.
I think that his past history of acting creepy towards your wife and her sister is relevant information to relay when telling the authorities about his current very suspicious behavior. This definitely is something that I would report and I hope you guys have already done so by the time you read this post.