Oh, no- this was just last year, when I 42. I guess I shouldn’t have used the word molested, but I didn’t realize that that was reserved for children.
(((Alice)))
Please don’t listen to the “blame the victim” people. YOU were and are the victim here. I divorced my blood relations and it was the best thing I ever did. I’m not in the state right now, but if you want to meet my adopted family, I can call and have invitations offered. Food, bikes, beer, horses, happy dogs and kids running all over while all of the adults keep an eye out. (the cats are always locked up so we don’t have to worry about a kid accidently letting one out.)
Oh, she was just “assaulted.” I see. If she were molested, then it would be OK to tell people and be upset, but a simple assault, pfft, any grown adult should be able to handle that, no problem.
In other news, the above paragraph is a crock of shit and Alice clearly and obviously did the right thing. Jesus H. Christ. I can’t be around my mom’s boyfriend and the only thing he ever did was express bigotry and call me some insulting names in an email. If someone actually laid hands on me? Fuck that, I’m not going to be in the same house with them again. Who in the hell voluntarily would?
Alice, I’m sorry that happened to you, and I’m sorry that what used to be a fun time of year with family has now been screwed up. That sucks, and you’re not wrong to feel bad about it.
It’s quite a loaded word. Notice how even though in the very post that Ruby is quoting me from (let alone the original thread) I made it abundantly clear that there were no children involved here and the situation would be radically different if there were (literally, in the sentences right before the part that he/she snipped), he/she failed to read it and assumed that a child was involved. That’s how powerful the knee-jerk response mechanism to the word “molested” can be. And I think you did know that, Alice.
There’s a reason people still use the phrase “child molester” - yes, it’s very/most often used for attacks on children, but sexual groping is frequently still called molestation regardless of the age of the person affected.
And how exactly are you supposed to know who else is affected if you don’t reveal what happened? For all Alice knew, he’d been doing this to everyone and Auntie had been putting on the “shocked and hurt” act and asking them to please keep it quiet for her sake. And if Alice wasn’t up to seeing her aunt as often, don’t you think her family members would ask something anyway? If she can’t talk to her own sibling or mother about her horrified reaction, who can she talk to?
When my then-70-something father-in-law was walking around his kitchen one Thanksgiving (when I’d been pressed into service as the kitchen helper) wearing long johns and with his dick hanging out of the open fly, I walked out of there and told my husband, who quietly told his dad about him swinging in the breeze, and asked him to put some pants on. His dad’s response was to get angry at him, and complain that it was his house, but at least he did put some damned pants on finally. So we told a few of his siblings too, because people need to watch for signs of senility/abuse/mental instability in family members sometimes.
Yeah, linking to the dictionary solves it because the dictionary encompasses all the nuance, implicit connotations, and emotional charge behind words. See post #24 for rebuttal.
Thanks for sharing, Alice. I missed the original thread, but I really feel for what you’ve gone through.
Fuck not telling. Your aunt had no right to ask you to keep that sort of thing quiet. You did the right thing exposing his behavior and you have every right to get support from anyone you can in dealing with something like this. If you promised your aunt not to spread it around, that, rather than your failure to keep that promise, was your error. (And it’s a totally understandable error.) Of course it was difficult for your aunt to be blindsided with second-hand accusations that he raped you, but that damage can be undone, while the damage your uncle caused cannot be.
I’m sorry that in this life no good deed goes unpunished. But you did the right thing, of that there can be no doubt.
Did he ever express even the slightest remorse for what he did? Is it now clear that he wasn’t suffering dementia? If he really is just an old asshole I don’t know how you can still see him at all. You wrote that
but the truth is that there is nothing you could have done that would cause anyone to make that judgment about you. Either he sees the whole world that way, in which case he’s a psychopath, or he doesn’t, in which case he was so pathetic, so selfish and self-loathing, so shriveled inside that he was willing to take someone good and worthy of love and abuse them that way. The only thing he thought about you was that you were weak enough to let him get away with it, and you proved him so, so wrong. You should be proud of what this incident says about you.
Well, I was just trying to clarify what the word actually meant. If the same thing had happened to me, a 37 year old woman, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to say ‘assault.’
Maybe I’m a happy idiot, but ‘molest’ would have been the word that I would have used, too. That’s all.
He sent me an email shortly after I told my aunt, that said basically, “Sorry for any untoward behaviors I may have exhibited with you”- obviously something that she forced him to do. And no, he doesn’t display any signs of dementia- my aunt has completely dismissed that as any kind of possibility, even though I encouraged her to consider it.
I didn’t mean for this thread to be controversial to anyone. Was just feeling bad and sentimental about this time of year. I apologize to Rigamarole for making all the wrong decisions and posting about them here, and using the wrong words to do it with.
It is not, the full legal expression when the victim(s) are children is “child molestation” - not every apple is red and not every molestation is of a child.
It’s not about me. Like I said, I’m trying to look at it from the perspective of the rest of your family. They’re the ones you owe consideration to, which goes beyond the relationship between you and your uncle. That’s the point I’ve really been trying to make.
But to the extent that I felt compelled to identify with them and take up an opposing viewpoint, it’s probably due to the fact that I grew up in an isolated and dysfunctional family that never had a lot of fun, welcoming family get-togethers like you described due to certain members alienating and abusing each other for various selfish reasons (unrelated to sexual assault, but that’s besides the point). And all the rallying 'round the flag of righteousness and justice and posts like Anaamika’s “fuck the family, fuck peace, fuck everyone, they’re all assholes” post just don’t sit right with me because I don’t think that’s an attitude to applaud. What you did is the relationship equivalent of a suicide-bombing. Sure, you took out your target, but look at all the collateral damage it caused.
This is why it’s important that you spoke up. The children in your family can see that you stand up for yourself, even when it’s difficult, and that they shouldn’t allow themselves to be abused. This is way better for them than your staying quiet so they could have the fake Happy Family Holiday bullshit.
Yeah, well, I don’t feel too bad about it,** Rig, **because in reality, I didn’t destroy a perfect, close, ideal family with my telling. I only exposed one more fucked up thing in a family with a long, long history of dysfunction and fucked-up things. This particular subset of the family seemed normal and sane, which is the reason I cherished them and our relationships so much. But after this happened, I began to see that it was mostly my aunt not admitting that everything was not normal and sane that kept up that illusion, as evidenced by her asking me to keep it quiet.
If sexual assaulting uncle didn’t want the family Thanksgiving to be wrecked, maybe he should have kept his grabby fucking hands off female family members’ breasts. Making this out to be Alice’s fault is ridiculous victim-blaming nonsense. If your family gatherings got fucked up due to abuse, blame the abusers. The responsibility of a victim to stay hush-hush for the sake of family unity or any other goddamn thing is zero.
Yeah, no, where would anyone get that impression.
God almighty, what I learn about the ridiculous lengths people will go to in order to continue “family harmony,” and sacrifice other humans in the process.
Alice, you did nothing wrong by standing up for yourself and demanding respect. IF your refusal to keep sexual assault quiet created discomfort within the family, that’s too bad. People shouldn’t have to suffer violations for the sake of the appearance of a perfect family.
You did the right thing. There are all kinds of pressures that keep that stuff unresolved. Family politics are among the worst kind, and for someone to suggest that you suck it up is exactly the kind of thing that perpetuates the coverups to maintain “family integrity”.
You don’t owe them your sanity to maintain the illusions that prop up theirs.
You did what you thought was right at the time. A lot of how we handle these kinds of things depends on context. If I was felt up by an 80 something aunt who had always behaved herself previously I would probably put a large chunk of that behavior down to creeping senility, and the lack of inhibition and impulse control that often accompanies it, and I probably would have agreed to keep quiet if my uncle asked me to in that scenario.
In that context I don’t think I would be enabling some predatory molester, but rather dealing with an awkward situation so as not to nuke family ties. To be frank, it’s not nice or pleasant, but being wildly inappropriate is just something old people do as their minds deteriorate.
No one was in your place and can judge that you did what you felt you had to do.
Fucking A.