Update: So I Just Got Molested By A Family Member

[miss_elizabeth]

As I said, I am so sorry about what happened to you. But I am even more sorry you are being blamed and treated so badly in this thread. You are handling yourself with astonishing grace and humility; all the people who are claiming you are some type of drama queen are obviously wrong, based on your behavior here. I’ve found this board to be unbelievably tolerant of sexual abuse, but this still saddens me. If these comments are affecting you anywhere near as much as they upset me, you have my deepest sympathy.

You did everything right. When he molested you, he gave up all rights to privacy. Period. If he cared about boundaries, he should have tried having some. You stood up for yourself. You did the right thing. I know you know this, but I want you to really know it. You did what you had to do, and you did the right thing. Any mistakes you might have made are on HIM; he did this. Every action flowed from his assault. All evil flourishes in the dark, but sexual evils more so than any other. It feeds on shame and silence. You stopped that. You should be proud of yourself; I don’t even know you, and I am very proud of you. As a fellow survivor of sexual abuse, thank you.

[perfectparanoia]

Alice, ignore the people in the thread who said you shouldn’t have told anyone. If it had been me,* I would have punched him without thought for my safety. Told everyone in the house at the time what had happened, grabbed my kids and never spoken to your uncle or aunt again (possibly eventually mending fences with the aunt as long as I never had to see her husband).

Hell, I might have pressed charges.

*in fact, the one time a guy did grab my boobs without permission, I punched him. First punch I had ever thrown. I broke his nose. Purely on instinct.

[Frank]

@miss_elizabeth

I’ve found this board to be unbelievably tolerant of sexual abuse, …

This board? Really?

[Alice_The_Goon]

It was a good day, for the most part. We went to the two dinners and ate a lot of good food. Most of the people were very friendly- I only knew a couple of people at each dinner. So I met and hung out with, for hours, a lot of people that I didn’t know, and I got overstimulated by that, and I came home and had a complete meltdown. But I’m okay now and very glad that this holiday is over. I like knowing people and having friends and everything, but new people are very difficult for me.
*
So* many thanks to all who’ve been supportive. And to those who have been less than, as well- your words have been considered and will continue to be. I’m far from perfect but am always willing to look at my mistakes as objectively as I can and try to improve.

[Taomist]

@Alan_Smithee

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.

Exactly this. I hope that you can find/make your own Thanksgiving traditions for you and your family, Alice, to replace those that just aren’t working any more. Try to remember the good, and carry it on to the future.

[Ruby]

@Rigamarole

Like I said - ignoring it is not the same thing as keeping it between the parties actually affected, without the need to involve everyone in the extended family. I’m actually looking at it from the point of view of her sons - all they know is that they used to have big, fun family get-togethers and now they don’t anymore and the reason is because of something mommy did (and even though I iterated this point before I know someone will clip it out of context - he may have started it, but she was the one who chose to make a public stink over it and the fallout is the result of that). That’s not fair to them.

Also, the OP is a (what, 30/40-something?)-year old woman who should be able to handle herself as an adult. There’s absolutely no evidence to support the fear that he’d extend his behavior toward children in the family, and if there were or the original incident had been toward a child that would have been a very different situation, and I’d have a very different tune (by the way, the OP wasn’t “molested”, she was assaulted, since that’s what they call it when it’s a grown-up being targeted).

Yeah, fuck everyone; they’re all assholes if they don’t support your righteous endeavors 100%. That’s a lovely way to foster family solidarity. In a perfect world, we could hold everyone to the highest standards and immediately and permanently shun them for any minor transgression. But because you endured a small amount of pain does not mean that the answer is spreading a disproportionate and undue amount of pain around to everyone else who wasn’t involved. Sometimes dealing with these kinds of things requires a little bit of tact and maturity, and the OP’s story is exactly the reason why. Somehow, I don’t think she was thinking about protecting the rest of the family from this horrible, predatory monster when she decided to blab to everyone. She was thinking about herself.

@Rigamarole

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.

My bad. I didn’t read the linked post and I missed your statement that your opinion would differ had a child been involved. It still doesn’t change my opinion. Sexual assault/molestation/abuse/whatever is still sexual assault/molestation/abuse/whatever. It’s not acceptable under any circumstances and to sweep it under the rug would have been a Bad Idea.

rigamarole, I don’t know if you are a man or woman but you think like a man. You don’t seem to have any sense of how it feels to be vulnerable or overpowered by someone who you may have loved and respected. Her reaction of frozen shock is not all that weird given the circumstances.

I do agree that she had options and choosing to deal directly with Uncle Grabby Hands and Aunt Denial may have been all that was needed if he was truly sorry for his transgression. However, she still wasn’t wrong to have told others in the family IMO.

[Alice_The_Goon]

Hey, maybe by next year he’ll be dead- not that I wish it on him, but he is 81, after all, and you gotta die sometime. Then my aunt and I can reconcile. Or, horrors, she dies first and I have to deal with him at her funeral.

I have decided that from now on, I am having Thanksgiving at my house and doing the inviting. Even in so-called normal families, there comes a point where the younger (middle-aged) generation has to take over and become the matriarch, and I guess that it’s time. That makes me feel old, but that’s okay.

[moejoe]

@Alice_The_Goon

Hey, maybe by next year he’ll be dead- not that I wish it on him, but he is 81, after all, and you gotta die sometime. Then my aunt and I can reconcile. Or, horrors, she dies first and I have to deal with him at her funeral.

I have decided that from now on, I am having Thanksgiving at my house and doing the inviting. Even in so-called normal families, there comes a point where the younger (middle-aged) generation has to take over and become the matriarch, and I guess that it’s time. That makes me feel old, but that’s okay.

I’m thinking probably I’ve fallen into the category of not very supportive here, and I want to make sure that you know that wasn’t my intention. So, let me try again for the record:

I think you were completely inside the bounds of wise choices to tell as many people as you felt like telling. Heck, putting his face on a flyer and pasting them around the neighb would have been ok by me, because the shame is his, not yours. I wish for you a time when, rather than asking people how you should handle a difficult situation, you find yourself telling people how you did handle it.

My suggestion that you find a way to react with more anger and force, rather than frozen fear, was about wishing that freedom for you, not judging you for not being there yet.

If my family was sitting down to a holiday meal with people who had abused me, my chair would be empty, and I certainly wouldn’t be bringing my kids there either. Bravo to you for setting that limit for yourself and your family.

I don’t agree that the pain of being molested (or whatever we’re calling it) is impossible to heal, and I sincerely hope that you don’t believe it either.

[Alice_The_Goon]

@moejoe

My suggestion that you find a way to react with more anger and force, rather than frozen fear, was about wishing that freedom for you, not judging you for not being there yet.

I have been thinking about this and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not someone that would punch an old man, or really anyone for that matter. I’m quiet, I’m sensitive, and I was raised with a huge emphasis on respecting your elders. I could no more punch an old man than I could a baby. And an old man that I’ve known and thought of as family for several years is a lot different than a stranger grabbing me in a dark alley, so I’m not afraid that I wouldn’t be able to defend myself in that position.

[Mississippienne]

Wow.

Some of the posters in this thread… my respect for them is slowly circling the drain. Alice, I am so sorry you got static not only from your family members (who you could reasonably expect to love and support you) but also from certain judgmental and small-minded persons here. You do not deserve that treatment. No one does.

As for some of y’all, all I can say is that I sincerely, sincerely hope that you never have to go through some of the things **Alice **has been through. And that if you do, that someone gives you more respect than you have given her.

[zweisamkeit]

@Frank

This board? Really?

Not to reply for her, but yes, really. Also sexist attitudes and behaviors in general.

[astro]

In reading most of the answers here there seems to be relatively little acknowledgement that she was quite possibly dealing with a person who, at 80 years old, has some level of age related mental impairment that is effecting judgement and impulse control.

If a molestation was attempted on me by a fully functioning adult then all bets are off with respect to being discreet, and let the chips fall where they may, but if I am dealing with someone in their 80’s making an out of character grab at me, and muttering “nice”, incipient mental issues are probably where I would go re putting that situation in context.

This does not excuse what the old person did, and everyone will deal with the situation of being groped by an elderly person differently, but for those castigating those posters who suggest than this particular situation might have been better handled on the down low, you might want to step back and look at the overall situation.

It’s not at all unusual for someone who is 80 years old to be on the leading edge of senility. People in this gray zone are still quite mentally functional, but they also do all sorts of odd and embarrassing stuff that is utterly out of character for them when they were younger. Being sexually aggressive is often one of these behaviors.

How do you handle this in mentally impaired elderly relatives? I’ve seen my elderly relatives do, or attempt to do stuff re being inappropriate that may well have gotten them arrested if allowances had not been made for their age and disability. It’s not like these things were kept as some dark family secret, the situation was discussed with other family members in the context of the impaired person needing supervision or some level of control being necessary if they interacted with others.

This is not to diminish being sexually groped, but being groped by an 80 year old family member who is on the down slope to senility is something people can (and do) handle with discretion within families in the interest of preserving family relationships. For better of worse allowances are made for misbehaving elderly people throughout human society.

Only the OP was there and only the OP can decide what is right for her to do, but there are variety of different ways to handle things, and keeping a confidence about an elderly relative acting out character and groping her, is not any more wrong than the OP was right about discussing it.

[Peeta_Mellark]

@Alice_The_Goon

It was a good day, for the most part. We went to the two dinners and ate a lot of good food. Most of the people were very friendly- I only knew a couple of people at each dinner. So I met and hung out with, for hours, a lot of people that I didn’t know, and I got overstimulated by that, and I came home and had a complete meltdown. But I’m okay now and very glad that this holiday is over. I like knowing people and having friends and everything, but new people are very difficult for me.
*
So* many thanks to all who’ve been supportive. And to those who have been less than, as well- your words have been considered and will continue to be. I’m far from perfect but am always willing to look at my mistakes as objectively as I can and try to improve.

{{{Alice}}} I wish I could do more for you than just toss some words at a message board. Like I said earlier, be kind to yourself. You deserve better than what happened.

[kayT]

Alice, I think you are quite right to host the events yourself and control the guest list. I also find new people stressful, and even dealing with people I know can sometimes leave me wondering what to say, etc. So being the hostess has been a lifesaver for me as I can not only do the inviting, I can also be busy in the kitchen and not have to make quite as much chit-chat.

I am glad you had an ok day for the most part and hope the rest of the “holiday season” is less stressful for you. You are a really strong person and I for one am impressed with your ability to read some of the foolishness here and remain calm!

[Lynn_Bodoni]

This does not excuse what the old person did, and everyone will deal with the situation of being groped by an elderly person differently, but for those castigating those posters who suggest than this particular situation might have been better handled on the down low, you might want to step back and look at the overall situation.

I agree that Uncle Grabby might be experiencing some mental issues. I disagree that this should be kept quiet. The OP didn’t tell about the incident to get revenge, in my opinion, but to alert others about Uncle’s grabbiness. If Uncle is getting senile, then people need to be aware that he will act on his impulses and not think about the consequences. And if he isn’t senile, but just thinks that it’s OK to grab and chase women, then other people need to know that, too.

[elbows]

It’s not all about the tribe you were given, often times it’s much more about focusing on the tribe you make!

I think you did okay, don’t beat yourself up, or pay any mind to the critics, they’ve never been where you are.

I hope you get to reconcile, once he’s worm food, too!

[kushiel]

@astro

This is not to diminish being sexually groped, but being groped by an 80 year old family member who is on the down slope to senility is something people can (and do) handle with discretion within families in the interest of preserving family relationships. For better of worse allowances are made for misbehaving elderly people throughout human society.

But even if it is age-related, the other family members need to know. What if this year, with the absence of Alice, he gropes another female relative?

Like I said above thread, I have an Uncle McGrabbyhands. My grandmother was in the hospital and all my aunts were in the hospital room with her and I was left with my uncles (I was about 11 at the time). At the time, I didn’t know he was McGrabbyhands, and he offered to go to the cafeteria and buy me a snack, so I went with him. Mom came out and asked my uncles where I was and they told her I went with Uncle McGrabbyhands, at which time Mom started a manhunt in the hospital, worried he tried to take me into an empty hospital room or something. Nothing had happened, but what if something had happened to one of my cousins before and my aunt never told my mother and he did something to me?

It doesn’t have to be Uncle McGrabbyhands is an asshole pervert, it’s more like Uncle McGrabbyhands age is affecting his mental health, so be alert.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@Alice_The_Goon

you think you’re talking to people in confidence, they turn out to be punk-ass bitches

This is definitely one of the top 10 life lessons I’ve noticed so far:

1. Kids: you can’t make them be you, but you can try to learn who they are and guide them on their own path/terms

2. You think you’re talking to people in confidence, they turn out to be punk-ass bitches (no need to rephrase that one)

3. Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something (friend of mine said that)

Still working on 4-10. I know I was one who chimed in with “tell.” Sorry it caused a shitstorm in the end, but I still think it was the lesser of two evils. Ultimately, it comes back on the wicked uncle because you wouldn’t have had to tell if he hadn’t gotten out of line. Incedentally, i think I also wondered out loud if he was losing his marbles and the lack of inhibition may have been a sign of that. Any insight about that in the last year? Or is it looking like he’s just an old prick?

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

@perfectparanoia

Alice, ignore the people in the thread who said you shouldn’t have told anyone.

I am not a good reader sometimes. Could you please direct me to where this occurred?
mmm

[MsWhatsit]

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

I am not a good reader sometimes. Could you please direct me to where this occurred?

Sorry to hear about your reading difficulties. Here you go:

@Rigamarole

You say your aunt told you not to tell anyone, yet you felt the need to disregard her and make sure everyone knew about it anyway. You didn’t need a manual - you needed to shut up and listen to her wisdom.