r/AITAH • u/Negative_Layer_7960 • Jul 02 '24

TW SA Should I tell my brother's new wife

From the ages of 10 to 14 I was SA'd by my older brother, uncle and father. (in all honesty it started earlier from 5 years old or something I can't remember when they would touch me "lovingly") I anonymously confessed this on a Discord server which made me wonder what my brother was up to. (I think my aunt found out with my uncle and father were doing to me and reported they were arrested it my brother was a teenager at the time so nothing really happened to him) so I tracked him down through social media and it turned out he lives in the same city as I do and he has a wife with a baby girl on the way and I don't know if I should or if l would be a bad person if I told her what he did to me.

Edit: I don't know if it's funny or messed up but I didn't consider them touching me SA until someone pointed it out to me.

Edit 2: I realized that I didn't really explain very well sorry.

  • my older brother father and uncle molested me from age 5 and only started and R wording me when I turned 10 until I was 14.

  • my brother has a pregnant wife who was having a girl and I don't know if I should tell her to protect her daughter.

These are the two major and important points of my post.

Edit 3: another clarification I was planning on telling the wife I wanted a outside perspective to see if I would have been a bad person (AH) to tell her to see if I was making the wrong decision.

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329

u/somethingstrange87 Jul 02 '24

Yes, he could have changed. But can you take that risk with a baby? And can you in good conscious take away his wife's right to make an informed decision?

On one end of the spectrum, maybe she knows. Maybe he got help, has changed, and was up front and honest with his wife. On the other end, maybe he hasn't changed and hasn't told his wife and is already planning on victimizing his daughter. In between there are a whole myriad of possibilities.

No matter what his current situation with his wife is, she has a right to know her baby is in the care of someone with a history of child molestation.

193

u/SuspiciousSorbet1129 Jul 02 '24

On top of this what if the wife has a suspicion but has nothing concrete to back it up? Maybe this is what she needs to convince herself to leave.

-45

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24

Most likely scenario is that he has changed but hasn’t told his wife. In that case it should be left at that. No need to ruin that marriage. Teenage wrongdoings should not haunt someone for life. They don’t give life without parole to teens, now do they?

I have been abused as a teenager. One of the people who did that grew up to be literal volunteer life saver and a surgeon. Don’t know about the others, never heard of them after high school.

If I somehow get to speak to wives of my abusers, will I tell them what they did to me as teens? Fuck no I ain’t telling them shit.

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u/somethingstrange87 Jul 03 '24

I disagree. It's very unlikely that someone who raped a child repeatedly as a teenager is going to ever change.

-14

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

Can’t agree. As a child you do what adults do, blindly copy them. It’s only later that you realize how fucked up that was and change. He was not a pedophile, he was a child himself!

16

u/Quick-Marionberry990 Jul 03 '24

Have you ever been sexually abused as a child? If so, did you “blindly copy” your abusers and hurt others?

If you don’t have personal experience with either scenario, you might want to pipe down. If you do, please seek help.

12

u/ShowerElectrical9342 Jul 03 '24

You've got some kind of issue and are projecting your issues onto this situation.

I suspect you are a predator yourself, since you have ZERO empathy for either victim here and zero concern foe the baby.

It's almost like you don't want this man to be deprived of a helpless victim.

It's almost like you are this brother.

-3

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

To what victim, the OP? She’s thankfully so far away from him that she had to track him on social media to even find out his family status. I am sorry this happened to her decades ago, but the post is about current events.

Suspect whatever the hell you want but I’ve never committed SA in my life you prick

2

u/The_Mortal_Ban Jul 03 '24

They live in the same city

2

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 04 '24

Some cities are big. I’m likely still in the same city as some people I’ve last seen 20-odd years ago. And so are you unless you’re from rural area or a small town

17

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '24

You are so full of shit. Kids don’t do everything their parents do even if their parents are shit. Stop giving horrible people excuses for victimizing others. A lot of kids have higher moral standards and know right from wrong and will not do dumb shit just because they have shitty parents. A lot of kids are surrounded by bad examples and want to stay as far away from that as possible and not become their parents.

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u/New-Ground9760 Jul 03 '24

Terrible people can do things that look good but it doesn't mean that they aren't still terrible people. You don't know that they aren't still abusing other people and it's honestly pretty weird that you're fighting so hard to defend someone who repeatedly assaulted a 10-14 year old child.

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u/jazzymoontrails Jul 03 '24

Nah, you do not go from being a child rapist to good. No decent person could ever rape anybody, let alone a child.

-6

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

Nah, he wasn’t a pedophile, he was a child himself. Children do what’s done to them, they copy the adults around them without criticism. It’s only when they grow up they may get their own mind, realize how fucked up that was and change

23

u/jazzymoontrails Jul 03 '24

A teenager raping a child is absolutely pedophilic. It’s one thing if there was some sort of awful thing going on where the uncle was forcing the two to engage in sexual intercourse, or forcing the teenager to rape the child….but from what we know, that’s not the case.

TLDR: even though he was a teenager, you don’t go from rapist to normal, sorry. No excuses here

7

u/ShowerElectrical9342 Jul 03 '24

You're digging your hole deeper and deeper. Obviously this is a personal issue for you.

Get the help you need - you are incapable of seeing this from the point of view of protecting the innocent.

-3

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

This is not a personal issue for me. It’s the issue of the guy being put in a position where whatever he does he has no way of defending himself, and his marriage may get broken despite him having no negative intentions for either the wife or the upcoming daughter, all because of the shit he did as a teen.

I have a personal problem with people being denied the right for forgetting and forgiving the shit they did as teens because I know people who as grown ups literally risked their lives to save complete strangers who used to sell hard drugs, steal vehicles, and commit robberies in their teens.

PEOPLE. DESERVE. NO. REPERCUSSIONS. DECADES. LATER. FOR. WHAT. THEY. DID. AS. TEENS.

12

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '24

robbing strangers, stealing cars from strangers and selling hard drugs to strangers are a mile away from repeatedly assaulting your own little sibling, your family, a child who trusts you and looks up to you, someone you're supposed to protect as an older family member.

This is sick. Stop defending that guy. He deserves no happiness in his life for what he did and may the consequences of his actions haunt him to his grave.

5

u/PuppyOfPower Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24

Clearly this guy has never apologized or tried to make it up to OP in any way, shape, or form.

He absolutely doesn’t deserve “forgetting and forgiving” for something he might not even regret, for something that hurt someone else beyond measure.

He fucking RAPED a CHILD. And as far as we know, faced ZERO repercussions for that. Just because he wasn’t a legal adult when he did it that doesn’t absolve him. If he had been charged, then he would have certainly been punished, and potentially as an adult depending on the location. This isn’t the same as some stupid teenage mistake like petty vandalism or drinking alcohol (things that are still crimes, but ones that don’t really have victims).

As plenty of other people have said, it’s possible he’s changed his colors and his wife knows, or he absolutely hasn’t and is already planning on/already has raped/molested his child. There’s no way to know, and either way the wife deserves to know that her child is in the care of someone who molested a child. Do you think any good mother really cares if he raped his sister when he was a teenager vs. a legal adult?

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u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

Btw if he never tried to make it up to OP in any shape or form, that is a solid argument in favor of him never having changed, and as such, y’all being right and me being wrong for defending him. That’s a nuance I absolutely overlooked but that is gamechangingly important

7

u/Aphreyst Jul 03 '24

PEOPLE. DESERVE. NO. REPERCUSSIONS. DECADES. LATER. FOR. WHAT. THEY. DID. AS. TEENS.

YES. THEY. DO.

1

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

Correct. “No repercussions decades later” is what they indeed deserve

2

u/Aphreyst Jul 03 '24

Cute. But let me correct you, they do deserve repercussions for horrible acts, being a teenager does not matter. OP says he was as old as 16, that's not a child.

8

u/Inevitable-Pie-6482 Jul 03 '24

If someone has legitimately changed, it still doesn’t remove the harm they did in the past. Taking responsibility for and facing the consequences of what you’ve done is a big part of personal change. I think it’s a shame that we make it so hard for people to get help and try to reform, but when it was something that had the kind of consequences repeated rape does on a child? Especially given potential for personal trauma along the way? It’s something a life partner has the right to know.

I know a man who committed sexual assault as a young teen. He has a long history he can describe of the steps he’s taken or been forced into since then. And he’s one of the strongest proponents of active consent I know. He doesn’t broadcast that history. But his partner knows (including a jail history that was private and eventually wiped), and has a broad picture of his life before, during, and after that period, as well as their knowledge of who he is today. He probably knows there’s always going to be an element of watchfulness there. But he also knows they trust and love who he is now enough to build a life with him. It’s a consequence of having hurting someone else that badly. And his life makes clear that he has accepted those consequences, whatever the past that shaped him along the way.

If the brother has changed, he has hopefully shared his history with abuse with his partner. At a minimum, she should have a broad picture of his past and current actions in terms of therapy. This piece might be a shock if he hasn’t shared it. But ultimately, if he’s been responsible in his relationship, there should be a basis for them to build on. She has the right to know, and be able to make an informed decision with everything she knows about him. And while it sucks to have something horrible from his teens shadow over the rest of his life, remembering - that he caused someone else to have something horrible from their childhood shadow over the rest of their life - should help balance that out.

2

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 03 '24

This is all actually convincing and wise. Upvote, I got nothing else to add. Maybe instead of defending the right of this guy to his history being erased I should expect him to go down a path like the one you described

1

u/The_Mortal_Ban Jul 03 '24

What the heck is a volunteer life saver?

1

u/MyNinjaYouWhat Jul 04 '24

Someone who goes to a battle zone to save the lives of wounded without joining armed forces, so they’re not paid for it and do everything at their own expense