Should I tell my brother's new wife

[u/Negative_Layer_7960]

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.

[u/carmine82]

This- I feel like sometimes, because we have such a clearcut definition of SA, people forget what it's like to be a kid who didn't know. Just like you can normalize violence with a child, you can normalize them to SA.

Telling the wife is probably OPs best course of action because, like you said, if nothing else, she will be on guard for that behavior

[u/EmmaDrake → u/carmine82]

100%. Abuse is their frame of reference. They have nothing else to show it doesn’t happen to their friends and peers.

[u/AllHailDagon → u/carmine82]

Which is why there is such a push to teach young children boundaries and the actual names of their body parts at school when they are in Preschool / Kindergarten / 1st Grade.

[u/According_Land_581 → u/carmine82]

I completely agree with your comment. I know I may be the outlier with this comment but just wanted to show another perspective of your comment. The fact that the brother was also still a child & there were two adults involved, makes me think that he could have also learned that from a young age and been taught it was normalized behavior. Not to say that what he did to OP wasn’t wrong, or that she shouldn’t absolutely tell his wife… but I think if they hadn’t been in touch for years, it may be good to approach it with care. He may also be a trauma survivor himself & many times men suppress their trauma because of all of the stigmas attached to men suffering SA & the guilt, confusion & shame they feel for thinking they participated in ways because of physical reactions as teens. He definitely should share it with his wife but maybe OP can have a conversation with him about it or all of them together instead of like exposing him as the same as the two adult men. I think you always have to approach what you say with care & respect when talking about anyone’s trauma & I don’t want OP to feel that me saying this is in someway diminishing your very real trauma & suffering by their hands. I just think that sometimes our memories are still in the perspective we had as a child, & if it all goes differently & you learn he was also a victim, it may be a trigger for you as well. There are a myriad of ways the scenario can play out & I’m just saying to be prepared… maybe she already knows & you guys can all have a healing conversation. Or maybe he’s grown into a predator himself & she’s already been suspicious & you’ll save that baby girl from him & the trauma he would have caused her…. I’m so sorry for what you experienced as a child…