Advice on how to deal with this TW: accusations of child sexual abuse

[NameChangeCliche]

Name changed for obvious reasons. I don’t know where to even begin with this and I apologise for the length in advance.

I’m looking for some advice on how we deal with my granny going forward. She’s 96 and lives in a nursing home because she couldn’t cope taking care of herself any more, but health wise she’s in very good nick for a woman of 96 and not expected to die imminently (or more imminently than any other 96 year old). Her mental health has always been an issue; she was diagnosed with bipolar in her 40s and had problems with barbiturates and other drugs before this. She also has a more recent diagnosis of BPD. She’s not schizophrenic but was suspected of being for some years.

My grandfather died 20 years ago, when I was around 25 and my mum (his daughter) was around 50. My mum has two siblings, an older brother and younger sister. She is married to my dad and they’ve had a long and happy marriage which produced me (middle child) and my older and younger sisters. I’m married and have two teenage daughters.

My granny is very sexually “open” is the only way I can put it. Her and my grandfather were nudists for a while in the 70s and 80s and did lots of nudist holidays and stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s relevant. Even now in her 90s she talks about sex more than is normal in polite conversation and often brings things round to sex. It’s a bit of a family joke that she can make anything you start talking about somehow about sex.

When I was about 10 in the mid eighties my grandparents split up for a while. They ended up getting back together and a big part of their getting back together was that they had a lot of very intense therapy, including sex therapy. They were very open about this with their adult children (I didn’t find out about this til later, obviously). They had a quite dysfunctional sexual relationship, largely because of my granny’s until then undiagnosed vulvodynia).

My granny had a poor relationship with her own father who was very domineering and had a bad temper, but no history of sexual abuse or anything (this is relevant. Also we believe this is true as much as we can believe anything as my mum has outright asked my granny if she was sexually abused at the time of hers and my grandfathers sex therapy/vulvodynia diagnosis. She said she wasn’t and never experienced any sexual abuse or sexual violence).

My mum and her brother have been clearing the house that my granny and grandad lived in to sell it to fund my granny’s care as her savings have run out. In the house they have found literally scores of diaries and notebooks where my granny has been collecting “evidence” of supposed sexual abuse within the family. This includes times and dates of things she’s “observed” that “prove” various men in the family have been sexually abusing the children, some girls and some boys. It starts in the mid 1950s with “evidence” of my grandad sexually abusing my mum and aunt, all innocent things like tickling, having baths with the kids. But under the “evidence” she writes, in very graphic language, what she thinks the men’s intentions behind these innocent things are. These diaries start again in the 70s when me and my siblings were born and follow the same pattern of innocent things being listed as evidence of sexual abuse, this time by both my grandfather and my dad (her son in law) and then graphic language underneath saying what she feels the men’s sexual intentions are towards the kids. There are similar lists and times and dates with the explicit stuff underneath involving my cousins and their dads. She then starts these diaries up again in the 00s with my kids, my sisters kids and their dads.

None of these men were or are sexually abusive; none of us were sexually abused. It’s all in her head. It’s some of the sickest stuff I’ve ever read in my life and it’s freaked us all out hugely. It’s also made us all angry because if she thought all of this was true enough to write it all down, why did she never do anything to protect these kids that she thought were in such danger?

As well as this there’s some other stuff where she writes about erotic fantasies and dreams she has had, involving friends, workmates and acquaintances, but also her sons in law and brothers in law.

My mum and uncle never want to speak to her again, in fact none of us do really. We are all horrified and freaked out. But we have no idea what to do- she’s a frail old lady in a care home who can’t just be abandoned, can she? Who do we turn to for help with any of this? I think that my mum and uncle (at least) need to talk to a professional going forward about how they deal with both what they’ve read and how to deal with my granny going forward.

Has anyone got any advice? We are all flailing and hugely upset and disgusted by what we’ve found.

Yes this - why do you know about this?

Even the thread title is wrong. Granny never "accused" anyone of abusing anyone. She had her own paranoid intrusive thoughts and wrote them down and did nothing more about them.

Op you and your family are so out of order and I feel so sorry for your elderly granny. This is one of those threads that will stick in my mind for a long time. Your poor granny, she deserves better from her family

Poor granny. What a massive invasion of privacy to read her diaries. It sounds like she’s been traumatised by being abused at some point and has tried to work through it by writing about it. Please burn them and continue to see your granny as normal. I would be beyond hurt and devastated if I knew my family had read my diaries.

Act like the Royals. Burn and forget. What else do you think would be appropriate? 96 years old. Poor woman. I suspect this, too, is a work of fiction.

I’m sorry op, I have a mother like this. Op knows, quite likely, PRECISELY because granny will have told everyone. People who haven’t experienced a bipolar, or mentally unwell, or otherwise personality disordered parent, just can’t conceive of how bloody shit it is, and how nasty they can be.

Plus, again judging by my own elderly mum, and by the ops own thread, granny absolutely wanted them to read those diaries.

Granny is Sharp as a pin, and asked other writings to be binned, but not these diaries. Granny will get some sort of weird vicarious pleasure of hurting family.

As I said, if you don’t have a parent like this, it doesn’t seem possible…

But op, to move forward, you have some good advice here. Essentially you need to ignore these writings, and understand they are the work of a mentally ill person, who probably won’t be here in five years… look after yourselves, it’s tough!

it sounds like you grandmother had had a chaotic life in terms of her mental health and substance use. Is it possible these diaries are related to dips in her mental health (eg she became obsessed or paranoid about the thought of CSA):

I think given her age there isn’t much you can do. I think your plan to support your mum and her siblings is right and seek therapy for them. As for your gran no change is likely there given she has been that way for so long and is so elderly. Everyone will have to make their own personal choice about what relationship they have with her moving forward. Breaking contact or maintaining contact are both valid choices. I’d just take a stance of everyone has to decide for themselves What contact they have with her, or not, and others will respect everyone else’s choice.

I'm sorry about your mum and what you've been through.

But op's Granny managed to keep these diaries a secret until now, aged 96. She didn't ask anyone to read them, let alone gossip about them in family conclave.

Op says they just found them when clearing the house.

I get that maybe Granny did leave these diaries to be read. However, sticking to the taboo/social rule of "don't read private diaries" would have protected everyone.

For gods sake, she's bipolar, she could very very likely have been manic when these were written. I'm bipolar, and also suffer from hypersexual episodes were I see sexual abuse and conspiracy theories EVERYWHERE.

Was there REALLY a need for everybody to read her diaries all the way through? I very much doubt it. And I'm a bit horrified that you feel her being sexual abused could "excuse" her mental health issues that have been solidified in a form of private writing.

Sorry but this is on all of you. Her private information and thoughts isn't a library service to be passed around. You would be very unfair to cut her off.

And I also agree that she was likely abused although to cope with it she may have even reframed it to herself as she wanted to do it and then becone very sexually a tive as a way of dealing with the trauma/betrayal. . That's incredibly common. I was rapedd repeatedly as a teenager and I didn't become sexually repressed, I went the opposite way and had slept with God knows how many people, id say over 1000 by the time I was 19. But it was all a way of coping and punishing myself for the crimes committed against me. But if you had asked me at the time I was SEXUALLY LIBERATED and having a grand old time, I absolutely was not a traumatised young woman screaming out for help..... except that's all I was.

I think you need to reframe it as intrusive thoughts, related to her mental health rather than a. Serious concerns she couldn't be bothered to act on. b.Some sort of sexual fantasy for her.

And it's very possible she was abused but repressed the memory and then when she and you and the others had kids it triggered something.

Especially if the records of the "victims" is all around a similar age.

Of course get therapy etc to work it through but this is an unwell old woman you've loved all your life, who has never intentionally caused harm (I know you think she left them to be found but it may have been about having her worries validated rather than trying to screw you all up). You need to try and separate the diaries from the person.

And there's absolutely no reason you all needed to read every page of the diaries

As horrible as it must have been to read all this stuff, all of you could have stopped at any time. You all seem very up in each others business.

You all know yourselves, whether you were abused or not, or whether other men in your life were abusive.
Personally, I'd chalk these up as the rambling, intrusive thoughts of a mentally ill person, with a long history of drug use and mental ill health.
After all, she's 96. And for all that she shows no signs of dying imminently, 96 year olds are going to die soon. My great aunt made it to 97, and went from perfectly fine, living in her own home, to dead, in less than 3 weeks. So it seems unnecessarily cruel to ghost a 96 year old over this.

sounds like OCD around intrusive thoughts.
You say she's had therapy in the past. I wonder if she's had therapy around this and been told to write her intrusive thoughts down? Intrusive throughts are often around the most taboo, awful subjects, like
murder, child abuse, rape, being racist etc.

psyche.co/guides/how-to-manage-intrusive-thoughts-with-the-help-of-cbt

and yes I agree, it does like she's been abused. Also, bpd is often a. incorrect diagnosis given to women who are actually autistic.

I didn't know this about bipolar- thank you for sharing. It would explain a lot of her previous behaviours around sex and talking about sex.

I just wanted to thank everyone who has given an opinion on this, whether it was condemning us for reading the books or understanding why we did.

We've decided to destroy them and continue as though nothing happened, but my uncle and mum are going to seek some counselling for themselves to help them deal with both what they've read but their relationship with her in general (which has often been difficult).

Thanks again all.

Sadly for us, she told us! In quite graphic and hideous detail. After my grandad died she revealed a lot of stuff about their marriage, including this, to the point that my mum had to ask her to stop. I was about 25 and my siblings similarly aged young adults and I can remember the looks on their faces when my granny just launched into telling us about this (and lots of other stuff!) one afternoon. The horror!

I really wish it was!

@Deata thanks so much for your post. My grandmother is not some frail, forgetful old lady who is vulnerable to us; if anything over the years I'd say we've all in some way been victims of her abuse... whether than be getting the sharp end of her very bad temper, some physical violence that she did against her own kids or exposing us to details about her sex life. I do feel that she wanted us to read this stuff, but in a way I'm glad it feels so unbelievable to people because it makes me realise how dysfunctional and awful her behaviour has been over the years if it literally seems unbelievable to people! Im sorry that you know somewhat what it's like to have a family member like this, but appreciate your post.

Sadly for us, she told us! In quite graphic and hideous detail. After my grandad died she revealed a lot of stuff about their marriage, including this, to the point that my mum had to ask her to stop.

That too fits with trauma. I used to call it the "Ancient mariner" phase. The need to talk to anyone who'd listen about what happened. The death of your grandfather could easily have been a trigger. According to my last psychiatrist, its extremely common.

My paternal grandmother was awful. My dad joined the military at 15 to get away from her after she drowned his cat. She complained about everything, called me fat when my bmi was underweight, hated my mother, fell out with most of her family because she was ashamed of being half Roma. After her death, I learned a lot about her early life from diaries (that she left to me) and from family members who reconnected at the funeral. It explained a lot. My parents struggled because of their childhoods and at points the urge to revert to the only parenting I knew is almost overwhelming.

Potentially your grandmother is the same.

Get therapy if you need and burn the diaries.

I totally agree with @Mumoftwo1312 , wtf were you doing sharing these private diaries out with the family? That’s completely unforgivable in my opinion and a great betrayal of your grandmother. She certainly doesn’t need to be ostracised because of your behaviour. Poor woman.

This.... Maybe you and your family should educate yourselves on the diagnoses she has.

She wrote what she believed to be true. It doesn't matter whether you know it to be untrue, that is what she thought! I actually feel sorry that she has lived a life "watching out" for you all and yet yous all want to disown her.

My mum had bipolar 1 and would become hyper sexual as she went into a manic phase. I wonder if it was in these periods of time that your gran was writing?

I know some people manage their bipolar okay but my mum wasn't one of them and would go unmedicated. She (or the bipolar, I'm never sure which) made life hell for a lot of people. My mum's hyper sexuality would rip apart other people's lives. Affairs with married men; boyfriends who she'd change every few months; once, a random man she'd brought back from a party who I found in her bed in the morning - yes, she'd left me on my own overnight at the age of 8 to pick him up.

I'm in awe of the people on this thread who can happily separate the illness from the person but I never managed it. The actions of people with these illnesses can cut to the core. Like your gran, my mum was a hostile environment to me and she attacked me when I was a teenager. I knew before you'd even written it that there would have been more going on in her relationships with other people.

OP, your gran hasn't got long to go. You and your family know what she's written is utter bllcks. In those diaries she only supposed what your family member's intensions were, nothing else. Yes, burn it all. I had psychotherapy a few years ago for my experiences and it definitely helped so maybe this can help your mum and uncle as well.

Good luck to you and your family OP.

I think, as others have suggested, you see this as a figment of someone's serious mental health issues and likely childhood trauma that's manifested itself as an obsession with seeing risk and abuse everywhere. I think you might even eventually be able to have compassion for her for fixating to a degree on preventing harm (harm that she herself very likely may have experienced). While yes, it involved, at least in her mind accusations against adults that you believe did not do those things, I would assume it came out of a wish to be protective of the children.

If anything, that is a positive - even if the whole thing is very difficult to accept. I have a parent who has her own childhood trauma and this trauma has manifested in trying to do harm - actively bringing a known paedophile around children in the family.

I don't blame you for reading them. Honestly, if I found something and I thought it might contain information about family members, yes, I'd read it. I think maybe this comes from my own expectation of abuse being everywhere. But if those allegations were true, I would have wanted to know about them. I would have kept reading because it might have helped me to protect a child.

This is what I can't get my head around really; she obviously wasn't looking out for or protecting us as she never actually did anything with her suspicions. Now okay, I can't know that they're all untrue, but I know the ones involving me are utter nonsense (which makes me think the others are also nonsense)... but she wrote with such anger and conviction that she was sure I was being sexually abused by my own father, and yet never even hinted at it to anyone who could protect me!!!! So it's bad enough she wrote all this really horrible, graphic stuff down because she was so certain of it at the time, but never stepped in to help any of us kids from these apparent paedophiles.

I suppose I can't get my head around the logic because it's illogical and the act of a very mentally unwell person, but nevertheless it's really bothering me that she apparently believed for a time (a long time sometimes, over a few years) that her kids and grandchildren and great grandchildren were victims of CSA, but just apparently sat back and watched. It's a head fuck.