The last unacknowledged domestic violence

[MangoSeason]

You are a 15 year old girl coming home from school. A 17 year old boy is following you. He shoved you into a wall at school today. He called you a cunt. He knocked your books out of your hand. The teachers just told him to stop being a pest and then walked away.

At your garden gate he suddenly is upon you and slams you into the ground. You get gravel rash. Your neighbour rolls her eyes and goes inside. You get to the front door and get inside. Not safe of course. Your parents are not home and he follows you in because he is your brother and he lives there.

You rush to the laundry and lock yourself in. You stay there until your mum comes home. She’s cross of course. She has been working all day and comes home to this. She says you two are old enough to sort it out yourselves. You must have provoked him. You are too sensitive.

You once tried telling your head of year. He laughed and said all siblings fight and you will be best friends in a few years. You tried again and told the school safe-guarding lead. They took it a bit more seriously and spoke to your parents. Your parents were furious at you. You are called a drama queen, trying to get your brother into trouble over normal sibling rough and tumble. Get over yourself! Your whole extended family is unhappy with you. Fancy speaking to the school about your own brother. What an untrustworthy wuss you are.

There was a school assembly with the local police about domestic violence. You learn what you should do if your parents hurt you. What you should do if your parents hurt each other. There was nothing mentioned about what to do your brother hurts you. You think about speaking to the police officer afterwards but what is the point? No-one cares. It will only upset your parents. It seems it is perfectly acceptable for a nearly fully grown boy to physically assault you if he is your brother.

Sibling violence is an under researched area of domestic violence. Most people don’t understand what it is. They think it is sibling rivalry. The risk factors for sibling violence are having authoritarian parents, siblings close in age and siblings being latch-key kids. The perpetrator is usually the oldest and strongest sibling. Most common is older brothers targeting younger sisters, followed by older brothers targeting younger brothers. Less common, but still frequent is older sisters targeting younger sisters. Older sisters targeting younger brothers is the least common, as the brother will become physically stronger than the sister at puberty. Sibling violence is characterised by the persistent targeting of one or more siblings by a stronger sibling. There is little back and forth. One is the perpetrator and one is the victim almost all the time.

Society doesn’t know how to handle it. Schools and police bat the issue back to parents who are the least able to act properly, as they love all their children and bury their heads in the sand.

Just want to out this out there. If you work with children and they complain that their sibling is hurting them, please take it seriously.

[vampirethriller]

My brother is 18 months younger than me but bigger and stronger and women aren't valued in our family, so he grew up abusing me and my sisters. I remember being told by my father that my sister then age 5 had said our brother touched her all the time in bed: father said if we didn't keep it secret we'd be taken away.
We were told not to make him angry and then he wouldn't hurt us. He's 37 now and they're still telling us not to make him angry and he won't hurt us.
It's not physical any more but it's still abuse. He literally screams in my face if I say something he disagrees with. I avoid him as much as possible.
Everyone outside the family thinks he's wonderful, such a lovely helpful man, so kind, so good to everyone. Nobody has ever believed us.

[Stormwhale]

My brother was very violent to me throughout our childhood and it has messed me up for life. As a teen I went looking for a family of some kind to be part of and ended up in the worst places, experiencing awful things. Now I have children I cannot cope with them being unkind to each other at all. My brother once dared to pick on my daughter and I completely lost it, flew into a murderous rage and if my family hadn't have stepped in I would have ended up in a cell for sure. My mental health was incredibly poor from late teens to mid 20s and i ended up in and out of hospital.

Through our childhood my parents dismissed it as me 'winding him up' or 'bickering', and excused his behaviour as he was unhappy and being bullied at school. Now as an adult my dm has apologised and said she didn't see how horrific it was.

I was an incredibly lonely, frightened child and I dont think the effects of it will ever leave me.

Thanks for this op.

[justanotherneighinparadise]

I had a similar dynamic but it was mental torture, not physical. We’re no contact now which feels much better. It was allowed to happen because my parents were both at work. They had no idea what was going on. I was a latchkey kid and scared to go home.

[MangoSeason]

@An0n0n0n

Yanbu. It's not talked about and people always assume having 2 plus kids is best so that theu have eachother. Unless the siblings are the same sex i have rarely met close boy/girl soblings, especially when there are only 2 kids.

I know a lot of close mixed sexed siblings, mine included! My DH is very close to his sisters. It was being exposed to normal sibling relationships in other families growing up that undid a lot of the gaslighting in my case.

That said, I was terrified of having a child like my brother. He was born wrong. I know this is not fashionable to say. From a very young age he would sabotage us getting a treat, as he got more pleasure from seeing me upset about missing out on the treat than missing out on the treat himself. My parents were hugely inadequate in parenting him and could have mitigated a lot of the damage. But he would always be not quite right. I thank my lucky stars that my children aren’t like him.

[MangoSeason]

When I say mine, I mean my children, not my brother and I!

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

The thing is OP I think this sort of abuse is not especially widespread (have you got any statistics?) And I think it absolutely is acknowledged and people are very aware of it as a category of abuse.

I imagine there may be some sectors where it's more common - there are cultures & social groupings where female roles & family structure mean this sort of behaviour is tolerated more and allowed to escalate. Perhaps there's work to be done in targeted prevention.

[Mummyoflittledragon]

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

This is quite extreme and not every day?

Dh and I would never tolerate this crap from either of our kids towards each other. As a neighbour if I saw what you described I would speak to the parents, if it happened repeatedly I would ring the school/social services and raise it. I think many people would.

These days, maybe. Not so much in the 60’s/70’s/80’s/90’s…

DD’s friend and sibling have been permanently split up with one living with each of the divorced parents as the elder terrorised the younger. From what I understand it was a lot less extreme than my experience. But I may not have the full facts.

Robert Thompson (one of Jamie Bulger murderers and rehabilitated) was subjected to the most horrendous abuse from his siblings, including sexual abuse. Yet he wasn’t saved. And we know what happened due to his training from his siblings and getting involved with Jon Venables, who is a repeat offender.

[SpringBluebellWoods]

Thanks for raising this OP, it’s something all parents should be aware of.

There are relatively frequent threads on here where people talk about how much fighting / bickering between siblings is acceptable. Quite a lot of people feel that it’s impossible to stop (including physical fighting) and often argue that it’s good for boys* to play fight or that they somehow need it. So I can see exactly how sibling abuse could go under the radar.

*the sexism of this is often commented on, but these commenters are often accused of not understanding the special and different nature of boys that means they need rough physical play more than girls

[KingdomScrolls]

This isn't unknown and cases are managed by marac the same as any other domestic abuse. It's high on the radar with children's services and youth offending teams. I'm sorry for your experience.

[MildredPuppy]

My mum is in hers 70s and still suffering the effects of an abusive older brother. She stopped contact with him 40 years ago but is still in his shadow. I had a difficult time too but my mum did believe me and tried to help via social services which has its own implications.

I try very hard to stop anything like that in my house but i have to say growing up in a very dysfunctiinal home has made it hard for me to judge what a healthy sibling relationship is. Obviously i can spot violence! But i suppose i never had it modelled how to resolve conflict between siblings but also know siblings cant just get along all the time. When i ask people advice i do get odd responses. Most people say oh just let them sort out a pecking order and dont interfere'. Thats the most common advice i get on sibling relationships and i think but thats why abuse happens. There seems a very high tolerance of siblings being violent as normal.

[Reloxa]

Thanks for the post OP. My older brother was violent to me well into our teens, in the sense of the occasional punch or slap and pushing around. He also used to lock me out of the house or into rooms for extended periods. There was a lot of verbal abuse, denigrating every part of the way I look.

We get on ok now, in a very distant way, and I am glad to see he is scrupulous about not letting his own kids bully each other. It has given me lifelong mental health issues though (I'm in my 50s) that I'm still working through. I've not been able to hold down a longterm relationship either and have been in terrible short term relationships as my self-esteem was so bad.

We were latchkey kids, no extended family near us. I brought it up with my mum a couple of years ago, as my aunt had commented to her that my brother used to bully me. When I said well yes, of course he did, she gave a vague 'did he...?' Find it hard to forgive that they made no move to protect me at the time. It really is domestic abuse - if a boyfriend did half of what my brother did everyone would be screaming at the woman to leave him.

[MangoSeason]

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

The thing is OP I think this sort of abuse is not especially widespread (have you got any statistics?) And I think it absolutely is acknowledged and people are very aware of it as a category of abuse.

I imagine there may be some sectors where it's more common - there are cultures & social groupings where female roles & family structure mean this sort of behaviour is tolerated more and allowed to escalate. Perhaps there's work to be done in targeted prevention.

Why do you think this? Think of all the nasty people in the world. The workplace bullies, the domestic abusers, the child abusers, the road ragers. There are a lot of them. They were all children once and many of them would have been in positions of power over brothers and sisters. Do you think this type of person would have been a nice, kind brother or sister? Abusers don’t suddenly appear as adults.

As for stats, there are some could links on the first page of this thread which discuss how depressingly common and under-reported sibling abuse is.

[HollowTalk]

Completely agree. I haven't spoken to my brother since I was eight years old because of exactly this and worse.

[Disabrie22]

Thank you for this post

[MangoSeason]

@KingdomScrolls

This isn't unknown and cases are managed by marac the same as any other domestic abuse. It's high on the radar with children's services and youth offending teams. I'm sorry for your experience.

My brother has never so much as had a speeding ticket. A lot of people I have spoken to say their abusive now adult sibling is law-abiding and work in highly respected professions. It’s like they get their release from abusing a safe victim, who will not have parents who will complain because, same parents.

How does a sibling abuse victim come to the attention of child services if they are not a youth offender? If the parents refuse to refer. If the school dismisses the victim because, all siblings fight! Didn’t you know!

[Summersnake]

I’m not surprised to read this
Look at the levels of violence towards women from men ,rapes ,all the stuff about sexual abuse in schools and unis .
Most of these boys / men will have sisters ,stands to reason they will be just as awful with their sisters as other women

[Psychgrad]

I did one of my psychology assignments on sibling abuse recently, was shocked at how prevalent is is. I work with children so will definitely keep it in mind however, it’s hard to report it when social services don’t even take it seriously.

[dottiedodah]

Well I never realised this was a thing! Always wanted a Brother or Sis .Maybe safer as an only . Its good that these things are brought out and spoken about .

[mommydragonn]

Thank you for sharing OP. 💐

[EveningOverRooftops]

I would add in being half siblings is a risk factor too.

Especially if only one has a different father and the rest have them same one.

The abuse will start with parents and siblings will copy it.

My sibling told the school my step father wasn’t my father shortly after I found out myself he wasn’t.

I was bullied by my sibling and of course by her friends and other kids (early 90s working class area where there was still shame with being born a bastard plus Irish catholic family)

That’s how females, ime, enact abuse. It’s not just physical but very manipulative and others are encouraged to do it too.

[moomin11]

OP thank you so much for posting about this. My brother was awful to me growing up, nothing as extreme as some others posted here but he was relentless. All my mum did was tell me to ignore him, on the occasions I tried to stick up for myself we both got told off for fighting. He called me a fat bitch every day, at 13 I stopped eating my lunch at school and threw my dinner away at home as I thought if I lost some weight he would stop. At age 30 I finally had the guts to tell my mum that she didn't do enough to protect me from the constant bullying.

[Ozanj]

There is actually a growing body of evidence to suggest eldest sisters are often the most abusive to younger brothers; but that because they undertake caring roles and boys are expected to be strong it doesn’t even get registered by the victims.

[Mistlewoeandwhine]

My friend was continually raped by her brother. No one knows as she couldn’t bring herself to upset her parents.
I have a large scar on my face (38 stitches) where my sister threw a glass at me when is 15. Nothing happened because she was my sister. I didn’t get any compensation. Nothing .
Op, you are right.

[Horehound]

My brother used to fight me a lot when younger. I remember playing monopoly with him, his friend, and my friend and he fell out with me over the game and launched across the board jumped on top of me hitting me. My skirt had come up past my tummy and my friend was like "we can see your pants"

So humiliating especially at age 10 :(

As it happens we are friends now...

[MangoSeason]

@EveningOverRooftops

I would add in being half siblings is a risk factor too.

Especially if only one has a different father and the rest have them same one.

The abuse will start with parents and siblings will copy it.

My sibling told the school my step father wasn’t my father shortly after I found out myself he wasn’t.

I was bullied by my sibling and of course by her friends and other kids (early 90s working class area where there was still shame with being born a bastard plus Irish catholic family)

That’s how females, ime, enact abuse. It’s not just physical but very manipulative and others are encouraged to do it too.

I am sorry for what you went through. Yes, step families can add a whole world of complication and hurt and danger for children from other children.