When my adult DD was 9, a family moved in next door that on the surface and initially seemed very ordinary - although we subsequently found out that they were incredibly dysfunctional behind closed doors.
It’s long story, but they started off as friendly neighbours and were very keen to socialise all the time - actually too much! The mother was very eager to encourage a friendship between my DD and hers, who was 12 at the time. This child was very bossy and domineering and I had to speak to her on numerous occasions about her behaviour, particularly with my DS who was 2 at the time. Whenever she was in our house, DS always seemed to have accidents; falling off the bed, hitting his head etc. far more than usual. I could never put my finger on it, but she seemed a very ‘knowing’ child, if that makes sense? She knew the ‘right’ thing to say to adults and was very confident for her age.
The parents were very intense too and started to take over our lives. They were always coming around about something and we started getting sucked into their dramas. The husband regularly walked out, she would call the police and report him missing and tell them he was mentally vulnerable so they would get the helicopter and dogs out to look for him. I actually think she enjoyed the attention. In the end, I told her that I didn’t want to be involved in the scenarios any more as sometimes it was almost nightly. It didn’t end up well as we then had the police called on us as she accused my DH of threatening her - she refused to call her dogs off cornering our cat, so he had shouted, but never threatened her - and she reported me to my employers because I allegedly hadn’t been supervising children in my care. Both accusations were luckily proven to be unfounded. There were numerous other fictions reports made about us that I won’t go in to.
Many years later, my DD confided in me that the 12 YO had physically and sexually abused her whilst they were friends. Some of the stuff DD has told me was appalling and I feel dreadful that I was unaware and that this child had so much control over DD that she was too frightened to tell me.
Although DD is a well balanced and amazing adult, she still has flashbacks which continue to crush her. I want to give her the best advice and support but I also do not know if it is appropriate after all this time to report the abuse and what good would it do? I have no doubt the daughter was probably receiving the same treatment at the hands of her parents too so would this be opening another can of worms? The daughter still lives locally and has children of her own so that is another dilemma.
Sorry this is so long. It’s almost impossible to nutshell it.