Huge backstory but to summarise :
Violent mother and sister growing up, was sent to other relatives including absent dad school holidays, boarding school, a meeting to get fostered out, all sorts as this sullen, dead quiet, unobtrusive young girl was just too much for the domineering mother with her new marriage and family to bear, seems like. She admitted she had ‘hormonal imbalances’, read as she’s erratic, violent and manipulative. She was sexually abused by her own father she told me, she came from a poor family of 16 siblings, all shacked up in a 3 bedroom London council house.
Left home soon as possible at 18. No contact for a decade, maybe a once yearly visit.
Moved unsurprisingly into a violent adult relationship, ‘rescued’ from it by said mother and now adult violent sister.
Sister fleeced me for money, in both weekly handouts direct from cashpoint and also a big loan she henceforth insisted I imagined.
She has ‘left’ numerous jobs and flatshares due to sexual harassment against her, she says, and acquires and disposes of best friends regularly.
She is childless and engineered custody of her boyfriend’s youngest child (he has several children by different women). This child was the result of his relationship with a 13 year old when he was mid-30s. Sister and Mum dismiss that as ‘everyone makes mistakes’.
Unsurprisingly, sister hates the child’s mother, and when that mother messaged me once to ask my opinion of my sister, I replied honestly that she was violent. I was unaware a custody hearing was impending, and my opinion was used in that hearing apparently.
Because of that, my sister started an online hate campaign against me, involving my violent ex too, and also, bizarrely, my mother, the three of them publishing links to YouTube videos describing psychopaths and narcissists tagging eachother publicly stating things like, ‘that’s her to a tee, isn’t it, it blows my mind’.
My sister also publicly claimed online :
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that she was sat in a court room about to sue both myself and her stepchild’s mother for slander. I never heard anything about this.
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that she ‘could have me removed from the premises because of the order in place’. We’d crossed paths at a playbarn. I ignored her as she kept walking past trying to catch my eye, so she posted this. There are no orders against me, but her post suggested she had some kind of non molestation order against me.
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I eventually sought solicitor advice and they sent a letter to both my ex and my sister. I also took out a PIN against her with the police. (Now defunct due to tit-for-tat potential, its a Police Information Notice, basically a visit from the police to politely request harassment stops). She replied with her own PIN, and shared that action to wider family.
Sorry for the long backstory, it’s relevant though to my question, which is:
I went no contact with all my wider family bar a select few and my other lovely sister, as I believe that family environment is too unhealthy for my children to be part of. Consequently they are strangers to most of them. They have grown up fine, one is happy and sociable the other is old enough to remember her violent dad and has flap ear’d enough over the years to be wary of my other sister. They both see my mum but only occasionally because she tends to let them down most times when arranging to see them.
My mother now wants to take them both a family party My brother’s grandchild. They are strangers to everyone there as they all chose not to attend my wedding, thanks to the phenomenal lies that have circulated. My mother also rang some relatives telling them not to attend the wedding.
I have idea, and never will, what’s been said about me. I’m unable to defend myself. I have never wanted to be active in this family because they are so domineering and intimidating, also stonewalling for decades, having decades long feuds with various members, and so on. I suppose by returning to the town they all live in after so many years away, when I was straight out of a violent relationship with a newborn and toddler and therefore highly vulnerable and mentally trashed, I was ripe for it.
So I’ve kept my children away from them all bar a few (the ‘normal’ ones), and now mother wants to make ‘baby steps’ she said to reunite. But only my children, not me.
My son wants to go to this party, he’s sociable, a pre-teen, he’s too young to remember anything as a baby and I don’t think he’s flap ear’d enough to understand what’s been going on with the wider family. Or maybe he’s just cba with it all like my lovely sister. My daughter doesn’t want to go because she hates parties.
Do I let my son go?
Do I agree to mother’s request for ‘baby steps’ reintroduction to the family that have badmouthed his mother so severely, because it isn’t his fault he hasn’t seen them all over the years, he’s just collateral damage for my mother/sister/ex’s behaviour.
For reference, the children do have contact with my mother (occasionally as I said) and my sister and some of their older nephews. So they are not entirely ousted.
My wish is to keep both children out of the arena altogether.
They have ‘in-laws family’ on my husband’s side who are just normal family, no dramas, so that hopefully gives them a better idea of what’s normal.
My husband says let them go if they want to. They are 12 and 14. What do you think? My AIBU is Yes if I should keep the, away, or No if I should let them go.
Their birth father is absent for many years. If they wanted to contact him, I would let them, once they are 18. I used to think 16, but she’s a year away from that and maturity levels are not ready for his degree of expert manipulation. He strangled me until I almost passed out. He hit me when I was pregnant. He jabbed a huge knife into the fridge door instead of me. He abducted my toddler. My sister also chucked my aunt down the stairs when she was 18. My mother used to chase me around the house as a child for a good hiding until I wet myself with fear. Luckily I’m a free spirit, positive minded, wanderlust type. My itchy feet saved me from staying put and taking it so many times. It’s the only thing that kept me from being damaged.
I agree this is a phenomenal background. I know it’s not rare hence the whole board on here dedicated to it - the ‘Stately Homes’ thread.
So my question might seem trivial, but a simple reintroduction to the family can open my son up to a lifetime of manipulation, starting now, age 12, when he’s still in that younger child maturity level, not quite the cool, together young teenager that he’s soon to be.
What’s your honest opinion?