To describe my brother's actions as a sexual assault

[Stillanothernamechange]

My brother lives with my family (me, DH, 2 small children). He is neurodivergent and sometimes finds life a challenge. But usually he is an extremely kind, selfless person.

Earlier this year we had an au pair who was romantically interested in him (at some point she drunkenly told him that she was falling in love with him). I made it pretty clear to him that it was not appropriate for him to be pursuing a romantic relationship with her; she's (early-mid-20s) over 10 years younger than him, the power imbalance obviously was huge, and frankly I didn't want to have to deal with the complications that could arise from a relationship turning sour between two people living in my house. They both told me they weren't interested in a relationship with each other (my brother was just coming out of a long and, in my opinion, horrible relationship).

They were often going out together or staying up late drinking together; I was happy for her that she had fun things to do but to be perfectly honest the late nights sometimes led to her being tired and grumpy when she was supposed to be working (and my brother's drinking has been a concern for a long time). What I didn't know was that when they were drunk they were - I guess the best term would be 'fooling around' (I have zero interest in learning the details; I know they weren't sleeping together). What I also didn't know was that at some point this did turn sour from the au pair's point of view, and that my brother didn't notice. (My best guess having spoken to her a bit is that she realised he also wasn't interested in a relationship with her, and given their continuing physical contact she felt a bit used and hurt - despite her saying the same about him. That's just my conjecture though.)

This all came to a head a month or so ago when they got home at 2am, my brother woke us up being loud and drunk, and the next morning we found out that one of his friends (I'm going to call him Jack) had slept on the au pair's floor. We had a serious conversation with my brother about his drinking, and spelled out that he had a choice to make between his current lifestyle and continuing to live in our home. AFTER having that conversation with him, the au pair (this is starting to feel a bit depersonalising; let's call her Sophie) said she needed to talk to us. She told us that the reason 'Jack' had slept on her floor is because he'd witnessed my brother's behaviour towards 'Sophie' and been horrified, and felt that she might need some security. Sophie told us that for some time she'd been avoiding my brother when he was drunk, because he was a bit handsy. She didn't tell us exactly what had been happening, and the conversation was clearly extremely difficult for her so I wasn't pressing her for details. The next day I spoke to Jack and he described what my brother had done as 'sort of tonguing her neck'. The important point here really is that an independent witness saw the behaviour, clearly understood that it wasn't consensual, and was appalled by it (Jack said many times that if he hadn't witnessed this himself he never would have believed my brother would have done something like this).

My husband and I were obviously completely horrified. This is a young woman we feel responsible for who didn't feel safe in her own living space because of predatory behaviour. My mum came down on the train and spent the evening talking to my brother, and he enrolled in an alcoholics programme. Sophie said she wasn't 'bothered' about it, but a week or so later she left giving us 3 days notice. There were, unrelated, issues with Sophie: we had noticed that things she said didn't always match up to her behaviour, and the day she gave us notice the manager of a local community centre had just contacted me and told me Sophie wasn't taking care of our toddler at all when they visited it together, to the point where he was at risk of seriously hurting himself (another parent on the school run has since told me he observed concerning behaviour by her around our children). But this is getting really long so I guess I'd better cut to my real issue, which is that I feel some of my family are massively minimising what my brother did. I spoke to my other brother about it recently and when I described it as sexual assault, he said "a lot of the rhetoric used regarding that incident has been completely over the top" and that Sophie "had given [my brother] reason on previous occasions to believe that she was consenting". I still can't believe that a member of my own family thinks like this about sexual assault - like, what the fuck is the relevance of her consenting on a previous occasion?

So: AIBU? Is this an extremely serious event which everyone in the family should be taking seriously? Or an understandable drunken mistake? For the record, the 'drunken octopus-hands' brother, as far as I know, is taking it seriously. It's the other one who doesn't seem to be.

What do you want from this thread ..
if Sophie thought it was a sexual assault she would contact the police ..she still went out drinking with him after the incident…which you didn’t see .
sophie is clearly a bullshitter ,and trouble maker and shit with your kids .
by the sounds of things she was happy with your brother untill she realised he wasn’t wanting a relationship..can you be 100% sure she made it clear she didn’t want him ….slobbering all over her kneck as you kindly put it …
why are u writing this post …what are you wanting out of it …your not Sophie ,you didn’t see what was going on at any point ..
your brother isn’t living with you out of the kindness of your heart ,he owns part of the house ,(so you can’t just kick him out …u said …)
is that what this thread is for
your trying to stir up trouble between family members so you can say you or your kids are not safe with your brother in the house …you want him out ?
if Sophie goes to the police and they investigate the matter ,your brother will have to face the consequences..
but other than that ….I really don’t see why you are posting ,
I think your trying to stir

@DMLady you took the words from my mouth!

It's so easy to sit and hurl popcorn from the sidelines, but stuff unfolds and it's so hard to deal with at the time. The unsafe and concerning behaviour was reported to OP AFTER all of this crap, and of course, everyone wants to see the best in everyone.

Handsy brother (and other brother) do seem to need more clarity on consent/lack of it. While there clearly was some blurring of lines in this case, it is still an important message that previous consent doesn't represent permanent consent and it can be revoked at any point and must be respected. If this situation went tits up, Handsy brother could have had an enormous problem on his hands. he does need to untangle himself from her for both their sakes.

The big issue is living with your brother in a joint house but you don't want to address that because it impacts your standard of living so you're deflecting on to the terminology your mother and other brother use. The terminology doesn't make what your brother did any better or any worse. It won't make it easier or harder for him to identify such behaviour going forwards.
And tbh your insistence on the language seems performative since you didn't even discuss reporting the incident to the police.

@Stillanothernamechange what strikes me is that firstly you’ll never get entirely to the bottom of all this and secondly you have a very unstable alcoholic living with your very young children. He doesn’t understand boundaries, he’s clearly going to find reducing or stopping drinking very hard ( and probably doesn’t even want to).

You can’t change the past. However you can predict a whole lot more hassle in the future and I strongly recommend that you start looking at options for separate living accommodation and supporting him from a distance.

I agree with this, she sounds a bit dodgy to me.

The other thing is "They do not reasonably believe that the other person consents." Given the previous behaviour and the ongoing contact plus his issues with understanding social clues did he reasonably believe that she was consenting?

It sounds as if it could be interpreted in more than one way.

Agree. The fact that your family are telling you ALL FINE NOTHING TO SEE HERE NOT A SEXUAL ASSAULT is also quite telling.

Of course they want to tell you it's all good, stop making a fuss. They are happy with the status quo because it takes the weight off them.

You are the one who is more or less supporting the alcoholic in your family with housing and what sounds like a lot of emotional/social support. At the expense of your own wellbeing and that of your family.

The language/what actually happened/what your family is saying aren't the issue here. There's a big fat elephant in the room and that's what you need to be talking about.

With respect, this is bullshit (as are a number of other posts; the constructive posters on here know exactly which ones those are 😆). I have addressed it; reading even my first post let alone the rest of the thread makes that clear. Yes it affects my standard of living; it also affects my children's standard of living. Have you experienced losing your home as a child? It's not nothing.

The most important person where a report to the police is concerned is Sophie, and that is not what she wanted.

Quite an eye-opener here in terms of the assumptions people bring from their own lives when replying to someone else's problem.

To those asking, who hadn't got this from my original post: what I wanted from my post was a gauge of opinion on whether I'm being unreasonable in referring to this as sexual assault. I think that is important. I was expecting pretty much full consensus so getting the opinions from those who felt it wasn't, or that lines were blurred, has been helpful (at least from the people who actually bother to read and understand the thread before posting...)

Also to give some clarity: my children have not seen my brother drunk or hungover. His tolerance is pretty high and it's very rare for him to be very drunk as he was on this occasion. His drinking has previously been a concern to me because 1. it's way beyond the recommended guidelines and that can't be good for his long term physical health; 2. I believe it contributes to him waking up later than he plans to in the morning and being less productive than he needs to be at work, and most importantly 3. I believe that living with someone whose drinking is not under control will affect my children even if they never witness any drunken behaviour (and obviously now even more importantly 4. he has behaved completely unacceptably while drunk). He has found it difficult to get help for his drinking in the past, because if you go to a GP and ask for help with it they're expecting you to be having a bottle of vodka for breakfast (he drinks in the evenings only). HE IS ADDRESSING HIS DRINKING. He is following the programme set for him by a doctor who runs addiction clinics, who also happens to be a person I hugely respect. I fully understand how some people with bad experiences might find it difficult to believe that a person with a drinking problem can ever get it under control, but they do exist.

The house is jointly owned so I don't see OP is supporting her brother with housing, presumably she is benefitting from living in a house that she hasn't had to pay full price for. The spelled out that he had a choice to make between his current lifestyle and continuing to live in our home. is worrying. The choice isn't him moving out it is selling up and all of them moving out unless they can buy him out and he agrees to that.

He's a vulnerable man and I think the OP needs to be careful about what she is saying and how it would come across to say a social worker.

Absolutely agree with this.

I don’t see the point in fixating on one issue (sexual assault) when the REAL issue was that your au pair and your brother were in a romantic and sexual relationship under your nose which impacted upon her ability to care for your kids. That’s a massive boundary that shouldn’t have been crossed.

We had an au pair and we also had my 20 something brother living in the house and actually she fancied him more than he fancied her. However, they would go out on the piss together because they were of a similar age group and nothing along these lines ever occurred ever. I’m not seeing any grey areas here it’s assault.

I wouldn't want to live with an alcoholic brother who showed dubious sexual behaviour (whether it would meet the legal test for assault, pass the evidential test and ever get to court - very unlikely).

I'm sorry OP, I think you shouldn't have another au pair while he lives with you, and he doesn't sound like a good person for children to be around.

Living with him and employing someone to work in the home makes you vicariously responsible for his behaviour, if he is capable of understanding what's right and wrong but does it anyway, and you've done what you can to explain - he's dodgy. I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle now.

Try not to quote the original post, saves us all a lot of scrolling

Yup.

i also wonder if ‘Jack’ was indeed sleeping on the floor all night.

Surely ,op
if you are that desperate to know if it was a sexual assault,you need to ask Sophie ..
is that what she thought it was ?
has she reported it to the police ?
if your so sure your brother is a sexual deviant,then report him to the police yourself.
if you were Sophie I could understand this thread ,and we would all be supportive and offer advice
but fact is ,you didn’t see what happened.
you didn’t know the full extent of the relationship and you didn’t know what was said by them both before and after the incident
yet you already said she still contacts him for advice regarding jobs .
by the sounds of things Sophie isn’t to worried by your brother,or she wouldn’t still be in touch .
I think ,op
you need to seriously examine your reasons for keeping this an on going issue in your family ..what exactly are you trying to achieve

Ok, so how I actually started the conversation was first listing all the things we like about living with him (I do actually like my own brother), then asking him to consider whether living with a young family is what he still wants to do or whether he'd rather have his own flat/share with other single childfree people. Then, explaining that drinking the amount he was then drinking is not compatible with living with our children.

Buying him out would not be impossible for us. And yes, if he didn't agree to that (and we concluded we couldn't carry on living with him) we would have to sell. As I've said.

I would not have any problem with a social worker looking at our living situation.

I’m sure you wouldn’t mind a social worker looking at your situation,
you could explain all about Sophie and how your brother sexually assaulted her ,and get the family on side .and get the social worker to say ,your bother isn’t safe around your children.
your brother has played in to your hands really ,sadly he’s given you the perfect excuse to cause trouble for him ,and get him out of the house .

As I said it is about how you say it compared to what you mean. If you meant you'd need to sell up that is one thing but in your OP you said, We had a serious conversation with my brother about his drinking, and spelled out that he had a choice to make between his current lifestyle and continuing to live in our home. There was no mention of selling up or buying him out.

Social workers are actually quite tuned in to looking at financial abuse of the vulnerable and the idea that he'd have to leave and move into a flat share doesn't sound great. If your intention is that you'd buy him out you would need to be clear about that and also recognise that he would have to agree to that, he might prefer it to go on the open market to ensure he gets a fair amount for his share.

I don't think the issue is your living situation, the issue is are you intending to tell a vulnerable man he needs to leave a house that is part owned by him.

I agree with this. The independent witness is irrelevant unless Sophie tells you she was assaulted (which she doesn't seem to be clearing up). In my experience as a teen/young adult men can sometimes jump on the hero wagon and want to "save" some women who don't need to be saved.

It’s more likely the young hero and Sophie were having sexual relations that night ,I don’t believe for a second he slept on her floor to protect her ..
they could of just woken you up op ,and told you the situation there and then ,if things were that bad ..
its all a crock of shit ,to stir up bad feeling against a vulnerable man .
get the family on side ,to get him out of house .

Not if Sophie is happily still seeing him and showing no interest in accusing him of sexual assault. The social worker would be more interested in protecting a vulnerable man as the children have parents who can care for them.

Do you really think telling him to leave a home he has paid a share of is reasonable? The optics are terrible.

As I said terrible optics.

I think it was incredibly inappropriate for the random friend to spend the night in Sophie's room!
None of the three sound at all reliable. In addition, there is a vital difference between putting hands on someone with affection intended (and in that circumstance, it is up to the person to indicate that they'd rather not have a hand placed on their arm or such like) and sexual assault.
So, on balance, I think no, you aren't in a position to confidently label your brother a sex offender.

I would add too that it doesn't sound as though you like your brother very much! Which is perfectly acceptable, but incredibly difficult if you have to live with him. There will come a time too when your kids are older, and they'll take more 'ownership' of their living space, and might feel resentful of this set up - so it might be easier (both short and long term) to sell and live seperately from your brother.

So this thread is about people minimising sexual assault, yet you keep using the word “handsy” and have even named him Handsy Brother”? Can you stop that? Handsy itself is a minimising term. And yes, he sexually assaulted her.

I do hope your are right ,iwasafool
I just feel so sorry for this young man
the op ,the sister ,is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
and no doubt the daily fail will be all over this
poor bloke