DD disclosed abuse by DS(ASD)

[Tornbetween2children]

Firstly I don’t know where to post this so I’ve put it in AIBU.

Six years ago my DD (who was then 15 and had gone completely off the rails) disclosed that she had been sexually abused by her brother when she was 6 and DS was 18. DS is autistic, and now lives in supported living many miles from our area.

I asked her if she could tell me what had happened and she said that she couldn’t. So I asked her if she’d feel able to talk to a therapist about it, which she agreed to and was in therapy for about a year. I also asked her if she wanted to report it to the police. I made it clear to her that I believe her, I’m on her side and I will support her with whatever she decided. She considered it for some time and decided against reporting it.

At the same time I confronted DS, who claimed to have no memory of it happening (this didn’t surprise me, he has always claimed that he can’t remember things when confronted). I made it clear that supporting his sister was my priority and even though I will always love him, I hate what he’s done. I told him that he couldn’t come to our home again because our home is his sister’s safe space and it can’t be safe for her if he’s around. (He had already moved out by this point, I didn’t kick him out). I also offered to pay for therapy for him too, but he refused.

Six years on DD is doing very well, has settled down and is at university. She has never talked to me about what happened. We never mention DS, I took down all the pictures of him, if other family members bring him up in front of her I quickly change the subject. It’s like he never existed.

I have little physical contact with DS, though we speak on the phone regularly (when DD is out). Sometimes we’ll meet up if I’m up his way. It makes me feel intensely guilty.

I have always tried really hard to bury my feelings for DD’s sake, she is the most important person in all this. But it is killing me. I feel torn down the middle. I don’t even know what happened, how frequent, how bad it was, so I tear myself to pieces imagining the very worst. I even got therapy but my therapist told me they’d have to stop because they couldn’t help me - there is no solution to this.

Members of my exH’s family are bad-mouthing me, calling me a bitch because I never have DS to stay at Christmas etc. I just have to take it on the chin to keep the secret. It’s breaking my heart that I can’t be there for DS as I should be. I love him so much, but I hate him too.

I was a victim of child sex abuse myself, and I was also so overprotective of DD, never let her go on sleepovers etc, and yet it still happened under our own roof. I’ll never forgive myself that I didn’t protect her.

I just feel like giving up. I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep on like this.

of course there is potential, he is not on the radar of the authorities so should he choose to change tack, there is no oversight? Wasn’t Wayne couzens and the like found guilty of low level offences before their penultimate crime, and they were able to escalate in offending because their previous offences weren’t registered properly or acted on properly?

It might even be the case that the care company should be made aware in case a woman is sent around in future. If it’s registered on his file, the care company would likely permanently allocate men to his care so things aren’t left to chance. At the moment, it might be his preference to see men. But that’s just a preference and doesn’t need to be set in stone. Whereas it’s a different situation completely if he’s given men to safeguard their staff.

OP I’m so sorry you and your DD are going through this. From a mother’s perspective you have absolutely done the right thing in every way with you and your DD. I also belive with your son. As you say if he was NT you would have handled things very differently, but he’s not. He in a safe place with people caring for him and you are still in his life. I don’t see how you can do any more. I know it’s easy for me to say but I don’t think you need to feel guilt for how you have handled things from the moment your dd trusted you to tell you what happened.

It’s understandable you will feel guilt though, this is what you need to manage, your own personal inner feelings. It sounds like you have been coping with this but are now struggling because of other people’s unsolicited opinions and a subject they know nothing about. What you now need to do is get the therapy you need to block these outsiders out, their thoughts and opinions mean fuck all to you and your family.

Im very much a fuck you person, in that I’ve learnt to build up a shield where I don’t care about telling people who have no business commenting on my business to fuck of and I feel very satisfied in doing this. I’m a scape goat child of a narcissistic abusive parent, guilt was my ball and chain all my life, until I said fuck you and cut all that shit out of my life. You need to do this with your ex and his family, they have nothing to do with you and your children. You need to find ways to not give a shit about their or anyone else opinions.

@Tornbetween2children Have you ever been concerned that your DS was acting out something he had experienced with DD? That he could be a victim to?

That would be my concern given his learning difficulties, functioning age and the fact that he spent parts of his childhood in respite care.

there’s a lot of minimising on this thread and attempts to see the man involved as a victim. Weird. He was an adult, she was 6.

Ultimately the daughter doesn’t need to disclose the full extent of what has happened to her by him, for the son to not be painted as a victim. It’s not really a victim-led approach there, you’ve been told it’s likely to retraumatise her, it seems silly to expect her to tell you everything as some posters are suggesting. Therapists don’t HAVE to report disclosures of abuse to the police either. They only have to report if their client is a danger to others and someone is at imminent harm. They don’t need to report that their client has previously been abused or that crimes have previously taken place. They’d be out of work doing that. Instigating criminal proceedings is totally separate, as that doesn’t address the underlying impact to the client.

I think you’re doing everyone involved a disservice by being half in, half out here. I think your body is telling you at this point, to stop doing that.

For me personally, he needs professional help that I wouldn’t be able to provide myself. You can’t pour from an empty cup. He needs professional help to address his own offending behaviour - not just his day to day care needs.

You can keep financially supporting him to pay for the professional help, but I’d cease the emotional support. At this point, it’s not helping anyone. He wants to progress the relationship and meet up with your daughter, you don’t feel comfortable, your daughter won’t feel comfortable if she was made aware etc. I think if you continue as you are, you are at risk of losing both of your children. To me, your son seems like a lost cause and your daughter has a chance to rebuild. I personally wouldn’t want to jeopardise that. Your daughter could validly just end the relationship with you, she doesn’t have to accept you having a relationship with him.

An ASD man incapable of caring for himself is nothing like a police man who has the ability of plan, move around freezing and use a police badge to trap a victim. The 2 are completely different.

And I can assure you the care company won’t give a shit about sending a woman round if he was comfortable with women, which op has stated he prefers men. Why do I know this, because many of my family are carers in these homes or mobile carers, they have been sent to sex offenders homes alone, escorted peadophiles on shopping trips to toy shops to look at dolls! And my mother was brutally attacked by a convicted child sex offender she was accompanying shopping in the middle of the street. The companies way of dealing with it was moving him to a new home ( his family paid a lot of money to protect him) my mother was given 2 days to get back to work, no support no counselling, just back to work to look after the next violent sex offender paying to live in supported living.

OP I’m not saying this is your son at all, just that the company looking after your son, even if they knew wouldn’t stop women being sent into care for him.

there’s a lot of minimising on this thread and attempts to see the man involved as a victim. Weird. He was an adult, she was 6.

I don't think anyone thinks he is a victim, I think it's because of his mental age in his 30s is 7/8 years old, it would have been less at 18 so not really an adult other than in size.

That absolutely does not take away from what has happened to the DD one bit. The OP has done exactly what she should have done. I think it's that it's more difficult to turn your back on someone if you truly believe they did not understand what they were doing.

Again, doesn't take away from what has happened to DD - SHE is the only victim here.

It's up to OP's DD whether to press charges and she has chosen not to. I think the OP has handled a horrendous situation very well. The process of reporting a sexual assault is incredibly traumatic in itself, and you can't force someone to do that. There's no way it would lead to anything anyway, so OP would be destroying her relationship with her daughter and putting her through additional trauma for nothing.

I've been thinking about this a lot and wanted to add that when people say ' autism is nothing to do with it' they are not necessarily getting how this condition can manifest very differently. I don't think our culture is great at understanding and identifying when young adults don't have capacity to be criminally responsible. Cognitive ability doesn't equal emotional nouse. If your son were able he wouldn't need support workers and would have a social circle.
So yes you do get to love both unconditionally, if that is what you feel.
I'm wondering about the barriers to enlisting more understanding from your extended family.

Well you've already done better than my mother she didn't believe me and let him stay and do it again

You’re doing everything right. Continue to support your DD and get more therapy to work through your own history and find peace. I think you should probably let your sons residential safeguarding lead know but maintain that your DD has decided not to report to police. This will help form his care plan, ensuring everyone is kept safe.

As for family giving you a hard time about Xmas, redirect and suggest they take him for Xmas.

You say that he has the mental age of a seven- or -eight-year-old, doesn’t understand the ramifications of his abuse of his sister, doesn’t understand why his sister doesn’t want to see him, and leads a very isolated existence. I don’t think his actions, under the circumstances, merit being completely cut out of your life, and I think losing his relationship with you would be devastating for him. I think you’re doing a great job with an impossibly difficult situation.

I do wonder, though, if it’s healthy for you to act “like he never existed” around your daughter. You’re putting a lot of emotional energy into hiding a secret - what do you think would happen if you mentioned his name to your daughter in a neutral way?

Sorry but the possibility does have to be considered - people with SEND are both far more likely than the general population to be accused of crimes they did not commit, and also to confess to crimes they did not commit, particularly if they lack the capacity to defend themselves.

Nobody is saying OP’s DD is a liar. Just that if OP is going to report her DS or cut him off she needs to be sure.

But she can’t “be sure” without rejecting the dd’s statement and understanding. There is no way, in this case, at this point in time. She also hasn’t rejected her son. She is seeing him appropriately housed and she communicates with him via phone.

Thank you for this. My (autistic) son is the same age as the mental age of OP’s son. My son says sorry when he’s in trouble at home or at school. He says that because he knows this is the appropriate response when you have done something wrong. He is not at all sorry, I have never managed to get him to understand how the other person feels after he has done something to them. His brain tells him that they did something to him first or that it wasn’t his fault (but he has said sorry because he has learnt this). He also says sorry when he hasn’t done anything wrong. He knows that denying it is a longer process than just apologising. Again, learnt behaviour. I am a teacher and I used to have a very troubled boy in my Y4 class, his behaviour was violent and awful. He had a chromosome abnormality and had suffered and witnessed abuse. The amount of times that I had to explain to parents that their child could not have in fact been hurt by this boy today because he wasn’t even in school at the same time was unreal. The same with my son, children naturally blame a child that they know is vulnerable and troublesome because the adult will believe them and it absolves them of any blame. My son has already done something that if it were typed out completely factually I suspect some people in here would claim he should be withdrawn from school and interrogated by they police etc. Luckily most people (including the other child’s Mum) can feel sorry for the victim but still realise that it isn’t as straight forward as one person being evil and needing to be ostracised from their family and society forever. They are also vulnerable and in some cases do not understand what they are doing. This doesn’t make it okay, it makes it more difficult to tackle.

People are also forgetting that if this were to be reported that it would be an alleged assault that is being reported. It would be highly unlikely that a conviction would be made (or sought) and you can’t go around writing things in risk assessments about sexual assault if there’s no evidence. They’re insinuating by reporting it the OP would be safeguarding other people (and that in some way she is failing by not doing so) but that’s not necessarily true.

She has reported the abuse: to her mother.

But when a young adult has a send diagnosis then development can be very limited in some areas. That doesn't just resolve once someone is 18. It's not helpful this idea that it's a competition. Acknowledging his vulnerability doesn't invalidate her feelings or account. The fact is his context might not fit the classic idea of an offender. That doesn't mean she's not a victim.
A parent can care for both if that's how they feel. It doesn't have to fit a formula.