Difficulty with pil previous actions

[ElmtreeMama]

This is a difficult post but basically my husband and his siblings were sexually abused as young children by a non close relative.
This happened on a couple of occasions that my husband can recall.
The problem is my husband told his parents this was happening at the time and they did nothing as they 'didn't want to rock the boat', years later they went nc with abuser but not before damage had been done.
I struggle to understand, let alone accept the actions of my pil who should have protected their children and now am struggling with the idea of them being near my child but my husband continues to want a relationship with them and for them to have a relationship with their grandchildren, though he is happy for them not to have unsupervised contact.
Any advice?

That's so difficult and I have no experience of how you both must feel.

Having very limited supervised contact at first might be the way to go but I think you are right in not giving them unsupervised.

This is so sad to read. My heart goes out to your husband and his siblings.

Unfortunately, I think the attitude and non-action of your parents-in-law was shockingly more common in days gone by than it is today. My own parents and grandparents often have/had an alarming tendency to "not make a fuss/not rock the boat" in even the most dire of situations so I do think for a lot of families/communities this wasn't uncommon.

Obviously nowadays we'd all be screaming blue murder at such a thing and quite rightly so but for your parents-in-law's generation I think it boils down to lack of understanding/awareness of child abuse and the damage it causes coupled with a desire not to potentially upset a fellow adult with a claim that may or may not be true (remember children were less likely to be believed in days gone by compared to today).

That said, I agree that your children having unsupervised contact with your parents-in-law might not be in everyone's best interests. Although I'm sure your parents-in-law love their grandchildren very much, I would query their ability to safeguard them appropriately if their attitude hasn't changed from the one I mentioned above. I think supervised contact is the way to go.

Where your husband is concerned, is having counselling for what happened to him as a child or any other kind of support?

Thanks both for your responses
It's actually really reassured me that how I feel isn't unreasonable and what you're both saying makes sense.
My husband has had counselling and has a dutiful rather than close relationship with his parents now.

I feel more comfortable that no unsupervised contact isn't unreasonable!

I feel more comfortable that no unsupervised contact isn't unreasonable

It's your baby and you get today how they are looked after and who does that looking after, nobody else.