I have posted about this before, vaguely, but many NCs ago, so if some details appear familiar, they probably are. Apologies that this will be massively long.
Basically: DP thinks - the thinks part is crucial - that when he was a child MIL sexually abused him. What he remembers are events where boundaries were crossed/ things were weird or inappropriate, but nothing that could definitely classed as deliberate, definitive abuse, rather than her just having very poor boundaries.
He has massive gaps in his memory, had huge issues around sex and intimacy which we're slowly getting to grips with, and, what is crucial for me, is that as teenager, when he says he can remember remembering more than he can now, though not what he remembered, iyswim, he believed the abuse happened. He is though not 100% sure. I am fairly sure it did happen.
MIL comes across as normal, niceish, if massively self-centred. We now have a small DS and let her have contact with him on the basis that it might not be true, but on the basis that it may be we absolutely never will leave him alone with her or let her babysit, (something I'm increasingly running out of excuses for but that's a whole other thread.)
What is currently exercising me is that I recently became aware that she regularly babysits for two small boys who are the children of younger friends of hers. I found this out entirely by chance and have no idea what to do. We sort of know them - as in could get in touch - and I really want to tell them, as if I was leaving DS with someone who someone else strongly believed was capable of such a thing I'd want to know. I suggested to DP that I go and see the wife of this couple - tell her the whole story in confidence, including that DP isn't sure it's true, and leave the ball in their court. DP totally flipped out. He's terrified they'd go to the police which he'd find extremely awkward (he is a policeman, small force, at least some of his colleagues would be bound to find out). He's of course also worried about the fallout within the family. He's horrified at the idea of people - anyone - knowing. Especially as he slightly doubts himself.
He is also, I think, furious with himself though for not doing something about it, now and before now - he once said to me when really quite drunk that he feels so weak, as he asks people professionally to do what he can't do himself, and stand up and publicly name their abusers.
Anyway the conversation about this babysitting freaked him out so much that I haven't raised it since but it's massively playing on my mind. I think if I just did it and somehow told them it would be an enormous betrayal of trust, and he would perhaps quite rightly not forgive me. Equally I feel like by doing nothing we are potentially enormously letting down two little boys. Equally, we could be spreading what would effectively be awful, malicious lies about a perfectly nice woman. He is paralysed, and I feel like I have to just make the decision. I can't.
Help?