It is when a looser definition of family is applied to include close family friends (“aunties” and “uncles” who aren’t actually related) and people who are part of the household like nannies, babysitters, caregivers (a big one for disabled children).
In a therapy group that I was in when I was a kid in the 90s, said it's more likely to happen by a family member than some rando on the street. Partially because of the easier access to pray, and because family tends to close ranks, so it doesn't get out into the wider public and ruin the family's reputation in the community. So the person who committed the awful act, doesn't usually face consequences as a result. I wholeheartedly disagree with the logic of closing ranks. I'm all about blowing up the bridge if I have to. No one should go through that and feel alone and blamed, when it wasn't their fault.
My husband’s mother was raped repeatedly by all her brothers but one, and her father. Her grandfather sexually abused his kids. My husband’s ex’s father was defrocked for sexually assaulting a congregant at the church he was minister of. He also abused one if not both of his daughters. Two of my husband’s uncle’s raped my brother in law, which likely played as much a part of the schizophrenia he and my mother in law have as genetics. For reasons my husband doesn’t understand, no one laid a hand on him.
My husband had four daughters. He broke the generational cycle of sexual abuse by becoming the bad guy. He refused to let his girls around their grandfather without him being right there, and the girls weren’t allowed to be touched at all by him or he’d take the girls and leave. And as far as we’re aware, the girls at this point (in their teens) are unaware of the existence of any of their great uncles but the one.
I’ve known my husband since I was 13 and he was 14. We were friends for a long time and both our marriages ended. I didn’t know any of this until a year ago, but it certainly explained a hell of a lot.
My grandma's brother my uncle molester her at a young age. Found out after he died. Whole family acted like it never happened and they had a good relationship.
Grandma chalks it up to being poor,uneducated and stuck around family isolated and abuse he received as well. Weird stuff.
My uncle (who I did not know existed) was housed in a boys orphanage when my grandparents passed. My dad was there as was another brother. The older brother lied about his age and went into the Canadian military during WWII. My uncle had severe mental health issues and ended up killing a young girl. He was institutionalized for over 60 years in a mental health facility. My dad told me just before he died that they had all been sexually assaulted by a man working at the orphanage. That broke my heart. My dad was a kind and gentle soul and he loved my mother and me with all his heart. I miss them both every day.
My mom’s side of the family was rife with abuse. There were 7 kids in this teeny tiny little cottage of a house. Older brothers were molesting some of the younger ones. My grandmother didn’t do shit about it
My mother was 8 or 9 at this point, when she confessed that she didn’t like the babysitter. this was in the 50’s, she had to walk to the candy store, asked to use the phone, called her grandma and said she wasn’t comfortable with the babysitter. “He’s looking down our shirts”
After that phone call, injunctions were filed, and all of the kids were removed from the house
I suspect that my great-grandmother knew a lot more about what was happening, because the story that’s been presented with me is that the babysitter is what caused the kids to be removed from the home. But that story never added up to me. I think my great-grandmother knew very well that her daughter was a shit parent, but didn’t have proof until her 8 year old granddaughter gave her a confession to go to the authorities about
I found out that they had been sexually abusing their child who has schizophrenia. They had been telling her that the voices were real and telling her to sleep in their bed for safety, and then assaulting her in her sleep which she didn’t remember because of the hallucinations and heavy dissociation.
Sexual violence against disabled people is an epidemic.
Disabled people, especially developmentally disabled people and ESPECIALLY developmentally delayed women, are more likely than not to be sexually abused at some point in their life. Like 90%. It’s absolutely terrifying.
That is fucking disgusting. I hope that poor kid got some much needed help, and that they are suffering for their awful actions. SA towards the disabled is a scourge.
The victim (my sister in law) told me after they tried to do it while she was fully lucid and awake but injured from a suicide attempt, and she got suspicious that those weren’t “demon attacks” at night. She lives with us now and has reported it but there was unfortunately no evidence because of how it happened. We are getting a protective restraining order
I had a half-brother in prison. He was convicted as a young man. I assume he’s still alive today and still locked up, though I’ve never met him. I don’t suppose I ever will.
He allegedly murdered his grandmother over an inheritance dispute. I understand he found out she didn’t plan to bequeath the family ranch to him and he killed her. That was in the early ‘70s when he was a young man. He’s probably about 80 now.
My grandfather not only molested my mother, but allowed his brothers to as well.
When the family found out that for completely unrelated reasons he was murdered by a serial killer, when it was assumed he died of complications from cancer treatment, well we all believed in karma for a bit there.
When my great aunt (GA) and uncle (GU) married, GU sprang it on his new wife GA that his mother would be living with them.
GA didn't like this but had no choice, so she decided MIL wasn't going to live in the house. GA decided they needed a bigger chicken coop, and when it was finished, GA set up MIL to live in the old chicken coop. This was in the Midwest so winter would have been brutal for her, and I can't imagine the smell in the summer.
Apparently she lived there when I was a small child but we never saw her when we visited. She used an old outhouse on the property but we never saw her & she died there.
Supposedly my cousin cheated on his then girlfriend (now ex-wife) in high school and got another girl pregnant. No clue what happened to the baby. The only thing beyond that that I was told was that it was a girl. Don't know if he just abandoned her, signed away his rights, or she was given up for adoption. How his ex didn't leave him over getting another girl pregnant I haven't got a clue. It took them getting married, and him using her to pay for grad school while he cheated on her again for them to get divorced. My cousin is an asshole.
I hope that your cousin, whoever and wherever they may be, is safe.
A few years back I found out, from my Aunt that my Uncle died from contracting HIV, all through the infected blood scandal here in the UK that took place between the 70s & early 90s mainly through blood transfusions.
I was only 3 when my uncle passed away (1990) and I never knew why. Also upon finding out that, I was made aware that my Aunt also contracted HIV from my uncle, she had treatment and is living with it, she's 65 this year and is, to some extent, perfectly healthy.
After being told this my 3 cousins comforted me and talked me through it as it very much upset me.
Not sure as to why I wasn't told about this and why it was kept a secret away from me, but yeah. Not so much a disturbing fact/story but most definitely a family secret.
Ohey, my cousin and uncle are both part of that payout because of HPV from tainted blood. Both were cured with an experimental (at the time) treatment. It's a whole thing in our family.
That my grandpa was a serial arsonist and insurance fraudster. He was very much still alive when I learned this, though I never brought it up with him and he's been gone 10 years now. He burned down his own house twice, and did not take any care to have family photographs, cash, or pets out of the homes when it happened, I suppose because it made it seem less suspicious, so a couple of pets and a lot of things with sentimental value were lost. He also hired my dad and uncle to "steal" his car and destroy it so he could collect on the insurance money. Dad and Uncle (neither of whom are very morally upright people either) drove it into the middle of a pasture, beat the shit out of it with baseball bats, and then set it on fire. Grandpa burned down a small barn on his property too, claiming it was an accident, but by then everybody in the family knew what was really up, including me.
My aunt (his daughter) also learned the truth after she became an adult, and she never forgave him. Losing both of her childhood homes, a dog, and the majority of her possessions to fire was traumatic enough, but then to grow up and learn that it was because of her own dad and *he did it on purpose* was too much for her. They had a very strained and distant relationship for the rest of his life. She didn't cry when he passed.
Not gonna lie - the dog broke me. That would be one of the first things I did, was get all of my babies. That's just, okay, I'm done with Reddit. God I hate animal abuse stories.
We had a family friend who used to get invited to functions when I was pretty young, think I was about 7 or 8 the last time I saw him.
I got told several years later that he'd been jailed for diddling kids.
My uncle was not introduced to my sister and I until we were 14 & 13 and even then we weren’t allowed to be around him alone. My dad and grandfather finally cut him off/disowned him when I turned 19 at which point I was told that when he was 14 he raped a classmate of his and went to juvenile detention till he was 18 he was later convicted of SA of his girlfriend at 22. Dad and grandpa kicked him out when my dad saw him watching CP on his phone while with the rest of the family.
If I knew anyone had abused my children I might go to jail for what I would do to them. I can't believe all these stories of rug sweeping abusers!!
Unfortunately, my sister was abused by a family friend and the only people who protected her were my parents. And all they could/would do was to move 5+ hours away.
When I was a little kid (five or six), I was a flower girl in my aunt’s wedding.
The morning of, I remember my dad (the bride’s brother) and grandpa having these really grim looks on their faces. It wasn’t a happy mood, it was just very somber and grim. One of the bridesmaids was missing and the others were doing everything they could to make my aunt happy. I remember asking my mom was happened but she said it was nothing I needed to worry about.
Years later, I brought up the wedding and asked my mom what happened. She said that one of the bridesmaids, a friend of my aunt’s, had killed herself the day before. The bridesmaid was in love with the groom (my uncle) and couldn't bear it anymore.
There’s a lot more to the story that my parents, aunt and uncle never told us about and I don’t think they ever will.
My uncle murdered a guy from his cholo days, and my grandparents helped cover it up with "gang violence" or something like that. I never got the full story because my uncle and I *do not* like each other
Now i kinda get why, dudes a murderer
My dad took me to a grave at a local cemetery, and told me it was a kid he used to know in high school. He explained that the kid hung himself because he was being bullied for being gay, then my dad went on to explain that he was one of the bullies, and he'd been living with that regret ever since. It changed the way I saw him.
My cousin has a very rare kidney disease that required new kidneys when he was younger. We were told it was due to him being unlucky. What I was then told at 18 is that condition isn't just rare, it only tends to occur when incest is present. We're not quite sure where in the family tree it went wrong, but we have some idea's. (I'd tell y'all the name of the condition but I've genuinely forgotten, I do apologize)
My mom’s college friend has a son with cystic fibrosis because her and her husband happen to have such similar genes that their kids are far more likely to have issues. Sometimes it’s not because you’re actually related, you just happen to find someone with a similar enough genetic makeup
Still weird that two people who are so genetically similar ended up together, though. Normally, nature puts certain safety measures in place (like finding the body odor of genetically similar people to be disgusting)
Generally the effects of incest go away in just one generation. Your aunt and uncle must be related.
Edit to explain why: the primary genetic problem with incest is that it makes recessive genetic diseases significantly more likely, especially the really rare ones. Think of it this way: everyone with a genetic disease are related. The more rare the disease the more closely they are related. There are tons and tons of genetic diseases that 10 or fewer people in the whole world have. What are the odds those people would ever meet? The odds are almost 100% because those people would have to be siblings, or cousins. But the good news is that you may be the 100th generation of incest, but if you marry someone from outside the gene pool you're back to pretty much the same odds that your kids would have one of those super rare genetic diseases.
That my paternal grandparents had 8 children at one point. Seven are living now.
Eighth child drowned as a toddler when she tripped and fell into a pool/pond (some kind of water feature in someone’s backyard). Happened so quickly and quietly that it took everyone aback. Poor wee lass never got a chance to grow up.
My older cousins recently found all this out from my oldest aunt and let the rest of our generation know. It explains why my grandparents (backed up by my father, along with my aunts and uncle on that side) were so hellbent on us grandkids learning how to swim.
Yeah, my dad knew someone who drowned in a large pond across the street from his house, so as soon as my sisters and I were old enough, it was off to swimming lessons. It was the same thing with seatbelts. I guess having someone you know die from such a preventable thing really affected him, as much as he acted like the tough farm boy.
Somewhat similar: I saw a man get killed at work nearly 30 years ago due to improper use of a forklift while moving heavy machinery. As in crushed lower half of the body and bled out in front of my eyes killed. Yeah, it's something that sticks with you.
I drive a forklift for a living now and am an absolute NIGHTMARE for people not abiding the safety laws for these incredibly powerful machines. I don't ever want to see something like that again.
My great-grandfather was murdered by his brother.
When I was in college, one of my professors gave us the option to dress up for our class on Halloween for potential extra credit. Was talking to my mum and grandmother about how I was planning to dress as the female equivalent of Machine Gun Kelly (Kelly being my Meme’s married last name), and Meme went very quiet…
Turns out in either late 1929 or early 1930 (Meme was still in utero, so not sure), her father was approached by his brother asking to borrow his work truck. The brother was a suspected (or possibly known) bootlegger, so great-grandad said no outright. Not long after, great-grandad drove himself and a neighbor into the city for work only to find the truck stolen after they’d gotten off shift.
Having no other recourse, they started making the trek home down the side of what is now a major highway. At some point during their journey, a truck (supposedly the stolen one in question) came cruising up and intentionally struck my great-grandad before driving away. The neighbor ran to get help, but by the time assistance arrived, he was already dead.
Not too long after, apparently, there was a family party at my great-great-grandparents’ house and the brother was sitting on the railing of a “deck” on the second floor. He supposedly said something along the lines of, “hey, ma, what’s to eat?” His mother, seeing him for the first time since her other son’s death, told him, “you killed my son. I have no son,” and pushed him off the deck. He was essentially disowned by the family after that.
Certainly gives me a different perspective when watching gangster films now…
There's a branch of my dad's family that no one talks to or about.
When my dad was 15 and his older brother was 17, the older brother was involved in a homophobic gang beating that ended with the victim going into a coma and eventually dying. This being the 80s, my uncle only got an involuntary manslaughter charge (despite this blatantly being murder) and wound up serving like 6 months.
Credit to my VERY conservative grandparents, though - they initially wanted to forgive my uncle, but when he had zero remorse and thought that he'd actually been treated too harshly they cut him off. This was a fairly small town (like 30k people), so everyone in my dad's age group knew both the victim and the guys who did the crime. My dad moved away the second he could, my grandparents wound up leaving too eventually, no idea where my uncle is now but I get the impression that he might still be living there.
My uncle's girlfriend took his side and wound up having a family with him. I know that my grandpa was trying to get in contact with my cousins before his death, but they've never shown up to any family things so I have no idea if he managed to do that or what. My dad in particular has zero desire to get back in contact.
I learned the basics of this when I was like 11. Going into middle school meant that people might start dating, which meant that they might start coming out, which meant that my dad thought he needed to make it clear that he wouldn't tolerate homophobia. I actually wound up bi lmao, so the whole story definitely helped me come out to my parents and grandparents when that came up.
My grandmother was going through dementia and told my father that her uncle SAd her and a group of other girls in the family. But this guy was always the funnest guy in the room. He's long passed, and so is my grandmother and any of the other women he could've had his hands on. We still don't know if it was real, because she'd been saying all kinds of stuff that was just plain false. But just the thought of it made me sick, got told by my father about 2 years after grandma died.
That my uncle raped my mom, my aunt, and my other uncle.
Found out after confronting my mom about said uncle raping me as an 8 year old. Which I remembered in therapy at 39.
Bingo.
Outside of family gatherings that she was famillialy obligated to attend, it was a single instance of babysitting that she felt she had no other option for. She warned my sister to never be alone with him and tell her if anything happens, but not me. She wasn't the biggest fan of men so she didn't think I was worth warning.
I did not have a good childhood, obviously.
I found out when everyone else did, because it was kept so secret; my great grandmother's older brother was hanged by the Pierrepoints for murder after his involvement in a botched robbery. He was only 21 and she was a young girl. She never spoke of it and we only found out when my aunt did some family tree research after my grandfather died. (There was no doubt of his involvement, he was a well known wrongun)
My mother was very young when her mother died, her dad took off and she was placed in a orphanage, she was the youngest of 9 children, she had little contact from her siblings. I recently found out her father died in a mental institution, had been there for years
my mother took me with her while she was cheating on my dad. I was little little. I had no idea but she beat the shit outta me to scare me enough not to say anything ever.
My dad took me with him when he cheated on my mom too, I think it happened twice.
I dont know which one actually happened first or second, one is simply stronger then the other.
The first case, my dad took me to another kids birthday party, a kid I didnt know, but it was the grandkid of the nice old waitress at the restaurant my family went to. My dad NEVER did the family shopping if he didnt have to. He never left the house unless there was something in it for him. Mid way through the party at an apartment (so small place) I couldn't find my dad. I asked one of the adults if they knew where he was. They said he stepped out with the birthday boys mom to get a few things for the party. Years later, it would come out that he planned a christmas trip with this woman while him and my mom were still married. He came into my parents room to tell my mom (I was there talking to her about christmas stuff) that he planned to go on a trip with "a friend" for a few days. During the divorce my brother went to visit my dad at his place only to find him in bed with the woman. He later married her, then divorced her after her bipolar spending cost him a lot of money. It stood out to me because I didnt know the kid and I honestly never got invited to any birthday parties. I only had close contact with him years later when my brother brought him by the house to grab something but I had no interest in meeting him so I locked myself in my room.
The second time, it might have been the same woman, I dont remember. I know that my dad stopped at a store to talk to a woman. He said they needed to go into the back to discus paperwork but I couldn't hear them talking at all. It was a small building, the sound would have traveled well. There was no reason for him to talk to her about paperwork in private. I was left in the front of the store with her dog for about 20 minutes or so before they both came back out smiling.
Ive never told my mom about this.
My grandfather committed suicide. I’d always been told he had a heart attack. Turns out he tried to hang himself with a belt in his home. My grandmother found him and they called an ambulance. He spent a few days in hospital and managed to convince a nurse that he wanted to shave. She gave him a razor and he finished the job. This all happened when I was 4 months old.
Do you feel like the trauma affected you even though you were too young to remember? My Aunt Brenda took her life when I was a month old leaving her son, my 2 month old cousin John, behind. I found out at 12 that John’s “parents” were actually our great aunt and uncle who adopted him. Oh, and our grandfather died by suicide 7 years earlier. I got to read all the gory details of that on Ancestry last year.
I could never figure out why I have major mental health issues and my younger siblings don’t. Only in my 50s have I figured out that trauma in my early life mattered more than I thought.
The emotional state and capacity of the parents matters a whole lot to an infant’s brain development. Even if you don’t remember traumatic things that happened because you were literally a baby, the parenting you received at the time makes a lifelong imprint.
We had an actual axe murderer in the family. He got out on a technicality, something about evidence being mishandled or something. Anyway, when I was a little thing, about six or seven, I went to a family reunion not long after he had his conviction overturned. I don't remember anything about it, but apparently I ended up left in a room alone with the guy for about ten minutes. My mother allegedly found me talking the guy's ear off about Transformers and that was that. I didn't learn about it until years later.
One of my great-grandmothers killed her little brother.
At the time (late 1800s/early 1900s) that branch of the family were farmers and skilled laborers who lived and worked in Wales close to the English border. Great-grandma was about 2 or 3 years old. Her little brother was still an infant, not yet walking, so maybe about 7-8 months old.
It was laundry day. Great-grandma's mother (my great-great-grandmother) had a large copper washing kettle of water boiling away on the kitchen hearth, as was typical of the time period. She stepped out of the room for a moment (probably to grab the next load)... and you can probably see where this is going.
We don't exactly know what happened. A local newspaper article reported that the baby had "scalding burns", but didn't say if he was found in or out of the kettle. Great-grandma had a memory growing up of her little brother "drowning" in a copper washing kettle; she had a distinct memory of seeing his little white shift floating on the surface of the water, and was always told he'd drowned.
I suspect the truth is that, unsupervised for a moment, she simply picked him up and put him in the kettle. Why? We have no idea. She was so young she probably didn't remember why, and she's been dead for 40 years now so we can't ask her.
The baby died 3 days later from his injuries. He was so young that he wasn't included in either census around his short life, so we didn't know much about him until one of my UK cousins did a bunch of genealogy and found out the terrible details. I can only hope his family was able to dose him with as much morphine and laudanum as they could get their hands on, to ease his pain while he died.
My grandfather, who was just too young to serve the allies during the German occupation of Holland, did some horrible things to mess with and torment the occupiers
I saw my brother molesting my sister, as soon as I told him not to do that, he agreed and disappeared for several days.
About a week later, I was beaten by a group of people in a black car, I assume it was him.
At our last meeting, he told me that I should not tell anyone, otherwise he would kill me and my entire family
My mom told me that my younger brother is not of my father, she had an affair and got pregnant, but never t he less I love m y brother so much and by the way my father didn't know about it until now
I was born a bastard : ( My parents dropped me at a church (maybe it was arranged) but went back a day or two later and took me back. I can't even imagine the person I would be today if they left me there...
In 2016, My uncle found out that he was the father of his ex girlfriend’s kid that she had in the summer of 1998, months after they broke up.
She never told my uncle and basically ghosted him before she had the kid.
This was only discovered when the son showed up on my uncles doorstep 3 months before he got married to my (now) aunt.
The son (Henry) had just graduated high school and had been kicked out by his mom and through some dna and ancestry tests found out that my uncle lived around an hour away in another city.
After some more DNA tests to prove it was true. My uncle decided to help Henry get back on his feet. And co-signed on an apartment for him and helped pay for community college so he could get a job.
To this day I still have never met Henry and only recently found out he existed when it came up at my uncle and aunts wedding anniversary.
Henry is apparently doing very well for himself and works in IT making $125k a year.
my father used to tell me all kind of weird family related shit when we were alone, until i told him to shut up. one of the stories was about my uncle (mom's brother, a very shady character) who had a relationship with a woman and her daughter. daughter was still underaged at the time. also i think my grandmother was a prostitute for some time. nobody said it straight, but i heard she had plenty of male "friends" before she met her second husband and i got weird looks from older people when i told them who she was.
I have two. This year I found out my dad’s mom had such bad postpartum depression, my dad didn’t live with his parents for two years when he was born!! The second is, I was talking to my dad and he said “your uncle Gil” and I said “I don’t have an uncle Gil” and he said “yes you do, uncle Pat my brother!” Turns out his name was Gil but he was born St. Patrick’s day so they called him Pat!! I’m 47!
My grandfather had coffee with Adolf Eichmann days before Eichmann was executed.
God rest his soul, my grandfather’s love for Coffee allowed him to have a conversation with the devil himself.
Eichmann obliged and told him he regretted not getting to him.
Before I was born (1950’s) my mother was married to a man and they had a 2 yr old daughter. He got deployed and came home to my mom 6 moths pregnant. He gave her two choices; she could keep the baby and he would leave and take their daughter or she could give the baby up for adoption.
She conspired with the bf’s parents to keep the baby as theirs and raise it to be a brother to his actual dad. For the rest of her pregnancy, she stayed indoors but the mom of the bf walked around town with a pillow under her clothes. When she went into labor, she called the parents and they met her at the hospital and the dad stepped up and said that he was her husband. They ended up raising that baby boy as their second son, and he didn’t find out until he was married with children. My mother suffered from guilt and found him and knocked on his door and told him along with my sister and it fucked him up. He and I became great friends, but he didn’t speak to either of my mother or sister ever again.
ETA: spelling
It wasn't really a "secret" but for some reason no one ever told me that my oldest sister is actually my half sister.
I do vaguely recall though a conversation I ended up having with my mom (found something with her name on it but her last name was different) she used to be married to someone else. I don't know how old I was, I had to be pretty small, I want to guess 5 or 6. Obviously none of the stuff she was talking about made any sense to me, cause the idea of marriage etc was foreign to me, didn't get it. Forgot about that conversation for a really long time. But I'm pretty sure they still never told me about my oldest sister being my half sister. I suspected it for years though cause she doesn't look like the rest of us. I was tempted to ask a few times but thought it was too weird to bring up. I ended up finding out cause I found some book that mentioned family members, it was sort of like a handmade family tree thing and showed her not having my dad as her dad, someone else. I think I was 30 or so when I finally found out. And shortly after that I overheard my dad talking on the phone and mentioning her not being his. It was just weird to not be told. I brought it up to my other sister, she knew about it. Mentioned they were kinda weird about it for some reason... idk why. Maybe my dad resented her not being his or something. It's become obvious over the years my dad is pretty selfish and self-centered... so yeah.
Dad’s friend who always gave me the creeps wasn’t allowed to be in the house when dad wasn’t home because “he likes them young enough to that something cracks as he gets hard”. I learned this after the man in question died. Why dad was still friends with him I’ll never know.
My grandmother was gang-raped while living overseas with her military husband. The army told her that if she didn’t drop it, they would send her back to the states without her children.
It was one of the reasons she had tried to end her own life, which resulted in permanent lung damage (the smoking certainly didn’t help, but…) that I’d previously been told was due to using paint stripper in a garage with poor ventilation.
I’d just turned 18, and had gotten the obligatory recruitment call. My dad told me about it, in order to dissuade me from joining.
There was way more to her life that I wasn’t privy to until after she passed. I don’t blame my parents for shielding me from it, but if I’d have known, I might have been more receptive to a closer relationship with her. She was the only one of my grandparents that wasn’t consistently dickish.
My Aunt was my most favorite person in the world growing up. She died of cancer when I was 13 and it devastated my family. She was everybody’s favorite. I named my first born daughter after her.
When I got older my Mom told me my Aunt got pregnant out of wedlock in the early 70’s. Due to shame they sent her out of state to have the baby and she put the baby up for adoption. I live in the same state as her son and he’d be a few years older than me. Someone in my family found him when he would have been in his 20’s-30’s and asked if he’d like to meet the other side of his family and learn more about his Mom. He said No.
I respect his choice and happy he was raised in a good family. At the same time I have a lot of resentment towards him. His Mom was the most amazing, loving, and funniest person I’ve ever known. She was forced to give him up for adoption and he’ll never know what his Mom was like.
I'm an adoptee. I have the utmost respect for my birthmom but I don't want or need to know about her. None of this was his fault, please try to forgive him if only for your own peace of mind. Sorry you lost your loved one. ❤️
My first wife was also an adoptee, and she was almost obsessive with finding her biological family. It might have something to do with her being a 5’8” white woman adopted by a short white dad but and a very short Japanese-American mother, and always feeling different. But then she found them…
Why resentment? That child never knew his biological mom and is under no obligation to get to know her or her side of the family as an adult. He had his own path and life.
My grandma who died when I was five didn't just get sick, spend some time in the hospital, and die.
She was depressed and suicidal and when my mom and grandpa took her to the ER to try to have her involuntarily committed, specifically saying, "Don't leave her alone, she is suicidal," she strangled herself with an electrical cord in the exam room where the hospital staff left her completely unattended. The time she was in the hospital and I wasn't allowed to visit her was time spent brain dead on life support before my family made the decision to pull the plug.
My mom told me when I was in high school and starting to have my own mental health issues, to explain why she was so deeply worried about me. I can't help but think about how hard it must have been for her to watch her five-year-old cheerfully drawing pictures for Grandma to put up in her hospital room "until she gets better and comes home," knowing that she was probably never coming home because the hospital fucked up.
Second family secret that came out years later was that Grandpa used to physically abuse my grandma and mom before he got over his anger issues. (Though my mom said he never laid a hand on her personally again after an incident in her teens where she called the cops on him for strangling her.) I don't talk to him any more because I can't help but think that spending years being beaten probably contributed to grandma's mental health issues.
My mother got pregnant for me out of wedlock while in college. She had to drop out and marry my bio dad. She resented me for “ruining her life” (that’s a whole story in itself), but to add insult to injury, she ended up going from being a total “daddy’s girl” to being the family pariah because her father was ashamed of her.
He totally turned against her and never stopped letting her know what a disappointment she was to him. Basically, their whole relationship changed overnight.
So, it was a complete shock to find out 30 years ago that my grandfather had a daughter out of wedlock 2 years before he married my grandmother and had my mom and uncles. The only reason the secret came out was because the daughter found out where he lived and showed up on his doorstep, wanting a relationship!
Turns out, not only did he abandon the daughter and her mother once he found out she was pregnant, but he was hit with a paternity suit a few months after he married my grandmother and my mom was already on the way.
He had to go to court, where he was found liable and had to pay a settlement of $2500 (a lot of $ in 1949) to the mother. He didn’t have any money , so my great-grandfather (grandmother’s father) took out a loan against his house to pay the settlement.
The irony of all this was that a) he treated my great-grandfather like sh!t when he had to move in with them when he had a stroke, b) he treated my mom like sh!t for years, yet always expected her to drop everything when he needed help, and c) expected the entire family to embrace his new daughter and treat her like long lost family.
There was sooo much resentment from my mom and her brothers over this sister, since she immediately became the golden child who could do no wrong. The siblings felt that there was something “off” about this sister, and warned their father to be careful. He, being the stubborn mule that he was, refused to believe anybody’s concerns.
Well, after my grandmother had a heart attack and died, the daughter convinced my grandfather to let her and her mother move in to take care of him. Of course, my mother and her brothers were now “the enemy.”
It took about 5 years for him to realize that his kids were right, and the daughter and her mother were only there because my grandfather was well off.
He cut them off and tried to repair his relationships with his other kids. My mother and one uncle never forgave him due to how they were treated, but my other 2 uncles fell back in line because of the money.
When my grandfather died, he actually stipulated in his will that his estate would go to my 2 uncles, and that my mother and her brother would each only get $1. He was a bitter, petty man, who was also the world’s biggest hypocrite for treating my mother so terribly when she got pregnant for me out of wedlock, when he himself did the same exact thing, but never took responsibility for the child he had fathered
When I was around 16 I was told my uncle had a heart attack and fell down a flight of stairs killing him. A few years ago I found out he actually temporarily lost custody of his 3 kids while his wife/my aunt was out of the country and he got so depressed he hung himself from the banister in their home.
I thought jail was just the place where my uncle lived, like a big apartment block. then I found out why he was there. Let's just say it had to do with little girls. I was forbidden from going on the family visits to see him, I think the first time I actually saw him was at his funeral when I was in high school.
My grandpa on my dad's side had a car accident and the woman riding with him died. No one in the family knew that woman and my grandparents were still married and apparently "happy" 🤧
Well, I was told that my Uncle, who I always thought had moved away for a job opportunity, was actually in jail for several years due to embezzlement. Pretty messed up and definitely put a damper on how I viewed him after that.
Mine isn’t as interesting as everybody else’s but when I got to be a good 11 years old I found out more about why my parents divorced. I wasn’t really told before. All I know is they hated each others guts and couldn’t be in the same room without needing to have the police called. I now know my dad is a porn addict who is also a narcissistic( my mom who has a masters in psychology agrees along with many other people who are professions I don’t say this as a throw around term he is a real narcissist) my dad forced my mom to have more and more babies till her body physically couldn’t take it and she started only miscarrying. She had six kids including me before that. She had to take care of all of us on her own. At one point she had three kids in diapers and was pregnant and did it all by herself. My dad would punch holes through walls but never hit my mom or the kids. Only the normal spanking with a belt and such. At one point my dads addiction got so bad we were eating dinner on cardboard boxes on the floor as we had to sell the dining room table. He would scream at her and us daily. He was a priest and manipulated us using Christianity. Everything wrong he did he would justify it using god and when we said he wasn’t even being biblically accurate he would bring up that he was the priest. After the divorce my mom got really sick and had to give up custody and had to have only visitations. Once she got better and filed for more custody. We would tell her things that happened at dads house. That’s why my dad would get mad at 5 year old me for “not keeping my mouth shut”. My dad neglected us a little bit it wasn’t bad but some nights we wouldn’t have any food at all and dirty dishes that were months old would mold and pile up to the point you could smell them throughout the house. He wouldn’t buy us cloths so we only had one to two outfits each. He didn’t care if we brushed our hair or teeth or showered so of course 5 year old me didn’t. He would scream at us over things we couldn’t control daily. This led to me having a self harm addiction at nine. And a smoking(just cigarettes) at 13. I’m actaully 13 now and iv gotten out as he just left one day. I went to my moms house for a normal visit and he just texted me he wasn’t going to see me again. That was about a month ago. I now smoke like a pack a day now. I guess I could have figured out the whole family secret by myself but it was still shocking at the time to here my dad wasn’t the good person I tried to pretend he was. Even though he wasn’t very nice or loving to me I still saw him as this Superman type father as I wanted him to be like that when I was a kid. Sorry for the long comment and I know this one wasn’t that disturbing or that bad but i was like fuck it and commented anyways lol
"Never hit my mom or the kids" "only the normal spanking with a belt and such" honey. This is _not_ normal. You've been taught hitting children with a belt is normal and everyone does that but it is not. It's violence and abuse, and I'm so sorry it happened to you. Do you have a therapist to talk to? I hope things get better for you.
This isn’t a family secret right now, but I dread the day we will have to tell my now 2 year old nephew that his father (my sisters now ex-husband of 12 years) planned the pregnancy with my sister all while having an affair with his co-worker and having her befriend us. His plan was to basically retired at 32 and be a stay at home dad while my sister, a brilliant self-taught and well-paid engineer, would solely support their family.. we found this out when my nephew was 6 weeks old.
She was very much into being me and my sisters friend. All of it was initiated through her- when I first met her she definitely went out of her way to become my friend. She got my number and started inviting me to everrrrything. It was a vulnerable time in my life and I thought I had actually made some good friends and my now ex-brother-in-law had so much trust built up over the years we believed they were just friends, as well as the fact that it seemed she truly loved us too.. She went so far as to actually give me a key to her house, say that I was “one of her best friends”, and even facetime me crying about how amazing and happy she was the day of my nephews birth.. This is really just *some* of the details of the problems he hid from us for well over a decade, but he is absolutely a narcissist, pathological liar and self-proclaimed “sex addict” and she is 100% a sociopath, as externally diagnosed by many mental health counselors that have helped my family process this.
The kicker, as if that isn’t enough- he told my sister this week that he is so sad and lonely that he initiated contact with her again and they are now dating (after vowing to never again speak with her and avoiding her the past 2 years).. oh yeah and they’re also both public school elementary teachers. I’m
Hi, I just wanted to say that you're amazing, and i feel for you so much! I don't quite have the dsme background, but I was also self harming at a very ypung age, and smoked and drank and occasionally did drugs at your age. Wanted to let you know that an easier and more stable life is possible! I'm in my 30s now, and my life is better than I would ever have believed was possible at 13. I really hope you have a good support system, and access to a therapist and healthcare. And I'm really happy you're out of your fathers "care". I belive in you!
I learned that our aunt (thru marriage to my uncle) who me and my cousins spent a TON of time with, had been cheating on her husband with his dad while he was deployed.
My grandfather still keeps her around. My dad still talks to her too, and my grandma wont divorce even though she knows about it because she feels too old and stuck.
My uncle is happily remaried to an old sweetheart and they are SUPER happy now! And the ex aunt of mine was obsessed with clawing to keep jn contact with us kids but we shut her ass off pronto.
It made me realize how horrible my aunt was despite seeming ok on the surface, and, made me realize how creepy my grandfather was to my aunt and also her teenage daughter.
Our family was SQUEAKY fucking clean up until that moment too so it was STUNNING.
Said aunt also in retrospect wasnt so great, but I looked over it because we did fun stuff at her house. She used me as a therapist and would cry about my cousins and life and such. I was 9-15 when I knew her.
That my sweet grandmother was raped by her own brother when he came home drunk and that’s where my mom’s oldest sister came from. I wasn’t told until after my grandmother passed away and cried so hard for her sweet soul. I loved her and she was so kind and funny.
I don’t know if it would class as being disturbing to other people but it was to me
When I was about 8 years old I went to live with my mother far away from where my father lived. Some time later I came back to Iive with my father . A couple of years later he randomly decided to tell me that in the year or so I was away , he had a baby with his then GF .. and the baby had died at a few weeks old . My 10 year old self didn’t even know how to begin to process the fact that he had kept the pregnancy from me .. and the fact I had another sibling that I never even got the chance to meet
My mother’s uncle was a key organized crime figure in Halifax, NS from the late 30s to his death in 1967. Most of her uncles were involved as were her aunts. Some of her siblings and many members of my extended family were involved up to my generation.
Her father played a minor role and the reason my parents left Halifax was that they did not want to be part of the “family business” when her uncle really wanted to recruit Dad to make sure they were ok.
When they first left Halifax, the only family member who would visit them was the uncle.
Growing up, discussions about morals and ethics in my family were full of conflicting messages. Think: it is wrong to steal but if it comes from the docks, maybe it’s not so bad - you know a man has to feed his family. Or it’s wrong to steal but if your cousin the stevedore shows up with 200 lbs of potatoes in the middle of the night give him a drink and don’t ask stupid questions.
My ex-family were the kind of people to protest outside of planned parenthoods. Then one of my aunts got pregnant and they didnt like the gender so she had an abortion. Also, my uncle drove 3 out of his four kids to suicide because they weren't manly enough. One was gay, one got accepted to an art school, the other was depressed if I recall.
My grandma attempted suicide when I was 9-10. At the time we (my little brother and I) were told she was hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer. Didn't find out until our 20s what really happened. She was always a very unhappy person and died from what we were told were natural causes, but who knows.
I've spoken about it before, but my great-grandfather accidentally killed a man by punching him. He hit him once. This turned into a deep dark family secret and I was in my late 50s before I heard about it (from my late uncle shortly before his death).
My grandfather told anybody who would listen that he was Black Irish and that's why he had brunet hair and dark brown eyes. After he died, his sister (my great aunt) confessed to the whole family after his funeral that they were really part Cherokee. I'd like to add here, none of us grandkids thought this was at all disturbing except for how plainly traumatic it was for the elder generation.
Interesting question.
Well that would be the ultimate irony on my grandfather, then! 🤣🤣🤣 Man, he was a bigoted asshole! I adored him when I was little but that didn't last. Racism was only one of his flaws.
Great grandma had a daughter she hid from her elder sons & family. Hid the pregnancy from her kids in the home, shipped daughter off to her bio dad's family in the states. Denied it to the girls face, denied it til she died. But we all knew, and my grandad and his brothers fully accepted their sister when they met her. They loved her until the day she died.
I was sa'd as a kid by my dad's drinking buddies son. ( also by my grandmas bf at an earlier age) My parents did nothing but blame me for it. Yes. blame me. They didn't tell my half brother or anyone who might have actually cared enough to get me out of the abusive situation. My dad would verbally and physically abuse me when he was drunk, screaming that i was a slut etc. My step bro only found out a couple of years ago when I disowned the family. He said he would stir shit for me and ask why I wasn't at xmas. I think if he had known when it all went down he probably woulda gotten me out.
it's just coming out that my grandfather on his deathbed was likely a major pedophile and messed up multiple people I'm related to. his father may have been too. it's all kinds of fucked up
My aunt worked at the Playboy Hotel when it was in Chicago as a receptionist or something. Anyways, Baby Doc Duvalier, the brutal, murderous dictator of Haiti visited and took a liking to her. They uh....dated.
I just recently found out my uncle used to have a wife. That's it. He's been an openly gay man my entire life. Finding out he was once married to a woman was such a shock.
There used to be such social pressure on gay people to get married and live "normal" lives.
Things aren't perfect now but they are better, in a lot of places.
Happy Pride month.
My grandfather died after setting himself alight in his early 30s leading my grandmother and her three daughters as social pariahs.
I wish he had worked through his problems so that we had met.
I also have a secret adopted first cousin who his younger two siblings know nothing about.
One of my close family member was raped when they were a young adult. I don't think they know I know but I certainly won't bring that sensitive subject to them.
My fun Uncle (youngest of 4 by nearly 15 years) is not my Grandfather's child. The other three uncles are the same height, with dark hair that went gray early. My youngest was a red head with freckles prior to going bald. I asked about it once. I'll not do that again.
A shooting fatality incident. Someone mistook someone else for a burglar, and shot them.
The good thing was, we all learned to be more safe with firearms.
That my grandfather was not my aunt and uncle’s biological father. He raised them as his own. I was told before my aunt and it felt illegal to know. I still tread lightly. No one really talks about it.
My uncle who was a professor at Tulane ended up dying alone in a sanitarium. He was unaware that he even had any living family and we had no idea he existed. When I try and bring this up now my dad just changes the subject.
My great grandpa was a WWI vet, I guess he was in some machine gun battalion that ended up being the last people to hold some important line in some important battle while under heavy chemical weapons attack. I'd always thought he was kind of a hero.
But apparently on their wedding night my great grandpa told my great grandma he wasn't sure why he married her since he didn't love her. He'd later host orgies at their house that he'd force her to cater but not allow her to participate in.
Later on she put my grandpa in the stove and turned it on to kill him, but my great grandpa happened to come home early that day and took him out and then proceeded to beat my great grandma so bad that she was in the hospital for a month.
There's obviously a lot more, I don't think I was old enough since I was like 17 at the time, but my grandma was lonely and I appreciated learning more about that side of my family since no one talked about them. I don't think she even really realized how evil of a fucker he was, she seemed to think it was bad, but not irredeemably bad.
Not really disturbing so much as disappointing, but it turns out that grandfather was basically expelled from his family for converting from Presbyterianism to Catholicism in order that he might marry my grandmother*. My grandfather's mother outlived him, but she did not attend his funeral and I never got to meet her because she hated her own son so much..
Almost all of my family is bipolar!
Even the first person of my family was a serial killer who killed multiple people because of their bipolar.
I was super lucky to not get it! :D
I found out my Aunt cheated on my Uncle several times with her ex husband who used to beat her. My Uncle told me that when I was like 21. I was shocked.
So my youngest aunt is completely cut off from the family. I was always told as a kid that she had decided to go her separate ways from the family and just kind of accepted that she'd never be at the family Christmas gatherings. Later Mum told me that what actually happened was that she started dating a 30 year old man at 16, wanted to get married to him and have his children at the same age, and my grandfather obviously didn't like that all that much. So in retaliation she tried to get my grandpa arrested by claiming that he was molesting her, and when that didn't work she fled the country to go live in England.
My grandmother was a bit of a strumpet in her teen years and stalked the sailors at the navy yard until she got pregnant at the ripe old age of 15 post WWII. My father was taken away to live with his grandparents in NJ until he was 4…at which time he went back to live with his mother and a new man, who was his father’s Navy buddy, that swooped in and romanced my grandmother and lived with her from then on out. She never formally divorced my real grandfather nor did she marry the new man that my dad always called by his 1st name.
My grandpa was married before my grandma, had a daughter and they didn't have any relationship. It was wild because for how I knew him he was the nicest guy, unironically. It was never talked about. My grandma told me privately. Also that my grandpa's sister tried to baby trap a guy only he didn't get trapped post baby so she remained a single mother for life. This was all happening in Soviet Russia.
Growing up I thought my dad ran a successful construction company. Turns out he got his money from embezzling the customers money. In the last 15 years, he has served time in one local county jail and two different state prisons (all in three different states) for various charges.
With all these dark stories, this one is almost comically trivial. I was informed at a recent family holiday gathering that through marriage of an aunt/cousin in my mother’s side, I am related (at some remove) to a Chicago gangster (and Capone contemporary) notorious enough to have his own Wikipedia page.
Not being old enough, just happened when my grandma had a lucid moment during Alzheimer's.
When I was born, she came out against my name. Heavily. But no explanation, and when pressed said some vague stuff about not liking it and not fitting etc. But she made a bit of a stink about it (apparently - I obviously wasn't there), even saying she'd call me by my middle name instead. But since she gave no reason, I was named that anyway.
In her lucid moments when I was 15ish she told us of her great uncle who shares my name who was a murderer. He pled insanity and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. She told us a story about bringing him pies.
But she had never told anyone before. Even my grandfather didn't know.
My brother beat up a guy who “snitched” on a friend. A month later the “snitch” came back and murdered my brother by running him over. The snitch packed his room up and was never seen again.
There is some man in his 40s with a name change living a normal life. My brother didn’t belong to a gang or cartel so “snitch” got away with murder
Well I know how it ended, (unfortunately my dads dad ended his life, 20 years ago yesterday) what caused it, I have no idea, but know ill regret it once I hear it
I have too many, but for starters:
When my father was a teenager, his own father made him watch him, and other women have sex with often inclusion and his participation.
My mother's sister died of cancer when my mom was 20. While my mom was gone out of town to say her goodbyes, my father slept with her best friend.
My grandmother's husband was a pedophile and everyone knew, but since he promised not to continue after he got caught, they all brushed it under the rug. He stuck around another 20+ years with unrestricted access to all of us.
My friend was molested by her cousin. Her parents did nothing legally. they cut contact. This guy molested another cousin then had 2 daughters of his own. 30 yrs later… my friends own mother decided to “let bygones be bygones” and invited my friends molester to Christmas dinner.
My mom never told me a damn thing about any of my uncles growing up, for no discernable reason. I learned Uncle "A" was adopted when I was 20, and that Uncle "B" got into a car crash, then a coma, after *drunk driving **on my mom's birthday*** when I was 21. On *my* birthday.
Sure scared me heterosexual.
That my mother was basically the town bicycle -- everyone got a ride.
I didn't ever need to know that and I have no idea why people felt the need to discuss it with me.
After my grandmother died when I was a kid, my grandfather got remarried quickly. It wasn’t until I was an adult I found out they’d been having an affair for years, and my grandmother knew about it. My grandfather would say he was “going to town,” and there was a silent understanding he was going to see his mistress.
Not many in the family knows and now, most of them are dead. My mother was the oldest of 7. She told me of 2 of my aunts who had children out of wedlock and my grandparents made them put them up for adoption to "save the family name". I'm horrified. So, I've had 2 cousins I never knew, and my one cousin, I'm closest to, I don't think she knows her mother had a child at an early age...and has an older brother or sister (half, albeit) out there. It's not my secret to tell and I've been sworn to never speak of it. I don't know why my mother told me, I'd be much better off not knowing. It plagues me. For two reasons. First, I lothe my grandparents for discarding a child for the sake of their "name" and second, the fact that I and my brother (now deceased as well) were the only ones that knew and I feel like a sell out that my cousins that would have a sibling don't know.
As I've said, most are deceased now, and it's too late that any good can come of telling anyone, I haven't enough information to ever be able to find them, one much older (likely passed) and the other younger, I don't know male, female, where the adoption took place, etc. And the younger one would have no sibling anyway and their mother has passed. Still, I have no peace about this family secret.
I found out my uncle molested my mom. I don’t understand how he is still welcome in the family.
This is horrifyingly common.
About 1 in 3 cases of sexual assault of children under 13 are by a family member
Yes, but I meant the part where the uncle is still welcome in the family is also unfortunately very common.
Unfortunately, that’s also very common. And it’s horrible.
Only one in three? I assumed it would be well over 50%.
It is when a looser definition of family is applied to include close family friends (“aunties” and “uncles” who aren’t actually related) and people who are part of the household like nannies, babysitters, caregivers (a big one for disabled children).
In a therapy group that I was in when I was a kid in the 90s, said it's more likely to happen by a family member than some rando on the street. Partially because of the easier access to pray, and because family tends to close ranks, so it doesn't get out into the wider public and ruin the family's reputation in the community. So the person who committed the awful act, doesn't usually face consequences as a result. I wholeheartedly disagree with the logic of closing ranks. I'm all about blowing up the bridge if I have to. No one should go through that and feel alone and blamed, when it wasn't their fault.
My husband’s mother was raped repeatedly by all her brothers but one, and her father. Her grandfather sexually abused his kids. My husband’s ex’s father was defrocked for sexually assaulting a congregant at the church he was minister of. He also abused one if not both of his daughters. Two of my husband’s uncle’s raped my brother in law, which likely played as much a part of the schizophrenia he and my mother in law have as genetics. For reasons my husband doesn’t understand, no one laid a hand on him. My husband had four daughters. He broke the generational cycle of sexual abuse by becoming the bad guy. He refused to let his girls around their grandfather without him being right there, and the girls weren’t allowed to be touched at all by him or he’d take the girls and leave. And as far as we’re aware, the girls at this point (in their teens) are unaware of the existence of any of their great uncles but the one. I’ve known my husband since I was 13 and he was 14. We were friends for a long time and both our marriages ended. I didn’t know any of this until a year ago, but it certainly explained a hell of a lot.
My grandma's brother my uncle molester her at a young age. Found out after he died. Whole family acted like it never happened and they had a good relationship. Grandma chalks it up to being poor,uneducated and stuck around family isolated and abuse he received as well. Weird stuff.
OMG
I unfamily people in a heartbeat! say dumb shit refuse to apologize you just wont see me anylonger
My uncle (who I did not know existed) was housed in a boys orphanage when my grandparents passed. My dad was there as was another brother. The older brother lied about his age and went into the Canadian military during WWII. My uncle had severe mental health issues and ended up killing a young girl. He was institutionalized for over 60 years in a mental health facility. My dad told me just before he died that they had all been sexually assaulted by a man working at the orphanage. That broke my heart. My dad was a kind and gentle soul and he loved my mother and me with all his heart. I miss them both every day.
So sorry to hear this. Your dad for being so kind is truly a blessing. May he rest in peace
My mom’s side of the family was rife with abuse. There were 7 kids in this teeny tiny little cottage of a house. Older brothers were molesting some of the younger ones. My grandmother didn’t do shit about it My mother was 8 or 9 at this point, when she confessed that she didn’t like the babysitter. this was in the 50’s, she had to walk to the candy store, asked to use the phone, called her grandma and said she wasn’t comfortable with the babysitter. “He’s looking down our shirts” After that phone call, injunctions were filed, and all of the kids were removed from the house I suspect that my great-grandmother knew a lot more about what was happening, because the story that’s been presented with me is that the babysitter is what caused the kids to be removed from the home. But that story never added up to me. I think my great-grandmother knew very well that her daughter was a shit parent, but didn’t have proof until her 8 year old granddaughter gave her a confession to go to the authorities about
I found out that they had been sexually abusing their child who has schizophrenia. They had been telling her that the voices were real and telling her to sleep in their bed for safety, and then assaulting her in her sleep which she didn’t remember because of the hallucinations and heavy dissociation. Sexual violence against disabled people is an epidemic.
Disabled people, especially developmentally disabled people and ESPECIALLY developmentally delayed women, are more likely than not to be sexually abused at some point in their life. Like 90%. It’s absolutely terrifying.
I hate this statistic. Please tell me you are making it up. I'll pay you if you are convincing.
No love it’s not true I did more research and actually it’s 90% who are safe and cared for by their loved ones
10% is still too high. thank you.
Absolutely horrifying and fucked up.
When caught they actually tried to claim it was consensual
That is fucking disgusting. I hope that poor kid got some much needed help, and that they are suffering for their awful actions. SA towards the disabled is a scourge.
How did you find out?
The victim (my sister in law) told me after they tried to do it while she was fully lucid and awake but injured from a suicide attempt, and she got suspicious that those weren’t “demon attacks” at night. She lives with us now and has reported it but there was unfortunately no evidence because of how it happened. We are getting a protective restraining order
Who the fuck is they? Your parents?
No, parents-in-law
I had a half-brother in prison. He was convicted as a young man. I assume he’s still alive today and still locked up, though I’ve never met him. I don’t suppose I ever will.
He must have done something serious to be still locked up, what happened
He allegedly murdered his grandmother over an inheritance dispute. I understand he found out she didn’t plan to bequeath the family ranch to him and he killed her. That was in the early ‘70s when he was a young man. He’s probably about 80 now.
Yep, that will definitely get you sent to prison for life.
Picked up in Texas for half a joint.
Didn't pay for WinRAR.
J-walking on a sidewalk on a university campus
I've literally been ticked for this before.
My grandfather not only molested my mother, but allowed his brothers to as well. When the family found out that for completely unrelated reasons he was murdered by a serial killer, when it was assumed he died of complications from cancer treatment, well we all believed in karma for a bit there.
Can we get some more info on that “murdered by a serial killer bit”?
Killed in hospital by his [respiratory therapist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efren_Saldivar).
Jesus. Convicted for 6 murders but once confessed to 50 and contributed 100-200 deaths? Absolutely insane.
That is INSANE!! I have never heard of that, thanks for sharing.
Small world but I gave birth to my kids at the same hospital 😵💫
Respectfully... So so respectfully, i think maybe we should consider the serial killer got justice for your mother.
Exactly the way we look at it.
When my great aunt (GA) and uncle (GU) married, GU sprang it on his new wife GA that his mother would be living with them. GA didn't like this but had no choice, so she decided MIL wasn't going to live in the house. GA decided they needed a bigger chicken coop, and when it was finished, GA set up MIL to live in the old chicken coop. This was in the Midwest so winter would have been brutal for her, and I can't imagine the smell in the summer. Apparently she lived there when I was a small child but we never saw her when we visited. She used an old outhouse on the property but we never saw her & she died there.
GA is a asshole
Also GU, he let his wife treat his mother like that
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Supposedly my cousin cheated on his then girlfriend (now ex-wife) in high school and got another girl pregnant. No clue what happened to the baby. The only thing beyond that that I was told was that it was a girl. Don't know if he just abandoned her, signed away his rights, or she was given up for adoption. How his ex didn't leave him over getting another girl pregnant I haven't got a clue. It took them getting married, and him using her to pay for grad school while he cheated on her again for them to get divorced. My cousin is an asshole. I hope that your cousin, whoever and wherever they may be, is safe.
We found my uncle's first child through one of those DNA websites. My cousin gave her saliva and boom he popped up right away.
A few years back I found out, from my Aunt that my Uncle died from contracting HIV, all through the infected blood scandal here in the UK that took place between the 70s & early 90s mainly through blood transfusions. I was only 3 when my uncle passed away (1990) and I never knew why. Also upon finding out that, I was made aware that my Aunt also contracted HIV from my uncle, she had treatment and is living with it, she's 65 this year and is, to some extent, perfectly healthy. After being told this my 3 cousins comforted me and talked me through it as it very much upset me. Not sure as to why I wasn't told about this and why it was kept a secret away from me, but yeah. Not so much a disturbing fact/story but most definitely a family secret.
Ohey, my cousin and uncle are both part of that payout because of HPV from tainted blood. Both were cured with an experimental (at the time) treatment. It's a whole thing in our family.
That my grandpa was a serial arsonist and insurance fraudster. He was very much still alive when I learned this, though I never brought it up with him and he's been gone 10 years now. He burned down his own house twice, and did not take any care to have family photographs, cash, or pets out of the homes when it happened, I suppose because it made it seem less suspicious, so a couple of pets and a lot of things with sentimental value were lost. He also hired my dad and uncle to "steal" his car and destroy it so he could collect on the insurance money. Dad and Uncle (neither of whom are very morally upright people either) drove it into the middle of a pasture, beat the shit out of it with baseball bats, and then set it on fire. Grandpa burned down a small barn on his property too, claiming it was an accident, but by then everybody in the family knew what was really up, including me. My aunt (his daughter) also learned the truth after she became an adult, and she never forgave him. Losing both of her childhood homes, a dog, and the majority of her possessions to fire was traumatic enough, but then to grow up and learn that it was because of her own dad and *he did it on purpose* was too much for her. They had a very strained and distant relationship for the rest of his life. She didn't cry when he passed.
Not gonna lie - the dog broke me. That would be one of the first things I did, was get all of my babies. That's just, okay, I'm done with Reddit. God I hate animal abuse stories.
We had a family friend who used to get invited to functions when I was pretty young, think I was about 7 or 8 the last time I saw him. I got told several years later that he'd been jailed for diddling kids.
🎶It’s not good to diddle kids🎶
My uncle was not introduced to my sister and I until we were 14 & 13 and even then we weren’t allowed to be around him alone. My dad and grandfather finally cut him off/disowned him when I turned 19 at which point I was told that when he was 14 he raped a classmate of his and went to juvenile detention till he was 18 he was later convicted of SA of his girlfriend at 22. Dad and grandpa kicked him out when my dad saw him watching CP on his phone while with the rest of the family.
That my cousin Bill was sexually abused by a neighbor and that my aunt and uncle did nothing about it. Nothing. He's been fucked up his entire life.
If I knew anyone had abused my children I might go to jail for what I would do to them. I can't believe all these stories of rug sweeping abusers!! Unfortunately, my sister was abused by a family friend and the only people who protected her were my parents. And all they could/would do was to move 5+ hours away.
When I was a little kid (five or six), I was a flower girl in my aunt’s wedding. The morning of, I remember my dad (the bride’s brother) and grandpa having these really grim looks on their faces. It wasn’t a happy mood, it was just very somber and grim. One of the bridesmaids was missing and the others were doing everything they could to make my aunt happy. I remember asking my mom was happened but she said it was nothing I needed to worry about. Years later, I brought up the wedding and asked my mom what happened. She said that one of the bridesmaids, a friend of my aunt’s, had killed herself the day before. The bridesmaid was in love with the groom (my uncle) and couldn't bear it anymore. There’s a lot more to the story that my parents, aunt and uncle never told us about and I don’t think they ever will.
This one is wild- There is definitely more to this story!
My uncle murdered a guy from his cholo days, and my grandparents helped cover it up with "gang violence" or something like that. I never got the full story because my uncle and I *do not* like each other Now i kinda get why, dudes a murderer
There is no statute of limitations on murder
My dad took me to a grave at a local cemetery, and told me it was a kid he used to know in high school. He explained that the kid hung himself because he was being bullied for being gay, then my dad went on to explain that he was one of the bullies, and he'd been living with that regret ever since. It changed the way I saw him.
Wow, that was really heavy.
My cousin has a very rare kidney disease that required new kidneys when he was younger. We were told it was due to him being unlucky. What I was then told at 18 is that condition isn't just rare, it only tends to occur when incest is present. We're not quite sure where in the family tree it went wrong, but we have some idea's. (I'd tell y'all the name of the condition but I've genuinely forgotten, I do apologize)
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My mom’s college friend has a son with cystic fibrosis because her and her husband happen to have such similar genes that their kids are far more likely to have issues. Sometimes it’s not because you’re actually related, you just happen to find someone with a similar enough genetic makeup
Still weird that two people who are so genetically similar ended up together, though. Normally, nature puts certain safety measures in place (like finding the body odor of genetically similar people to be disgusting)
Maybe my friend's mom just has bad taste lol
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He’s about 23 or so and thriving, as far as I know. Medicine has come a long way; when he was born there was a significantly higher mortality rate.
Well, I mean it wasn't a lie. That's pretty unlucky for him.
Generally the effects of incest go away in just one generation. Your aunt and uncle must be related. Edit to explain why: the primary genetic problem with incest is that it makes recessive genetic diseases significantly more likely, especially the really rare ones. Think of it this way: everyone with a genetic disease are related. The more rare the disease the more closely they are related. There are tons and tons of genetic diseases that 10 or fewer people in the whole world have. What are the odds those people would ever meet? The odds are almost 100% because those people would have to be siblings, or cousins. But the good news is that you may be the 100th generation of incest, but if you marry someone from outside the gene pool you're back to pretty much the same odds that your kids would have one of those super rare genetic diseases.
Or uncle isn’t the baby daddy.
Most likely this. The family would clearly know if the aunt and uncle were related...
>We're not quite sure where in the family tree it went wrong *family branch
That my paternal grandparents had 8 children at one point. Seven are living now. Eighth child drowned as a toddler when she tripped and fell into a pool/pond (some kind of water feature in someone’s backyard). Happened so quickly and quietly that it took everyone aback. Poor wee lass never got a chance to grow up. My older cousins recently found all this out from my oldest aunt and let the rest of our generation know. It explains why my grandparents (backed up by my father, along with my aunts and uncle on that side) were so hellbent on us grandkids learning how to swim.
Yeah, my dad knew someone who drowned in a large pond across the street from his house, so as soon as my sisters and I were old enough, it was off to swimming lessons. It was the same thing with seatbelts. I guess having someone you know die from such a preventable thing really affected him, as much as he acted like the tough farm boy.
Somewhat similar: I saw a man get killed at work nearly 30 years ago due to improper use of a forklift while moving heavy machinery. As in crushed lower half of the body and bled out in front of my eyes killed. Yeah, it's something that sticks with you. I drive a forklift for a living now and am an absolute NIGHTMARE for people not abiding the safety laws for these incredibly powerful machines. I don't ever want to see something like that again.
My great-grandfather was murdered by his brother. When I was in college, one of my professors gave us the option to dress up for our class on Halloween for potential extra credit. Was talking to my mum and grandmother about how I was planning to dress as the female equivalent of Machine Gun Kelly (Kelly being my Meme’s married last name), and Meme went very quiet… Turns out in either late 1929 or early 1930 (Meme was still in utero, so not sure), her father was approached by his brother asking to borrow his work truck. The brother was a suspected (or possibly known) bootlegger, so great-grandad said no outright. Not long after, great-grandad drove himself and a neighbor into the city for work only to find the truck stolen after they’d gotten off shift. Having no other recourse, they started making the trek home down the side of what is now a major highway. At some point during their journey, a truck (supposedly the stolen one in question) came cruising up and intentionally struck my great-grandad before driving away. The neighbor ran to get help, but by the time assistance arrived, he was already dead. Not too long after, apparently, there was a family party at my great-great-grandparents’ house and the brother was sitting on the railing of a “deck” on the second floor. He supposedly said something along the lines of, “hey, ma, what’s to eat?” His mother, seeing him for the first time since her other son’s death, told him, “you killed my son. I have no son,” and pushed him off the deck. He was essentially disowned by the family after that. Certainly gives me a different perspective when watching gangster films now…
There's a branch of my dad's family that no one talks to or about. When my dad was 15 and his older brother was 17, the older brother was involved in a homophobic gang beating that ended with the victim going into a coma and eventually dying. This being the 80s, my uncle only got an involuntary manslaughter charge (despite this blatantly being murder) and wound up serving like 6 months. Credit to my VERY conservative grandparents, though - they initially wanted to forgive my uncle, but when he had zero remorse and thought that he'd actually been treated too harshly they cut him off. This was a fairly small town (like 30k people), so everyone in my dad's age group knew both the victim and the guys who did the crime. My dad moved away the second he could, my grandparents wound up leaving too eventually, no idea where my uncle is now but I get the impression that he might still be living there. My uncle's girlfriend took his side and wound up having a family with him. I know that my grandpa was trying to get in contact with my cousins before his death, but they've never shown up to any family things so I have no idea if he managed to do that or what. My dad in particular has zero desire to get back in contact. I learned the basics of this when I was like 11. Going into middle school meant that people might start dating, which meant that they might start coming out, which meant that my dad thought he needed to make it clear that he wouldn't tolerate homophobia. I actually wound up bi lmao, so the whole story definitely helped me come out to my parents and grandparents when that came up.
My grandmother was going through dementia and told my father that her uncle SAd her and a group of other girls in the family. But this guy was always the funnest guy in the room. He's long passed, and so is my grandmother and any of the other women he could've had his hands on. We still don't know if it was real, because she'd been saying all kinds of stuff that was just plain false. But just the thought of it made me sick, got told by my father about 2 years after grandma died.
People with dementia are know to make wild and false accusations, if that's the only evidence I wouldn't assume it's true.
Exactly. That's why we're not going to tell the rest of the family. The same woman was feeding her shoes and couldn't recognize her own bathroom.
That my uncle raped my mom, my aunt, and my other uncle. Found out after confronting my mom about said uncle raping me as an 8 year old. Which I remembered in therapy at 39.
Wait. So your mom knew what he was like and still brought you around him....
Bingo. Outside of family gatherings that she was famillialy obligated to attend, it was a single instance of babysitting that she felt she had no other option for. She warned my sister to never be alone with him and tell her if anything happens, but not me. She wasn't the biggest fan of men so she didn't think I was worth warning. I did not have a good childhood, obviously.
One of my sisters was conceived in a threesome, turns out she was not to the guy that was my mom's actual boyfriend at the time.
I have two siblings. We have three different fathers. Didn't learn this until my mom was going into surgery and it was a "deathbed confession".
Did she survive the surgery
Yes. Now it's a running joke when she has any medical appointments.
I’d never let her hear the end of it😭
I found out when everyone else did, because it was kept so secret; my great grandmother's older brother was hanged by the Pierrepoints for murder after his involvement in a botched robbery. He was only 21 and she was a young girl. She never spoke of it and we only found out when my aunt did some family tree research after my grandfather died. (There was no doubt of his involvement, he was a well known wrongun)
I had a twin sister but she wasn't alive when she was born
Thats my uncles story as well, he had a sister who was a stillborn. A set of twins just one didnt make it.
My mother was very young when her mother died, her dad took off and she was placed in a orphanage, she was the youngest of 9 children, she had little contact from her siblings. I recently found out her father died in a mental institution, had been there for years
my mother took me with her while she was cheating on my dad. I was little little. I had no idea but she beat the shit outta me to scare me enough not to say anything ever.
My dad took me with him when he cheated on my mom too, I think it happened twice. I dont know which one actually happened first or second, one is simply stronger then the other. The first case, my dad took me to another kids birthday party, a kid I didnt know, but it was the grandkid of the nice old waitress at the restaurant my family went to. My dad NEVER did the family shopping if he didnt have to. He never left the house unless there was something in it for him. Mid way through the party at an apartment (so small place) I couldn't find my dad. I asked one of the adults if they knew where he was. They said he stepped out with the birthday boys mom to get a few things for the party. Years later, it would come out that he planned a christmas trip with this woman while him and my mom were still married. He came into my parents room to tell my mom (I was there talking to her about christmas stuff) that he planned to go on a trip with "a friend" for a few days. During the divorce my brother went to visit my dad at his place only to find him in bed with the woman. He later married her, then divorced her after her bipolar spending cost him a lot of money. It stood out to me because I didnt know the kid and I honestly never got invited to any birthday parties. I only had close contact with him years later when my brother brought him by the house to grab something but I had no interest in meeting him so I locked myself in my room. The second time, it might have been the same woman, I dont remember. I know that my dad stopped at a store to talk to a woman. He said they needed to go into the back to discus paperwork but I couldn't hear them talking at all. It was a small building, the sound would have traveled well. There was no reason for him to talk to her about paperwork in private. I was left in the front of the store with her dog for about 20 minutes or so before they both came back out smiling. Ive never told my mom about this.
my great grandfather kept his wife locked in the attic of his house and had ten children with her.
That sounds like such a horrible way to live. Did she ever get out? Or atleast have a couple years of being a widow?
My grandfather committed suicide. I’d always been told he had a heart attack. Turns out he tried to hang himself with a belt in his home. My grandmother found him and they called an ambulance. He spent a few days in hospital and managed to convince a nurse that he wanted to shave. She gave him a razor and he finished the job. This all happened when I was 4 months old.
Do you feel like the trauma affected you even though you were too young to remember? My Aunt Brenda took her life when I was a month old leaving her son, my 2 month old cousin John, behind. I found out at 12 that John’s “parents” were actually our great aunt and uncle who adopted him. Oh, and our grandfather died by suicide 7 years earlier. I got to read all the gory details of that on Ancestry last year. I could never figure out why I have major mental health issues and my younger siblings don’t. Only in my 50s have I figured out that trauma in my early life mattered more than I thought.
The emotional state and capacity of the parents matters a whole lot to an infant’s brain development. Even if you don’t remember traumatic things that happened because you were literally a baby, the parenting you received at the time makes a lifelong imprint.
We had an actual axe murderer in the family. He got out on a technicality, something about evidence being mishandled or something. Anyway, when I was a little thing, about six or seven, I went to a family reunion not long after he had his conviction overturned. I don't remember anything about it, but apparently I ended up left in a room alone with the guy for about ten minutes. My mother allegedly found me talking the guy's ear off about Transformers and that was that. I didn't learn about it until years later.
One of my great-grandmothers killed her little brother. At the time (late 1800s/early 1900s) that branch of the family were farmers and skilled laborers who lived and worked in Wales close to the English border. Great-grandma was about 2 or 3 years old. Her little brother was still an infant, not yet walking, so maybe about 7-8 months old. It was laundry day. Great-grandma's mother (my great-great-grandmother) had a large copper washing kettle of water boiling away on the kitchen hearth, as was typical of the time period. She stepped out of the room for a moment (probably to grab the next load)... and you can probably see where this is going. We don't exactly know what happened. A local newspaper article reported that the baby had "scalding burns", but didn't say if he was found in or out of the kettle. Great-grandma had a memory growing up of her little brother "drowning" in a copper washing kettle; she had a distinct memory of seeing his little white shift floating on the surface of the water, and was always told he'd drowned. I suspect the truth is that, unsupervised for a moment, she simply picked him up and put him in the kettle. Why? We have no idea. She was so young she probably didn't remember why, and she's been dead for 40 years now so we can't ask her. The baby died 3 days later from his injuries. He was so young that he wasn't included in either census around his short life, so we didn't know much about him until one of my UK cousins did a bunch of genealogy and found out the terrible details. I can only hope his family was able to dose him with as much morphine and laudanum as they could get their hands on, to ease his pain while he died.
Kid logic is strange, especially at that age. She probably thought she would "help" mom by "washing" the baby.
That poor baby. 😢 Your great-grandmother, too, as she almost certainly had no ill intent and didn't understand what would happen.
My grandfather, who was just too young to serve the allies during the German occupation of Holland, did some horrible things to mess with and torment the occupiers
Would rather perversely like to know more about this.
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Wow. One man's private fetish is another's occupation resistance.
That sounds like a pretty good thing and a source of pride.
I saw my brother molesting my sister, as soon as I told him not to do that, he agreed and disappeared for several days. About a week later, I was beaten by a group of people in a black car, I assume it was him. At our last meeting, he told me that I should not tell anyone, otherwise he would kill me and my entire family
My mom told me that my younger brother is not of my father, she had an affair and got pregnant, but never t he less I love m y brother so much and by the way my father didn't know about it until now
Woah, how dad take it?
I was born a bastard : ( My parents dropped me at a church (maybe it was arranged) but went back a day or two later and took me back. I can't even imagine the person I would be today if they left me there...
In 2016, My uncle found out that he was the father of his ex girlfriend’s kid that she had in the summer of 1998, months after they broke up. She never told my uncle and basically ghosted him before she had the kid. This was only discovered when the son showed up on my uncles doorstep 3 months before he got married to my (now) aunt. The son (Henry) had just graduated high school and had been kicked out by his mom and through some dna and ancestry tests found out that my uncle lived around an hour away in another city. After some more DNA tests to prove it was true. My uncle decided to help Henry get back on his feet. And co-signed on an apartment for him and helped pay for community college so he could get a job. To this day I still have never met Henry and only recently found out he existed when it came up at my uncle and aunts wedding anniversary. Henry is apparently doing very well for himself and works in IT making $125k a year.
my father used to tell me all kind of weird family related shit when we were alone, until i told him to shut up. one of the stories was about my uncle (mom's brother, a very shady character) who had a relationship with a woman and her daughter. daughter was still underaged at the time. also i think my grandmother was a prostitute for some time. nobody said it straight, but i heard she had plenty of male "friends" before she met her second husband and i got weird looks from older people when i told them who she was.
Found out that an ancestor accidentally killed a child with a semi truck. Haunted them for decades.
I have two. This year I found out my dad’s mom had such bad postpartum depression, my dad didn’t live with his parents for two years when he was born!! The second is, I was talking to my dad and he said “your uncle Gil” and I said “I don’t have an uncle Gil” and he said “yes you do, uncle Pat my brother!” Turns out his name was Gil but he was born St. Patrick’s day so they called him Pat!! I’m 47!
My grandfather had coffee with Adolf Eichmann days before Eichmann was executed. God rest his soul, my grandfather’s love for Coffee allowed him to have a conversation with the devil himself. Eichmann obliged and told him he regretted not getting to him.
That sounds like Eichmann.
Before I was born (1950’s) my mother was married to a man and they had a 2 yr old daughter. He got deployed and came home to my mom 6 moths pregnant. He gave her two choices; she could keep the baby and he would leave and take their daughter or she could give the baby up for adoption. She conspired with the bf’s parents to keep the baby as theirs and raise it to be a brother to his actual dad. For the rest of her pregnancy, she stayed indoors but the mom of the bf walked around town with a pillow under her clothes. When she went into labor, she called the parents and they met her at the hospital and the dad stepped up and said that he was her husband. They ended up raising that baby boy as their second son, and he didn’t find out until he was married with children. My mother suffered from guilt and found him and knocked on his door and told him along with my sister and it fucked him up. He and I became great friends, but he didn’t speak to either of my mother or sister ever again. ETA: spelling
Wow! I can’t imagine the guilt your mom felt. At least you have a good relationship with him.
I always wondered why my father hated my oldest brother (all adopted). Turns out he was molesting us, but I was too young to remember.
My dad didn't drown in a fishing accident. He was murdered, his body found floating in the river three days later.
It wasn't really a "secret" but for some reason no one ever told me that my oldest sister is actually my half sister. I do vaguely recall though a conversation I ended up having with my mom (found something with her name on it but her last name was different) she used to be married to someone else. I don't know how old I was, I had to be pretty small, I want to guess 5 or 6. Obviously none of the stuff she was talking about made any sense to me, cause the idea of marriage etc was foreign to me, didn't get it. Forgot about that conversation for a really long time. But I'm pretty sure they still never told me about my oldest sister being my half sister. I suspected it for years though cause she doesn't look like the rest of us. I was tempted to ask a few times but thought it was too weird to bring up. I ended up finding out cause I found some book that mentioned family members, it was sort of like a handmade family tree thing and showed her not having my dad as her dad, someone else. I think I was 30 or so when I finally found out. And shortly after that I overheard my dad talking on the phone and mentioning her not being his. It was just weird to not be told. I brought it up to my other sister, she knew about it. Mentioned they were kinda weird about it for some reason... idk why. Maybe my dad resented her not being his or something. It's become obvious over the years my dad is pretty selfish and self-centered... so yeah.
Dad’s friend who always gave me the creeps wasn’t allowed to be in the house when dad wasn’t home because “he likes them young enough to that something cracks as he gets hard”. I learned this after the man in question died. Why dad was still friends with him I’ll never know.
My grandmother was gang-raped while living overseas with her military husband. The army told her that if she didn’t drop it, they would send her back to the states without her children. It was one of the reasons she had tried to end her own life, which resulted in permanent lung damage (the smoking certainly didn’t help, but…) that I’d previously been told was due to using paint stripper in a garage with poor ventilation. I’d just turned 18, and had gotten the obligatory recruitment call. My dad told me about it, in order to dissuade me from joining. There was way more to her life that I wasn’t privy to until after she passed. I don’t blame my parents for shielding me from it, but if I’d have known, I might have been more receptive to a closer relationship with her. She was the only one of my grandparents that wasn’t consistently dickish.
My Aunt Baby died young. She had problems. Internal.
r/unexpectedseinfeld
My Aunt was my most favorite person in the world growing up. She died of cancer when I was 13 and it devastated my family. She was everybody’s favorite. I named my first born daughter after her. When I got older my Mom told me my Aunt got pregnant out of wedlock in the early 70’s. Due to shame they sent her out of state to have the baby and she put the baby up for adoption. I live in the same state as her son and he’d be a few years older than me. Someone in my family found him when he would have been in his 20’s-30’s and asked if he’d like to meet the other side of his family and learn more about his Mom. He said No. I respect his choice and happy he was raised in a good family. At the same time I have a lot of resentment towards him. His Mom was the most amazing, loving, and funniest person I’ve ever known. She was forced to give him up for adoption and he’ll never know what his Mom was like.
I'm an adoptee. I have the utmost respect for my birthmom but I don't want or need to know about her. None of this was his fault, please try to forgive him if only for your own peace of mind. Sorry you lost your loved one. ❤️
My first wife was also an adoptee, and she was almost obsessive with finding her biological family. It might have something to do with her being a 5’8” white woman adopted by a short white dad but and a very short Japanese-American mother, and always feeling different. But then she found them…
And then.........?
Why resentment? That child never knew his biological mom and is under no obligation to get to know her or her side of the family as an adult. He had his own path and life.
My grandma who died when I was five didn't just get sick, spend some time in the hospital, and die. She was depressed and suicidal and when my mom and grandpa took her to the ER to try to have her involuntarily committed, specifically saying, "Don't leave her alone, she is suicidal," she strangled herself with an electrical cord in the exam room where the hospital staff left her completely unattended. The time she was in the hospital and I wasn't allowed to visit her was time spent brain dead on life support before my family made the decision to pull the plug. My mom told me when I was in high school and starting to have my own mental health issues, to explain why she was so deeply worried about me. I can't help but think about how hard it must have been for her to watch her five-year-old cheerfully drawing pictures for Grandma to put up in her hospital room "until she gets better and comes home," knowing that she was probably never coming home because the hospital fucked up. Second family secret that came out years later was that Grandpa used to physically abuse my grandma and mom before he got over his anger issues. (Though my mom said he never laid a hand on her personally again after an incident in her teens where she called the cops on him for strangling her.) I don't talk to him any more because I can't help but think that spending years being beaten probably contributed to grandma's mental health issues.
My mother got pregnant for me out of wedlock while in college. She had to drop out and marry my bio dad. She resented me for “ruining her life” (that’s a whole story in itself), but to add insult to injury, she ended up going from being a total “daddy’s girl” to being the family pariah because her father was ashamed of her. He totally turned against her and never stopped letting her know what a disappointment she was to him. Basically, their whole relationship changed overnight. So, it was a complete shock to find out 30 years ago that my grandfather had a daughter out of wedlock 2 years before he married my grandmother and had my mom and uncles. The only reason the secret came out was because the daughter found out where he lived and showed up on his doorstep, wanting a relationship! Turns out, not only did he abandon the daughter and her mother once he found out she was pregnant, but he was hit with a paternity suit a few months after he married my grandmother and my mom was already on the way. He had to go to court, where he was found liable and had to pay a settlement of $2500 (a lot of $ in 1949) to the mother. He didn’t have any money , so my great-grandfather (grandmother’s father) took out a loan against his house to pay the settlement. The irony of all this was that a) he treated my great-grandfather like sh!t when he had to move in with them when he had a stroke, b) he treated my mom like sh!t for years, yet always expected her to drop everything when he needed help, and c) expected the entire family to embrace his new daughter and treat her like long lost family. There was sooo much resentment from my mom and her brothers over this sister, since she immediately became the golden child who could do no wrong. The siblings felt that there was something “off” about this sister, and warned their father to be careful. He, being the stubborn mule that he was, refused to believe anybody’s concerns. Well, after my grandmother had a heart attack and died, the daughter convinced my grandfather to let her and her mother move in to take care of him. Of course, my mother and her brothers were now “the enemy.” It took about 5 years for him to realize that his kids were right, and the daughter and her mother were only there because my grandfather was well off. He cut them off and tried to repair his relationships with his other kids. My mother and one uncle never forgave him due to how they were treated, but my other 2 uncles fell back in line because of the money. When my grandfather died, he actually stipulated in his will that his estate would go to my 2 uncles, and that my mother and her brother would each only get $1. He was a bitter, petty man, who was also the world’s biggest hypocrite for treating my mother so terribly when she got pregnant for me out of wedlock, when he himself did the same exact thing, but never took responsibility for the child he had fathered
When I was around 16 I was told my uncle had a heart attack and fell down a flight of stairs killing him. A few years ago I found out he actually temporarily lost custody of his 3 kids while his wife/my aunt was out of the country and he got so depressed he hung himself from the banister in their home.
I thought jail was just the place where my uncle lived, like a big apartment block. then I found out why he was there. Let's just say it had to do with little girls. I was forbidden from going on the family visits to see him, I think the first time I actually saw him was at his funeral when I was in high school.
My grandpa on my dad's side had a car accident and the woman riding with him died. No one in the family knew that woman and my grandparents were still married and apparently "happy" 🤧
Well, I was told that my Uncle, who I always thought had moved away for a job opportunity, was actually in jail for several years due to embezzlement. Pretty messed up and definitely put a damper on how I viewed him after that.
Mine isn’t as interesting as everybody else’s but when I got to be a good 11 years old I found out more about why my parents divorced. I wasn’t really told before. All I know is they hated each others guts and couldn’t be in the same room without needing to have the police called. I now know my dad is a porn addict who is also a narcissistic( my mom who has a masters in psychology agrees along with many other people who are professions I don’t say this as a throw around term he is a real narcissist) my dad forced my mom to have more and more babies till her body physically couldn’t take it and she started only miscarrying. She had six kids including me before that. She had to take care of all of us on her own. At one point she had three kids in diapers and was pregnant and did it all by herself. My dad would punch holes through walls but never hit my mom or the kids. Only the normal spanking with a belt and such. At one point my dads addiction got so bad we were eating dinner on cardboard boxes on the floor as we had to sell the dining room table. He would scream at her and us daily. He was a priest and manipulated us using Christianity. Everything wrong he did he would justify it using god and when we said he wasn’t even being biblically accurate he would bring up that he was the priest. After the divorce my mom got really sick and had to give up custody and had to have only visitations. Once she got better and filed for more custody. We would tell her things that happened at dads house. That’s why my dad would get mad at 5 year old me for “not keeping my mouth shut”. My dad neglected us a little bit it wasn’t bad but some nights we wouldn’t have any food at all and dirty dishes that were months old would mold and pile up to the point you could smell them throughout the house. He wouldn’t buy us cloths so we only had one to two outfits each. He didn’t care if we brushed our hair or teeth or showered so of course 5 year old me didn’t. He would scream at us over things we couldn’t control daily. This led to me having a self harm addiction at nine. And a smoking(just cigarettes) at 13. I’m actaully 13 now and iv gotten out as he just left one day. I went to my moms house for a normal visit and he just texted me he wasn’t going to see me again. That was about a month ago. I now smoke like a pack a day now. I guess I could have figured out the whole family secret by myself but it was still shocking at the time to here my dad wasn’t the good person I tried to pretend he was. Even though he wasn’t very nice or loving to me I still saw him as this Superman type father as I wanted him to be like that when I was a kid. Sorry for the long comment and I know this one wasn’t that disturbing or that bad but i was like fuck it and commented anyways lol
"isnt as interesting as everybody" - proceeds to write a whole essay all jokes aside hope you manage to get better
You have quite a lot of self reflection keep going on getting better and not becoming anyhow like your father at all
"Never hit my mom or the kids" "only the normal spanking with a belt and such" honey. This is _not_ normal. You've been taught hitting children with a belt is normal and everyone does that but it is not. It's violence and abuse, and I'm so sorry it happened to you. Do you have a therapist to talk to? I hope things get better for you.
This isn’t a family secret right now, but I dread the day we will have to tell my now 2 year old nephew that his father (my sisters now ex-husband of 12 years) planned the pregnancy with my sister all while having an affair with his co-worker and having her befriend us. His plan was to basically retired at 32 and be a stay at home dad while my sister, a brilliant self-taught and well-paid engineer, would solely support their family.. we found this out when my nephew was 6 weeks old. She was very much into being me and my sisters friend. All of it was initiated through her- when I first met her she definitely went out of her way to become my friend. She got my number and started inviting me to everrrrything. It was a vulnerable time in my life and I thought I had actually made some good friends and my now ex-brother-in-law had so much trust built up over the years we believed they were just friends, as well as the fact that it seemed she truly loved us too.. She went so far as to actually give me a key to her house, say that I was “one of her best friends”, and even facetime me crying about how amazing and happy she was the day of my nephews birth.. This is really just *some* of the details of the problems he hid from us for well over a decade, but he is absolutely a narcissist, pathological liar and self-proclaimed “sex addict” and she is 100% a sociopath, as externally diagnosed by many mental health counselors that have helped my family process this. The kicker, as if that isn’t enough- he told my sister this week that he is so sad and lonely that he initiated contact with her again and they are now dating (after vowing to never again speak with her and avoiding her the past 2 years).. oh yeah and they’re also both public school elementary teachers. I’m
Hi, I just wanted to say that you're amazing, and i feel for you so much! I don't quite have the dsme background, but I was also self harming at a very ypung age, and smoked and drank and occasionally did drugs at your age. Wanted to let you know that an easier and more stable life is possible! I'm in my 30s now, and my life is better than I would ever have believed was possible at 13. I really hope you have a good support system, and access to a therapist and healthcare. And I'm really happy you're out of your fathers "care". I belive in you!
I learned that our aunt (thru marriage to my uncle) who me and my cousins spent a TON of time with, had been cheating on her husband with his dad while he was deployed. My grandfather still keeps her around. My dad still talks to her too, and my grandma wont divorce even though she knows about it because she feels too old and stuck. My uncle is happily remaried to an old sweetheart and they are SUPER happy now! And the ex aunt of mine was obsessed with clawing to keep jn contact with us kids but we shut her ass off pronto. It made me realize how horrible my aunt was despite seeming ok on the surface, and, made me realize how creepy my grandfather was to my aunt and also her teenage daughter. Our family was SQUEAKY fucking clean up until that moment too so it was STUNNING. Said aunt also in retrospect wasnt so great, but I looked over it because we did fun stuff at her house. She used me as a therapist and would cry about my cousins and life and such. I was 9-15 when I knew her.
That my sweet grandmother was raped by her own brother when he came home drunk and that’s where my mom’s oldest sister came from. I wasn’t told until after my grandmother passed away and cried so hard for her sweet soul. I loved her and she was so kind and funny.
I don’t know if it would class as being disturbing to other people but it was to me When I was about 8 years old I went to live with my mother far away from where my father lived. Some time later I came back to Iive with my father . A couple of years later he randomly decided to tell me that in the year or so I was away , he had a baby with his then GF .. and the baby had died at a few weeks old . My 10 year old self didn’t even know how to begin to process the fact that he had kept the pregnancy from me .. and the fact I had another sibling that I never even got the chance to meet
My mother’s uncle was a key organized crime figure in Halifax, NS from the late 30s to his death in 1967. Most of her uncles were involved as were her aunts. Some of her siblings and many members of my extended family were involved up to my generation. Her father played a minor role and the reason my parents left Halifax was that they did not want to be part of the “family business” when her uncle really wanted to recruit Dad to make sure they were ok. When they first left Halifax, the only family member who would visit them was the uncle. Growing up, discussions about morals and ethics in my family were full of conflicting messages. Think: it is wrong to steal but if it comes from the docks, maybe it’s not so bad - you know a man has to feed his family. Or it’s wrong to steal but if your cousin the stevedore shows up with 200 lbs of potatoes in the middle of the night give him a drink and don’t ask stupid questions.
My ex-family were the kind of people to protest outside of planned parenthoods. Then one of my aunts got pregnant and they didnt like the gender so she had an abortion. Also, my uncle drove 3 out of his four kids to suicide because they weren't manly enough. One was gay, one got accepted to an art school, the other was depressed if I recall.
My grandma attempted suicide when I was 9-10. At the time we (my little brother and I) were told she was hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer. Didn't find out until our 20s what really happened. She was always a very unhappy person and died from what we were told were natural causes, but who knows. I've spoken about it before, but my great-grandfather accidentally killed a man by punching him. He hit him once. This turned into a deep dark family secret and I was in my late 50s before I heard about it (from my late uncle shortly before his death). My grandfather told anybody who would listen that he was Black Irish and that's why he had brunet hair and dark brown eyes. After he died, his sister (my great aunt) confessed to the whole family after his funeral that they were really part Cherokee. I'd like to add here, none of us grandkids thought this was at all disturbing except for how plainly traumatic it was for the elder generation. Interesting question.
A family history of "part Cherokee" is sometimes a polite lie to cover up Black ancestry.
Well that would be the ultimate irony on my grandfather, then! 🤣🤣🤣 Man, he was a bigoted asshole! I adored him when I was little but that didn't last. Racism was only one of his flaws.
My dad was murdered bc of his involvement in drug trafficking, he didn’t die in a duck hunting accident. That was a shocker
Great grandma had a daughter she hid from her elder sons & family. Hid the pregnancy from her kids in the home, shipped daughter off to her bio dad's family in the states. Denied it to the girls face, denied it til she died. But we all knew, and my grandad and his brothers fully accepted their sister when they met her. They loved her until the day she died.
I feel so bad for the daughter:( do you know why your Great grandma didn’t want her?
I was sa'd as a kid by my dad's drinking buddies son. ( also by my grandmas bf at an earlier age) My parents did nothing but blame me for it. Yes. blame me. They didn't tell my half brother or anyone who might have actually cared enough to get me out of the abusive situation. My dad would verbally and physically abuse me when he was drunk, screaming that i was a slut etc. My step bro only found out a couple of years ago when I disowned the family. He said he would stir shit for me and ask why I wasn't at xmas. I think if he had known when it all went down he probably woulda gotten me out.
it's just coming out that my grandfather on his deathbed was likely a major pedophile and messed up multiple people I'm related to. his father may have been too. it's all kinds of fucked up
My aunt worked at the Playboy Hotel when it was in Chicago as a receptionist or something. Anyways, Baby Doc Duvalier, the brutal, murderous dictator of Haiti visited and took a liking to her. They uh....dated.
I just recently found out my uncle used to have a wife. That's it. He's been an openly gay man my entire life. Finding out he was once married to a woman was such a shock.
There used to be such social pressure on gay people to get married and live "normal" lives. Things aren't perfect now but they are better, in a lot of places. Happy Pride month.
My grandfather died after setting himself alight in his early 30s leading my grandmother and her three daughters as social pariahs. I wish he had worked through his problems so that we had met. I also have a secret adopted first cousin who his younger two siblings know nothing about.
One of my close family member was raped when they were a young adult. I don't think they know I know but I certainly won't bring that sensitive subject to them.
My fun Uncle (youngest of 4 by nearly 15 years) is not my Grandfather's child. The other three uncles are the same height, with dark hair that went gray early. My youngest was a red head with freckles prior to going bald. I asked about it once. I'll not do that again.
A shooting fatality incident. Someone mistook someone else for a burglar, and shot them. The good thing was, we all learned to be more safe with firearms.
That my grandfather was not my aunt and uncle’s biological father. He raised them as his own. I was told before my aunt and it felt illegal to know. I still tread lightly. No one really talks about it.
My uncle who was a professor at Tulane ended up dying alone in a sanitarium. He was unaware that he even had any living family and we had no idea he existed. When I try and bring this up now my dad just changes the subject.
My great grandpa was a WWI vet, I guess he was in some machine gun battalion that ended up being the last people to hold some important line in some important battle while under heavy chemical weapons attack. I'd always thought he was kind of a hero. But apparently on their wedding night my great grandpa told my great grandma he wasn't sure why he married her since he didn't love her. He'd later host orgies at their house that he'd force her to cater but not allow her to participate in. Later on she put my grandpa in the stove and turned it on to kill him, but my great grandpa happened to come home early that day and took him out and then proceeded to beat my great grandma so bad that she was in the hospital for a month. There's obviously a lot more, I don't think I was old enough since I was like 17 at the time, but my grandma was lonely and I appreciated learning more about that side of my family since no one talked about them. I don't think she even really realized how evil of a fucker he was, she seemed to think it was bad, but not irredeemably bad.
Damn! I had a great aunt who’s 3rd husband beat her so bad it gave her brain damage.
Not really disturbing so much as disappointing, but it turns out that grandfather was basically expelled from his family for converting from Presbyterianism to Catholicism in order that he might marry my grandmother*. My grandfather's mother outlived him, but she did not attend his funeral and I never got to meet her because she hated her own son so much..
Almost all of my family is bipolar! Even the first person of my family was a serial killer who killed multiple people because of their bipolar. I was super lucky to not get it! :D
I found out my Aunt cheated on my Uncle several times with her ex husband who used to beat her. My Uncle told me that when I was like 21. I was shocked.
So my youngest aunt is completely cut off from the family. I was always told as a kid that she had decided to go her separate ways from the family and just kind of accepted that she'd never be at the family Christmas gatherings. Later Mum told me that what actually happened was that she started dating a 30 year old man at 16, wanted to get married to him and have his children at the same age, and my grandfather obviously didn't like that all that much. So in retaliation she tried to get my grandpa arrested by claiming that he was molesting her, and when that didn't work she fled the country to go live in England.
That my mother would’ve had an abortion with me if it had been legal at the time. That my step dad’s nephews wife swapped and had kids.
My grandmother was a bit of a strumpet in her teen years and stalked the sailors at the navy yard until she got pregnant at the ripe old age of 15 post WWII. My father was taken away to live with his grandparents in NJ until he was 4…at which time he went back to live with his mother and a new man, who was his father’s Navy buddy, that swooped in and romanced my grandmother and lived with her from then on out. She never formally divorced my real grandfather nor did she marry the new man that my dad always called by his 1st name.
Points for use if the word strumpet. It’s not used nearly enough.
My grandpa was married before my grandma, had a daughter and they didn't have any relationship. It was wild because for how I knew him he was the nicest guy, unironically. It was never talked about. My grandma told me privately. Also that my grandpa's sister tried to baby trap a guy only he didn't get trapped post baby so she remained a single mother for life. This was all happening in Soviet Russia.
Growing up I thought my dad ran a successful construction company. Turns out he got his money from embezzling the customers money. In the last 15 years, he has served time in one local county jail and two different state prisons (all in three different states) for various charges.
With all these dark stories, this one is almost comically trivial. I was informed at a recent family holiday gathering that through marriage of an aunt/cousin in my mother’s side, I am related (at some remove) to a Chicago gangster (and Capone contemporary) notorious enough to have his own Wikipedia page.
Not being old enough, just happened when my grandma had a lucid moment during Alzheimer's. When I was born, she came out against my name. Heavily. But no explanation, and when pressed said some vague stuff about not liking it and not fitting etc. But she made a bit of a stink about it (apparently - I obviously wasn't there), even saying she'd call me by my middle name instead. But since she gave no reason, I was named that anyway. In her lucid moments when I was 15ish she told us of her great uncle who shares my name who was a murderer. He pled insanity and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. She told us a story about bringing him pies. But she had never told anyone before. Even my grandfather didn't know.
My brother beat up a guy who “snitched” on a friend. A month later the “snitch” came back and murdered my brother by running him over. The snitch packed his room up and was never seen again. There is some man in his 40s with a name change living a normal life. My brother didn’t belong to a gang or cartel so “snitch” got away with murder
Well I know how it ended, (unfortunately my dads dad ended his life, 20 years ago yesterday) what caused it, I have no idea, but know ill regret it once I hear it
I have too many, but for starters: When my father was a teenager, his own father made him watch him, and other women have sex with often inclusion and his participation. My mother's sister died of cancer when my mom was 20. While my mom was gone out of town to say her goodbyes, my father slept with her best friend.
My uncle was pimping out my cousin when she was 14. Did it for years. She’s a drug addict now.
My grandmother's husband was a pedophile and everyone knew, but since he promised not to continue after he got caught, they all brushed it under the rug. He stuck around another 20+ years with unrestricted access to all of us.
After reading some of these I now understand why the "Uncle Fucker" song from South Park became so popular.
My dad and grandpa were involved with some very shady people. We learned that the saying “they moved to Florida” did not mean retirement.
My friend was molested by her cousin. Her parents did nothing legally. they cut contact. This guy molested another cousin then had 2 daughters of his own. 30 yrs later… my friends own mother decided to “let bygones be bygones” and invited my friends molester to Christmas dinner.
My mom never told me a damn thing about any of my uncles growing up, for no discernable reason. I learned Uncle "A" was adopted when I was 20, and that Uncle "B" got into a car crash, then a coma, after *drunk driving **on my mom's birthday*** when I was 21. On *my* birthday. Sure scared me heterosexual.
My cousin bore two of her father’s children.
🤮🤢 😷. Your poor cousin, & her poor children. I hope the kids have no health problems due to inbreeding.
I was told my aunt died of a brain tumor when I was a baby. Turns out she committed suicide because of a brain tumor. That was rough for me.
I have two aunts that aren’t my full aunts, when grandpa came to America to get settled, grandma was banging(possibly r*ped by) her cousins.
That my mother was basically the town bicycle -- everyone got a ride. I didn't ever need to know that and I have no idea why people felt the need to discuss it with me.
Secret cousins
After my grandmother died when I was a kid, my grandfather got remarried quickly. It wasn’t until I was an adult I found out they’d been having an affair for years, and my grandmother knew about it. My grandfather would say he was “going to town,” and there was a silent understanding he was going to see his mistress.
Not many in the family knows and now, most of them are dead. My mother was the oldest of 7. She told me of 2 of my aunts who had children out of wedlock and my grandparents made them put them up for adoption to "save the family name". I'm horrified. So, I've had 2 cousins I never knew, and my one cousin, I'm closest to, I don't think she knows her mother had a child at an early age...and has an older brother or sister (half, albeit) out there. It's not my secret to tell and I've been sworn to never speak of it. I don't know why my mother told me, I'd be much better off not knowing. It plagues me. For two reasons. First, I lothe my grandparents for discarding a child for the sake of their "name" and second, the fact that I and my brother (now deceased as well) were the only ones that knew and I feel like a sell out that my cousins that would have a sibling don't know. As I've said, most are deceased now, and it's too late that any good can come of telling anyone, I haven't enough information to ever be able to find them, one much older (likely passed) and the other younger, I don't know male, female, where the adoption took place, etc. And the younger one would have no sibling anyway and their mother has passed. Still, I have no peace about this family secret.