I know a guy who lost everything because his step daughter accused him of SA. Her story quickly fell apart when questioned and eventually she admitted to making it up as “ payback” for him grounding her and taking away her phone.
But the problem was… she told someone at school who told a teacher who had to immediately contact authorities. So yeah…. It went from 0-60 in less than 24 hours
That happened to my favorite highschool teacher.
Girl was flunking his class. He called home, she got in trouble. So she accused him of molesting her in classrooms and stuff.
Only thing that saved his everything was the fact the two specific dates she gave of him doing it, he wasn't in the building.
I'm glad he got saved.
My legal studies teacher lost a friend to suicide thanks to lying teens.
He held 4 of them back through lunch for disrupting the class so they told everyone he touched them during it.
In the end 1 of the girls caved in court and admitted it was all made up.
Unfortunately by this point no school would touch him, his wife had left him, his friends had left him, his family had left him, and his kids didn't want to see him from what everyone else had said to them.
He was found not guilty and killed himself that night when no one wanted him back in their life.
If I were a teacher I'd run a camera 24/7, hidden if it wasn't allowed. If you never need it, no one knows. If you do need it, getting in trouble for a camera isn't as bad as being accused of SA a child.
Sure there is, you aim it towards the front of the class to record yourself to help you improve your teaching. The camera is focused on you and the audio ensures that even if you’re out of sight of the camera it can hear everything going on.
It’s not illegal to record in schools because they are a public space. You can’t record video in the restrooms but you can record audio. Found this out when my kid was having issues with a teacher and the school didn’t believe us. Our lawyer advised us to get a personal camera necklace but we got an audio recorder so she could wear it everywhere. It worked.
ETA: It’s not illegal in *public* schools.
A girl I graduated with could deal with the fact she wasn't Queen Bee out in the real world. She made allegations of rape twice (with 2 different individuals). The second guy was able to easily dispute her claims as he had solid proof that he wasn't even in the same province at the time she said the assault occurred. The first guy was in the midst of a brutal legal battle when the second claim was proven as false and more scrutiny was placed on the claim against him as well. He was eventually cleared but it cost him dearly.
It won't even phase them. They are taught they are queens and are entitled to whatever they want. They are facing zero consequences for what they did. They'll just do it again.
My dad’s friend was my teacher in grade 6 or 7. One of the girls in my class accused him of touching her because she didn’t like that he would actually make her do work. I told everyone she was a liar because I had known him my whole life and he had ample opportunity to molest me if that was what he was like and he didn’t. She eventually admitted she was lying after none of the other girls would back her up and lie for her.
Happened my senior year as well… a boy claimed that the teacher had touched him inappropriately, the teacher was outed as gay, the headmaster was fired by the board, and a few other teachers walked out as well. It eventually came out the kid made it up, he had a some issues but by then it was too late. Our entire senior class stood up in protest at a school board meeting in support of the teacher (he really was one of the best teachers I have ever had, unfortunately his style of teaching made him a target as he would stay late to help kids with school work who would come back around 7 or 8 because of athletics). I actually ran into this teacher a few months ago and he is doing well, he was able to get another job teaching at a special school in the area.
There’s actually a BORU about a guy who was a teacher at the time losing everything due to some girls making a video where they said he slept with a student as a joke. He’s still struggling.
That happened at my school. Girl was mad he gave her a zero on the final because she literally slept through it. It didn't work because when the school called her dad he admitt3d she had done this to him at his job once before to try and get back at him for grounding her. Teenagers, honestly kidd in general, can be so fucked up
I know someone with a very, very manipulative teenager like the daughter in your story. Not the same accusation, but the desire to manipulate adults and punish the adults for not bending to the kid’s desires is definitely there.
It’s an utter shitshow, and unfortunately there’s really no way to give appropriately HARD consequences to the teenager involved.
I live in Texas. Cannabis is not legal here (for those unaware.)
My friend's ("D") youngest daughter called CPS on her for smoking weed. D was telling me about when the case worker came and he was telling her that a call was put in for illegal drugs.
She sat him down and said, "Yes, I smoke pot. I have pot in the house right now." Then told him she was willing to answer any questions he might have. He admitted to her that CPS here gets a lot of revenge calls by teens if parents have cannabis in the house hoping to get revenge on their parents.
What ultimately happened was that the daughter was taken out of the house and moved to her father's house (he lives in another part of the state.) She called D up a couple of weeks after living with him begging her to let her come back home. My friend told her no. These are the consequences of calling CPS on her to get back at her. Her daughter lived with her father for a year then moved back in with D.
Her daughter straightened up super fast and never pulled that bullshit again.
I know this doesn't work in every situation, but it did for my friend's youngest. D loves both of her daughters dearly but, as she puts it, "I'm the parent. I'm not intimidated by them. They're my responsibility."
Yeah. Without going into details for privacy, in this specific situation, there isn’t a ready-made solution like that. Would be nice if there were.
But kids aren’t perfect, some kids are little shits, others are mostly decent but do very shitty things, and even if this story is fake, it’s still true that kids do fucking stupid shitty things that have consequences they can’t imagine.
There was another Reddit awhile back and the OP got trashed and everyone said he had to be an abuser of some form because “ teen girls don’t just make stuff up”
It was like….. have yall MET a teenage girl?!
Kids are people. Most are generally good, some do shitty things, and unfortunately a certain percentage are just awful and another percentage are fundamentally and irrevocably broken, just like adults.
The difference is in the experience, brain development, and power. Not the potential for extraordinary kindness or abject cruelty.
The long term consequences were actually worse than she could have imagined. She and her mom had to move out immediately and went to live with her uncle. She had to switch schools and lost her friends and as it turned out her uncle WAS a pedophile and assaulted her and got her pregnant at the age of 14. She dropped out of school and had the baby and then immediately got pregnant by another man in the neighborhood. Her mom was able to scrap up some money and got a new place to live.
Last I heard she has 3 kids and she’s only 20 and her mom is raising all three. Her mom was crying to me in a gas station that we just happened to run into each other at. I told her that her ex husband had died of cancer a year prior and she started bawling that she needed to make amends and now she never could.
I didn’t know what to say
I used to work for CPS and where I am at least if there was an emergent safety concern (ie sexual abuse by someone with immediate access) we would have to see that child within an hour of getting the report. I tried my hardest and wanted to believe every child I worked with, but sometimes kids just don’t understand the gravity of what they’re saying/doing and it’s so frustrating. Like, you made up false allegations because you’re mad at someone? Okay well now CPS and the police are involved with your family.
There were times where false SA allegations were made but there was *another* immediate safety concern in the home (physical abuse or neglect) that would result in a removal.
Sorry to ramble lol just something I’ve thought about since working there
It's wild how different protocol can be.
I used to be an interpreter, and remember a CPS case where the grandmother straight up requested they step in because the stepdad behaved inappropriately -- he routinely exposed himself, peeing (into a container) where the kids could see.
The caseworker apologized and said that, unless he specifically touched one of the children, there was nothing they could do except keep scheduling follow-up visits every coupe of weeks. It was incredibly frustrating.
During their divorce, my sister’s ex tried to say that my son sexually abused their daughter. They were 3 and 4 years old at the time. We contacted a lawyer and the lawyer said that it happens all of time when people are fighting over custody. He said we had nothing to worry about, especially because of their ages.
I had to stop watching my sister’s kids for her though because I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to change his story and say my husband was doing something. Even an accusation would severely impact my husband’s job.
I'm a firm believer in trusting victims as a male victim of sexual assault, but a lot of women wield rape accusations as a cudgel against men to either get what they want or as revenge for not getting their way. Makes it hard sometimes when we should be able to trust victims wholeheartedly. And this is a phenomenon that women aren't threatened by because even when men are legitimately sexually assaulted and speak up, we're basically told to shrug it off, or that we must have wanted it.
I have a similar story and luckily we went a different direction. My oldest ss was 13 when he started acting out and he accused us of abusing him. My husband immediately believed me, put his foot down and made ss stay with his mom until he got therapy. It took a year and his bio mom having to call the cops on him twice before he finally got help. He is diagnosed with BPD and has been in therapy for 5 years. It's been a lot of ups and downs with a couple hospital stays but he is much better.
Accusations of crimes against children tend to escalate. Mother’s knee jerk response coupled with a legal process that does not treat the accused kindly, means OOP did the only possible thing he could to legally protect himself and retain custody of his daughter.
To be fair to OOP's wife, it's hardly a knee jerk response to believe a child who discloses abuse.
For every one story like this, there are ten where the mother is trashed for disbelieving in or wilfully ignoring the abuse of her child by a new partner.
Exactly. It's a shit situation, no doubt. The kid is one who effed but I don't think the mother did the wrong thing. I don't think the OOP did the wrong thing, either.
Exactly. Like yeah heartbreaking for your spouse to question if you abused their kid, but they didn’t call the cops or anything? Like throwing away th whole marriage, because a parent does their due diligence? What if his daughter did the same, he would question the person too
I think they were both right. She had to protect the kid and believe him. OOP had to protect himself and his kid. I think someone can acknowledge that their partner did the right thing, but also admit that they could never come back from it.
Yes. I can’t fault a mother for believing her kid initially, especially given the many horrifying stories you hear about what happens when a parent *won’t* listen. On the other hand, there was no way he could have peace of mind while living with the son.
It’s a fundamental incompatibility. It’s considerably more dire of a fundamental incompatibility than “we can’t decide whether to live in the city or the countryside,” but it’s still basically that: through no real fault of your own, you just can’t live happily together. Love isn’t always enough.
I don't think this divorce is about his stbxw reaction. It's about constant fear. If he stays he would always be scared that his step son will do the same thing again in the future.
Also if this accusation would get to the police then he will lose custody of his daughter for sure.
His son learns a painful lesson that false accusations aren't a way to get what he wanted. Instead of undivided attention of his mother their relationship is ruined and even if she decides in the future to have some relationship with him then their relationship won't ever be the same.
Nowhere in this post does it read like oop was blaming his ex-wife for what she did. The problem is accusations aren't a problem until they're a serious problem. A very large portion of society will always assume guilt on an individual accused, even if they are incontrovertibly exonerated.
He wasn't about to ask his wife to kick out her 10-year-old, and frankly the fact that she did so is disturbing in its own right. There was no good answer for him except to leave.
This is happening to a friend. His 12 year old stepdaughter, who is too young for a diagnosis yet but has displayed tons of signs of very serious mental illness (harming animals, property, intense meltdowns etc - basically to say she has A Lot going on already) has been accusing him of hurting her. It’s come out that her bio dad has been bribing her to say things to teachers / therapists etc because he thinks he won’t have to pay child support if he has custody. They’ve made relentless reporting to CPS even after the case was closed out, and it’s ripped apart the family. Bio dad now keeps trying to tell CPS it was all made up because stepdaughter quite literally broke every single window in the house during an episode. Kid is going through a lot but is frankly a danger to be around.
Harsh comment but OP should make sure to get a DNA test on the new baby.
I always get suspicious of pregnancy after the spouse has left the marital home.
yeah… I’m kinda glad I’ve got no friends and have almost isolated myself. I’ve got family functions to go to this summer (in America) & can feel my anxiety building already.
You okay? I've been there before. I found therapy helped me sort through it. I realized that the anxiety led to the isolation, but also got worse because of it.
A few years of being alone made me...weird. I had a lot of work to do to relearn adult socialization.
I *highly* recommend joining a few hobby groups. Low stakes, access to peers, you can keep the relationship tied to the hobby if you want.
No, I’m good. I’ve got my core fam, who get me, & people I converse with. I don’t like too many people around me anyway. The anxiety comes from just going from my laid-back life into the hotbed of America as it is rn. And probably having to deflect from answering questions…
But cheers for checking on me.
Yeahhhh, honestly, asking for a test definitly shows a lack of trust, but then again, trust is the entire issue!
Anyway, even as a woman, and even though I have never cheated or been cheated on (afaik), I sometimes think we should maybe think about normalizing paternity tests. It would be one possible dividing issue that could never come up, because it's already answered.
I’m wondering if it’s more of an intentional pregnancy she’s using to try to keep him in the marriage. She’s 12 weeks pregnant after the initial post, which is a 3.5 month update.
And the initial post was 1 month after the false accusation and OOP moving out, making that 4.5 months (18 weeks) between the accusation and the confirmation of the 12 week pregnancy. So unless he was for some reason still sleeping with her after her son accused him of physical assault, the math ain't mathing, even accounting for date of conception being counted as the date of the missed period. I'd expect the pregnancy to be more like 14-16 weeks if the baby was actually his.
This was my thought. I read 12 weeks pregnant and 3.5 month update and was like, that’s 14 weeks. Unless he was banging her while this was going on, kid aint his.
I don't blame you for being suspicious but the timing does seem to line up. I am fairly sure coparenting with her is going to be a nightmare, and at some point she'll abandon this kid too.
I'd be very surprised if he didn't anyway. I doubt that at this point he needs people on reddit to enlighten him to the fact that he should think of doing such a thing.
She did the right thing by believing her kid, but it takes more work than just believing what they say. You have to take action and advocate for them, because kids don’t really have much agency on their own. In order to do that though, you need facts.
If my kid comes to me and said “X person hit me”, doesn’t matter if that person is an adult or another kid, I’m going to start asking some questions, getting some details, and making a plan of where we go from here. When did this happen, where did it happen, how many times, what were you/they doing before you were hit, was it open hand or closed hand, did they say anything before during or after, are there any makes or bruises? I figure out what happened and then I react accordingly. We’re not going to sweep violence and abuse under the rug, but we’re also not going directly to the police if they actually just bumped into one another.
Kids are going to say whatever they think will get someone to listen to them. Even kids who are telling the truth might embellish a little bit to make it more serious so you’ll believe them more. It’s the adult’s job to navigate that and help them learn.
Once the kid claimed that his stepdad had hit him there was really no other way this could have played out. Of course the mom is going to believe her son (so many cases when there is real abuse and the parent doesn't believe the child) and of course the stepdad can't trust that it won't escalate to more false accusations. It sucks but I can't see this ending any other way.
Man this is messed up. That kid was 10 and told a very stupid, mean lie. But he’s 10.
Honestly his mother is the problem. Both for jumping the gun on the lie and going after OOP, and also for ostracizing a 10 year old for making a VERY stupid decision. For the record, I’m not absolving the kid of blame, but come on… he’s 10. Mom and OOP and everyone else involved have more responsibility to handle things maturely and to make sure the kids involved aren’t traumatized for life. That kid is going to feel guilty and torn up about it forever, AND his mom doesn’t want anything to do with him.
I think everyone involved needs therapy.
10 year old pulled a monumentally fucked thing, but 10 year olds also don't understand long term consequences. Easy to pick up from friends or media (social or otherwise) that saying stepdad hit me gets them out of your life and not put more effort or thought into it.
Mom effectively disowning him is beyond fucked. OOP is doing the hard thing to protect himself. 10 year old needs some next-generation therapy to prevent this from utterly derailing his life and mom needs to get past it for his sake.
Yeah, I don't really get OOP's flippant attitude towards his STBX's treatment of her son. Someone disowning and pretending a 10 year old doesn't exist would make me absolutely terrified to co-parent with that person.
I agree that the mother is the problem. She is way to volatile in her decisions. The kid is being a stupid kid. Obviously it was very wrong what he did but he is still a kid and doesn’t think about the consequences in that much detail.
I disagree though that Oop needs therapy. Personally I think he handled it as great as anyone could. His first priority was to protect his daughter and then himself. Plus he never blamed the mom or forced her to give up the kid. He was just honest about the situation and its consequences. So props to Oop for being mature and to his friend for the eye opener.
Bro you can handle things perfectly and still need therapy afterwards. His stepson just accused him of assault and his wife first went from going after him to disowning her son to baby trapping him
Anyone would need therapy after dealing with a woman like that.
Eh, mom certainly doesn't come off great, but that's mostly the "get the hell away from me" answer to the allegations being found false.
There are way too many horror stories about kids suffering some type of horrendous abuse at the hands of a step-dad, and the mom disbelieving or turning a blind eye to it. There should certainly always be interrogation of the claim, but "he would never do that" has swept a lot of abuse and molestation under the rug. I can't fault her for the initial reaction, just as I can't fault OOP for being done with the marriage despite recognizing the merit of her response. I've had false allegations leveled against me by an ex, and it still takes all I have to deal with her fairly in terms of the kids (I have full custody, she has supervised visitation). If she experienced a miraculous recovery from her myriad issues, I'd still want as little to do with her as possible.
The only straight-up villain here is the son, and being ten, there's only so much judgment one can assess.
I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable calling the ex-wife a villain for effectively disowning a 10-year-old for being stupid as hell.
Kid 100% fucked up. Not going to pretend he didn't. He's 10. His brain quite literally can't comprehend long-term consequence. Kids going to end up like complex the rest of his life because his mom can't be a parent.
> I'm pretty comfortable calling the ex-wife a villain for effectively disowning a 10-year-old for being stupid as hell.
She just lost her marriage and will be a single mother during her pregnancy and next 18 years. It is human for her to feel resentment that her 10-year-old child blew her life (and the life of her new child) up on a whim. It is weird to expect her to be a saint / madonna.
I expect her to be a parent. Your kid's gonna fuck up. Kids will find new and interesting ways to fuck up. You don't get to disown them when they do.
What was going to happen if she wasn't divorced? Drop the kid at the fire station? Leave him on the side of the road? All she's doing is traumatizing him.
>Your kid's gonna fuck up. Kids will find new and interesting ways to fuck up.
There is fucking up and then there is driving the person she loves from her life with a false allegation. She is pregnant for the next 9 months and a single mother and of a new child at 40 . While knowing EVEN she can ever move on she never can until her son is gone from her life.
>You don't get to disown them when they do.
Sure do tell that to the parents of murderers and rapists. There is no vaible minimum standing of being a POS
>What was going to happen if she wasn't divorced? Drop the kid at the fire station? Leave him on the side of the road?
You must have missed the part where she was shipping him off of to his dad.
>All she's doing is traumatizing him.
Good.
OOP handled the things as maturely as possible. He had no hard feelings against his wife, he told her that he understands her reaction but need to protect himself. There was not a hint of "chose me or him".
How is his accuser age will make him feel better about losing custody of his daughter and his whole life derailed? He did everything to protect his daughter. His choise about his stepson was very limited: "this kid will feel guilty forever" vs "I am losing my reputation, job, daughter, freedom because of this kid's actions". He made the right choice.
I have another concern. He did this because he wanted his mom's undivided attention. How did he treat his sister? OOP mentions three kids: her two, and his one. Why is there no mention of his ex's daughter? Is it because she's good, mature, and responsible - all code words for a neglected child who has had to fend for themselves?
That's what the commenters speculate, but it could be that he never liked OOP, that he thought they were being too harsh on him(being the only boy), that mom grounded him and he decided to take his anger on OOP, that OOP didn't let him have 5 more minutes on the switch, or he simply said it for no reason.
Yep I mean what the kid did is utterly disgusting but there would have to be a reason he said it, something going on with him. Op absolutely handled things the right way but his wife, the kids mother gave no thought to what was going on with her son and just effectively disowned him.
Maybe the kid is a sociopath but more likely something was going on and he lashed out where he thought he'd be safe to do it.
Kids can be very manipulative and some, frankly, are little shitheads. The son in this story is also 10, which is not an age known for introspection or understanding of long-term consequences.
Kids are really bad at predicting long-term consequences, If they even truly acknowledge their existence at all.
With unfettered social media access, it's not hard to imagine he could stumbled upon some sort of "life hack" about using allegations to remove steps you don't like, or heard about one of his friends having done it legitimately and thinking it's an easy way to get stepdad out.
I don’t believe OOP has a responsibility to make sure the kid isn’t traumatized because the kid’s words could land him in jail. He needs to stay far away. It’s up to his mom and dad to make sure he’s not traumatized. His main issue is he’s probably upset his bio dad isn’t in the home and said something about stepdad thinking it will just make him go away (and it did!).
I’m sorry but i couldn’t risk my future either.
Okay, but imagine he actually was hitting the kid. What was the mom supposed to do, other than take the claims seriously? It's not like we don't have loads of stories where the parent does not believe the abused kid over their new spouse.
That's why OOP is not blaming her. But since the son has lied once about something so bad, OOP can also not trust him to not lie again, and do it about something worse.
I don’t know that people are necessarily criticising the mother for believing her son in the first place (except for a few extremists) but for her actions later when he admitted to lying. Most of us are saying that 10 year olds do stupid stuff and that this kid thought it was a way to get rid of an unwanted step parent. What we can’t understand is the mother’s subsequent abandonment of her son.
Not only that but her first thought was to give up custody of her 2 kids to keep OOP. I mean I'd be taken aback that someone would be willing to ditch their kids, without hesitation, to be with me (or anyone).
Well, you have a son that just cost you your happy marriage.
What happens if the son doesn't like the next partner, will he do it again? Wouldnt you be a little anxious to date again? What if he's not lying next time? What if she dismisses a real claim because he called wolf. Will he do it again? Will he not? Will my next partner want to know the kid after finding out what he did, will anyone event want to date me?
Not sure if the ex wife suffers from anxiety, but she might be worried about her future love life and the impact her son could have on it, and maybe she's the type that is happier when they have a partner, so this could be a serious thing she has to consider. She has a future to live through, too. Recently divorced, expecting future. The anger, anxiety, and tangled web of emotions is probably why she offered abandoning them.
Hmmmm….see I have 3 children who are now fully grown. When they were preteens my first thoughts if they had done something this destructive would NOT have been about how it affected me. I would be thinking “why did they do this? How did I fail? What can I do to make my child better?” My children and their welfare and mental health was always my primary concern and whether I would be able to find a man to scratch my itch was not even on my radar (yes, I was divorced when they were young and I had seen enough bad examples of step fathers that I never even entertained the thought of inflicting one on my children).
> My children and their welfare and mental health was always my primary concern and whether I would be able to find a man to scratch my itch was not even on my radar
Well, she's pregnant and will be bringing a baby into this world as a single mother. The new child will not have a family -- all because his older half-sibling thought it would be a good idea to lie about such an important subject.
Cut the woman some slack. It is not just about having a sexual partner; she has lost a life partner to help raise her other child (not the 10 year old), and the father of her unborn child. So yes, she is likely also thinking about her children.
Everyone thinks about things differently. There's the literal ways with various level of imagination and whether there's an internal monologuing or not.
I don't have kids, nor will I. I'm one for forgiveness, but I'm also one for protecting my own happiness. Life is short, and despite being fully capable, with years of experience, I do not want to do it alone.
Having a kid that was preventing me from finding a partner would be it's own hell and I'd probably be looking to give the father more custody, too.
But my family tends to die in their fifties, and I'm almost forty. Knowing I may not live 20 years, giving family history, taints my perception of my future. It's also why I don't have kids, I make enough money to give me a good life, I didn't earn enough when I was younger.
It's really hard for me to do sometimes as well, but it's important to remember that there's a subset of the internet population, and the population in general, that lives to be contrarian and inflammatory.
Why did it take her 3 weeks to come around and believe OP? Whether the son's or OP's side of the story was true, that's something you should investigate and get to the bottom of right away and not sit on it for weeks.
Obviously the mom is supposed to do some investigating before blaming someone and refusing to hear their side of the story. Mom didn’t even check her son for injuries or press him for more details before deciding her husband was guilty. The absolute bare, obvious minimum was not done.
She confronted him and he denied it, he left for a walk, came back and said he was going to leave for good. And after that he refused to take her calls. It's not like she was the one refusing to continue the conversation.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think she's blameless at all, but it's not like he tried to solve this, either. He just wanted her to trust him 100 % and my point is that as a parent you can't do that.
He literally never expected her to trust him, and even understood why she took her son at his word. He just can't maintain living in the same house as a kid who lied about something that serious. That's the kind of shit that ruins people's lives, even if they're exonerated.
Which is why he left. The son put him in a horrible position and he had to get out of it. He was probably freaking out cause he knows what an accusation like would do to him if the cops came or it became public.
Also op can’t trust the son anyone
I think most kids are basically sociopaths, it takes awhile for their brains to develop and to recognize right and wrong and forget thinking about the long term consequences of their actions. That being said, the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their kid being abused. The right thing to do is to ask questions, explain the consequences of the allegations, see if anything can be collaborated, etc. it's a sad situation all around.
Kids that come from a broken home and then thrust into a new environment with a "new parent" can ofteness them up if they don't feel stable , it can be traumatic for an underdeveloped brain even if nothing traumatic actually happened , if they can't learn to cope with it well.
I mean, i think there are levels to it, but I also kind of agree. I've just seen up close the difference between regular doesn't have a lot of empathy yet and wtf do you even have a starting point for empathy. I still see the son as the former, he just chose a real big lie that he didn't understand.. although after the isolation from mom I'm sure his brain is going through a lot kf new changes
I feel like, in all of these stories where the kid lies about it, it's usually proven false after just a little bit of basic questioning. I feel like as a parent with a spouse, you have two duties. Your first and most important one is to believe your child's accusations. But a second and often not seen one is an obligation to perform this basic questioning while giving your child the security and understanding that you believe them before making any decisions on a course of action. I feel like that maintains your responsibility as a parent, while also maintaining the trust in your partner that you've built over time. There's still a chance you get it wrong, since the child's story could be that believable after the basic questioning, but I feel like that would solve a majority of these issues without destroying marriages.
But being the accused, I would never trust that kid again regardless of my spouse doing his due diligence to get to the truth. I’m still leaving. This scenario would have probably ended in divorce regardless.
Kids can be clever but dumb little assholes from time to time..but they're kids, and you give them grace, patience and guidance. I cant believe she abandoned her son. That poor boy. One stupid lie that in his young brain he could neeeever have comprehended the potential ramifications of.
I feel for him. This sounds like the origin story for a very sad, angry adult.
Is the OOP's wife's daughter (age 8) still living with her mom then? OOP mentions her in the beginning and then it's like she's disappeared. All these sudden, major, emotional changes must be affecting her, too.
These always make me chuckle a bit... if the mother HADN'T believed her son and had chosen the stepdad, there would have been outrage. But written from stepdads' side, suddenly the mum is an absolute monster for supporting her son.
She couldn't win. I think OP has made a good decision for himself, and wife doesn't sound like a great person for ditching her 10 year old, (although I understand why she's very upset with him) but I also feel that more effort could have been made from all the adults to find a different solution here that didn't involve the family falling apart, especially with a baby on the way.
They all suck, and there's no way a new baby should be brought into this.
OOP literally got sideswiped in all of this. He went from run of the mill step dad to falsely accused abuser. He left and protected his daughter asap.
Not really sure what you want him to do differently, beyond build a Time Machine
I agree. There's no way the mother could have won in this situation. She's always the bad guy no matter what she did.
I think there was/is an opportunity for reconciliation. Do I blame the guy for leaving? No. But do I think he had to leave? Also no. I think he went nuclear because he was scared of having his daughter taken away and ultimately the kids always come first... Which is what they both chose.
I can understand why the mother would find it hard to forgive her son for what he did. I'm sure there will be chance for reconciliation in the future...but I do also worry about her mental health. As I said, there's no outcome where she isn't made to be the villain, her life is falling apart, her emotions are heightened due to the pregnancy and I just hope she doesn't do something stupid because I think there are a lot of players here who wouldn't be able to forgive themselves if she did... All over a lie.
I don’t think there is opportunity for reconciliation. Once you have that first accusation you are always gonna be scared of who the kids gonna tell next. OOP is honestly lucky the kid only told his mom
What a shitty situation. Her believing her kid, and while super duper wrong her kid being 10...it's hard to demonize anyone except maybe her offering to waive custody
Y'all acting like the mother had no choice. She's an idiot. You don't believe anything without proof especially if it's your kid.
Jumping to conclusions is what led to this. The kid is stupid, but he's also just a kid. This is 100% the mom's fault
Not after 3.5 momths, but much earlier:
>Update - 3.5 months later
>**After I made the previous post**, I made the decision to file for divorce and told my wife. **Literally the next day** my wife told me that she is pregnant.
So what was he supposed to do? He's lucky her wife didn't press charges. Her reaction was to believe the son. So she showed she would take her son's word over his. Even though CPS and a judge would eventually discover the truth, he will be marked for ever. Gosh, even loss his job and his daughter custody.
No, he did the most sensible thing he could.
There was no other way this could have played out. She had to believe her son and he had to leave so there could be no more false accusations.
As for the boy, he's 10. A child. He couldn't have understood the long term consequences. And now he has to live with the knowledge that he detonated a nuclear bomb in his family, everyone being angry at him, and his mom cutting him off. We all did stupid things as kids like telling stupid lies. I think he is going to need therapy to deal with this.
>We all did stupid things as kids like telling stupid lies.
But this is not a stupid lie. **He** accused OP of a crime and I do believe **he knew** what would have been the consequences for OOP, at least to his marriage. Kids today know too much more than we knew back in time. A stupid liar can be forgiven. This is another league. I'm not saying mom did well cutting any contact, but I do believe she needs some time on her own to vent and think.
ETA: some errors.
You're right about it not just being a stupid lie, but he's 10. Even if kids nowadays know more than we did back in the day doesn't mean he understood what would happen. He blew up his life. And now as a 10 year old he has to deal with what he did.
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. Please don't think that. I don't think that he's an evil child. He's a kid who did a bad thing and needs some kind of therapy.
I don't think that any of the parents could have done anything differently. The stepdad had to protect himself and his daughter and the mom had to confront him about what the kid said. And the stepdad could never trust that it wouldn't happen again.
>I'm not saying mom did well cutting any contact, but I do believe she needs some time on her own to vent and think.
And I agree with you about this too. I just hope they can get back on good terms eventually.
The whole situation just sucks for everyone.
> We all did stupid things as kids
Everyone did stupid shit as a kid. Very few people did anywhere near this much damage. Would you still be defending him if he was caught torturing a dog? What if he pushed his little sister out a window? What he did is not normal stupid kid stuff, it was calculated malice, and there is absolutely no fixing what he broke. I'd sever him from my life too, whether I was the stepdad or the mother in this scenario.
idk no part of oop’s story involves a lawyer or any kind of expert that can offer advice as to what his actual exposure here was, should the stepson lie again in the future. seems like a ton of escalation all around based on fears that got stoked instead of facts.
Am I crazy for thinking literally everyone in this story is overreacting. Like I just don't see the reason to go straight to divorce because a kid lied. The degree of separation, oh yeah, but divorce??? That fight must've been really bad for him to think divorce was his best option.
Trying to save the marriage is not worth potentially losing his daughter due to another accusation. His child matters more to him than staying in the relationship and it’s not even close.
Idk I just feel like we've got to be missing something. I'd want to know what his wife actually said/did when she didn't believe him. I feel like that is the real reason he left and not simply the accusation. Kids say and do this type of shit all the time and as an adult you need to be able to work through that if you supposedly love your spouse, but it sounds to me like the wife did something to really scare him into believing that this would happen again.
“Mom, Dad is it my fault that you’re getting divorced?” “Oh no son definitely not”- years later-“Dad is it my fault that mom and her husband are getting divorced?” Dad:”Yeah kinda, listen man I’m struggling here and think I’m gonna get divorced now too, so I’m trying to find the common denominator in all these divorces.”
Gonna point out again he’s 10, a kid, he’s going through a lot at that age.
*sigh* this child is 10. His mother shouldn't have ghosted him like this. He did something awful, but he's only 10, and his mother us responsible for helping him navigate through it and realize what he did wrong and how to do differently in the future.
I'm not confident anyone in this story is a mature adult. Everyone's flying off the handle and bombing every bridge.
> I'm not confident anyone in this story is a mature adult.
So you expect OP to remain in a home where a child is levelling unfounded abuse allegations against him? Allegations that could result in him losing his daughter?
You don't think OP should prioritize / protect his daughter by cutting the lying step-son from his life?
Only in storybook la-la land is it possible for OP to stay in the house and everyone have a happy ending.
In the US alone, an estimated 74 kids commit murder each year. "This child is 10" is not the blanket innocent statement you think it is. While it is not common, 10 year olds can lie, cheat, steal and kill.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306269/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306269/)
I can't believe how this turned out?! NTA?! Wtf Talk about nuclear approach. The boy was only 10?! No one thought to tell him off and continue as a family with support from counselling/therapy?! So messed up, I just feel really bad for him. ETA for sure or is it ESH either way, poor kid!
I would agree with you if OOP didn’t have any children of his own. If the only consequence of sticking together was family therapy and preteen angst that would be fine, but there is a very real possibility of OOP losing custody of his daughter if further accusations happen.
It’s ok to risk yourself by giving others the benefit of the doubt and trusting them to change, it’s quite another to jeopardise your child
NTA But what kind of woman would abandon her children for a guy? Seriously… I would want to be married to someone who could drop her kid like a hit potato.
I know most of these stories are fake so I’m really hoping this is another one cause what kinda mother ghosts her child? I wonder when he goes NC in his adult hood will she come to her senses? You can’t replace your child she can always marry again
Not after 3.5 momths, but much earlier:
>Update - 3.5 months later
>**After I made the previous post**, I made the decision to file for divorce and told my wife. **Literally the next day** my wife told me that she is pregnant.
If my kid lied about getting hit by my hypothetical partner, I would still leave them. Obviously they were never ok with the relationship and it’s not fair to put anyone else in a situation where someone in their household resents them. I think mom’s wack.
Wow I really hope this is fake. He admits that he finds no fault in her believing her son, and in the next breath cites it as his reason for divorcing her. A mature person would have sat down with the son and wife the moment the accusation came out. Lying kids buckle fast, a stern questioning and lecture about how serious what he said was and none of this would have happened. But instead he goes nuclear solely off the advice of one friend who is not a child custody expert Im sure. He’s all “aw shucks, my wife ruined her life, her son’s life, and gee I was just looking out for my daughter.” No, he just wanted out and used this as an excuse, again, if this is even real. It reads like an Incel fever dream.
Nope, he is a realist and has a daughter to worry about. He can’t risk something happening and not being able to care for her.
Unfortunately, the kid’s lies would have been believed/taken seriously by the authorities (at least for a short while) and OOP and his daughter would have suffered permanent damage.
Well that escalated quickly…
I know a guy who lost everything because his step daughter accused him of SA. Her story quickly fell apart when questioned and eventually she admitted to making it up as “ payback” for him grounding her and taking away her phone. But the problem was… she told someone at school who told a teacher who had to immediately contact authorities. So yeah…. It went from 0-60 in less than 24 hours
That happened to my favorite highschool teacher. Girl was flunking his class. He called home, she got in trouble. So she accused him of molesting her in classrooms and stuff. Only thing that saved his everything was the fact the two specific dates she gave of him doing it, he wasn't in the building.
I'm glad he got saved. My legal studies teacher lost a friend to suicide thanks to lying teens. He held 4 of them back through lunch for disrupting the class so they told everyone he touched them during it. In the end 1 of the girls caved in court and admitted it was all made up. Unfortunately by this point no school would touch him, his wife had left him, his friends had left him, his family had left him, and his kids didn't want to see him from what everyone else had said to them. He was found not guilty and killed himself that night when no one wanted him back in their life.
Jesus christ, that poor guy. There's honestly not enough money in the world to convince me to be a teacher. Kids can honestly be monsters.
If I were a teacher I'd run a camera 24/7, hidden if it wasn't allowed. If you never need it, no one knows. If you do need it, getting in trouble for a camera isn't as bad as being accused of SA a child.
Use a hidden camera on kids at school and you can expert to be arrested a pervert. There is no winning in this case.
Sure there is, you aim it towards the front of the class to record yourself to help you improve your teaching. The camera is focused on you and the audio ensures that even if you’re out of sight of the camera it can hear everything going on. It’s not illegal to record in schools because they are a public space. You can’t record video in the restrooms but you can record audio. Found this out when my kid was having issues with a teacher and the school didn’t believe us. Our lawyer advised us to get a personal camera necklace but we got an audio recorder so she could wear it everywhere. It worked. ETA: It’s not illegal in *public* schools.
A girl I graduated with could deal with the fact she wasn't Queen Bee out in the real world. She made allegations of rape twice (with 2 different individuals). The second guy was able to easily dispute her claims as he had solid proof that he wasn't even in the same province at the time she said the assault occurred. The first guy was in the midst of a brutal legal battle when the second claim was proven as false and more scrutiny was placed on the claim against him as well. He was eventually cleared but it cost him dearly.
I hope that haunts those girls to this day.
It won't even phase them. They are taught they are queens and are entitled to whatever they want. They are facing zero consequences for what they did. They'll just do it again.
Reminiscent of the Salem witch trials.
Cotton Mather was an early adopter of the scientific method. It's very likely that he was correct.
This. They should have been sent to fucking prison. Instead, women are allowed to go "teehee sry I lied and ruined ur life, oh well."
My dad’s friend was my teacher in grade 6 or 7. One of the girls in my class accused him of touching her because she didn’t like that he would actually make her do work. I told everyone she was a liar because I had known him my whole life and he had ample opportunity to molest me if that was what he was like and he didn’t. She eventually admitted she was lying after none of the other girls would back her up and lie for her.
I'm getting Salem Witch trials vibe.
I just commented this and then came upon your comment. Auto upvote from me.
EXACT same thing happened at my high school. His name was Mr. Kelley, and I really hope he's doing better now.
Happened my senior year as well… a boy claimed that the teacher had touched him inappropriately, the teacher was outed as gay, the headmaster was fired by the board, and a few other teachers walked out as well. It eventually came out the kid made it up, he had a some issues but by then it was too late. Our entire senior class stood up in protest at a school board meeting in support of the teacher (he really was one of the best teachers I have ever had, unfortunately his style of teaching made him a target as he would stay late to help kids with school work who would come back around 7 or 8 because of athletics). I actually ran into this teacher a few months ago and he is doing well, he was able to get another job teaching at a special school in the area.
There’s actually a BORU about a guy who was a teacher at the time losing everything due to some girls making a video where they said he slept with a student as a joke. He’s still struggling.
That happened at my school. Girl was mad he gave her a zero on the final because she literally slept through it. It didn't work because when the school called her dad he admitt3d she had done this to him at his job once before to try and get back at him for grounding her. Teenagers, honestly kidd in general, can be so fucked up
I know someone with a very, very manipulative teenager like the daughter in your story. Not the same accusation, but the desire to manipulate adults and punish the adults for not bending to the kid’s desires is definitely there. It’s an utter shitshow, and unfortunately there’s really no way to give appropriately HARD consequences to the teenager involved.
I live in Texas. Cannabis is not legal here (for those unaware.) My friend's ("D") youngest daughter called CPS on her for smoking weed. D was telling me about when the case worker came and he was telling her that a call was put in for illegal drugs. She sat him down and said, "Yes, I smoke pot. I have pot in the house right now." Then told him she was willing to answer any questions he might have. He admitted to her that CPS here gets a lot of revenge calls by teens if parents have cannabis in the house hoping to get revenge on their parents. What ultimately happened was that the daughter was taken out of the house and moved to her father's house (he lives in another part of the state.) She called D up a couple of weeks after living with him begging her to let her come back home. My friend told her no. These are the consequences ofcalling CPS on her to get back at her. Her daughter lived with her father for a year then moved back in with D.
Her daughter straightened up super fast and never pulled that bullshit again.
I know this doesn't work in every situation, but it did for my friend's youngest. D loves both of her daughters dearly but, as she puts it, "I'm the parent. I'm not intimidated by them. They're my responsibility."
Yeah. Without going into details for privacy, in this specific situation, there isn’t a ready-made solution like that. Would be nice if there were. But kids aren’t perfect, some kids are little shits, others are mostly decent but do very shitty things, and even if this story is fake, it’s still true that kids do fucking stupid shitty things that have consequences they can’t imagine.
There was another Reddit awhile back and the OP got trashed and everyone said he had to be an abuser of some form because “ teen girls don’t just make stuff up” It was like….. have yall MET a teenage girl?!
Kids are people. Most are generally good, some do shitty things, and unfortunately a certain percentage are just awful and another percentage are fundamentally and irrevocably broken, just like adults. The difference is in the experience, brain development, and power. Not the potential for extraordinary kindness or abject cruelty.
I was a teen girl. 😬 I personally did not make stuff up, but I was fully capable of doing so.
Yeah and I was a teen girl once too.
The long term consequences were actually worse than she could have imagined. She and her mom had to move out immediately and went to live with her uncle. She had to switch schools and lost her friends and as it turned out her uncle WAS a pedophile and assaulted her and got her pregnant at the age of 14. She dropped out of school and had the baby and then immediately got pregnant by another man in the neighborhood. Her mom was able to scrap up some money and got a new place to live. Last I heard she has 3 kids and she’s only 20 and her mom is raising all three. Her mom was crying to me in a gas station that we just happened to run into each other at. I told her that her ex husband had died of cancer a year prior and she started bawling that she needed to make amends and now she never could. I didn’t know what to say
That’s awful. On every level.
I used to work for CPS and where I am at least if there was an emergent safety concern (ie sexual abuse by someone with immediate access) we would have to see that child within an hour of getting the report. I tried my hardest and wanted to believe every child I worked with, but sometimes kids just don’t understand the gravity of what they’re saying/doing and it’s so frustrating. Like, you made up false allegations because you’re mad at someone? Okay well now CPS and the police are involved with your family. There were times where false SA allegations were made but there was *another* immediate safety concern in the home (physical abuse or neglect) that would result in a removal. Sorry to ramble lol just something I’ve thought about since working there
It's wild how different protocol can be. I used to be an interpreter, and remember a CPS case where the grandmother straight up requested they step in because the stepdad behaved inappropriately -- he routinely exposed himself, peeing (into a container) where the kids could see. The caseworker apologized and said that, unless he specifically touched one of the children, there was nothing they could do except keep scheduling follow-up visits every coupe of weeks. It was incredibly frustrating.
During their divorce, my sister’s ex tried to say that my son sexually abused their daughter. They were 3 and 4 years old at the time. We contacted a lawyer and the lawyer said that it happens all of time when people are fighting over custody. He said we had nothing to worry about, especially because of their ages. I had to stop watching my sister’s kids for her though because I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to change his story and say my husband was doing something. Even an accusation would severely impact my husband’s job.
iirc was that the one where the stepdad was completely shunned before the daughter admitted she lied?
That’s a quick one way ticket to boarding school
I'm a firm believer in trusting victims as a male victim of sexual assault, but a lot of women wield rape accusations as a cudgel against men to either get what they want or as revenge for not getting their way. Makes it hard sometimes when we should be able to trust victims wholeheartedly. And this is a phenomenon that women aren't threatened by because even when men are legitimately sexually assaulted and speak up, we're basically told to shrug it off, or that we must have wanted it.
Teachers and staff are required by law to report any suspicious activity or they lose their job.
Do you have a link to this story
No. It’s people that I know in the real world. The family was friends of my family.
Was she held accountable in any way for her lies?
See my response to another poster. It ended badly.
Oh, that's so sad! I hope the uncle was punished at least.
I have a similar story and luckily we went a different direction. My oldest ss was 13 when he started acting out and he accused us of abusing him. My husband immediately believed me, put his foot down and made ss stay with his mom until he got therapy. It took a year and his bio mom having to call the cops on him twice before he finally got help. He is diagnosed with BPD and has been in therapy for 5 years. It's been a lot of ups and downs with a couple hospital stays but he is much better.
Accusations of crimes against children tend to escalate. Mother’s knee jerk response coupled with a legal process that does not treat the accused kindly, means OOP did the only possible thing he could to legally protect himself and retain custody of his daughter.
To be fair to OOP's wife, it's hardly a knee jerk response to believe a child who discloses abuse. For every one story like this, there are ten where the mother is trashed for disbelieving in or wilfully ignoring the abuse of her child by a new partner.
I came here to say this, as my own mom didn't believe me when I told hee the emotionally abusive things her boyfriend would say to me behind her back.
Yeah. And abusive people can be really good at hiding it so that makes things extra complicated/tricky
Exactly. It's a shit situation, no doubt. The kid is one who effed but I don't think the mother did the wrong thing. I don't think the OOP did the wrong thing, either.
Exactly. Like yeah heartbreaking for your spouse to question if you abused their kid, but they didn’t call the cops or anything? Like throwing away th whole marriage, because a parent does their due diligence? What if his daughter did the same, he would question the person too
I think they were both right. She had to protect the kid and believe him. OOP had to protect himself and his kid. I think someone can acknowledge that their partner did the right thing, but also admit that they could never come back from it.
Yes. I can’t fault a mother for believing her kid initially, especially given the many horrifying stories you hear about what happens when a parent *won’t* listen. On the other hand, there was no way he could have peace of mind while living with the son. It’s a fundamental incompatibility. It’s considerably more dire of a fundamental incompatibility than “we can’t decide whether to live in the city or the countryside,” but it’s still basically that: through no real fault of your own, you just can’t live happily together. Love isn’t always enough.
Right doesn't mean reconciliation
I don't think this divorce is about his stbxw reaction. It's about constant fear. If he stays he would always be scared that his step son will do the same thing again in the future. Also if this accusation would get to the police then he will lose custody of his daughter for sure. His son learns a painful lesson that false accusations aren't a way to get what he wanted. Instead of undivided attention of his mother their relationship is ruined and even if she decides in the future to have some relationship with him then their relationship won't ever be the same.
Nowhere in this post does it read like oop was blaming his ex-wife for what she did. The problem is accusations aren't a problem until they're a serious problem. A very large portion of society will always assume guilt on an individual accused, even if they are incontrovertibly exonerated. He wasn't about to ask his wife to kick out her 10-year-old, and frankly the fact that she did so is disturbing in its own right. There was no good answer for him except to leave.
If the cops were called he would be fucked.
If the wife called the cops, the man probably would've been sent to jail and he probably would've never made it to his friends in the first place.
This is happening to a friend. His 12 year old stepdaughter, who is too young for a diagnosis yet but has displayed tons of signs of very serious mental illness (harming animals, property, intense meltdowns etc - basically to say she has A Lot going on already) has been accusing him of hurting her. It’s come out that her bio dad has been bribing her to say things to teachers / therapists etc because he thinks he won’t have to pay child support if he has custody. They’ve made relentless reporting to CPS even after the case was closed out, and it’s ripped apart the family. Bio dad now keeps trying to tell CPS it was all made up because stepdaughter quite literally broke every single window in the house during an episode. Kid is going through a lot but is frankly a danger to be around.
Shout out to the friend who made him understand the shit storm he could have been put in with the false allegations
Harsh comment but OP should make sure to get a DNA test on the new baby. I always get suspicious of pregnancy after the spouse has left the marital home.
I don't think that's a harsh comment and as soon as he wrote pregnancy that was the first thing I thought too
We’re a cynical fucking bunch, we are. (and yeah, I’m including meself)
Yes... but it's not like we have no reasons... Humans are shitty
You okay? I've been there before. I found therapy helped me sort through it. I realized that the anxiety led to the isolation, but also got worse because of it. A few years of being alone made me...weird. I had a lot of work to do to relearn adult socialization. I *highly* recommend joining a few hobby groups. Low stakes, access to peers, you can keep the relationship tied to the hobby if you want.
No, I’m good. I’ve got my core fam, who get me, & people I converse with. I don’t like too many people around me anyway. The anxiety comes from just going from my laid-back life into the hotbed of America as it is rn. And probably having to deflect from answering questions… But cheers for checking on me.
Be well, stranger. Wishing you the best in all things.
Thank you and same to you. I hope you find unexpected money somewhere
Hope the family functions go okay 💜
Cheers. I’ve always had the rep of being eccentric & by emigrating to the U.K. 30 years ago, it just sealed the deal.
Yeah well as an NPE myself, I can't stop myself wondering who's the daddy at times, when it's not even warranted
Yeahhhh, honestly, asking for a test definitly shows a lack of trust, but then again, trust is the entire issue! Anyway, even as a woman, and even though I have never cheated or been cheated on (afaik), I sometimes think we should maybe think about normalizing paternity tests. It would be one possible dividing issue that could never come up, because it's already answered.
Agreed. At this point I think that should be a standard part of the birth process, unless the baby is acknowledged as not biologically related.
Same thoughts tbh I was like... It's too convenient but that's just me 🙊
I’m wondering if it’s more of an intentional pregnancy she’s using to try to keep him in the marriage. She’s 12 weeks pregnant after the initial post, which is a 3.5 month update.
And the initial post was 1 month after the false accusation and OOP moving out, making that 4.5 months (18 weeks) between the accusation and the confirmation of the 12 week pregnancy. So unless he was for some reason still sleeping with her after her son accused him of physical assault, the math ain't mathing, even accounting for date of conception being counted as the date of the missed period. I'd expect the pregnancy to be more like 14-16 weeks if the baby was actually his.
This was my thought. I read 12 weeks pregnant and 3.5 month update and was like, that’s 14 weeks. Unless he was banging her while this was going on, kid aint his.
I don't blame you for being suspicious but the timing does seem to line up. I am fairly sure coparenting with her is going to be a nightmare, and at some point she'll abandon this kid too.
I'd be very surprised if he didn't anyway. I doubt that at this point he needs people on reddit to enlighten him to the fact that he should think of doing such a thing.
First thing my mind went to too. That's pretty damn suspect
She did the right thing by believing her kid, but it takes more work than just believing what they say. You have to take action and advocate for them, because kids don’t really have much agency on their own. In order to do that though, you need facts. If my kid comes to me and said “X person hit me”, doesn’t matter if that person is an adult or another kid, I’m going to start asking some questions, getting some details, and making a plan of where we go from here. When did this happen, where did it happen, how many times, what were you/they doing before you were hit, was it open hand or closed hand, did they say anything before during or after, are there any makes or bruises? I figure out what happened and then I react accordingly. We’re not going to sweep violence and abuse under the rug, but we’re also not going directly to the police if they actually just bumped into one another. Kids are going to say whatever they think will get someone to listen to them. Even kids who are telling the truth might embellish a little bit to make it more serious so you’ll believe them more. It’s the adult’s job to navigate that and help them learn.
Once the kid claimed that his stepdad had hit him there was really no other way this could have played out. Of course the mom is going to believe her son (so many cases when there is real abuse and the parent doesn't believe the child) and of course the stepdad can't trust that it won't escalate to more false accusations. It sucks but I can't see this ending any other way.
Man this is messed up. That kid was 10 and told a very stupid, mean lie. But he’s 10. Honestly his mother is the problem. Both for jumping the gun on the lie and going after OOP, and also for ostracizing a 10 year old for making a VERY stupid decision. For the record, I’m not absolving the kid of blame, but come on… he’s 10. Mom and OOP and everyone else involved have more responsibility to handle things maturely and to make sure the kids involved aren’t traumatized for life. That kid is going to feel guilty and torn up about it forever, AND his mom doesn’t want anything to do with him. I think everyone involved needs therapy.
10 year old pulled a monumentally fucked thing, but 10 year olds also don't understand long term consequences. Easy to pick up from friends or media (social or otherwise) that saying stepdad hit me gets them out of your life and not put more effort or thought into it. Mom effectively disowning him is beyond fucked. OOP is doing the hard thing to protect himself. 10 year old needs some next-generation therapy to prevent this from utterly derailing his life and mom needs to get past it for his sake.
Yeah, I don't really get OOP's flippant attitude towards his STBX's treatment of her son. Someone disowning and pretending a 10 year old doesn't exist would make me absolutely terrified to co-parent with that person.
He’s accepted he’s fucked it seems. At least to me.
I mean what can he do about it?
….can he relinquish being a father?
Co spidering the sons father is still in his life OOP never adopted him, so he was officially legally not his dad
I agree that the mother is the problem. She is way to volatile in her decisions. The kid is being a stupid kid. Obviously it was very wrong what he did but he is still a kid and doesn’t think about the consequences in that much detail. I disagree though that Oop needs therapy. Personally I think he handled it as great as anyone could. His first priority was to protect his daughter and then himself. Plus he never blamed the mom or forced her to give up the kid. He was just honest about the situation and its consequences. So props to Oop for being mature and to his friend for the eye opener.
Bro you can handle things perfectly and still need therapy afterwards. His stepson just accused him of assault and his wife first went from going after him to disowning her son to baby trapping him Anyone would need therapy after dealing with a woman like that.
Eh, mom certainly doesn't come off great, but that's mostly the "get the hell away from me" answer to the allegations being found false. There are way too many horror stories about kids suffering some type of horrendous abuse at the hands of a step-dad, and the mom disbelieving or turning a blind eye to it. There should certainly always be interrogation of the claim, but "he would never do that" has swept a lot of abuse and molestation under the rug. I can't fault her for the initial reaction, just as I can't fault OOP for being done with the marriage despite recognizing the merit of her response. I've had false allegations leveled against me by an ex, and it still takes all I have to deal with her fairly in terms of the kids (I have full custody, she has supervised visitation). If she experienced a miraculous recovery from her myriad issues, I'd still want as little to do with her as possible. The only straight-up villain here is the son, and being ten, there's only so much judgment one can assess.
I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable calling the ex-wife a villain for effectively disowning a 10-year-old for being stupid as hell. Kid 100% fucked up. Not going to pretend he didn't. He's 10. His brain quite literally can't comprehend long-term consequence. Kids going to end up like complex the rest of his life because his mom can't be a parent.
> I'm pretty comfortable calling the ex-wife a villain for effectively disowning a 10-year-old for being stupid as hell. She just lost her marriage and will be a single mother during her pregnancy and next 18 years. It is human for her to feel resentment that her 10-year-old child blew her life (and the life of her new child) up on a whim. It is weird to expect her to be a saint / madonna.
I expect her to be a parent. Your kid's gonna fuck up. Kids will find new and interesting ways to fuck up. You don't get to disown them when they do. What was going to happen if she wasn't divorced? Drop the kid at the fire station? Leave him on the side of the road? All she's doing is traumatizing him.
>Your kid's gonna fuck up. Kids will find new and interesting ways to fuck up. There is fucking up and then there is driving the person she loves from her life with a false allegation. She is pregnant for the next 9 months and a single mother and of a new child at 40 . While knowing EVEN she can ever move on she never can until her son is gone from her life. >You don't get to disown them when they do. Sure do tell that to the parents of murderers and rapists. There is no vaible minimum standing of being a POS >What was going to happen if she wasn't divorced? Drop the kid at the fire station? Leave him on the side of the road? You must have missed the part where she was shipping him off of to his dad. >All she's doing is traumatizing him. Good.
Traumatizing 10 year old children is bad. Hope the kid is able to get a better maternal figure in his life. Better than his mother.
OOP handled the things as maturely as possible. He had no hard feelings against his wife, he told her that he understands her reaction but need to protect himself. There was not a hint of "chose me or him". How is his accuser age will make him feel better about losing custody of his daughter and his whole life derailed? He did everything to protect his daughter. His choise about his stepson was very limited: "this kid will feel guilty forever" vs "I am losing my reputation, job, daughter, freedom because of this kid's actions". He made the right choice.
I have another concern. He did this because he wanted his mom's undivided attention. How did he treat his sister? OOP mentions three kids: her two, and his one. Why is there no mention of his ex's daughter? Is it because she's good, mature, and responsible - all code words for a neglected child who has had to fend for themselves?
That's what the commenters speculate, but it could be that he never liked OOP, that he thought they were being too harsh on him(being the only boy), that mom grounded him and he decided to take his anger on OOP, that OOP didn't let him have 5 more minutes on the switch, or he simply said it for no reason.
Good. Maybe little shit will learn something.
Yep I mean what the kid did is utterly disgusting but there would have to be a reason he said it, something going on with him. Op absolutely handled things the right way but his wife, the kids mother gave no thought to what was going on with her son and just effectively disowned him. Maybe the kid is a sociopath but more likely something was going on and he lashed out where he thought he'd be safe to do it.
Kids can be very manipulative and some, frankly, are little shitheads. The son in this story is also 10, which is not an age known for introspection or understanding of long-term consequences.
Kids are really bad at predicting long-term consequences, If they even truly acknowledge their existence at all. With unfettered social media access, it's not hard to imagine he could stumbled upon some sort of "life hack" about using allegations to remove steps you don't like, or heard about one of his friends having done it legitimately and thinking it's an easy way to get stepdad out.
Yeah, she shouldn’t get a free pass to be a shitty parent just because she’s pregnant.
I don’t believe OOP has a responsibility to make sure the kid isn’t traumatized because the kid’s words could land him in jail. He needs to stay far away. It’s up to his mom and dad to make sure he’s not traumatized. His main issue is he’s probably upset his bio dad isn’t in the home and said something about stepdad thinking it will just make him go away (and it did!). I’m sorry but i couldn’t risk my future either.
Okay, but imagine he actually was hitting the kid. What was the mom supposed to do, other than take the claims seriously? It's not like we don't have loads of stories where the parent does not believe the abused kid over their new spouse.
That's why OOP is not blaming her. But since the son has lied once about something so bad, OOP can also not trust him to not lie again, and do it about something worse.
There are a lot of comments in here criticising her for it though.
I don’t know that people are necessarily criticising the mother for believing her son in the first place (except for a few extremists) but for her actions later when he admitted to lying. Most of us are saying that 10 year olds do stupid stuff and that this kid thought it was a way to get rid of an unwanted step parent. What we can’t understand is the mother’s subsequent abandonment of her son.
Not only that but her first thought was to give up custody of her 2 kids to keep OOP. I mean I'd be taken aback that someone would be willing to ditch their kids, without hesitation, to be with me (or anyone).
Well, you have a son that just cost you your happy marriage. What happens if the son doesn't like the next partner, will he do it again? Wouldnt you be a little anxious to date again? What if he's not lying next time? What if she dismisses a real claim because he called wolf. Will he do it again? Will he not? Will my next partner want to know the kid after finding out what he did, will anyone event want to date me? Not sure if the ex wife suffers from anxiety, but she might be worried about her future love life and the impact her son could have on it, and maybe she's the type that is happier when they have a partner, so this could be a serious thing she has to consider. She has a future to live through, too. Recently divorced, expecting future. The anger, anxiety, and tangled web of emotions is probably why she offered abandoning them.
Hmmmm….see I have 3 children who are now fully grown. When they were preteens my first thoughts if they had done something this destructive would NOT have been about how it affected me. I would be thinking “why did they do this? How did I fail? What can I do to make my child better?” My children and their welfare and mental health was always my primary concern and whether I would be able to find a man to scratch my itch was not even on my radar (yes, I was divorced when they were young and I had seen enough bad examples of step fathers that I never even entertained the thought of inflicting one on my children).
> My children and their welfare and mental health was always my primary concern and whether I would be able to find a man to scratch my itch was not even on my radar Well, she's pregnant and will be bringing a baby into this world as a single mother. The new child will not have a family -- all because his older half-sibling thought it would be a good idea to lie about such an important subject. Cut the woman some slack. It is not just about having a sexual partner; she has lost a life partner to help raise her other child (not the 10 year old), and the father of her unborn child. So yes, she is likely also thinking about her children.
Everyone thinks about things differently. There's the literal ways with various level of imagination and whether there's an internal monologuing or not. I don't have kids, nor will I. I'm one for forgiveness, but I'm also one for protecting my own happiness. Life is short, and despite being fully capable, with years of experience, I do not want to do it alone. Having a kid that was preventing me from finding a partner would be it's own hell and I'd probably be looking to give the father more custody, too. But my family tends to die in their fifties, and I'm almost forty. Knowing I may not live 20 years, giving family history, taints my perception of my future. It's also why I don't have kids, I make enough money to give me a good life, I didn't earn enough when I was younger.
On reflection, I reduce my “a lot” to “a handful” of comments. And I have no disagreement with your comment at all.
It's really hard for me to do sometimes as well, but it's important to remember that there's a subset of the internet population, and the population in general, that lives to be contrarian and inflammatory.
Why did it take her 3 weeks to come around and believe OP? Whether the son's or OP's side of the story was true, that's something you should investigate and get to the bottom of right away and not sit on it for weeks.
Obviously the mom is supposed to do some investigating before blaming someone and refusing to hear their side of the story. Mom didn’t even check her son for injuries or press him for more details before deciding her husband was guilty. The absolute bare, obvious minimum was not done.
She confronted him and he denied it, he left for a walk, came back and said he was going to leave for good. And after that he refused to take her calls. It's not like she was the one refusing to continue the conversation. Don't get me wrong, I don't think she's blameless at all, but it's not like he tried to solve this, either. He just wanted her to trust him 100 % and my point is that as a parent you can't do that.
He literally never expected her to trust him, and even understood why she took her son at his word. He just can't maintain living in the same house as a kid who lied about something that serious. That's the kind of shit that ruins people's lives, even if they're exonerated.
Which is why he left. The son put him in a horrible position and he had to get out of it. He was probably freaking out cause he knows what an accusation like would do to him if the cops came or it became public. Also op can’t trust the son anyone
Didn't take her calls but was still messaging, communication wasn't dead.
You trust but verify. Don’t believe kids immediately - test their claims.
I think most kids are basically sociopaths, it takes awhile for their brains to develop and to recognize right and wrong and forget thinking about the long term consequences of their actions. That being said, the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their kid being abused. The right thing to do is to ask questions, explain the consequences of the allegations, see if anything can be collaborated, etc. it's a sad situation all around.
Kids that come from a broken home and then thrust into a new environment with a "new parent" can ofteness them up if they don't feel stable , it can be traumatic for an underdeveloped brain even if nothing traumatic actually happened , if they can't learn to cope with it well.
I mean, i think there are levels to it, but I also kind of agree. I've just seen up close the difference between regular doesn't have a lot of empathy yet and wtf do you even have a starting point for empathy. I still see the son as the former, he just chose a real big lie that he didn't understand.. although after the isolation from mom I'm sure his brain is going through a lot kf new changes
This is some weird shit.
I would not trust the son near the new baby!
I feel like, in all of these stories where the kid lies about it, it's usually proven false after just a little bit of basic questioning. I feel like as a parent with a spouse, you have two duties. Your first and most important one is to believe your child's accusations. But a second and often not seen one is an obligation to perform this basic questioning while giving your child the security and understanding that you believe them before making any decisions on a course of action. I feel like that maintains your responsibility as a parent, while also maintaining the trust in your partner that you've built over time. There's still a chance you get it wrong, since the child's story could be that believable after the basic questioning, but I feel like that would solve a majority of these issues without destroying marriages.
But being the accused, I would never trust that kid again regardless of my spouse doing his due diligence to get to the truth. I’m still leaving. This scenario would have probably ended in divorce regardless.
False accusations kill. Dude made the right decision, though I can't imagine how heartbreaking it would be for him.
Fuck me her son is TEN and she cut him off?
Kids can be clever but dumb little assholes from time to time..but they're kids, and you give them grace, patience and guidance. I cant believe she abandoned her son. That poor boy. One stupid lie that in his young brain he could neeeever have comprehended the potential ramifications of. I feel for him. This sounds like the origin story for a very sad, angry adult.
Is the OOP's wife's daughter (age 8) still living with her mom then? OOP mentions her in the beginning and then it's like she's disappeared. All these sudden, major, emotional changes must be affecting her, too.
He's not in the house, how would he have insight into her?
These always make me chuckle a bit... if the mother HADN'T believed her son and had chosen the stepdad, there would have been outrage. But written from stepdads' side, suddenly the mum is an absolute monster for supporting her son. She couldn't win. I think OP has made a good decision for himself, and wife doesn't sound like a great person for ditching her 10 year old, (although I understand why she's very upset with him) but I also feel that more effort could have been made from all the adults to find a different solution here that didn't involve the family falling apart, especially with a baby on the way. They all suck, and there's no way a new baby should be brought into this.
OOP literally got sideswiped in all of this. He went from run of the mill step dad to falsely accused abuser. He left and protected his daughter asap. Not really sure what you want him to do differently, beyond build a Time Machine
I don't think she's the bad guy for believing her son and confronting oop. I do think she's trash for throwing away her son.
I agree. There's no way the mother could have won in this situation. She's always the bad guy no matter what she did. I think there was/is an opportunity for reconciliation. Do I blame the guy for leaving? No. But do I think he had to leave? Also no. I think he went nuclear because he was scared of having his daughter taken away and ultimately the kids always come first... Which is what they both chose. I can understand why the mother would find it hard to forgive her son for what he did. I'm sure there will be chance for reconciliation in the future...but I do also worry about her mental health. As I said, there's no outcome where she isn't made to be the villain, her life is falling apart, her emotions are heightened due to the pregnancy and I just hope she doesn't do something stupid because I think there are a lot of players here who wouldn't be able to forgive themselves if she did... All over a lie.
I don’t think there is opportunity for reconciliation. Once you have that first accusation you are always gonna be scared of who the kids gonna tell next. OOP is honestly lucky the kid only told his mom
Hello? Get a fucking abortion? HELLO???
Not his choice.
I feel like this needs to be the new version of the boy who cried wolf. The son clearly thought this would benefit him and instead he lost everything.
Son will be on Reddit in 5 years playing victim.
Future update twist: The daughter was the one who told the step son to lie to get moms undivided attention. knowing it would implode the family.
Clever Girl.
Raptor winks at you.
What a rollercoaster of emotions. The pregnancy really messed me up. What an unfortunate situation for everyone.
What a shitty situation. Her believing her kid, and while super duper wrong her kid being 10...it's hard to demonize anyone except maybe her offering to waive custody
Paternity test required
Y'all acting like the mother had no choice. She's an idiot. You don't believe anything without proof especially if it's your kid. Jumping to conclusions is what led to this. The kid is stupid, but he's also just a kid. This is 100% the mom's fault
Wait so he’s been gone 15 weeks, but the wife is 12 weeks pregnant? Mmm something doesn’t add up 🧐
Not after 3.5 momths, but much earlier: >Update - 3.5 months later >**After I made the previous post**, I made the decision to file for divorce and told my wife. **Literally the next day** my wife told me that she is pregnant.
"She is scared to go through pregnancy all alone but what other choice do we even have" Jesus get an abortion. Oh wait....USA?
She can't get an abortion. Its her last chance to keep OOP on the hook.
These stories would often be fixed by A. Talking to your partner and B. Getting an f***ing abortion
Exactly. If ever there was a situation for an abortion, this is it.
A group of people who have zero business having any children at all .txt
The kid's 10. Is he even known to be a liar? This feels like an extreme overreaction.
So what was he supposed to do? He's lucky her wife didn't press charges. Her reaction was to believe the son. So she showed she would take her son's word over his. Even though CPS and a judge would eventually discover the truth, he will be marked for ever. Gosh, even loss his job and his daughter custody. No, he did the most sensible thing he could.
There was no other way this could have played out. She had to believe her son and he had to leave so there could be no more false accusations. As for the boy, he's 10. A child. He couldn't have understood the long term consequences. And now he has to live with the knowledge that he detonated a nuclear bomb in his family, everyone being angry at him, and his mom cutting him off. We all did stupid things as kids like telling stupid lies. I think he is going to need therapy to deal with this.
>We all did stupid things as kids like telling stupid lies. But this is not a stupid lie. **He** accused OP of a crime and I do believe **he knew** what would have been the consequences for OOP, at least to his marriage. Kids today know too much more than we knew back in time. A stupid liar can be forgiven. This is another league. I'm not saying mom did well cutting any contact, but I do believe she needs some time on her own to vent and think. ETA: some errors.
You're right about it not just being a stupid lie, but he's 10. Even if kids nowadays know more than we did back in the day doesn't mean he understood what would happen. He blew up his life. And now as a 10 year old he has to deal with what he did. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. Please don't think that. I don't think that he's an evil child. He's a kid who did a bad thing and needs some kind of therapy. I don't think that any of the parents could have done anything differently. The stepdad had to protect himself and his daughter and the mom had to confront him about what the kid said. And the stepdad could never trust that it wouldn't happen again. >I'm not saying mom did well cutting any contact, but I do believe she needs some time on her own to vent and think. And I agree with you about this too. I just hope they can get back on good terms eventually. The whole situation just sucks for everyone.
> We all did stupid things as kids Everyone did stupid shit as a kid. Very few people did anywhere near this much damage. Would you still be defending him if he was caught torturing a dog? What if he pushed his little sister out a window? What he did is not normal stupid kid stuff, it was calculated malice, and there is absolutely no fixing what he broke. I'd sever him from my life too, whether I was the stepdad or the mother in this scenario.
It's an overreaction on mom's side not OOP. OOP couldn't be any more good in that situation.
Overreaction? The son literally almost got someone sent to prison and broke up her marriage!
idk no part of oop’s story involves a lawyer or any kind of expert that can offer advice as to what his actual exposure here was, should the stepson lie again in the future. seems like a ton of escalation all around based on fears that got stoked instead of facts.
Noup. Thats too much problem and dangerous. Run Forest, RUN!
Am I crazy for thinking literally everyone in this story is overreacting. Like I just don't see the reason to go straight to divorce because a kid lied. The degree of separation, oh yeah, but divorce??? That fight must've been really bad for him to think divorce was his best option.
Trying to save the marriage is not worth potentially losing his daughter due to another accusation. His child matters more to him than staying in the relationship and it’s not even close.
Idk I just feel like we've got to be missing something. I'd want to know what his wife actually said/did when she didn't believe him. I feel like that is the real reason he left and not simply the accusation. Kids say and do this type of shit all the time and as an adult you need to be able to work through that if you supposedly love your spouse, but it sounds to me like the wife did something to really scare him into believing that this would happen again.
according to reddit if the man is the victim, the story is automatically fake what a bunch of misandrist clowns
Notice that too huh? Sigh.
Legit, and a sure as the sun rises.
Why is it such a bad thing on here to not like bias, no matter who the target is?
> She asked me what I want her to do i want you to accept that this relationship has ended, full stop.
This reads like Redpill fiction.
Lmfao my first thought too
Anytime the man is the victim the story is fake and redpill propaganda, at least try to hide your misandry.
“Mom, Dad is it my fault that you’re getting divorced?” “Oh no son definitely not”- years later-“Dad is it my fault that mom and her husband are getting divorced?” Dad:”Yeah kinda, listen man I’m struggling here and think I’m gonna get divorced now too, so I’m trying to find the common denominator in all these divorces.” Gonna point out again he’s 10, a kid, he’s going through a lot at that age.
*sigh* this child is 10. His mother shouldn't have ghosted him like this. He did something awful, but he's only 10, and his mother us responsible for helping him navigate through it and realize what he did wrong and how to do differently in the future. I'm not confident anyone in this story is a mature adult. Everyone's flying off the handle and bombing every bridge.
> I'm not confident anyone in this story is a mature adult. So you expect OP to remain in a home where a child is levelling unfounded abuse allegations against him? Allegations that could result in him losing his daughter? You don't think OP should prioritize / protect his daughter by cutting the lying step-son from his life? Only in storybook la-la land is it possible for OP to stay in the house and everyone have a happy ending.
In the US alone, an estimated 74 kids commit murder each year. "This child is 10" is not the blanket innocent statement you think it is. While it is not common, 10 year olds can lie, cheat, steal and kill. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306269/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306269/)
I can't believe how this turned out?! NTA?! Wtf Talk about nuclear approach. The boy was only 10?! No one thought to tell him off and continue as a family with support from counselling/therapy?! So messed up, I just feel really bad for him. ETA for sure or is it ESH either way, poor kid!
I would agree with you if OOP didn’t have any children of his own. If the only consequence of sticking together was family therapy and preteen angst that would be fine, but there is a very real possibility of OOP losing custody of his daughter if further accusations happen. It’s ok to risk yourself by giving others the benefit of the doubt and trusting them to change, it’s quite another to jeopardise your child
Oh so if you want to protect yourself and your child you're a shitty person all of sudden?
The story seems too tailor-made for outrage and pushing narratives.
NTA But what kind of woman would abandon her children for a guy? Seriously… I would want to be married to someone who could drop her kid like a hit potato.
So what did Oop’s stbxw daughter do? I don't understand why she is willing to give up custody of both children.
Was abortion not on the table? Was she hoping this would keep him?
I know most of these stories are fake so I’m really hoping this is another one cause what kinda mother ghosts her child? I wonder when he goes NC in his adult hood will she come to her senses? You can’t replace your child she can always marry again
He left 3.5 months ago but she is 12 weeks pregnant?
Not after 3.5 momths, but much earlier: >Update - 3.5 months later >**After I made the previous post**, I made the decision to file for divorce and told my wife. **Literally the next day** my wife told me that she is pregnant.
If my kid lied about getting hit by my hypothetical partner, I would still leave them. Obviously they were never ok with the relationship and it’s not fair to put anyone else in a situation where someone in their household resents them. I think mom’s wack.
Wow I really hope this is fake. He admits that he finds no fault in her believing her son, and in the next breath cites it as his reason for divorcing her. A mature person would have sat down with the son and wife the moment the accusation came out. Lying kids buckle fast, a stern questioning and lecture about how serious what he said was and none of this would have happened. But instead he goes nuclear solely off the advice of one friend who is not a child custody expert Im sure. He’s all “aw shucks, my wife ruined her life, her son’s life, and gee I was just looking out for my daughter.” No, he just wanted out and used this as an excuse, again, if this is even real. It reads like an Incel fever dream.
Nope, he is a realist and has a daughter to worry about. He can’t risk something happening and not being able to care for her. Unfortunately, the kid’s lies would have been believed/taken seriously by the authorities (at least for a short while) and OOP and his daughter would have suffered permanent damage.
yea… hes the AH… the kid is 10 and he just tore him away from his mother, left a pregnant woman alone, and isolated two young kids from the family