Hello all, I’m here to vent my story, or rather, my daughters story. This is old news but I still haven’t forgiven and moved on from it so here I am..

May 2021 we moved onto my fathers property while we saved up to buy our first house. My stepmom has two boys (ages 9 and 10 at the time) from a previous marriage. We have two girls (ages 5 and 2 at the time). They all played together regularly with conflict usually stemming from the 9yr old. He would often break our girls toys, refuse to share, and/or use foul language around them. I always felt a bit bad when I’d have to send him back to his own house due to his behavior. Our 5yr old would often stay the night at their house and it seemed all was well. Never had any complaints.

Fast forward to Jan 2022, we had just got the call from the realtor telling us our offer was accepted on our dream home. My husband and I were thru the roof!! That feeling like nothing can bring me down now!

But then.. My 5yr old soon comes to me and says she’d like to tell me something but not in front of dad.. I didn’t think much of it cause she’s done this before and it would usually be something small like “don’t tell dad I tripped today” or whatever.. so we go into the bathroom with the vent on for privacy and she proceeds to nervously try and find the words to say. This concerns me immediately because it’s not her normal behavior. I ask her why she’s so scared to tell me, did she do something wrong? She seems unsure. I ask her should she or someone be in trouble? She says maybe. I ask her who, she says the 9yr old (let’s call him Frank). I tell her I need to know what he did so I can determine if he or her or both of them should be in trouble or not. My daughter, shaking with nerves, stutters out the words “frank made me touch his weiner.. with my mouth”

At first I’m shocked, but to clarify I ask her again, and tell her this is very serious and I need to know she’s telling the truth and not lying because frank will be in very much trouble. She just nods her head and then bursts into uncontrollable sobbing tears. I hold her and tell her she is not in trouble and that she has done nothing wrong but that I am going to have to tell dad and confront frank and his/my parents.

I hold her for a while longer as she cries and then let her know I’m going to talk to dad. She stays hidden in the bathroom.

My husband is at the sink doing the dishes when I approach him and let him know “I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you to freak out” and proceed to relay what our daughter has said. He calmly takes in the information and I ask him to go console our daughter while I confront my parents.

I walk next door and my stepmom is cooking dinner, I ask to speak with her privately and we step into her bedroom. I tell her my daughter has just admitted to frank forcing her to touch his weiner with her mouth the last time she stayed the night with them. Neither of us want this to be true. She says they will talk with him and get back to me.

So I walk back to my house where my husband is still consoling our daughter. She’s calm enough to give more information now. Basically frank manipulated her into thinking if she didn’t do what he told her to, she would be in trouble. And she states that it has happened more than once when she’s stayed the night there. I’m horrified.

My parents walk over after about a half hour and relay that they have talked to frank and he did admit to forcing her to touch his weiner but not with her mouth, just her hands. He claims he saw/learned it from YouTube. They also talked to their other son though and found that this behavior was actually stemming from abuse happening at their biological fathers house. Their punishment included taking away his phone and television for a month. We all came together to confront frank as well and of course a 9yr old on the spot isn’t going to have much to say outside of “sorry.” Truly we were/are very proud of our daughter, she was able to walk right up to him and hug him and tell him “it’s okay just don’t do it again. If you don’t like it done to you don’t do it to other people.” My husband also surprised everyone by remaining calm and getting down on his knees and hugging frank and telling him he’s not a bad kid and everyone makes mistakes and to learn from them. Personally all I had to say was that this hurt me and it would take me a while to trust him again. My father was very disappointed as well stating that this changes our whole family dynamic and he doesn’t feel he’s going to have the same relationship with his granddaughters now. Which is true. I went forward with not allowing anymore sleepovers and not allowing the kids to be alone together under any circumstances until we moved.

Since moving away, we have much more limited contact with them. They do still talk on the phone occasionally and it bothers me every time. My dad will say things along the lines of when am I gonna send my girls over for a visit and in my head I’m like NEVER! Even the thought of them eventually visiting us, I’m still uncomfortable with frank being around my daughter. I wouldn’t trust him to sleep in my home. This sounds terrible I know, but I just haven’t been able to truly forgive what occurred. As parents we try so hard to protect our children and then for it to happen with a family member (which statistically is always more likely) is so hard to come to terms with. What bothers me even more is that my family kept it very hush hush and didn’t tell anyone else when usually there are absolutely no secrets in our family. I hate to think what if this had been someone else’s child, such as a school friend or even one of my brothers daughters who recently visited. Someone else I’m sure would have blown this up much more. I just don’t know how to move on from this. I can’t forgive frank or myself.

Thank you for listening to me vent. I appreciate it very much.