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IHOC: MIL#5 - A Paedophile in the Family

"We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal." - Tennessee Williams

Background: I am Scottish, my husband and his father are Finnish. Neither of us have siblings and my parents died shortly after DH and I married. We have four now adult children and a beautiful granddaughter, who is going to inherit this mess.

My FIL sees himself as a white knight, prancing about the countryside and rescuing damsels in distress. Sadly he tends to attract, and in turn is attracted to, women with severe personality disorders, but that's what you get when you troll www.plentyofcrazies.com for dates.

Alone they run the gamut from pure evil to mildly annoying; and yet together they squabble and engage in the kind of Machiavellian maneuvering that would put House of Cards to shame. To date there have been 7 wives, from around the globe, giving rise to the name of my MILs: the International House of Cunts.

All too many times have people commented that I should write a book about my life, and I am tired, so tired, of inviting people to remember that this is our life, these are my children, and whilst these posts are written with humour it as a coping mechanism for some of the terrible things we have been through. We're not throw away characters in a novel for your entertainment. Please don't ask.

This post is mostly about:

MIL#5: The American Felon

[Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse.]

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TL;DR: The last post was about how FIL and MIL#5 met, how DH and I stupidly let her into our lives, how she became my best friend and the MIL I'd always wanted, and how she helped hold our family together at the worst of times.

And now you're about to learn how very wrong we were. Before anyone asks, our son has given us permission to post about this and already knows its contents. He will also be reading it, so as before, I ask you to be kind.

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Time, that treacherous she-beast, moved ever onward. I would say that she marched, but time doesn't really work that way. It flits about, some days longer than the next. Some months pass in mere seconds, whilst others linger for years, immortalised in the hourglass of your mind. There are days of my life that seem to have stretched almost to eternity, and others that lasted but a few blearily remembered moments before dying into the haze of memories long forgotten.

Our lives settled back into relative normality, and aside from a few incidents with the other MILs (including MIL#1 who had nonapologised her way back into our lives), everything was going really well. DH got promoted to FIL's old job, and FIL took over running the family business. GFIL started to wind down his involvement after heart attack number 3 and spent more time with his great-grandchildren. And despite MIL#5's frequent trips to visit her son and granddaughter, problems with DH's stepbrother never arose again. I started getting treatment for my cPTSD, and seeing a psychiatrist, and started to really think about where my life was heading - whether I really wanted to spend so much time away from my family anymore.

DH and I were back in our groove, our troubles having forged us into a stronger partnership than we ever thought possible. The twins were growing up to be really well adjusted children despite the insanity in their lives, and DS1 was the big brother to them that we always knew he would be. DS1 was also spending two or three nights a week at MIL#5 and FIL's place, "to be a teenager" and be away from the stress of having two 6 year old siblings. It was a rocky start, but by the end of 1999 we were so hopeful for the new millennium and all of the surprises it had in store. So naive too, hoping that things had changed for the better.

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DS1 had been your average teenager. So, basically, uncommunicative, belligerent, irrational, secretive and moody. Also obsessed with Linkin Park, much to my chagrin. As parents we tried to set a good example, we tried to show him the path of True Metal, but he turned from us; he started listening to Limp Bizkit. *Oh the shame.*

In early 2000, when he was 13, DS1 started to selfharm. When we realised what was going on we forced him into counselling, but in reality you can't pressure therapy on anyone; his therapist informed us that he thought DS1 was holding back some terrible secret that was causing a lot of guilt and selfhatred to manifest. He, like us, assumed that it was probably connected to his young struggles to accept his sexuality.

But DS1 wouldn't talk to the therapist. He wouldn't talk to us. He wouldn't talk to his teachers. His grades started slipping. He started losing friends. He started stealing alcohol from us or his grandparents. He started pulling away from us, and we made the vital parenting mistake of trying to befriend our way in to his secret teenage life.

We gave him as much space as we could - didn't go into his room without knocking and tried not to bother him about what he was getting up to, tried to move past the irrational shouting matches and open belligerence that he showed us; but I'll tell you what I've learnt: if you work for a clandestine branch of a shady military organisation and want to know if your torture techniques work, try them on a teenager because waterboarding is the only way to get the truth out of a 13 year old.

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About half way through 2000 MIL#5 was taken by the police for questioning. Two boys from DS1's school had made accusations against her and the police were investigating.

The whole family was floored. MIL#5 had been volunteering with one of the after school activity groups for years with no trouble, and we were so sure that she had done nothing wrong that DH and I dropped everything to rally to her defence. There were lots of whispers around town that we went out of our way to quiet. We helped FIL hire lawyers. We argued in her corner during a school meeting that was called to address the rumours. We started raising funds and supporters for her defence.

This is one of those days that is pressed into my memory for all time - one that seemed to last long enough for empires to rise and fall. I remember everything, from the way the light looked out of the window, to the hairs out of place in DH's beard, to what books were lying on the coffee table.

DH and I were sat in the living room discussing the next steps and how to support FIL and MIL#5 when DS1 came downstairs from his room - an unusual event in itself - and told us we had to stop defending MIL#5. That those boys weren't lying. And that he wanted to go to the police as well.

I must admit, DH and I completely fucked up. It took incredible courage for DS1 to tell us what little that he did - that MIL#5 had done the same to him - and my first response was to ask if he was sure and wasn't just misunderstanding the situation. That was probably the only time in my entire marriage that DH has told me to shut up. When it did filter through what DS1 was trying to tell us I started fainting, which I'm sure comes as no surprise, and every time DS1 spoke DH would start shouting and punching holes in the wall. All in all, I think we handled it well.

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#If you are at all triggered by mentions of sexual abuse please stop reading here. The next part of my post will not be pleasant for you.

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We ended up having to call the lead detective on the case and he asked us to bring DS1 in as soon as we could, so the next day we took off work and had to take DS1 to the police station to make his statement. DH and I were allowed to watch, remotely, but we weren't allowed to be in the room. DS1 had an advocate, and had to recount years of sexual abuse to complete strangers. I wish so desperately I'd have been able to be in there with him, but he was so brave and fearless once his terrible and consuming secret was out in the open - he told them everything.

 Outside, watching, I threw up and DH cried.

Whilst I stayed at the station with DS1, DH went home and searched DS1's room for anything that might tell us what the hell was going on with our own son. Inside CD cases he found "love letters" and pornographic material of MIL#5 dating back years. All the way back to when DS1 was 11.

What we now know:

* When DS1 had spent a lot of time with MIL#5 whilst DH and I were away MIL#5 had doted on him, given him lots of expensive gifts, lots of attention. She preyed upon his fears that we were replacing him with the twins. She convinced him that our love was conditional, but hers was not.

* MIL#5 convinced DS1 that if he spoke out he would not be believed, which was only compounded by DH and I going to the ends of the earth to help MIL#5 when two young men came forwards with accusations against her.
*  She told him what they had together was "true love" and "pure" and the way things were meant to be. She wrote him sexually explicit "love letters" detailing the exciting sexual experiences she was going to "teach" him. At the trial we found out that he had written letters back to her.
* MIL#5 began raping my son when he was 12 and a half.
* MIL#5 had convinced my son that his sexuality was unnatural and that only through being with her would he know real love. She played on his romanticism and need for acceptance to coerce him into compliance.
* When he could not keep an erection, MIL#5 would feed him sildenafil in a rather repulsive way that makes me nauseous just... some things I just can't, even now. To this day my son can't eat tablets without triggering an anxiety attack.
* This was not the first time MIL#5 had been arrested for child sexual abuse. When FIL and MIL#5 had gotten married we had begged FIL to run a background check on MIL#5. He did and it came back clean, save for one or two fines for smoking weed when she was a teenager in the 60s. But a civilian request to a back country police department in Nowheresville, North Carolina, was not met with much enthusiasm, and the police force there had not checked aliases. Under her previous married name MIL#5 had been arrested for four counts of sexual activity with a child during the 1980s - but the two kids were too terrified of losing her love that they wouldn't testify, and much like us, MIL#5 had ingratiated herself into their parent's lives to the point that they did not believe their own sons because MIL#5 was so nice, and so the charges had been dropped. Not sure if arrests would even show up on a background check, but it had never come up when they got married so I assume not.
* the reason that MIL#5's son had been so belligerent towards DS1 is because he saw my son as his replacement.

It took a year to come to trial, and with the overwhelming evidence against her - from DS1s statements, to the love letters and images, to the statements from the other boys - the original two and another two who came forward after her arrest had been announced - one would have thought that MIL#5 would have plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence.

But no, she claimed she was not guilty. She tried to claim it wasn't abuse, that it was consensual. With DS1 she tried to claim that she was only doing what was best for DS1 by ensuring that he was straight. **She tried to rape the gay out of him.** In court, her advocates could not control her outbursts, so convinced was she that she was in the right that she would shout over the judges, and had to be removed more than once. She was found guilty of a whole raft of offences, including 12 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a minor, obviously. 15 years, with conditions attached to her parole.

Since that time DS1, DH, myself, the twins and DD2 have spent a lot of time in therapy, both individually and as a family. Ironically, it was his therapist that helped him come to terms with his sexuality, and DS1 is now married to a lovely young man, and has a daughter of his own. But for a long time he suffered with night-terrors, crippling anxiety attacks and suicidal ideations, and everything else that goes along with PTSD, which apparently runs in the family.

Throughout all of this my other MILs were a combination of insufferable, sublimely ridiculous, and surprisingly caring and supportive. They were the rock that my family stood on to keep our heads above water, and they were the weights dragging us down.

There was one lovely evening when MIL#4 insisted on showing me her binders of magazines of partially naked men to assure me that these were what she was attracted to, and that she didn't want to have sex with my children. Which was... nice of her, I guess. And MIL#2's insistence that DS1 was going to hell for having sex outside of marriage led to my darling husband, who has never raised a hand to anyone in anger, threatening to kill her. So that was fun. Tensions in the family were high, as you can imagine.

FIL threw MIL#5 out the day after DS1 went to the police. Eventually he was granted a divorce on his terms. The words "sexual predator" and "divorce" will go along way to getting everything you want out of a legal document. He was devastated to learn he'd been living with a child molester for years and hadn't seen it. That his wife had duped him so completely. That whilst he had been having sex with her, earlier that day she had also had sex with his grandson and other teenage boys.

I know that thought has haunted FIL for a long time. He was terrified that he had somehow tacitly allowed it, even though he didn't know what was going on. DH has never blamed him for any of it, but for a long period of time I did. I rarely talk about FIL here because a) this is justnoMIL and b) DH doesn't like it when I trash talk his dad, but this is one instance where I very much blamed FIL for letting this monster into our lives.

For the longest time I thought he should have known what she was. He was married to her, for fucks sake. But no, not really. Any suspicions he may have ever had were only around her having an affair - and never an affair with a child. She was, and still is, an expert manipulator. **She learned to cover herself so well that the woman she is in reality, is not a woman we ever knew.**

I blamed myself as well. A lot. Sometimes, even now, I still do. For not being around enough to notice. For ignoring the warning signs and red flags. For being so consumed with my own career and mental health problems that I didn't notice what was going on with my child. And it took many years and a whole bunch of therapy to come to terms with what happened. Even now it has taken me months to type this up. Every time I start I can't bring myself to finish a paragraph, as each sentence takes me back to that singular day where I witnessed my child confess the horrors of his life, and was so helpless to do a single thing to change what had happened.

I'm not too sure, however, that MIL#1 didn't know what she was. Though MIL#1 now claims that they weren't close friends and really barely knew each other - which wasn't the case at all - I still wouldn't put it past MIL#1 to have introduced MIL#5 into our lives knowing full well what she was. Just for fun. But maybe I give MIL#1 too much credit.

MIL#5 was given mandated therapy and medication, and will spend the rest of her life under the scrutiny of mental health professionals and the justice system. She is not allowed to contact any member of my family, and she is not allowed on the island where we live after repeatedly violating the law here. Plus being here would mean she would be inside the perimeter of the restraining order at all times - small island. Sadly, that hasn't stopped her.

You see, MIL#5 has now been released from prison three times. The first time she didn't even wait a day before turning up at DS1's job and creating a scene about how she forgives him for lying about her. She was arrested, parole revoked. The second time she was released she came to our house - having gotten our address from her extended restraining order. She spent months stalking all of our family members online, gathering information about the kids from what she could find on social media, and since then we have always been incredibly careful about what kind of personal information goes online, and every member of the family uses VPNs and encryption to ensure that she cannot track us, as she has done in the past. After harassing us at our house she was arrested for trying to break in to see DS1, and ended up back in prison. The third time she was released because she had come to the end of her sentence.

This was about two years ago now. She turned up at our house again, demanding to see our son. She tried to appeal to my motherhood - I should understand because I was a mother too and I know a mother's love. I feel sick even typing that.

Violation of restraining orders. Back to prison she went. Throughout her incarceration she has repeatedly sent letters and made phone calls to our house, but thankfully she no longer has a means of contacting him. She does know where he lives, however. He received another letter about five months ago. In the file it went.

Unfortunately, MIL#5 is back out, having come to the end of her sentence for violating her restraining orders. Her resolve has not waned since her last release. I know this, as hang ups to our landline and cars driving down our back country road have become a familiar reminder that MIL#5 is out and free in society. Originally we were bracing for another wonderful visit - it is only a matter of time now - and another round of police, followed by lawyers, followed by another sentencing. But that's manageable. That's becoming old hat now. Except...

Now my son has a child of his own. And now I am absolutely terrified about what might happen if MIL#5 finds out that DS1 is not only married, but has a daughter. I don't know what MIL#5 will do if she thinks she hasn't got a way back in. That she lost. Because DS1 hasn't been in the correct age bracket for her sexual appetites for 15 years now, but she keeps coming back. I think its because she didn't have control over him, and his statement was the nail in the coffin that sent her to prison. He shared her love letters with the court. She has always, in her letters, accused him of violating their love. In her mind, our son is the one that got away. In my next post, I'll tell you about the one that didn't.

In previous posts and comments I have mentioned that MIL#1 isn't the worst of my MILs. She's not the one that really keeps me awake at night. Now you know why. Stranger Danger taught us all to look for the strange man in a trench coat, hiding in the bushes. The media tried to show us that paedophiles all look like overweight men with plastic 1980s glasses and small eyes. We never expect the monsters to be in our homes. Nor do we expect them to be women.

It took so long to work up the courage to post about this, even though some part of me knew it had to come out, if only for my own sake. And then, last week, a complete stranger here on Reddit reached out to me, and reminded me of what I've known for a long time: that knowing other people have been through the same as you can bring some semblance of hope, and the more that people talk about male rape, the more it will become acceptable in society to acknowledge that, yes, **men can be raped, and yes, it is just as devastating as when it happens to a woman as well.** If that gentleman is reading this I would like to say thank you.

Reading the posts of /u/clean-pillows-please is like looking into a mirror to the past, and seeing ourselves in a different time and place. I know that fear, that anger, that emotional exhaustion, that helplessness. I know it like an old friend, one ever present on the periphery. If we had known then what we know now. And yet our cultures still struggle to accept the depiction of mothers and grandmothers as other than, and so people like Stench, and Surrogate, and FUBAR, and MIL#5 slip through our nets.

Don't make my mistakes. Listen to that little voice in the back of your mind, your instincts are there for a reason. And though leaping to conclusions can be disastrous and harmful to the innocent, I can't help but hope that you follow this advice:  please don't leave your kids as vulnerable as I left mine. Find the happy balance, and keep your families safe. I wish someone had told me that 18 years ago.