Dear Abby: Oh, HELL, no

[cereta]

DEAR ABBY: My husband recently asked how I would feel about him buying a plane ticket for his brother "Jake" to visit us and his parents over the holidays. I told him I wouldn't like it -- not because my husband would be paying for the ticket, but because Jake is a registered sex offender.

My husband is now upset with me, saying Jake "served his time." I understand that, but the underage girl he messed around with was his niece. My daughter is 10 and starting to develop. She's also affectionate with family. I don't want her hugging Uncle Jake.

My husband and I are now not speaking. He told me that if his family isn't welcome in our house, he will start treating my family badly. Am I wrong for not wanting Jake sleeping under the same roof as my daughter? -- PROTECTIVE MOM IN THE MIDWEST

DEAR PROTECTIVE MOM: No, you're not wrong. That your husband would try to blackmail you into allowing a registered sex offender to sleep in the same house as your adolescent daughter is deplorable. Your daughter is old enough to be told that Uncle Jake has a problem with young girls, and that if he ever makes a move on her, you want to know immediately.

It isn't like Jake did time for bank robbery. Sex offenders are usually prohibited from having contact with minors. The man has a sexual impulse disorder that shouldn't be ignored, and your husband should not allow any risk that your daughter might be molested.

Comments

[cereta]

See the post's subject line. It's good that Abby validated her, but frankly, I would be further along the road to "see a lawyer" territory. There are very few things short of actual abuse that would have me immediately considering a divorce and actually, honestly considering suing for sole custody and strict visitation conditions, but this is one of them. Never mind the childish, "Well, I'm going to be mean to your family, nyah," response. A man who doesn't see a problem with letting my daughter be around a registered sex offender, one whose crime was serious enough to do jail time (I am very, very much doubting the girl in question was 17), is not someone I trust.

[wolfshark]

Right there with you. I cannot imagine a situation where I would I would let someone who had already "messed around with" his niece come near any of my nieces or my hypothetical daughter. My husband would know that even the suggestion would be a deal breaker.

[clayr]

He told me that if his family isn't welcome in our house, he will start treating my family badly.

How does he not get the difference between a registered sex offender and the entirety of his family? This seems like an extremely defensive phrasing as if the husband is leaping to hyperbole to try to invalidate the woman writing the letter. You know "OMG, you don't like any of my family" as a response to one specific criticism? Is it just me getting this vibe?

[minoanmiss]

You're not the only one.

Dammit, I want to set up a See A Lawyer fund for so many of the letter writers...

[delphi]

That husband could be my father. Fortunately, my dad didn't go out of his way to keep close contact with the sex offenders in his family, but when it came down to it, the ability of the men in his family to feel comfortable as guests far superseded the girls' and women's right not to be assaulted. It even extended outside the family, and I learned in time that the same lessons that had taught his relatives it was okay to rape had taught him that rape was something that inevitably happened to "the wrong kind" of girls and women.

As such, any partner who pulled the above with me would be out on his ass so fast his head would spin, and would not be spending any time with our child unchaperoned, as some vital instinct of respect, empathy and protectiveness was obviously fundamentally broken.

[recessional]

My brain keeps trying to come up with a possible scenario to explain her husband doing this. I know, intellectually, that some people just are that . . . *EXPRESSIVE HAND GESTURE*, but there is a part of my hindbrain that makes it just not compute. There must be some deeply complex special instance story behind all this, it says! There's no way a REAL PERSON would do that.

This probably mostly just speaks well of the men I was raised around who had daughters/nieces/stepdaughters, who were the most intolerant IN THE WORLD of threats to them (yes, this was actually tested, sadly). And I know this is not a universal, or even as prevalent as it should be. And hell to the yes with "I would seriously reconsider your marriage to this man".

Just. What. WHAT. How does this man even vaguely think this could POSSIBLY be an appropriate response? DOES NOT COMPUTE. ERROR.

[vass]

He told me that if his family isn't welcome in our house, he will start treating my family badly.

That bit gives me chills. If I were that woman, that would be the point where I started working on an exit strategy for me and the children.