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

[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in his family, but when it came down to it, the ability of the men in his family to feel comfortable as guests far superseded the girls' and women's right not to be assaulted.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.