agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Annie: I have two grown sons, ages 32 and 24, and they are my oldest and youngest children of six. At the age of 15, the 32-year-old was accused of a crime that the family knows he did not commit. But the accusation resulted in his spending approximately 15 years in and out of the penal system. He entered a facility for adult inmates when he was barely 16, since he was charged as an adult.

My 24-year-old was the accuser (at roughly age 11). The accusations tore our family apart. The oldest went to prison; the youngest and one other of my children were removed from my custody and sent to foster homes and group homes.

Cut to today, years later: The boys are at war. Both are accusing the other of "ruining my life." They have been around each other a few times, and most of those times were cordial. The last time was a couple of months ago.

I live in Ohio, while the youngest lives in Missouri and the oldest is in Arizona. I hadn't seen my oldest son in several years, so he drove to Ohio to surprise me. When he left, he had plans to go to Oklahoma to visit another sibling, but he decided to go to Missouri to visit the youngest and meet his niece and nephew. I was skeptical about this, due to threats they had previously made against each other. It went exactly as I prayed it wouldn't.

They got into a screaming match, hurling angry threats and insults at each other in front of my autistic grandson's second birthday party! Now they are saying the other one is dead to them, along with the children!

Annie, I can't divulge personal information regarding the nature of the alleged crime, but I can tell you that this mama is torn in two. The boys aren't asking anyone to take sides, but we all are feeling jerked back and forth. What can I do, as a mother, to get two very stubborn, traumatized and angry young men to get help with their relationship? Individually and, possibly, together? We don't want two different holiday gatherings. And we don't know how to tell the grandkids why their uncles won't be around each other. What can we, as a family, do to bring our boys back together? -- Torn Apart Mother

Dear Torn Apart: There is so much past resentment that needs to be forgiven and worked through in therapy between the brothers and you, their mother. Without processing the deep hurt and resentment that each has toward the other, every time they get together, it has a huge potential to end in a terrible fight. The fight only makes the rift deeper. They are grown adults so they have to WANT to make their relationship work better. You can encourage each of them to forgive, or to speak about their past hurts and traumas, but in the end, it has to be up to them to want to work on their relationship.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearannie/s-2728671

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Did Oldest do something extremely serious? He did something that got him convicted as an adult, but as we all know, our penal system is extremely fucked up about that and it doesn't actually tell you anything.

LW says he "spent fifteen years in and out of the penal system" "as a result of the accusation". It's hard to tell, but that doesn't sound like he got a fifteen-year sentence, that sounds to me like he got [some length of sentence possibly including probation] and the continued being in and out of jail possibly for other crimes and/or parole violations, which LW blames on the fact that he went to adult prison for the first time at 16 (And is likely right!) But the original accusation frankly could have been anything from murder to marijuana possession.

And it's possible given the letter that the accusations were false and youngest son has admitted it! It wouldn't be that hard for police to coerce a seven-year-old into saying "Yes, my brother had a gun when he left the house" or "I saw him put the marijuana in the bag", and even convince the seven-year-old they were telling the truth. They don't seem to be blaming each other for the crime or the prison sentence, just for making Mom's life harder, so it could be something like "It's your fault because you let the cops trick you into lying!" vs. "It's your fault because you kept getting back into trouble even after you were paroled!"

LW is still clearly siding with the older son, but if it's something like the above that might be more justified.

Or LW could be deliberately slanting stuff to hide the fact that older son actually did do something terrible to younger son and they all know it.

But we really don't know based on this letter, so LW, you should probably talk to someone you actually can share details with.

Given that whatever went down involved two of the other kids ending up in foster care, and the youngest still says the oldest "ruined his life", I'm pretty sure that "it's a serious crime" is a reasonable assumption.

Sure, our criminal justice system is bullshit in multiple ways, and so is child services... but honestly, with all the shit in this letter, I'm going to err on the side of trusting, at least, that the accusations were probably serious ones.

It seemed super weird to me that two, but only two, of the kids would be removed from custody just because the teenager committed a crime, even if the crime was against another kid in the family, especially if the accused was no longer living there. I didn't even try to parse that tbh, except that LW has gotta be leaving a lot out. (Given the way LW wrote the letter, my odds are actually on "After Eldest Son was arrested, LW decided he was the only thing that mattered, and started neglecting and/or abusing the kids that sided with the cops, and/or the cops put pressure on family services to take the youngest kids away out of fear that Mom would compel them not to testify")

But we do know that whatever happened caused the family to be split up, and that's enough to get "you ruined my life" on its own, even if nothing that happened was really their fault.

Basically I don't trust anything LW is saying here, period.

Edited 2022-09-30 18:17 (UTC)

Basically I don't trust anything LW is saying here, period.

Well, we can definitely agree on that. Honestly, I think the person both these men shouldn't be talking to is Mom.

Yes, agreed!

It seemed super weird to me that two, but only two, of the kids would be removed from custody just because the teenager committed a crime, even if the crime was against another kid in the family, especially if the accused was no longer living there

If the teenager sexually abused a sibling, and the parents were all la la la head in the sand about it, and refused to cooperate with authorities about making sure it never happened again,

I can definitely see that resulting in child removal.

I can maybe see that, if the two kids who were removed were either the two youngest, or the two who were specified as targets of the abuse, particularly as a temporary thing if they had to get more legal ducks in a row to get the accused out of the home.

But even then it would be at least partly down to LW refusing to cooperate with protecting them, not just that someone was accused of a crime.

LW's refusal to believe that older brother did anything wrong

would be consistent with LW having failed to protect younger kid from older brother at the time...

At age 7, Youngest might have said something to a teacher, or someone else who's a mandated reporter. Or, a teacher or other mandated reporter might have seen something and asked Youngest. Usually all that's needed under child protection laws is an honest belief that there's reasonable grounds to suspect harm is occurring or could occur. There's a lot of Missing Information here.

Yeah. Which could have been actual serious harm that needed investigation and people removed from the family, but 7 still didn't mean to do it, or could have been a seven-year-old fabulation and the grownups taking it out of proportion and 7-yaer-old not knowing how to stop things. I literally have no idea.

"My 24-year-old was the accuser (at roughly age 11)."

He was 11, not 7.

ETA: Oh wait, I just saw your comment further down about the ages. nm

Edited 2022-10-01 00:03 (UTC)

Yeah my best guess is that LW tried to deliberately fudge the ages for anonymity and screwed up but dunno, I think we just really don't know how old they actually were