not allowed to see grand daughter

You'd be shocked and amazed at just how much rug sweeping happens around sexual abuse and how easily perpetrators get away with it. Lived through it. Even the people who believed me in my family didn't want to and were easily convinced I made it up "for attention" as a child. Even a family member who had experienced low level wrong behaviour from the same person didn't want to believe it. The fact that I only revealed it to protect my own little sister and still people didn't want to believe it. Of course my mum had a field day turning everyone against me and she KNEW it was the truth. Because sometimes mum's will protect an abuser over their own child or even deliberately put them in harms way... While claiming innocence of course.

Smileless -- elena mentioned how GS interacted with GD (his cousin) as some kind of 'evidence' that nothing happened because he acted "normal" and "happy" together.

Abuse, especially between minor children is often as difficult to spot as parents who abuse their children. I always looked "happy" around my mom. No matter how abusive she was being because 'making her look bad' was a serious offence that led to further abuse. The fact that she was abusive was what would 'make her look bad' and it had nothing to do with Me and how I was behaving, wasn't even a thought in my head until I went through recovery.

Children who are abused by each other (especially sexually) do not have any framework with which to describe that kind of abuse. What a child may call 'full blown intercourse' may not be how an adult would view whatever occurred. They fundamentally lack the knowledge/experience to understand what ANY sex acts are 'defined as'.

It is 'normal' for a child to want to be around their abusers and often act happily so. They want things to be "normal" but because they have suffered damage that the adults around them are not managing appropriately, their only defense mechanism is to try to make things appear 'normal' which is where the mental damage starts to pile up on the child if the 'adults' continue to act like everything in "normal" when it is not.

That is what I am talking about when I say elena and others here are failing hard at grasping what abuse looks like.

As for her husband NEVER having a relationship with certain members of her family now being a 'good thing'? You glossed over the fact that that is a huge 'red flag' in her relationship with him. A dysfunctional behavior having a "good outcome" is a bit messed up.

Elena,
An 11 year old may not realise what full intercourse is. I was molested at age 3 but not actually penetrated. I did not understand this and at age 11 confided in a friend that I had had sex before. I did not understand. I was still physically a virgin. I definitely believe your grandson, everything he is saying sounds very much like stereotypical abuse. You keep saying that you believe your grandson but then you say that you don't. My parents didn't believe me and so I was molested for years. Even if the allegations aren't true, your daughter would be thinking that you don't take these things seriously, or that you would be likely to rugsweep should a grandchild ever say anything to you.

I definitely don't think that your daughter should have named your husband to the preschool without any evidence, I would have warned them off possible abuse but not name anyone until they were arrested. However if you were my mother, I wouldn't trust you with gc unsupervised just because of your dismissal.

Also Elena,
If authorities had of interegrated me at age 11 (therapists included) I would have vehemently denied anything happened because I was groomed to believe that I was at fault and that I would be in trouble. Note I was 3-6 years old when I was abused

Sorry posting multiple messages.
Elena, a healthy family doesn't accuse members of sexual abuse with no evidence pointing to it happening. It's a sign that the relationship was dysfunctional well before the abuse allegations.

Just because the authorities say nothing happened, doesn't mean nothing did. They don't know, they only know what others tell them. I was 21 before I was finally able to tell anyone what happened to me.

Ironflower -- That is my point as well. If someone is incapable of understanding how children behave after abuse, there is little chance they will see the signs of abuse. If abuse has occurred and they don't understand the aftereffects of abuse, how can they make good choices to treat the damage caused? Sexual abuse becomes a 'family issue' as in elena's case. Even if there are no issues with abuse in her family husband/son etc. sexual abuse HAS been introduced to her family through her GD. It may have been passed to her GS through his cousin. So there now IS abuse in the family. It is not being addressed properly, which is the true issue of why daughter is staying away.

a healthy family doesn't accuse members of sexual abuse with no evidence pointing to it happening. It's a sign that the relationship was dysfunctional well before the abuse allegations. True, but some will not agree...

Ironflower -- I posted this earlier on the EAC thread but if it is helpful check it out. I found it very insightful.

www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-compassion-chronicles/201501/healing-the-shame-childhood-abuse-through-self-compassion

Thankyou Hannah <3