When family pressures you to forget abuse - what to do?

eva4 wrote:I wasn't sure if blocking her was too extreme, but her comments were upsetting me and making me feel kind of like I was floating away, so I didn't want to hear anymore.

eva4 wrote:Hi, I haven't been on this forum in over 5 years. I want to thank everyone who supported me back then. I had stopped coming because people in my life told me going online was "putting ideas in my head" that weren't true, and I was all to eager to believe none of this was true. I don't want this to be -too- long, so here's the main points of what I've been through, and what is going on now:

-I thought I had OCD when I was younger because of intrusive thoughts/images/body sensations/feeling sick to my stomach around my father. I had asked to see a therapist but was told "only crazy people need therapists."

-I eventually move out and manage to mostly bury/distract myself from the upsetting thoughts, most of the time.

-Years later, after the birth of my second son, I let my first son (aged 2 at the time) sleep over my parents' house for the first time. I slowly realize he is showing unmistakable signs of abuse afterwards. His signs of abuse trigger flashbacks in me, which I originally fear are random hallucinations, but I go on to be diagnosed with C-PTSD. (I also remember seeing searches for child pornography on the family computer when I was younger (however, my younger sister later tells me it was her that watched it (she would have been about middle school aged at the time I saw the searches). She says Catholic school messed her up, says she doesn't want to talk about it further, doesn't believe me about my son's abuse, and then blocks me. She hasn't spoken to me in over 5 years now.)

-DCF says there is no proof of abuse. They say treating him for unproven abuse (play therapy) would "put a stigma on him." I later find out my husband has taken my parents' side and tells DCF they are very nice people and that he doesn't believe me (he was playing video games 70+ hours a week and didn't see any signs of abuse). I later find out my parents are giving him money and gifts.

-My son continues to show explicit signs of sexual abuse and I bring him to the hospital and ask if he should be tested for STDs. DCF is called again and they say I am showing "red flags" and they "don't want to have to take my children away." I never bring up the signs of abuse in a professional setting again.

-I find out my husband has continued bringing my son to see my parents behind my back and has even let me father be the one to bring him to the bathroom. My husband says we shouldn't keep the kids away from them. My therapist suggests I "take control" of the situation and invite my parents over for a visit I can supervise myself, saying, "Because you're not really positive there really was abuse, right?"

-My mother agrees to come to visit the kids and says we will not talk about "the situation." However, when they arrive, she ignores my kids and corners me in the kitchen, verbally abusing me (saying I was an "ungrateful bitch" who "she wishes she never gave birth to"), and when I start giggling nervously (I always do that when I'm overwhelmed), she hits me in the face and knocks me to the ground. They leave me screaming and crying on the floor and go home. I call my therapist, he tells me to call the police, and my mother is arrested (my husband was playing video games the whole time).

-My grandmother tells me to drop the charges. She says I am ruining the family. She says I deserved to be slapped and that she would have done the same thing if I was "laughing at her."

-Two years go by and I continue to have visits with my parents. I hear part of myself screaming and crying in my head that "I can't take it anymore," but I ignore it. My husband has the same volatile personality as my mother and I try not to set him off, but little things like throwing away his toothpaste before the last bit is used send him into raging, screaming, and shoving fits. He also threatens to drop the kids off at my parents' house if I ever try to leave him. I am working third shift and am exhausted.

-I have more visits my my parents at my house. My grandmother, who has spent the last few years telling me I'm crazy, that I am ruining her family and ruining her happiness, keeps pressuring me to "forget everything" and let the kids sleep over my parents' house (although I don't). I am having constant nightmares of sexual abuse by my father.

-One morning my youngest tells me, in a very scared voice, that in the middle of the night, I pulled his hair, pinched him, and poked him in the eye. He says I put my hand over his mouth and screamed at him to go to bed. He tells me I was talking about "bad" things "my daddy" used to do to me. He didn't seem to understand what I had been saying, but I realized I had been describing sexual abuse with little kid words. I don't remember any of this. Even as he tells me what I said/did, I get the weird sensation of his words being pulled down deep inside of me, and I have to claw to pull them back up to the surface to avoid completely forgetting what he just said.

This incident was really the turning point where I could no longer deny my history of abuse and that repressing it would only cause further harm to my children. Apparently with the lack of sleep, living with an abusive husband, and continuing to have visits with my parents where I acted like everything was fine, I had lost control over the tortured younger self inside of me. It was such a dark point of my life no longer being able to deny the dissociation and abuse history. I was so scared ot losing control again. I was so scared of what could happen if I weren't in control. I cut off all contact with my parents and blocked my grandmother. I went through a several years-long process of divorcing my husband that involved a restraining order, but I finally got the signed agreement last week where I got full custody of the kids and he was not allowed to let the kids have contact with my parents in any way during his visitation hours. I've had a new therapist for the past couple of years and have made amazing progress healing trauma.

As for my mother, she has gone from saying that I made up my son's signs of abuse when he was 2, to saying a neighbor did it, to saying my ex-husband did it, and now she says I did it, since when I had confided in my then-husband that I had the sleepwalking episode, he told her about it and she has doubled down that I'm the only "crazy" one in the family. She actually later sent my divorce lawyer a string of out of control emails saying that I was the one who abused my son and that she would bring me to court for grandparents' rights if I didn't bring the kids to see her soon.

My lawyer says my mother has a very weak case for grandparents' rights in my state and that I should continue not to let the kids see her, as it has been about 3 years now and seeing her would weaken the clause in my divorce agreement stating it is dangerous for the kids to be around them due to abusive behavior.

However, my grandmother says my grandfather is very sick, has come close to dying, and says one of his wishes is to see his family together again before he dies. I told her I would consider visiting them and having my mother present there (not my father). My grandmother cries that it is time for me to "get over all of this" and to "let us all be a real family again." She cried and said, "We were a nice family, weren't we? Tell me we were."

So. That was long. But it seems this is it. I have to decide whether to do the visits at my grandmother's house with my mother present and keep insisting that is as far as I will go and I will not discuss "the situation" any further, or I just flat out say goodbye to my grandmother and wait for my mother to bring me to court to try to see the kids.

TLDR; I don't know if anyone managed to read all of that, but how did you deal with people telling you to "forget" abuse/or denying it happened (and believe me, I want nothing more than to pretend that none of it happened, so it's an internal struggle, too).

Thanks.