Parents were cousins...and sexual abusers

I used to post on this forum several years ago in what was then the Adult Children of Narcissists board. Back then I posted alot about the emotional/psychological abuse I went through as a kid. and my escape from my psycho family. I didn't post much about the sexual nature of some of the abuse. For one, I wasn't ready to deal with it. Secondly, the sexual abuse really was less frequent and very much secondary to the mental/psychological.

I'm in my middle-40s now, and maybe it's all the time I've had to think and reflect due to pandemic quarantine, but I am just now fully realizing how messed up my parents were and that they were both sexual abusers. They were both perverts, but in different ways and focused on different ages.

For one, my parents were cousins. I've never talked about that because it is embarrassing and shameful. It was a huge family secret. I learned it from my aunt when I was 15 years old. I confronted my mother about it, and she would admit to them being 2nd cousins. It seemed weird to me, but I put that knowledge away and didn't deal with it for many, many years. But recently, I got my DNA tested and my parents seem to have been more closely related than second cousins. Genetically, they look like more like 1st cousins. The older I grow, the more grossed out I am by that. My father was born in the United States and as a 35 year old man, went back to the "old country" in Europe to meet and impregnate his 20 year old cousin, my mother. The older I get the more seedy it all seems.

I have one crystal clear memory of my mother dislocating my shoulder and then raping me rectally when I was 5, just before I started school. I have more fragmented memories of her abusing me before then. When I started school, the physical ended and verbal/psychological abuse ramped up.

I realize now that my father was a voyeuristic hebephile. He never physically molested me. But he sexually harassed me very creepily, especially when I was 11 through 13 years old. When I hit puberty at 11, he started trying to get glimpses of me naked. He would do things like covertly film me walking across the yard in shorts and zoom in on my bum--he accidentally played one of those tapes during a family home movie night. Talk about awkward. Also, when I hit puberty, his mental and emotional abuse of me went off the charts.

The whole family was centered around enabling and covering for my parents. I have 2 much older siblings that were 16 and 17 years old when I was born. They were always around enough to see what was happening to me. They did nothing to help me. To this day, they defend our parents and pretend that there was nothing wrong with them. I am the bad guy for breaking away from the family for my own mental health.

The older I get, the more.....I don't know.....astounded I am by the whole thing.

Anyway thanks for reading.

Do you think your siblings were treated that way, as well, and perhaps it became normalized for them?

Hi Snaga,
That's possible. They are so much older than me, so I don't know what their childhoods were really like.

When they were kids, our father was still working. When I was growing up, he had retired. I was born when my father was 54 years old.

I do know that my brother had more freedom and basic respect from our parents. My sister admitted to me one time that he acted as sort of a shield for her. She got to go out and do more things because she would say she was going out with him.

My brother did tell me about one incident. Our beloved uncle committed suicide in a very grisly way. Our mother forced my sister to clean up the blood and fluids. My sister was 19 at the time. I know that must have deeply traumatized her. My sister was also obese her whole life--she's always had a serious problem with food. I've often wondered if that was in reaction to abuse from our parents. I know my father was always disgusted by fat women. It makes me wonder.

It's sad, but my siblings are now very much like our parents. Manipulative, abusive. Maybe it is a case of the abused becoming abusers.

Thanks for responding.

I know in the moment, even as a teenager, it's hard to... counter a parent, even an abusive one. I had a stepfather who was verbally abusive to my mother, and it wasn't until after adulthood I started finding it more and more intolerable. If she hadn't left him, it's likely one day there would have been a showdown- but as a kid, it's... hard.

But then you say they turned out something like your parents. That's a shame. I hear that happens, though.

Snaga wrote:I know in the moment, even as a teenager, it's hard to... counter a parent, even an abusive one. I had a stepfather who was verbally abusive to my mother, and it wasn't until after adulthood I started finding it more and more intolerable. If she hadn't left him, it's likely one day there would have been a showdown- but as a kid, it's... hard.

But then you say they turned out something like your parents. That's a shame. I hear that happens, though.

It's amazing how sick behavior can be normalized by kids when it's all we know. But yeah, even as a teenager it is hard to counter a parent. Especially when you have two manipulative, disordered parents who enable and support each other. Our parents operated as a tag team. The older I get the more I see it.

Yeah. My siblings never really grew a spine to stand up to our parents--especially my sister. She is still totally enmeshed with our mom. Our father died a few years ago. But they always treated her like garbage and she stayed on as their flying monkey doing whatever they wanted, including stalking and harassing me after I left the family when I was 18.

Well, I take it you limit contact with them- they sound fairly toxic for you.

Snaga wrote:Well, I take it you limit contact with them- they sound fairly toxic for you.

Yep. I escaped when I turned 18. They stalked, threatened, harassed me for almost a year. I was no contact with them for about 5 years. Then, against my better judgement, I got back in minimal contact for a few years. I saw that nothing had changed. So now, I have not spoken with my sister or parents since 2007.
Like typical abusers they wanted "reconciliation" without accepting any accountability, and with me falling back into the scapegoat role.
I've talked with my brother a few times over the years, but his goal in talking to me was only to rope me back in to dealing with our mother. He wanted me to share in the burden of dealing with her. It seems that after I cut contact, she started dishing out my portion of manipulation and abuse to my siblings, and they didn't like it. I told him that I am unable to have a relationship with our parents and I told him why, even though he already knew. So that was that.

Sometimes that's the only thing to do.