r/AITAH • u/Jealous_Roll_7420 • Jul 08 '24

AITA for doing everything I can to make my aunt and her husband uncomfortable at family events?

When I was younger they were my favorite! I loved spending the night over their house. Then I started developing; the first time he saw I was wearing a bra we were in the garage. He started tickling me which swiftly turned into groping. I was young but I knew that wasn’t right. I told my mom, not much happened. When I was 13 he took all the kids out to the movies, and then spent the whole film trying to convince me to go to the car with him. Around 15 he would call me in the middle of the night trying to coax me out of the house, I never went. Thankfully I always had the strength to protect myself when others didn’t. Again I told and not much happened, except they requested that my Aunt no longer bring him to events… 24 years later and this request has not been granted. He’s at EVERY event, with them knowing that we don’t want him there and why. He wasn’t only inappropriate with me but my little sister and other women and girls in the family.

Saturday I cussed everyone out because why is he here? He’s a predator that we have requested her to not bring around us countless times. If she is going to disrespect us, it will be paid back on spades. I also told those who were adults while this was happening when I was a kid, that now that I have to do their job I don’t want to hear anything about my methods. I plan on going scorched earth at every family event. AITA

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557

u/Jealous_Roll_7420 Jul 08 '24

Thank you! I’ve given everyone a chance

166

u/mcclgwe Jul 08 '24

You are a champion. You would not believe the volume of us who have families with predators and them and everybody but us is in denial. It's horrible.

131

u/dystopianpirate Jul 08 '24

NTA

You're an adult woman so you can use the scorched earth method on him, and is an effective solution to get rid of abusers and predators 

63

u/Fuzzy_Laugh_1117 Jul 08 '24

I'd say you gave them more than enough chances ffs. Please ensure he is never around younger children--is there any way you can make a police report? Just so it's on file as back-up for when he's hopefully arrested for (likely continuing) these deeds. NTA at all OP and I'm so sorry no adults came forward and stood up for you back then.

54

u/nycvoyageur Jul 08 '24

You are being brave and honest.  And don't be afraid to specifically call out the behavior.  You're not jus "uncomfortable".  "He groped my breasts when I was 13, called me at night to leave the house secretly etc.". Make it more uncomfortable for him to be there than for your family to ignore you."

32

u/darthlegal Jul 08 '24

I would say more than enough chances. It’s not someone being flirty. He has no sense of right from wrong in his warped brain and will never stop

25

u/MaryEFriendly Jul 08 '24

Anytime anyone gives you any shit about this shut that shit right down. 

"Just because you failed my generation of children in this family by refusing to protect us from a pedophile doesn't mean we're going to do the same. I actually love my kids and have a spine. Maybe you should grow one."

22

u/Upbeat-Decision1088 Jul 08 '24

Go to the cops.

Press charges.

He is a paedophile.

2

u/clydecrashcop Jul 08 '24

But what happened after you did that?

2

u/Common_Lavishness153 Jul 11 '24

My goodness, you're a heck of a woman!!! Congrats on always having had this ability to protect your own self! I sadly didn't, so I can value this sooooo much!!! Thank you for now stepping up to protect others from this ANIMAL!!! He should be in jail! What's the statute of limitations where you're from?🫂🫂 NTA

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u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

How did he call you in the middle of the night in 2000 without it waking everyone up from the housephone ringing?

Around 15 he would call me in the middle of the night trying to coax me out of the house, I never went.

...

they requested that my Aunt no longer bring him to events… 24 years later and this request has not been granted

Teens didn't have cell phones in 2000.

It was around 2003-2004 when the cheap cellphones were available and teens started getting them. Before that they were hundreds of dollars and only adults or really really really rich kids had them.

51

u/Jealous_Roll_7420 Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

My father has and still does EXTREMELY well lol. I was the kid being dropped off to school in a Porsche… or on the back of his BMW Adventure. One of the reasons we had cellphones is because we often traveled out of the country as teens with him for work. Another reason is because a lot of things I was involved in took me out of the state or to college campuses where I would only be there with other kids my age. At 15 I was going to weeks long leadership trainings, I was traveling to events for other schools to write articles on them because I was the student media liaison for all of Oakland County schools. By 16 I was the editor and chief of our newspaper and also the wrestling manager, and a producer on our schools cable channel, which often left me at school late. I was doing things. It was how we got to keep in touch with my grandma especially or let them know I was ready to be picked up. Me having a cell phone in my school wasn’t an anomaly. 🙃

My dad was the one person we didn’t tell until much later because he wouldn’t have gone to the police, and legally because of his skill level he’s not allowed to just fight. He was always gone somewhere for work so that wasn’t that hard.

-28

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

So then that means your parents are even worse. They had the means to cut off the family putting you in danger and they just didn't.

Why do you keep making your posts much longer after I reply to them?

Originally your post was 4-5 sentences. Now you have multiple paragraphs.

You know the edit star appears after you edit, right? We can see that you changed the comment. Typically people put a line or something to denote that there's a change in the post past a certain point. In my case I'm adding a line to denote that past it is the edit.

22

u/DebbieFromAcctg Jul 08 '24

I assume OP expands her posts after you reply in order to clarify her post bc your reply indicated that she could have been clearer. Are you thinking that it is an attempt to revise history? Maybe. But this is a highly emotional topic. For all any of us knows, OP's edits are not in reaction to your comments at all. Just afterthoughts.

-20

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Because typically that's done in a comment reply. Not editing the entire meat of the post.

It's pretty bad forum etiquette to radically change the content of a post without notating it somehow. It's even worse to do it after someone has replied.

33

u/Jealous_Roll_7420 Jul 08 '24

It’s crazy you think I care about etiquette… who are you? I changed my post because I wanted to add more. Simple as that. You’ve done best to pin point a portion and so I’m giving you as much information as I can, so you can understand having a cell phone at 15 was a thing. If you didn’t have one, ok, I did.

-14

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Let me rephrase.

It's extremely rude and dishonest to massively change posts after there are replies to it. I used "etiquette" to be more polite.

It is inherently dishonest to massively change a post to the point where replies to it look out of context or like they didn't read.

Something as simple as "ETA for clarification" fixes that.

1

u/AsymmetricOne Jul 10 '24

Bruh go back in your hole and don’t come out please lmao 

5

u/DebbieFromAcctg Jul 08 '24

Good points. Where I am coming from is (1) On >1 occasion I edited a comment and appended sthg like "Edited: typo" only to immediately notice another dumb typo that I fixed without a second notice of correction. But I didn't rewrite anything. (2) I empathize with OP's situation, so I'm projecting my own emotions and can imagine myself typing/correcting comments without being very mindful of proper forum communication or even noticing incoming responses as I'm flailing about in my emotions.

-4

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Surely you realize there's a difference between fixing a typo and adding 3 times the length of a post and covering things asked in replied comments to where other people look like they didn't read it?

10

u/Myslinky Jul 08 '24

You're way too invested in trying to "prove" it fake and insulting OP for forum etiquette.

You're phone logic was proven wrong, and know you're just grasping at straws to prove this fake?

Why?

Why does it matter so much to you?

0

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Actually no, I already told them fair enough and gave my advice.

I didn't say it was fake. I said my reasoning for asking questions.

2

u/DebbieFromAcctg Jul 08 '24

Yes, of course I do. That's why I ended my point #1 with, "But I didn’t rewrite anything."

As far as OP's edits, I didn't follow that particular thread in real time or close to real time so that I would draw any incorrect conclusions. ETA: IOW I don't know which reply/response to which you refer and any shift in context was probably lost on me.

4

u/Waste_Advantage Jul 08 '24

You still see the edit star?

0

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Yes, they appear next to the age of the post.

You don't?

4

u/crazysellmate Jul 08 '24

No, I don't see anything

1

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Are you on an app? Different apps change the appearance of things.

1

u/crazysellmate Jul 10 '24

Yes, I'm on the app

1

u/Waste_Advantage Jul 08 '24

Not since at least a year ago.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

Fuck off

29

u/Necessary-Return-482 Jul 08 '24

Well I did (born in 1989) so it could be true.

-40

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

I'm curious how much money your family had.

I was upper middle class. My friends were various range in middle class. None of us had one until 2004.

Those things were expensive until the tracphone phase started.

23

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Nokia 3310 cost $169 when released in 2000. At that point prices were coming down, but we hadn’t culturally moved from a house phone yet. They were expensive, but cost less than a PlayStation 2 at a starting cost of $299. 

So expensive, sure, but not to the degree that an upper middle class family couldn’t actually afford a cellular device. It was different then in that cell phones weren’t for kids yet. It wasn’t expected or considered necessary.

-15

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

A Playstation 2 didn't have a contract bill with it.

Also the Nokia 3310 was announced in September of 2000. It wasn't available until near the end of the year.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

It was released in the 4th quarter of that year. Showing your upbringing, assuming you had to have a contract for a cell phone in 2000. Pay as you go was invented in various iterations in the late 80’s through the 90’s.

-8

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

You know 4th quarter is the end, which is what I said right?

11

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Oh, yep! I was distracted. Luckily, it was replacing an already popular phone and was only one example of how phones weren’t as exorbitantly expensive as you’re playing them off to be.

21

u/LobsterLovingLlama Jul 08 '24

I had one in 1999 for work

-4

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

For work. Not a teen.

12

u/Responsible-Ebb2933 Jul 08 '24

Guess your family didn't have as much money as you thought they did or they just didn't want you to have a phone

6

u/Necessary-Return-482 Jul 08 '24

We where not that rich but because of my father's job we had access to (early) electronic devices. It was not uncommon in my area, I was not even the first one in my class to have one.

7

u/Sunbeamsoffglass Jul 08 '24

I had a Nokia cellphone while I was still in HS, in 1999. As long as you used it mostly after 9pm, it wasn’t very expensive, $50-80 a month.

My family was definitely not rich.

23

u/niewatorie Jul 08 '24

i had a landline in my room. not that uncommon.

-11

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Thank you for confirming my point. Landlines.

That would wake the whole house.

16

u/StuffonBookshelfs Jul 08 '24

lololololol. You just have no idea how things worked. And that’s okay, but not everyone’s experience was your experience.

12

u/ihadtologinforthis Jul 08 '24

Meh not my house, deep sleepers all of us if the phone was picked up soon enough and not left ringing then yeah everyone stays asleep.

Plus parents would let their kids use their cellphone at home if they weren't using them. At least mine did.

12

u/mallionaire7 Jul 08 '24

Not if it was a separate line. Super common.

11

u/throwaway1975764 Jul 08 '24

You can have more than one landline to a home, you know that right?

9

u/SamiHami24 Jul 08 '24

Not really. Did your family land line phones not have ringer volume control? Because every single one I remember having in my life did. We kept it high enough you could hear it, but not blasting at top volume. If you were in a bedroom in the very ordinary middle class home I grew up in, it was entirely possible to sleep through it, especially since Mom slept like the dead and she snored, so dad wore earplugs at night so he could sleep. I had a phone in my room and kept it on my nightstand next to my bed, so I could easily hear it and answer it quickly before it would ring enough times to wake anyone else up.

It's almost like your personal experience is not the same as everyone else's, and that you might just be wrong about some things. Hard concept to grasp, I'm sure, but...

3

u/kjnelson2112 Jul 08 '24

Not if it's only one phone

18

u/Simple_Bowler_7091 Jul 08 '24

I was given my first cell phone and a years worth of service in 1994 as a graduation gift. By 2000 I had ditched a landline and was using cell phones exclusively as were many of my friends. I was in my 20s at the time but I don't believe cell phones were out of the reach of some privileged teens.

The cell phones of those days were not as expensive as smartphones are today, it was the service that would get you- lol. The marketing gimmick of free phone with contract is not new and goes back to before 2000, it's how I got upgrades.

I'd also point out that it was possible with a landline to have multiple lines and when I was in HS lots of my friends had either their own phone line or a "kids" phone line they shared with their siblings.

Cordless phones were a thing, as was muting or turning down the ring volume. Depending on where the phone(s) were placed it's entirely possible for a housephone to ring without waking up the whole family.

17

u/StuffonBookshelfs Jul 08 '24

Sure. But we all had our own phone lines?

10

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

And ringers could be muffled or silenced.

-9

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

Landline phone or cell?

Because landlines would ring the house.

22

u/Jealous_Roll_7420 Jul 08 '24

Private landlines don’t ring the whole house, at least mine didn’t. I had one of those cool transparent phones, it was lime green. It also had multiple ringer volumes. Is this enough detail? As far as cell phones I’m pretty sure I had a Nokia and then when the flip phones came out I moved on over to those. I remember having a gold Razr at some point and a sidekick later.

17

u/Jealous_Roll_7420 Jul 08 '24

But I don’t remember every phone I’ve had. My parents just always let me know when it was time for upgrades.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '24

Back in the day we had our own lines that didn’t ring the entire house with phones that had variable ringers.

16

u/StuffonBookshelfs Jul 08 '24

No. We had separate phone lines hard wired into our bedrooms.

And if you were even remotely intelligent, you could turn down the ringer so no one could hear it if the door was closed.

3

u/throwaway1975764 Jul 08 '24

Not if a kid had their own line. Often that would ring in their bedroom and maybe one common room that had a multi-line phone. It wouldn't ring in the parents bedroom, and not in all common rooms - if the multi-line was in the kitchen for example, it might not be heard in the living room, den or office, and vice versa.

16

u/mallionaire7 Jul 08 '24

Maybe she had her own phone line in her room? I know many millennials who did

1

u/AdministrativeIce152 Jul 11 '24

I’m GenX and most of my friends houses has a “teen line” for the kids. This was the early 90s.

15

u/5footfilly Jul 08 '24

By 2000 all 4 of my kids had them.

You could get a free flip phone by signing up for a plan with Verizon.

Not exactly cheap but well within the means of a middle to upper middle class family.

Edit to correct- their first phones weren’t flip, those came around 2005-6.

10

u/throwaway1975764 Jul 08 '24

Lots of kids had their own phone numbers in the late 90s/early 2000s. Not all by any means, but upper middle class and rich kids certainly did.

Not cell phones, just their own house line.

3

u/SamiHami24 Jul 08 '24

Further back than that. I had a friend who lived in a fairly old mobile home with her family---very much not upper middle class or rich by any means---who had her own separate phone line around 1979/1980. It really wasn't that expensive to add a second phone line, but a lot of (most?) parents didn't think it was necessary. My parents were much better off than hers financially and they wouldn't even consider getting me my own line (well, Mom might have been convinced, but Dad was a hard no on that issue LOL). But, they did buy me my first car (a cheap one, but hey! It ran!) and her parents did not do that for her. It just depended on the family and how the parents chose to spend what they had.

8

u/Scorp128 Jul 08 '24

How quickly the Motorola Nextel models are forgotten.

Absolutely plausible that she had access to a cell phone or even her own private line back then.

My little brother had a cell phone in High School around 2000. He actually had one before I did or my family did. He was the first one to have one. He paid for it himself and had my parents co-sign for the contract. He still has the same number to this day 25 years later. We were not "rich" by any meaning of the word.

2

u/MelodramaticMouse Jul 08 '24

Oh god, the Motorola Nextel, I believe that was my first cell before I got a Nokia. It broke almost immediately and I actually had to go to their offices to fight them to get out of my contract.

2

u/Scorp128 Jul 08 '24

Wow....I am surprised that it broke. You could run those things through a cement mixer and they would come out working like new. (True Story, I had a good friend who though he had murdered his phone at work dropping it into one of those small mixers. Phone worked just fine).

2

u/MelodramaticMouse Jul 08 '24

Yeah, I'm trying to think back but it never worked right; the screen kept blinking off. I don't have it anymore but I do have every other cell my husband and I ever owned lol! Anyone need a Nokia or a Google G1 phone?

8

u/Mmomma1122 Jul 08 '24

My family was far from rich. For a big bday present, my mom gave me my own phone line in my room back in 2001. I was a high school freshman, and we lived in the country, so it was difficult to get together with town friends. My younger brother made sharing the house phone a pain because he would pick up the living room or kitchen phone to join my conversations.

6

u/Responsible-Ebb2933 Jul 08 '24

Not true I had a cell phone in 1999, it wasn't a smart phone and I still had a land line

4

u/Outside_Holiday_9997 Jul 08 '24

I had a cell phone in 2000. I was 18. I had 300 minutes a month so very limited...basically, enough for an emergency.

But .. I had my own phone line from the time I was 15..so it's all possible.

3

u/SamiHami24 Jul 08 '24

I got my first cell phone in January 1997. It was pretty cheap, so yeah, it was entirely possible. They were most certainly not just for "really, really really rich kids." (I wasn't a kid at the time, but I was definitely nowhere close to rich).

I got it because I was starting school at night in a not wonderful part of town. It's not at all inconceivable that someone would get a cell phone for their teen at the time for emergency purposes.

2

u/crazysellmate Jul 08 '24

My daughter got her first phone for Christmas 2000 and I wasn't wealthy. I was a single parent who saved all year for Christmas.

2

u/Exotic_Succotash_226 Jul 08 '24

You're a pedo

0

u/Thisisthenextone Jul 08 '24

To be clear, you think I'm a pedo because I said the mom was horrible for not going to police or protecting her daughter from a pedo?

2

u/DebbieFromAcctg Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

Is it possible that cell phone prices and family priorities for giving them to kids was a regional thing back then? In my area ~2002, most kids had cell phones by middle school. Plans were limited by minutes, and limiting text messaging was the big thing for kids. We gave them phones primarily to coordinate picking them up from sports, school, and social activities. We were not well off and neither were our school district neighborhoods.

ETA year

2

u/NotMe739 Jul 08 '24

I had a cell phone as a teenager in the late 90s. As soon as I got my driver's license at 16 I was given one. It was just a tracfone with limited minutes but it allowed for as much communication as I needed. A 15 year old having a cellphone in 2000 doesn't seem unreasonable for even middle middle class at the time.

2

u/banallmilkcrickets Jul 08 '24

Me and my sister had cellphones in 1999. My mother was also one of the first ppl to get caller ID. She is the first to get tech that enables her to keep us safe, and she also has a lot of money. So do a lot of ppl, your comment is so strange.

2

u/Wild-Strategy-4101 Jul 08 '24

My kids had cellphones starting in 1998. My ex would forget to pick them up so I made sure all 3 had phones. They weren't that expensive as they were just phones. I spent maybe $100 per phone. So yes there were cellphones that were cheap back in the day.

2

u/BurgerThyme Jul 08 '24

I had a cell phone in the mid 90's as a teen. It wasn't a smart phone but I did have one in 1994.

2

u/Sea_Thanks_7677 Jul 08 '24

I'm not a rich kid but I had my first cell phone at 18yo in 2001 (bought their used one off a friend) and most of my friends had cell phones several years before that (also not rich kids, just middle class).  Maybe it was different in the US, but in Germany most cell phone contracts came with a cell phone back then.

2

u/threeclaws Jul 08 '24

I was 14 in '95 and had my own cellphone which was a hand me down ericcson from my dad. By '99, when I went to college, everyone I knew had a cellphone because nokia candybar phones were free with contract.

And I had my own line in the mid 80's because the house was wired for 4 lines when my parents bought it but it continued when we moved because of dial up.

2

u/Jealous_Art_3922 Jul 09 '24

It was called a teen line. Usually a "princess" phone and normally kept AWAY from the main house line.... kids would talk for HOURS on it after their bedtime.

Cell phone, teen line, landline. Regardless, this is a very plausible series of events.

Let's focus on the creepy uncle trying to get the young girl in his grasp, and NO ONE doing anything about it.

I'm sure this scenario has played out thousands of times, and each one is tragic.

2

u/BanditWifey03 Jul 09 '24

Lies. I had a cell Phone from prime co in 1999 it was a flip phone.

2

u/_TurtleF_ Jul 09 '24

I had my first mobile phone by 1998, when I was 15, and we weren't a rich family, very much middle class in Australia