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QUESTION:
"From the time my daughter a young girl, her father would talk about how big her breasts were getting, and he would just always make comments that would make her uncomfortable. There was a few times he would smack her butt when she was a teenager. One time when he smacked her butt she spoke up and was quickly shut down by his girlfriend and her daughter telling her to not speak of it again, and they brought it up a couple times after saying that she was making it all up. She was told that this is normal behavior for a father, and that he was just “messing around”. Now that she’s 18 she’s starting to realize how disgusting and inappropriate it all was, so thats why she only now brought it up. Since most of this stuff happened a few years back, would I be in the wrong for only bringing it up now?"
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TOP ANSWERS (AS SELECTED BY MODERATOR):
The following top answers have been selected by a moderator from hundreds of responses to the original question.
"Do not dismiss it overall just because it happened before. She needs justice, even if it can just be yelling at him. For them to say keep it quiet is horrifying. As disgusting as that is, I hope that’s all that was done, poor baby. I would offer her therapy. Some safe place she can speak to an unbiased professional who can maintain a proper appearance as she gets it all off her chest. I know you would want to know, and you can try speaking to her, but you may lose your shit hearing some of it. At the least, find out if he needs to be reported (I’m not sure if speech and butt slaps can be, especially if its been years)"
"That’s literally sexual harassment!!! I would go to the authorities asap"
"No. It’s not wrong. It was inappropriate and not “normal”. It was unwanted sexual touching of a child. See a woman’s victim advocate or sexual assault advocate to find the best ways to help her."
"Definitely gotta talk through it. With her at least. Repressing things like that is not good for ones mental health. She needs to understand. I remember all the realizations I had once grown. Things were not normal, it was my norm at the time. I’m now a mother and see many things were wrong. Trying to heal and make sense of things later sucks!"
"Help HER get through it. You’d be surprised how much abuse you can go through for YEARS just going through it all in survival mode until one day you’re telling someone a story about your past and they call it ABUSE (which it is!) And suddenly your survival mode turns off and the lights come on and you start to really see all that you’ve been through… labeling it for what it was, validating her natural instincts that it was not appropriate behavior, and helping her get through it all will be extremely vital for her mental/emotional health and success in her future. Also, she doesn’t need to “forgive him” or keep him in her life…if he’s an abuser that title trumps “father”. I don’t believe in forcing people to maintain contact with their abusers."
"Nope I think it’s time u find out if something else happened n if so she can still go after him legally"
"This is more than just weird behavior. This is totally inappropriate sexual harassment and assault. If your daughter has made a point to bring it up and talk about how uncomfortable it made her, TALK ABOUT IT. Sometimes when you’re growing up you don’t realize how wrong things are until you’re an adult. I’d be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you. I just don’t understand why you didn’t stand up for your daughter and all of a sudden care? This man would be in jail or have a permanent injury if this happened to my daughter."
"If my husband smacked our daughters butt at that age we would have some serious problems. Absolutely disgusting!"
"How inappropriate and disgusting of the step mom and step sister to shut her down and make her feel like she couldn’t express her discomfort. They should’ve been the first to call him out after witnessing this. I’d be having it investigated for sure."
"That’s disgusting and wrong yes she should bring it up talk about it and hopefully now that she is a adult she never has to see this man again."
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