AITAH for going no contact with my sister after finding she had a hand in a traumatic childhood event?

A Reddit user shares a deeply personal story about their tumultuous childhood, revealing the trauma they faced from physical abuse at the hands of their stepfather. After discussing past experiences with their sister Mary, the user learns that Mary was responsible for a letter that led to severe beatings.

Shocked and hurt by this revelation, the user decides to go no contact with Mary, leading to backlash from other family members who believe they are overreacting. Read the original story below to explore the complexities of family dynamics and trauma.

‘ AITAH for going no contact with my sister after finding she had a hand in a traumatic childhood event?’

I (Candice, 34f) had a pretty rough childhood. My three sisters (Della 33f, Mary 32f, and Alice 31f) and I were raised by my stepdad (he was the youngest two’s real dad). He was a good dad in some ways but there was a lot of physical abuse under the guise of “discipline” along with being exposed to unsavory people.

When I was around 11 or 12, my youngest sister, Alice, brought a letter to my dad that was apparently written by someone named Candace. It was to a boy named Dustin and the letter basically said, “I don’t like it when you try to touch me inappropriately. Please stop.

Sincerely, Candace. My dad called me in and said that I had written the letter, even though that wasn’t how I spelled my name, and the handwriting was different from mine. I tried to explain that it wasn’t me, but he wasn’t hearing it.

He made me tape the letter on the wall of his bedroom, and he beat me every day, morning and night, for three days, making me write the date and time of each beating on the letter. The only reason he stopped is because the last day he beat me, his friend came by while he was beating me and told him he should let it go.

This has been a memory that I’ve always struggled with. Getting beaten was bad enough, but those beatings were some of the worst I’d ever experienced, and I didn’t even do anything wrong. I have been bitter about it my whole life.

I had my first child when I was 20 while my husband was deployed and I lived with my dad while my husband was gone. I confronted my dad about the beatings, saying that it was messed up that he beat me like that over something I didn’t do.

He got mad and said how dare I question how he parented me. I packed up my stuff that night and the next morning my baby and I left to another state to go live with my husbands family. I never saw or spoke to my dad again, and he died the next year.

I was sad that we never spoke again, but I was still bitter about those beatings. Every time I told the story, whether to a friend or my partner, I would almost come to tears, still angry about it. Fast forward to the other day, I was talking to my second youngest sister, Mary, on the phone.

She has had mental health problems for years. We were discussing beatings we had gotten from our dad as kids and I brought up the letter beating. She then told me, laughing, that it was her that had written the letter all those years ago, and she thought I knew. I was in shock.

I told her I needed to hang up to process what she had revealed to me, but she kept laughing like it was no big deal. I was devastated. While I went through all kinds of physical, emotional, and s**ual abuse as a child, those beatings were some of my worst memories.

I couldn’t believe she watched me basically get tortured for three days and never said anything to stop it. I hung up and called my sister Della, who was shocked to hear that Mary had done that all those years ago. She told me I should go no contact for a while to recover emotionally.

So I did just that. Now my other sister and mom are blowing up my phone calling me an AH for cutting my sister off for something she did at 9 years old. They say she was just a little kid and didn’t know any better. So, am I the AH?

Here’s how people reacted to the post:

Cranky70something −  NTA. First, each one of us has the freedom to include or exclude anyone in our life for any reason or no reason at all.. Mary did you a terrible wrong. You do not state how old she was when she did this, but you said she was a couple years younger than you.

You were 11 or 12, and that makes her 9 or 10. She was old enough to have developed a moral compass. Even very small children know right from wrong. You do mention she had mental problems, without specifying their nature.

But, she was old enough and mentally together enough to have written the letter and was aware of the seriousness of its contents. She witnessed your t**ror and pain for 3 days and did *nothing.* What she did was evil, and then she laughed about it.

If I were you, I would never speak to her again. I would never have any contact whatsoever with her. And I would go low contact on anyone who does not support you.

It sounds as though you’ve got PTSD from what happened to you, and although I know that counseling and therapy are not panaceas, I would give them a shot. I have read that cognitive behavioral therapy has been recently found to be quite effective with PTSD.

I wish you the very best of luck and I am so, so sorry that happened to you. (((hugs))). Edited to add: It’s also disquieting that your father didn’t take the contents of that letter seriously, and also that he didn’t listen to you when you pointed out it wasn’t your handwriting and it wasn’t the way your name was spelled.

He never stopped to consider that the letter might not have been a f**e, not childish BS. What if there had been a person named Dustin who was abusing someone named Candice in your neighborhood? He didn’t bother checking? The lack of fairness must have been as difficult as the beatings.

she_who_knits −  NTA.  The minute your dad started beating you, she knew it wasn’t a funny joke any more. She may have been young, but she wasn’t stupid. And it’s even less funny now. Stay NC until she sends you a handwritten groveling apology. Go LC with your mom, she let that man beat you.

supertwicken −  NTA! You didn’t cut her off for “something she did at 9 years old.” You are cutting her off for being an *awful human being* at 32 years old!

DesperateToNotDream −  1. What on *earth* was your stepdads (so called) reasoning for beating you for (if it had been a real letter) telling a boy to stop touching you? Even if you had written the letter, wtf was he trying to teach you by beating you for that??

2. You aren’t cutting her off for something she did at age 9. If she had been apologetic and remorseful that would be one thing. You’re cutting her off because she *still* thinks it was a funny thing to have done. 3. I would go NC with everyone in your horrible family.

karjeda −  Where was your mom when he abused you??? Your sister was 9, your mom wasn’t. Cut sister snd mom off, what despicable people. I just can’t with mom.

Sister is bad enough to laugh knowing you were beaten for 3 days. But mom? To act like that hasn’t affected you your whole life? What a rotten mom. Why do you even talk to her?

Astyryx −  Keep Della, the rest are garbage. F**k “She was a little kid” she was only two years younger than you. **You** were a little kid.  I hope your stepdad is itchy in hell for all eternity.

Not only was it sadistic and unjust, but even if take at face value, it was a letter to someone asking them to _stop_ touching you, so especially horrible if it were real.

F**k Mary. Her mental problems are an explanation, not an excuse, and clearly she’s doing nothing to deal with them. She’s a bottomless a**hole. And f**k your mother and religious sister.

One abandoned her kids to a monster, the other is hiding her s**tty lack of a moral compass behind a cardboard cutout of God. Best of luck to you and the decent sister, therapy will help, especially EMDR + IFS. Preserve your peace.

YeeHawMiMaw −  She may have been 9 when she wrote it, but she was 32 when she LAUGHED about it. You do not owe her even a second thought.

amyloulie −  NTA. That’s twisted and tbh you wouldn’t be an AH if you never spoke to her again. I feel in a way that might be the best thing for your own mental health.

NonniSpumoni −  NTA. I had something very similar happen to me. I was blamed by my brother for something I had no part in and received a similar punishment. After my beating my brother actually confessed, no one apologized to me..

I was just told we should be proud of brother for coming forward and being honest. He received no punishment. I lived in fear my entire childhood. I have trauma related mental health issues. Some stuff just never goes away, it is there because it’s hardwired into our brains.

What your sister did could have been forgiven if she had come forward earlier. Maybe even now if she were contrite or had an apology or explanation. She had nothing. She thought it was funny. One of the most traumatic events in your life was humourous to her.

So f**k her. F**k your mom. F**k anyone that thinks this is okay. You get to process this however you want. You get to go no contact for life if you want. Lay down the law with anyone that doesn’t respect these boundaries.

I am old now…I have had therapy and worked on myself. I am not who I was when I was younger. My past does not define me. I am no contact with my brother and my parents are dead(I don’t even miss them) and my life is fantastic. Cut out the cancer.

GrumpyLump91 −  It’s too bad your sister won’t get beaten and tortured for 3 days so she can understand what you went through.
BTW, where was your mom when you were young? Sounds like she needs to STFU.

Do you think the user’s decision to cut off contact with her sister was justified given the trauma involved, or was it an overreaction to a childhood mistake? How would you handle a similar revelation within your family? Share your thoughts below!