Family and Friends Forum

This week we had a meeting with my husbands SOR manager and he wants to put a call into SS with regards to my nieces and nephew. I totally get why, but now I feel like my sister is being dragged into this mess even though she's done nothing wrong at all. He did say that he was happy for me to do the initial disclosure and said I didn't have to rush and he'd be back within a month. My plan had always been to tell her and my parents in the next week or so anyway, I was waiting for this meeting so that I could clarify some of the wording on the SHPO.



Those of you who have told family, especially if you have chosen to stay with your partner, how have you approached the subject? I'm not amazingly close to my family but at the same time I really don't want them to disown me, which I'm anxious that they might. My husband has already said that he will stay away from my sister and her children anyway but obviously I'd still like a relationship with them.

Thanks Mabel and Snowdrop for sharing your experiences. Unfortunately not telling them has been taken out of my hands as the police want to involve social services so it's got to be better, however hard, to tell them myself first. I can't put my sister through SS just turning up on her doorstep. Anyway I ended up calling my step dad today and telling him, he was really supportive, as he's always been. He's offered to have a conversation with my mum ahead of me telling her, she's been unwell and also has very early onset dementia. Hopefully she will be as supportive as him. I'm going over there tomorrow so I'm hoping that things won't be too weird.

It's been a mixed few days. My step dad told my mum for me before I got there and she took it fine. However given her memory issues we don't know how much she'll remember. He also primed my sister and asked her to call me. She was more upset about the fact that I hadn't told her about it and had been dealing with it alone, she said that she'd have gone to court to be with me if she had known. We talked about the restrictions of visiting her and agreed it would be easier for my husband to stay away, which is also what he said. But she is still happy for me to visit, her youngest is 9 so only 7 years before it doesn't become an issue anyway and she's probably off to boarding school at 13.

In the middle of all that a friend confirmed that everyone in the local pub was aware. Given that as far as we know it never made it into the paper I have no idea how they found out. We suspected that they have known since the first court date back in mid August, but no-one until know had actually come out and said anything directly and we've been avoiding the pub. I've been avoiding answering the message asking me if what she was told was correct, as it feels like everything is about to come crashing down and what has been my safe space where I could forget about it for a while occasionally is about to disappear. I guess I'm worried mostly that I'm about to lose all my local friends.

We did have a conversation about moving if things become too bad down here, and he's not opposed to it. However I'd rather not have to move just yet as I actually like my house.

Anyway I'm glad that i got those hard conversations with the family done and they haven't disowned me, or even saying that they want nothing to do with my husband. I wish in some respects that I'd said something earlier but it's not exactly an easy conversation to have, and it feels so much better not feeling like I have a big secret that I can't talk about, at least now I know I can talk to them about it.