When I was about 18 or 19, my brother told me that he had an attraction to minors. I had been abused countless times as a child, but at the time, was dealing with my own thoughts of the same nature. I have never harmed a child and never would, and since this was about 5 or 6 years ago, I haven’t had any attraction like that since.
I confided in him that I had the same attraction, but that I would never act on it. After some time of him trying to get me to talk about it more, I blocked him on social media and wanted nothing to do with him because i was fearful that my attraction would get worse by talking to him.
It didn’t take long before I told my dad that he had those attractions and my dad decided that he wouldn’t allow him to go anywhere near the kids unsupervised if he were to come and visit. I didn’t tell my dad of my own attraction because I was afraid that he would disown me. I even tried to convey the same thing to my mom.
I don’t know how, but they both either forgot or maybe confronted him and he denied it outright. I don’t know which.
As the years went on, I just tried to put it out of my head, not wanting to think about it. Whenever my brother would come up in conversation, I would try to change the subject or just listen while waiting for them to be done talking about him.
Eventually, my dad convinced me to unblock him because he wanted to talk to me about making music for him or something. It had been a few years since I decided I wanted nothing to do with my brother, and I didn’t have a good enough excuse to tell people as to why I wanted nothing to do with him, so I unblocked him at my father’s request and started small chats with him.
My brother was now in full contact with my family again. He was talking to my mom, my dad, me, but most worryingly, to my niece. I was comforted in knowing that he was only talking to her with other people around, or that’s what I thought.
Fast forward to a little bit later and my mom comes to me crying about how my brother is a predator. She saw messages on my niece’s phone that indicated that he was possibly grooming her. There was nothing explicit, but because I knew his history, I knew what was happening.
To prevent panic in the family, I decided to handle this my own way, which is something I would come to regret tremendously. I tried to tell my mom that it may not be what it looks like to keep her calm, then I decided to contact my brother to try and scare him away from my niece.