Dealing with an Abusive Sister

[aeonicentity]

Not sure if this classifies as parenting, but its the cosest thing to the subject I need to talk about:

 

Free Domainers:

 

To begin, I’m usually not so forward about my personal life on the internet, but I’ve got no alternatives at this point. Specifically I’m looking for advice on dealing with abusive siblings. The content of this post is personal, and sensitive. Do not reply to this with frivolity, or useless suggestions. What I’m looking for here is accurate, useful advice on how to RTR this situation.

 

Background: I’m the last of 7 kids. My oldest sister is 40, and has 4 kids. Most of them have asperger’s syndrome. For the purpose’s of this post she will be referred to as S. S has serious issues with her mental psyche. By all accounts she’s always been smart, but very unstable.

 

S has never been particularly clean, and neither has her house. However, usually, it wasn’t in horrible shape (If you’ve ever seen my room, you know I don’t have a leg to stand on here.). S has always had problems with disciplining her children, either over reacting to them or under reacting to their behaviors. This has caused some stress in the family, but nothing that can’t be overcome.

 

Seven years ago, S had her youngest child, who was a real trial. He was born with serious allergies to just about all food. We (as a family) spent a lot of time taking food away from him and preventing him from eating things which would kill him. As a result he’s developed posessiveness issues, and oppositional defiance in addition to his aspergers. I’m concerned that he’s also developing sociopathic tendencies. All of thishas been very tough on S, and she’s snapped. She’s asking us to validate her, her parenting, and all her life decisions, even as she does things which we cannot condone or support.

 

Specifically, she’s projecting the abuse she puts on her kids onto her husband, accusing him of abuse (who knows, she might be right, but I can’t tell.) and asking all of us to side with her despite none of us knowing what’s going on.

 

She’s in the process of separating from her husband, and currently has de facto custody of the children, and control of the house. The house is degrading, and is so filthy that when her kids show up to our house for a weekend, they reek of rabbit shit (because she’s taken to raising them instead of a back yard). She doesn’t raise the kids,she spends her entire day sitting in her room complaining on facebook about them.

 

This abuse is particularly disturbing to me in her older two children. Her oldest daugter is failing highschool spectacularly, and can’t concentrate because she’s got all the responsibility of raising three kids. She’s disciplined by extremely harsh groundings, and emotional manipulation.

 

Her oldest son is coming of age, trying to cope with being sexually abused by a peer all of this with a mother who won’t leave her room, and posts excessively  about how horrible her life is on facebook.

 

I can’t just let these kids stay in this environment, it tortures me to even think about it. But what recourse do we as a family have? We all pretty much agree that S can’t actually raise these children by herself (although some of us disagree about where the children should go instead). There has to be something we can do legally! What options do people have when adults can’t handle themselves, and you need to take kids out of the situation?

[tjt]

I am so sorry to hear all of this, and I have absolutely no solution or advice to offer

Do you have an update? I see it has been a few months since posting.

 

Wishing you all the best!