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| My Sibling Was Abused as a Baby. Should I Share What I Saw? | My Sibling Was Abused as a Baby. Should I Share What I Saw? |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| When I was a child, I witnessed my parent severely beat a sibling — a one-time incident nobody else witnessed. My sibling was a baby at the time, and the injury was dismissed as being the result of a fall. This occurred many decades ago. | When I was a child, I witnessed my parent severely beat a sibling — a one-time incident nobody else witnessed. My sibling was a baby at the time, and the injury was dismissed as being the result of a fall. This occurred many decades ago. |
| Over the years, I have wondered if I should disclose what I know. I believe my parent suffers tremendous guilt, but I don’t know if disclosure would bring relief or shame. For my sibling, I wonder if the disclosure would provide an answer to their anxiety issues. | Over the years, I have wondered if I should disclose what I know. I believe my parent suffers tremendous guilt, but I don’t know if disclosure would bring relief or shame. For my sibling, I wonder if the disclosure would provide an answer to their anxiety issues. |
| I feel I should wait until our parent is gone to share what I know. Will my sibling have reason to be angry with me for waiting until a time when there is no way to confront our parent? — Name Withheld | I feel I should wait until our parent is gone to share what I know. Will my sibling have reason to be angry with me for waiting until a time when there is no way to confront our parent? — Name Withheld |
| From the Ethicist: | From the Ethicist: |
| I’m going to assume that you’re substantially older than your sibling and that you saw exactly what you remember seeing. The first question is what the consequences of your disclosure are likely to be. Even if this injury caused a lifelong anxiety disorder, I don’t know that such conditions have “answers.” In midcentury psychological thrillers like “Spellbound,” uncovering a long-buried truth would bring a cure, but the clinical evidence offers no such assurances. | I’m going to assume that you’re substantially older than your sibling and that you saw exactly what you remember seeing. The first question is what the consequences of your disclosure are likely to be. Even if this injury caused a lifelong anxiety disorder, I don’t know that such conditions have “answers.” In midcentury psychological thrillers like “Spellbound,” uncovering a long-buried truth would bring a cure, but the clinical evidence offers no such assurances. |
| The only thing we can be pretty sure of is that this revelation will disrupt your family relationships. There will be recriminations, anger and pain. You will indeed have to explain to your sibling why you have kept this to yourself for all those decades. Your parent (if you don’t wait for the parent’s death) may remember the incident differently from the way you remember it, or not at all. Your sibling might become permanently estranged from your parent. Or, for that matter, your parent could persuade your sibling that you’re delusional, and both could become estranged from you. But while negative consequences, whatever the specifics, are highly probable, the positive effects you mention — relieving your parent’s shame, reducing your sibling’s anxiety — are merely speculative. If all that mattered were the health and happiness of your family members, the expected results do not commend revealing what you know. | The only thing we can be pretty sure of is that this revelation will disrupt your family relationships. There will be recriminations, anger and pain. You will indeed have to explain to your sibling why you have kept this to yourself for all those decades. Your parent (if you don’t wait for the parent’s death) may remember the incident differently from the way you remember it, or not at all. Your sibling might become permanently estranged from your parent. Or, for that matter, your parent could persuade your sibling that you’re delusional, and both could become estranged from you. But while negative consequences, whatever the specifics, are highly probable, the positive effects you mention — relieving your parent’s shame, reducing your sibling’s anxiety — are merely speculative. If all that mattered were the health and happiness of your family members, the expected results do not commend revealing what you know. |
| You could argue, however, that the facts should come out, because your sibling has the right to know what happened, and because your parent and you have the obligation to face up to it and apologize — for the abuse, for the silence. I favor living lives that are in touch with reality. As I’ve often noted, there’s value in having the chance to deal with the central determining truths about our lives, even if it doesn’t make us happier. | You could argue, however, that the facts should come out, because your sibling has the right to know what happened, and because your parent and you have the obligation to face up to it and apologize — for the abuse, for the silence. I favor living lives that are in touch with reality. As I’ve often noted, there’s value in having the chance to deal with the central determining truths about our lives, even if it doesn’t make us happier. |
| This case doesn’t depend on your speculations about what benefits the revelation will bring. It’s about what your sibling is owed. If you really believe that your sibling is entitled to know what you know, then you shouldn’t wait until your parent is gone, because you will have denied your sibling the opportunity to confront this parent — and your parent the opportunity to address what happened. | |
| Your sibling’s entitlement to this truth is, I’ll grant, a weighty consideration. But when it comes to what you describe as a one-time incident, many decades in the past, your first priority should be doing what would be best for your sibling. Try to be as cleareyed about this as possible. To insist on disclosure when the knowledge would only cause long-term distress would be acting on that old maxim fiat justitia, ruat caelum — let there be justice, though the heavens fall. That, I fear, would be a kind of moral fanaticism. | |
| I am a woman in my mid-30s, and my partner of two years is about to turn 50. We love each other very much and want to start a family. But my partner was once a heavy, longtime smoker (who has since quit and now takes excellent care of his health). His father and uncle both died of heart disease in their 60s. Is it ethical to create children who’d face a higher likelihood of losing their father while they’re still young, and who may themselves inherit family health issues? — Name Withheld | |
| From the Ethicist: | |
| I don’t know that you can make reliable inferences about your partner’s health prospects or about your children’s. Perhaps your partner’s father and uncle were heavy smokers, as he once was, and their smoking accelerated their deaths. Medical care relating to cardiovascular health has, in any case, advanced since then; it will have advanced further when your children are adults. | |
| Although smokers die, on average, a decade sooner than nonsmokers, those who quit at 50 are estimated to get back six years of life expectancy. Going by the actuarial tables, any children you might have will probably be adults before they lose their father. | |
| Still, given your concerns, you might want to confer — jointly — with a genetic counselor. Having kids together is, needless to say, a choice that’s best made together; you and your partner should talk openly about whatever hopes and apprehensions you may have. | |
| Last week’s question was from a reader whose mother told all her adult children about a codicil in her will that stipulated they would be disinherited if they married someone not recognized as Jewish by her local Orthodox Rabbinate. Our letter writer shared: “I’ve since married someone who fits her definition of a Jew, so the codicil doesn’t apply to me. Still, I have three middle-aged siblings who are all not religious and unmarried. … Is she right to have the codicil? And to have told us about it?” | |
| In his response, the Ethicist noted: “What your mother and her husband are planning to do, as it happens, is at odds with much rabbinical thought concerning inheritance. A Judaic scholar I conferred with confirms that the mainstream Talmudic tradition of Halakha, or Jewish law, revered by the Orthodox Union, holds that apostates don’t forfeit their right to inherit. … Whom we marry is properly up to us. Parents may express their views; coercion, though, is wrong. Does threatening to deprive someone of a substantial inheritance amount to coercion? Different understandings of coercion will come out differently on this. But it’s too close for comfort.” (Reread the full question and answer here.) | |
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| Trying to “control from the grave” in this case is wrongheaded of the parents, and it has the added distasteful feature of controlling their children's lives now. If a corrective conversation with a rabbi is not successful, the children can share the funds equally when the time comes and do the right thing by any excluded siblings. — Caroline | |
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| In an effort to stop this wrong, the letter writer can decide now to share the inheritance in an equitable way with their siblings. The writer can reassure the siblings that they are free to marry whomever they love without worrying about the codicil. The parents are free to do what they want with their money, ethical or not — but the writer does not have an obligation to continue the wrong after they pass. — Nicole | |
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| The Ethicist’s response is thorough but misses one point. While it may be controlling of the parents, it is indeed important for everyone to know about this plan for career and financial planning purposes. To marry a non-Jew and move through life thinking that there’s a cushion in one’s senior years, only to discover that there isn’t, could be every bit as tragic as not following one’s heart in marriage. — Diane | |
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| As soon as I became a parent, I concluded that any money earned by my spouse and I was also equally belonging to our children. Despite what the mother thinks the money is not “hers” but belonging to her and her family equally. — Neil | |
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| The Ethicist’s response was logical and calm. Allow me to express another side. What a sad, miserly way to divide your own family. I don’t buy it as “an expression of love” for a second. This is nothing more than an attempt to control grown children who want to live their own lives. If that wasn’t the case, the mother would never have told them about it. The letter writer has two ethical choices, try to talk the mother out of this mistake or split it with them after she passes. — Ruth |