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| Version 3 | Version 4 |
|---|---|
| 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? |
| (about 4 hours 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. | |
| 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. |