Man is convinced teen nephew robbed him, family has doubts, you be the judge.
When this man is furious with his cousin, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for confronting my cousin in front of the whole family for stealing from my house?'
I(Late 30s Male) hosted Thanksgiving at my house. My husband(50s Male) and I have a nephew(16) who stays with us part-time. He has a bedroom on the second floor, and my bedroom is on the third floor.
It's a sweet Suite, with a sitting room living room, two walk-in closets and the bedroom. When you walk up the stairs you walk into the sitting room, then there's a small living room, then the bedroom and then you go into either one of the closets from the bedroom.
I have a nephew who is five, and is exhibiting signs of autism. His mother (27 F) is my second cousin. She came, along with her two brothers, and their mother. So everyone's taking turns entertaining my 5 year old nephew because he requires a little bit of extra attention.
At one point I leave the living room on the first floor, and I see him on the stairs, playing with a toy car and what looks like a watch. I look closer and I see the watch belongs to my husband. And it's a pretty expensive watch to be smashing into a toy car. I asked my nephew where he got it, and he said uncle's (29 Male) backpack. I asked him if he could show me.
He leads me to the piano room, where everyone put their jackets and whatnot, and my one cousin's backpack. My nephew opens the front portion of the backpack, and I see some other jewelry in there....
I was really pissed off, so I grabbed his backpack, and grab my nephew and went into the living room. I dumped the backpack out onto one of the coffee tables and ask my cousin what the heck was going on with the fact that two of my husband's watches, and a necklace that belong to my mother were in his bag.
I dumped out the bag, and the nephew who lives with me, his Switch was in there. The cousin who's backpack it was freaked out. Saying clearly my autistic nephew put stuff in there that he had taken from upstairs.
I know that's not the case, because he's not tall enough to get to the dresser where the jewelry was. Nor do I think he would even wander that far from everyone else. AITA for confronting him in front of everyone?
Let's find out.
tartymae writes:
NTA,In fact this cousin, who should never darken your doorstep again, is extra TA, because they also lied against a disabled child. Let the whole family see the level of their shit-i-tude.
emeraldbluezen writes:
YUP. OP, you actually did everyone a favor. Now they're aware that your cousin is a thief and can make appropriate decisions as to whether they want to maintain any sort of relationship with him or not...NTA.
potentialdiver9 writes:
NTA - those giving you a hard time don’t want to ruffle feathers. They’d rather keep the peace and allow the bad behavior. And blaming it on an autistic five year old? I wouldn’t let them back in the house without a five page essay accepting responsibility, a verbal apology to you, and a verbal apology to the five year old for accusing them.