'AITA for telling my SIL a family secret, and now everyone is breaking up or divorcing?'

"AITA for telling my SIL a family secret, and now everyone is breaking up or divorcing?"

I (30F) recently told my SIL a family secret everyone hid from her and now everyone is calling me the AH and telling me it wasn’t my place. Some back story: I am no contact with my mother and her husband but I do still have a relationship with about half of my siblings.

There’s 12 of us and I’m the only girl. Anyway, several months ago I got an invite to my older brother’s (33m, we’ll call him Adam) wedding. The invite came with myself, my husband, and our children listed. I immediately called him and asked if our mother’s husband will be there and he said of course.

I reminded Adam that I will never have my children in the same room as that man and frankly I never want to be either but I’ll make an exception for myself only and celebrate his happy day but my children and husband will not attend.

He said his wife (we’ll call her Abby) would be so disappointed because we’ve never met and because she has no family of her own (no siblings and both parents deceased) she was hoping to have the entirety of her new family together. I told Adam I’m sorry to disappoint his wife to be but I’ll be attending alone and I’m not bending on this.

The day of the wedding, I did as I said I would and came alone and my husband took the kids to go visit his parents for the weekend. The ceremony was beautiful and it was amazing to see my brother so happy. During the reception, Abby pulled me aside when she found the time and started asking me a million questions, excited to meet Adam’s mysterious little sister. Her exact words.

Then she asked the question that made my heart sink. How come I’m never around. I realized then no one ever told her about my mother’s husband. At first I told her it was a conversation she really needed to have with Adam.

She said she’s tried asking him and everyone else and the responses she always got was I’m dramatic and a drama queen and I’m throwing a years-long tantrum because I’m a brat. But after speaking with me she didn’t get that impression of me at all. I insisted again that she really needs to speak with Adam. Her next response made my heart sink even further.

She said she’d rather hear it from me because Adam will just refuse to tell her and because she’s now 10 weeks pregnant, she really wants her child to know their entire family. Her baby won’t have aunts, uncles, and cousins from her side so she really wanted her baby to have a relationship with everyone and she thought maybe whatever it is she could help fix it.

I took a deep breath and told her the man my mother is married to hurt me and made my entire middle school experience a nightmare and no one protected me until I met my husband.

He and his family made me realize I didn’t have to put up with the crap I got from my family so the moment I graduated high school I left and never looked back. After I said this to her, I just turned and left the reception and drove straight home.

Well during their honeymoon, Abby did some investigating and found my step dad’s criminal record, the charges, and him still listed on the registry. She then took it upon herself to message the other wives and girlfriends of my other brothers to see if any of them knew. None of them did. Now four of my brothers are looking at divorces, including Adam, and two have already been dumped.

My phone has been blowing up non stop because this of course is my fault. My husband insists I did nothing wrong and that they should have been honest with their significant others. So AITAH for telling my SIL our family secret or should I just have kept my mouth shut.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

grayblue_grrrl wrote:

NTA. Imagine a group of men protecting a predator and breeding a whole new pack for him. Without consent of the women in their lives.

Screw them all.

JustAMuggle94 wrote:

NTA. She’s pregnant. She needs to know the risk of her child’s safety in the family. Your brother clearly doesn’t care about that at all. Neither does anyone else in that family. This is the sad reality of family ab**ers. Usually, the rest of the family will protect them instead of the victim for some reason.

HistorineHeroine wrote:

NTA. Assuming at least half the partners are rational adults…they’re splitting because their partners told them you were a “drama queen” over a s** offender and are realizing their partners aren’t a safe place at all. I’ve been married for years, with children, and would be out with a quickness. Maybe they shouldn’t have lied to protect your a**ser 🤷‍♀️

romarqable wrote:

NTA. When I was about 12, my family was living in the second floor of my grandfather's house. My grandmother had passed about 4 years prior. My grandfather had remarried to a particularly awful woman. They told us one day that her son would be moving in downstairs with them, and that since age 15 he'd been in juvie for stealing a car.

He was about to turn 18 and be released. The kids biological father called my parents and told them the real truth. He's been in a psych ward since 8 years old for molesting his own four-yea- old sister. My grandfather lied to us. My sisters were living in the house at the same time as us, 5 and 3.

My blood grandfather was willing to put his own grandchildren in harm's way to move a predator into his home. I went no contact, and only saw him one more time after we moved out, at his funeral. NTA. I'm sorry your family failed you so horribly.

You, and anyone harmed by POS people like that deserve so much better. And your family is truly awful for not only letting him stay around, lying about you, but also not telling their own spouses that an ab*ser, on a registry would be around the family and their kids. disgusting on their part.

Traditional_Start561 wrote:

Nope, NTA, time someone stepped up to protect the children/future children, not to mention none of the spineless cowards you call brothers could be honest with their wives about it? What did they think would happen when they eventually did find out when it happened to one of their kids?

CartoonistSeparate47 wrote:

NTA. They're not divorcing because you told them the truth. They're divorcing because THEY didn't tell the truth. And also for letting them (and possibly their kids) around him.