ArcaMax

Dear Eric: I have two brothers with storied pasts from 60 years ago. My older brother had a daughter when he was a teenager. Only I know this. He is now deceased. Should I tell his family?

My younger brother molested my niece (my older brother’s daughter) over an eight-year period. His wife doesn’t know this and wonders why he has no relationship with his family. He has no children.

Should I tell his wife?

I was planning to take these secrets to my grave. What do you think?

– Sister With Secrets

Dear Sister: One of these is a secret; the other is a crime. Your niece deserves justice. Although time, circumstance, and the law may make that difficult to achieve, if she wasn’t the one who asked you to keep this a secret, then you have an obligation to speak the truth.

Your family has stepped away from the brother, which is one way of protecting your niece and others, but it doesn’t address the root problem and it likely wasn’t all that your niece needed to begin processing or healing.

I hope that you and your family have supported your niece in other ways and provided her the care that she needs after such an awful violation. You owe your brother nothing. The responsibility is to your niece and her healing. But yes, you should also tell your brother’s wife. If she hasn’t figured it out already, she needs to know who she married.

As to your other brother and the daughter that the rest of the family doesn’t know about, this kind of information is brought to light more and more often through genetic testing. So, it’s only a matter of time. You can tell his family, and they can decide if they want to try to find their half-sibling or not.

But I encourage you to share this information as so often when people discover family they didn’t know they had, they regret the time lost. There’s no guarantee that will be the case here, but the family deserves the chance to make the decision.

Dear Eric: I read your response to “No Vote”, about a letter writer who didn’t support her husband’s run for school board in part because he didn’t have kids and I think an important point about serving on a Board of Education was overlooked.

Running for the Board of Education is not about whether you have children in the school system – or even whether you have children at all. A BOE member is an elected public official entrusted with helping oversee one of the community’s most important responsibilities: educating its children while being accountable for the taxpayers’ money.

Boards of Education have significant responsibilities involving policy, educational priorities, budgets, and fiscal oversight.

A good board member should be asking difficult questions: Are taxpayer dollars being spent wisely? Are resources actually reaching the classroom? Are teachers getting what they need to teach effectively? Are students receiving the programs and services they need to succeed? Can the district achieve better results with the resources it has?

Local government doesn't belong only to parents, retirees, longtime political activists, or people who have already spent decades serving. Communities need younger residents willing to become involved, learn the issues, ask questions, and accept responsibility.

– Civic Engagement

Dear Civic: These are all excellent points! Thanks for sharing this important perspective.

Dear Eric: When I read the letter from “Changed For The Better”, about a city dweller whose parents held an “intervention” to get the letter writer to move back to a small town, it felt as if I were reading about myself.

I grew up in smalltown Indiana and moved to Chicago immediately after college. I encountered exactly the same type of “interventions.”

I’m 69 now, and my parents are still living at 87. My family and I have had huge ups and downs throughout the years, but I stayed true to myself regardless of the outcome.

Your advice was excellent. His parents and family have a choice – to accept their child’s autonomy or not. I hope Changed realizes there may be times he has to simply walk away and live his life on his terms. My parents and I know our beliefs will never align, but we have learned to have a loving relationship regardless of how we live.

– City Mouse

Dear City: Thank you for sharing your perspective. One of the important things that your letter, and the original question, highlight is that sometimes our loved ones make choices that we wouldn’t make for ourselves, but that doesn’t necessarily make those choices bad. One component of a healthy familial relationship is knowing when to say, “you’re an adult and you can make your own decisions. I’m rooting for you.”

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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