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Question55 year old man texting my niece
My ex SIL (30s) is in a new relationship with a 55 year old man who has several grown children and multiple grandchildren. They met in March. She went to mandatory drug rehab the past week and I've been keeping my teenage niece for a few days at a time while my brother works nightshift.
I became aware that my niece is spending a lot of time texting someone, and lo and behold, it's my SIL's boyfriend.
I told my brother and he wants to take her phone and beat the shit out of the guy, but so far the texts are "harmless" and the phone is the only way my niece can talk to her mom in rehab.
Niece is desperate to live with her mom and is pissed at her dad all the time. Custody is shared but obviously my brother has the kid most of the time right now.
I'm seeing all of this as a big red flag on top of a dumpster fire, but what the hell can I even do? Any ideas?
Report it to the police cyber unit as early pedophilia grooming. Ask that they put him on a watch list. Don't know if they would get his online search history but someone needs to.
I will check into this. He posts a lot of suggestive and sexual content on his public social media, which my niece can view, and has viewed (I've seen her reactions in my own feeds.)
Not sure why "talk to her" doesn't come up here, but maybe this? You can report grooming https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/grooming/
Share with her stories of what child grooming is: https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/opinion/child-grooming-531126
There are people who you can pay to handle this: https://parentingsafechildren.com/an-encounter-with-grooming/
Personally, I'd take her phone when she is in the shower and call the dude and tell him never to call and that you have reported him to the police, etc. Have dad threaten to kill him if he calls again--whatever it takes.
https://www.internetmatters.org/issues/online-grooming/protect-your-child/
Thank you. I will check all these links.
She is almost literally attached to the phone. I have NEVER caught her without it in her hand.
If she were mine, I would have had that phone immediately...but I'm sort of outside the situation.
I'm also not sure if taking the phone is a good idea? With a teen, that might escalate into her running away, and she would definitely run to the wrong people. 🤔
That's why he hasn't done it yet, but since she's using it to communicate with a pervy old man and watch Tiktok all day, I might risk it.
She's got to shower and sleep
At my house the phone goes with her into the shower, and she sleeps with it in her hand, playing videos or music. I have no clue what terms if any were agreed to by my brother, but I don't really have jurisdiction over her phone other than what I can see her doing with it while she's here.
I would never let my kids do this--the older ones with phones know "their" phones are my property. I have to know every passcode, app, and, if requested, I can see any text message, etc. No social media. They can't have them in their rooms overnight, they all charge in my room or another common area. I don't invade privacy routinely, I just don't promise them any when it comes to phones, and they accept it or they don't have one.
I really hate phones.
Here’s a registry available to the public:
Hire an investigator if you can’t find anything online. He may be grooming her. Best wishes.
He's not on it. He has an old arrest for contempt of court, but that's all I can find.
I have zero experience with shit like this (thankfully), but it seems to me that the best way to ensure your niece's safety would be to improve her relationship with her dad.
Do you know what the problem is? (Aside from him apparently having temper problems, if you were serious about him wanting to beat the shit out of the guy. Idk about other people, but that sort of thing would have scared me. Male violence is male violence, I'm just not much of a fan of men who don't seem to have their temper under control. One always worries about ending up as collateral damage.)
Also ... perhaps you can do something to help your niece meet kids her age to socialize with? A teenager voluntarily spending her time messaging with some crusty old 55 year old her mom is dating ... that seems really strange. And perhaps loneliness is part of the reason?
My instinct would be to not address the issue directly, but more ... indirectly, seeing as teens typically double down on any behaviour that their parents disapprove of.
My brother does have a temper. He's otherwise a pretty upright guy; no drinking, no vices, hardworking. He is in counseling post-divorce because 18 years with an addict is rough. I think his "beat the shit out of him" comment, made only to me, is because he doesn't know how else to deal with this situation. He has shared custody and doesn't want to press things legally even though his ex is an unrepentant addict. My niece has become her mom's enabler since the divorce. She covers up the drinking and drug abuse, tells us bald lies about where her mom is or what is happening.
She also hasn't been well-raised or socialized. Until recently my brother was pretty checked out from parenting trying to hold everything else together. I never imagined this is how he would raise his children. And while I love her and recognize that so much of this isn't her fault, my niece is sloppy, tremendously overweight for her age and height, lazy, rude, and anti-social. She came out as a lesbian recently but she's actually dating a TIM. I don't trust her judgement at all.
When a girls alarms aren't going off, it means someone has disabled it, or failed to help her set it in the first place.
I have very, very limited influence. She recently went with her mother to a suggestively-themed restaurant bar...think Hooters but more raunchy and classless. She was wearing a shirt from there that I objected to because it was demeaning to women and I didn't want my kids to read it. She declared me silly and said "Mom and I thought it was fun" at which point I explained that I would never have taken my child there no matter what age, because crass sexual humor should not be endorsed or normalized for minors. I tried to he diplomatic, but of course she viewed it as an attack on her mother. I am extremely neutral about my ex SIL when talking to my niece because I know it's her mother and she does love her. But I won't stand for dangerous or degrading things. She needs to know what is and is not respectful to women.
I hate to say it, but I fantasize about just not having to deal with this at all. It is such a mess. I want to help everyone, but it's a minefield.
Damn, that's rough.
Seems like the grooming is only the tip of the iceberg, there. Dating a TIM! (I mean, dating a male is normal for a hetero girl to do, but deluding herself that it means she's a lesbian ... that's serious.)
Your brother having mentally checked out would explain why the girl is more attached to her mother; children need attention and prefer even bad attention over being ignored. Hopefully, it is not too late to repair that.
It is good that you stay firm with her on the topic of keeping your children away from harmful influences. (I'd use things like that t-shirt as starting points for feminist explanations. So, not just "it is sexual and therefore bad for minors" but "I don't want my daughters to think of themselves as sex objects, nor my sons to think of girls like that". Who knows, something might stick.)
I did have a gender ideology discussion with her a few weeks back and it went ok, but because of the TIM I feel like I have to tread lightly. She also has a best friend who is a TIF, so she's soaked in it right now and I'm trying to be gentle about it.
My approach is as woman-first as I can make it (gender ideology is harming women and especially lesbians; porn and sexual crudity harms women; I'm teaching my boys that these are lines we don't cross and therefore that shirt has to go, etc).
My brother is trying to focus as much as he can on his daughter without being overbearing, but I would say he's afraid to parent her as much since she's so angry, and it's coming off as being a buddy. My ex SIL has revealed details of the divorce that my brother isn't proud of (he had an affair years and years ago before any kids) and my niece is understandably weirded out. And my brother is not willing to articulate the substance abuse issues that led to the break up because he doesn't want to talk bad about his daughters mother. Which I understand.
It just feels like a massive, dangerous stalemate.
That is so, so much to deal with while also having your hands tied. I’m sorry that you have to even worry about it. My heart goes out to everyone except the old dude who’s texting your niece.
First thing I'd do is Google his name along with 'convicted and 'sentenced', see if anything comes up.
Not all states make criminal records available online, and there are so many crimes that get no media coverage. Arrests are also a red flag, but those are even less likely to be reported in the media and those records are more restricted in terms of public access.
A broken marriage, and a mother in rehab, make a teenage daughter a predator's ideal target.
Your brother needs to add himself to the chat or block that dude's number. Get in the face of his dude to let him know his daughter is protected. If she wants to have a bitch about living with her dad tell her she can text you and you will keep her confidence. You can help steer her into a healthier way of dealing with what is going on in her life.
A trusted adult needs to sit down and calmly talk with the girl about how to spot red flags and who to talk to if she starts feeling like men are acting weird around her. That may not be her Dad if she is worried he will "do something embarrassing"
Sadly I'm not sure there's an adult she trusts aside from her mom.
I try, but especially the last few months, she's withdrawn and uninterested in talking to me. She just lays around watching Tiktok. And apparently texting this dude, recently.
Then, she needs to be in counseling. So she can debrief without involving the family. The old dude is filling up the need to have an unrelated adult to talk to.
There are support networks for families of addicts, find a few referrals and convince your brother to help organize it as it will help his relationship with her and keep her safe.
She is currently in counseling, and has been previously sent to a mandatory mental health facility for cutting. She likes her therapist, is on several drugs, and has been in one therapy office or another since she was about 10. Sometimes with her parents, sometimes alone.
Which to me seems like it's time to find a new person/approach as these issues are not being helped.
She has other issues, like she refuses to be in the sun over concerns of poisoning, and she has several "diseases" that only her mom seems to understand. Her mom is in a health field and doctor shops like crazy, so there are no consistent visits to any one person. All that concerns me too, but there's almost too much to figure out.
God what a nightmare. Turning that around is going to be a huge amount of work. Can the Dad privately let the therapist know he is worried she is being groomed?
Send her a link to how older men groom teenagers online. It might trigger some thoughts or even make her outraged enough to bring it up with the therapist.
https://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/article/6-stages-of-grooming-adults-and-teens-spotting-the-red-flags/
Refuses to be in the sun over concerns of poisoning? Is that what she says? That sounds like tinfoil-hat stuff. (Skin cancer, I would get. Refusing to use sunblock because it is poisonous, I would also get, but that's more of a eco-friendly-nature freak type of concern, and she doesn't seem to be that type?)
If she's a health nut, I'd try to get at her through that - sitting there surfing tiktok all day is definitely not healthy, so perhaps that's a way you could persuade her to take a walk in the forest. (I wouldn't frame it as telling her what to do, though, more as "I want to live healthier, so I've decided to go for a walk in the forest every weekend, wanna come?")
I wouldn't try to argue with her about the diseases. Perhaps they're real, perhaps not, as long as she isn't trying to cure them by ingesting poison, it's less harmful than gender nonsense. (Plus, it is getting her tons of attention from her mom, which ... yeah, that's probably what she's after. It's unhealthy attention, but it's attention.)
Is the therapist allowed to talk to her dad about what she's talking of in therapy, or is she too old for that?
Her mother told her a few years ago that she would get sun poisoning if she went outside. Not a burn, poisoning.
Over the last several years my niece has told me she's allergic to oranges, peaches, strawberries, corn, avocados, etc (she wasn't), the sun (she isn't), she has multiple obscure diseases and disorders, autism (never been checked that we know of), ADHD (never been checked that we know of), celiac disease (again, she doesn't), kidney problems with no name... She has had 8 spinal taps at her mother's behest but I don't know what for.
That aspect of this is an entirely separate can of worms unfortunately. The girl lives to have a diagnosis, as does her mother.
Yikes sounds like it could be Munchausens By Proxy that turned into hypochondria
I'm really getting to the end of my rope in terms of what I can do to help here. She's very angry at me this week because I think she figured out who told her dad what she's been up to, and her presence in my house has become disruptive and rude. She was really mean to my elderly father one night when he was trying to explain something he had to go do the next day, and she won't even talk to my mom because my ex SIL has informed her that "everyone hates [SIL] especially your grandma". I am the only one who she would talk to until recently. She's dismissive of my youngest (who adores her), makes fun of my oldest for enjoying certain games or TV shows, and won't eat the food I cook after I've worked all day cooking food for other people...I feel like I'm laying out for her because I really want to give her a safe space, but I don't know what else I can be doing.
I know a lot of this isn't her fault. Most of it's totally beyond her control. She honestly scares me sometimes. After she blew up at me I had a long talk with my brother about scaling back how much help I can give. I've been knotted up about it and crying when I think about it. I just don't know what to do.
Just saw your last question. My brother isn't actually sure. The therapist won't talk to him and everything is done through the mom. She is 15, and I'm not sure if that's too old or not? But it's been strongly implied that he would have to go to court to get control over her medical care.
Well yeah, if he doesn't have any say in her medical care, he literally can't do anything to help her. He needs to get involved a lot more.
I hope he wakes up soon because I don't think we have a lot of time to waste.