I confronted my brother via a letter a few years ago. I also told the rest of my family what happened. It started when I was about 8 years old and lasted until I was about 16 years old. The biggest and most unnoticed symptom of abuse was bed wetting starting at a young age and lasting well into my adult years preconfrontation. My mother took me to doctors/specialists to "fix" my bed wetting, I had so many tests ran and blood drawn and prescriptions but nothing worked and every doctor told my mom that I was "normal". No one could figure out why...

As an adult I started to see a therapist, several in fact. My parents were confused as to why I was seeing a therapist until my therapist thought it would be a good idea to bring them to a session and tell them what happened. Their reaction: mother-cried, father-claimed he knew it. After this they didn't treat him any differently and kinda swept it under the rug.

Then I saw a therapist who suggested I confront my abuser and, of course, that terrified me because I knew what he was capable of. He also sexually abused my cousin and my best friend and at one point held my best friend on the ground, put a nail to her forehead and drew back a hammer as if he was going to pound a nail in her forehead. Terrified doesn't seem to cover what I was feeling at the prospect of confronting this monster.

Fast forward to my early 30's. I followed the therapists advice but instead of confronting him face to face, I felt safer writing him a letter. To feel a little more comfortable I told him in that letter that if he tried to contact me or my family I would call the police. After I wrote the letter I set boundaries with my family. I told them that from this point on I would no longer participate in family events that he was invited to.

Confrontation has produced both negative and positive results. The positive is that I no longer wet the bed or have nightmares. The negative is the constant struggle with my family. My father has since passed away and my mother continues to invite him to all the family events, but she also invites me and my kids too. This is her way of being impartial to either one of us. I understand that this is difficult for her to accept, but it's also unfair to ask me to socialize in a family environment with my monstrously abusive brother. I've made so much progress since confrontation that if I had to be in a family event with him I fear I would regress back to bed wetting and nightmares. I understand that my decision is kind of asking my mother to choose between us or take sides, but I don't think it's fair for her to ask me to endure that pain everytime we have a family function.

Since confrontation over the last few years I've had some very lonely holidays...Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter... I have my own children, and I am blessed for that, but it's still not the same to not be able to see your mom and sister, and the good brother on those holidays. I feel very alienated even though it was my choice and I live with it everyday.

So, confrontation has it's good points and it's bad points. You will have to carefully weigh in your mind what will be good for you and maybe look at it from a healing perspective. I have healed a lot, but the pain never totally goes away and for me, it created a new set of issues and pain, pain of loneliness.

Good luck with whatever you choose.