Hankster, while I can understand how you would feel that way? I am not so sure your perception of "his" reasoning is right. He "did" admit and also talked about how "messed up he is as well". He is talking about his "own" abuse too, and it sounds like he has "never" opened up about it until this conversation purple has shown us.

It is "very" hard to look back on these childhood experiences as an adult. It is soooo important to understand "what capacities a child has to understand abuse".

I was also abused by my brother, and I was way to little to understand it. I didn't even know how to "tell" either, I really remember being "afraid". I have never had this kind of conversation with my brother, however I do know he has sought therapy for "years". He was abused as well in many ways. Ignorance was a huge factor in what happened to him and myself.

It has been very hard for me to process as well. I look back "being a mother, a good mother" and it is soooo hard for me to see what I had to find a way to live through when I was so young, just a toddler and for years after. I have really "cried alot" about it, because I can "feel that troubled child in me" and knowing what I know now? Its alot to sort through. All I know is that it is very important to understand "what children are capable of understanding". They truely do "not" have the life experiences to understand what we understand as adults. They don't even have any idea how to even "talk about it" either.

I think it was good that there has at least been some talk about this between Purple and her brother. It also sounds like he has some PTSD from war too? In that alone he is going to "distance". And it sounds like their mother was really not there for them, was divorced and trying to find some place to live and get her own life together.