[amco]

I was sexually abused when I was a child and I've started feeling a bit like I'm reliving the feelings I felt then when it all came out.
The reason why is because my brother has accused me of sexually abusing him when we were children.
I am 3 years older than him and he is 100% making this up.
I am baffled as to why he would make up such a hurtful lie, especially since he knows I was abused. I am a woman by the way.
It's all a tangled web. Everything is one big tangled web.
I don't even know where to start.
Our parents are divorced and although I speak to them individually about it and they are very supportive , they just keep saying they don't know what to do about him saying this about me.
It all started last year. My brother and I fell out because he was aggressive and violent towards me. He threw a footstool at me and pushed me on the sofa and threatened to punch me. He has never said sorry.
In the year that passed he sent me two text messages where the words were all messed up , so I assumed they were sent by mistake.
In the last text message he accused me of sexually abusing him. He says the woman who brought him up told him this 5 years ago (she died 3 years ago). My father says she would never ever have said this and that he is making it up to get at him through me!
None of what my brother says adds up. Why is he doing this? How can I move away from this?
Also, I am worried about my mother. She has schizoaffective disorder and is stable on her medication.
My brother stopped speaking to her last year, but recently (after he sent me the text) went along her to say that what he said in his text message was true! She, of course, knows it's not true, but he is adamant that it is!
He now says he might visit her again, but he will never talk to his dad again and wants nothing to do with me.
This puts her is a very awkward situation.
I feel overwhelmed by the whole situation... I want to know how to move forward with this.

[Soundoff]

I'm sorry that you had to go through that and I can relate. I do want to say that the fact that you're a woman and was also abused yourself doesn't mean you couldn't have abused your brother. I'm not implying that you ever did just stating gender and history of abuse doesn't prove otherwise. Anyway, for your brother to have an outburst of accusations is alarming, assuming that he's a grown man, it's odd that its surfacing now. Also, the fact that your brother is aggressive to you shows resentment on some level and its understandable to be defensive but you need to find the root of the problem. Is he seeing a therapist? Why don't you try family therapy? I know these accusations hurt especially with what you've been through bit I doubt your brother would throw them at you if it was only a conflict with your father.

[amco]

Thank you for your reply.
My mother wants to try family therapy. My brother doesn't. I do. My father doesn't. So, I think family therapy is out of the question. It looks like a problem that can't be solved!
The only reason I can think that my brother resents me is because he was brought up with the neighbors (family friends) and I was brought up with (as he sees it) our parents.
However, it wasn't as clear cut as this.
It is really complicated.
Basically, our mother was mentally ill most of the time...going back and forth to hospital or heavily medicated. Our father was young and immature and unable to cope.
The neighbor was like a mother figure to my father and started to look after my brother. She had grown sons of her own and apparently didn't like looking after girls. Anyway, according to my mother she wanted a baby and she more or less stole my brother. He lived with her from the age of one year old.
I lived with two different neighbors and was in a children's home 3 times.
I lived with my father from the age of 8 to 17. This is the time my brother remembers. He seems to think I was the 'chosen' child and he was rejected by our parents.
However, my life living with my father was far from perfect.
I wrote my brother a letter after he stopped talking to me last year.
I hoped that if I shared how my childhood was with him...maybe he would see it wasn't all about him and that everyone was messed up.
My letter made no difference to him.
In the letter I told him about a time when I was about 4 years old and I visited him. The woman who looked after him told me to go away and not come back. Her reason was that it upset him too much. He used to cry when I left because he wanted to come home with me.
In his text message to me, he said she told him 5 years ago that she stopped me coming because she saw me sexually abusing him. So I would have been 4 and him 1. It's absolute nonsense!
My brother came to live with us again after this time. However, that didn't work out because our mother became ill again. I had holidays with my brother and he visited the house every day. If I was supposed to have abused him then you would think someone would have said/done something!
Anyway...there is more to the story. My brother is addicted to porn and has been visiting prostitutes. He has a girlfriend and is worried I will say something to her. My mother thinks he could be making the sexual abuse accusation in an attempt to scare/threaten me to make sure I say nothing to his girl-friend.
....I wouldn't say anything anyway as it's not my place to do that
My mother thinks my brother never really understood about me being abused. He was only 10 years old when it was made public. The husband of the woman who abused me used to visit the woman who looked after him and she used to blame me for what happened.
I think he was brought up in a house where the adults blame children for being abused.
There is just so much to this...its a mess