Were there any scandals in your families?

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My first cousin (her mom) just phoned, claiming this daughter, her husband (my first cousin’s husband, not her daughter’s) and his best friend tried to… strangle her. My mom claims this best friend to be… gay and my cousin’s hubby’s lover because:

-he’s a very educated man while my cousin’s husband is just a simpleton so what else could they have with each other according to her but for sex?

-he spends a lot of time in their house and every time he spends a night there, he sleeps with him in one bed (well, according to my poor mother, all couples of close friends of the same sex often spending nights in each other’s homes sharing beds then, must be gays and lesbians - when I asked her if I had a close female friend who’d like to sleep here often, she confirmed she’d be suspicious we were lesbians).

None that I know of.

Oh lawd... where to start with the family scandal... My family was thrown out of Scotland at one point, where they moved to Ireland, then my great (x4) grandmother got attitude with English soldiers and killed a few of them with some farm equipment before they killed her and her husband. Then I had a great (x3) grandpa say he had some disease so he ran off to the wood to not infect the family but he ran off with some other woman instead... they said they found him hung and buried an empty casket to avoid the scandal. My grandma was bipolar or had ptsd or something and most of the men in her family rape and beat their kids still... My one cousin is always in jail for beating his women and selling drugs, I have another cousin who ha been known to flash people... Most of the people on my moms side of the family are addicts... most alcoholics... some use cocaine, some use crack. They all smoke pot and most of them have or still do sell those sorts of things. More people in my moms family have been in jail than not. More of my moms cousin have been raped by family members than not. My mom is a scandal in herself. She is a recovered addict, but has done thing like marry a flasher then divorce him to marry a guy he tried to kill by hitting him on the head with a frying pan. There is a question in my mind if my father is my father because my mom slept with his brother... the list goes on. I am clearly messed up and I am the normal one on my mom's side of the family... I have been in mental hospitals, juvenile centers, got pregnant at 16, moved out at 16, ran away at 14, married an abusive ass when I was 17 to divorce him after beating him senseless... I'm a bisexual, autistic pagan who never leaves the house and owns seven snakes and I am the normal one. It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world.

My mother's parents made money during Prohibition selling bathtub gin via agents of Joseph Kennedy (they knew him personally and their enterprise got his blessing) - my mom's dad comes from Scottish stock banished to Northern Ireland for aiding Bonnie Prince Charles' attempt to regain the crown, and by their own admission my mom and her dad always spoke of the "glorious Scots fighting against the English by rum-running and such", so I see this as a continuation of that trend.....

Oh hell, why not.

My maternal grandmother was the upstairs maid for the Tannery owner who employed half the county. My grandfather use to hang around with the Tannery owner's sons and that's how he met my grandmother. They had a baby boy, my uncle of course, don't know if they were married yet or not, and my grandmother gave the baby to her mother in law, because her mother in law, my great grandmother, was lonely and my great grandfather was a womanizer who was never at home. Plus, my great grandmother and great grandfather were kind of well off and only had two kids, my grandfather and his sister - who caused a scandal herself by - now get ready for this - marrying a Catholic. My grandmother and grandfather had many more children including my mother. Now, when the boy she gave away to her mother in law became a man and got married he lived in a house across the street from my grandparents but would have nothing to do with them and my grandmother used to sit at the kitchen window and watch him when he came outside and cry because he wouldn't even talk to her and told her once 'You're not my mother. You gave me away when I was just a tiny baby."

My mother had another brother who was an exhibitionist. He used to stand in front of the upstairs window of his house which looked out on the street and when he saw a woman coming by he would knock on the window and expose himself to her. Also, there were incidents in the park where he would expose himself to females. I stayed overnight at his house once because I was good friends with his daughter, my cousin. When it was time to go to bed we went to her room and she shoved a very large dresser in front of her bedroom door. I asked her why she did that and she said "To keep my father out." We were both about 7 or 8 years old at that time. This uncle's wife used to be a bare-back rider with the circus and that's how my uncle met her. My mother used to blame all of my uncle's problems on his wife, saying things like "If she was more of a woman he wouldn't do the things he does." My mother thought the wife was a Lesbian.

I'll start with my mother's side of the family. My grandmother was hooked on Valium for her panic disorder since she was nineteen. After being taken off it she had a breakdown and had been agoraphobic ever since. My grandfather was sometimes absent and often trying to kill himself. Some of my Mums earliest memories are of calling an ambulance for him because she'd found him uncounsious on the floor or he wouldn't stop screaming. I know he smoked pot(but most people in my family do) and got my Mum high when she was 16. He left the family, was diagnosed with a personality disorder and now lives in Canada and had a sex change. My grandmother remarried but the new guy started trying to offer my mother money for sex when she was 14. My mother herself I don't think has done anything scandalous, besides not paying TV licence.
In my Dad's family everyone's basically a criminal or an alcoholic or both. His sister is a prostitute and I get the feeling there may have been incestuous times with her father. maybe not, I don't ask. Before I was born my Dad used to be a drug dealer. Amphetamines, high-quality stuff, really pure. The police were after him for about 2 yrs and I'm told it ended in this huge drug bust. He got 3 yrs but only did 1.5 due to good behaviour. since I was born the only illigal thing he's done is grow marijuana.
So, yeah... me and my sister aren't allowed to see any of our extended family.

My great grandfather was a Freemason. I think it's !

Hartzofspace wrote:
Wow, what did it say? All I have is a medallion of sorts.

Just-me wrote:

There’s a woman’s version?!? I had no idea; where do I sign up?

Nothing too big.

My maternal grandfather learned as an adult that his mother had an illegitimate child. First she was married and had 2 children, then her husband died. She met a man and they were together. He was going to the US and promised to send for her, which of course he never did. She became pregnant and had the boy adopted. I don’t know which year this was but it was before 1914 and this was a big deal back then. Later she married a new man and my grandfather was born. Only after my great grandmother’s death did his sister tell my grandfather about it. In his mature adulthood he got in touch with his long lost brother and his daughter. They kept some contact.
Oh, and according to my grandfather my great grandmother had a real temper and didn’t hide it. Not very acceptable around the 1920’s!


A similar story on the paternal side of my family. My grandmother had to send her daughter away (I think it was for economic reasons, my family doesn’t like talking about it, so there’s a lot I don’t know). She struggled hard to feed her 4 remaining children. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic.
My father and his siblings got to know their lost sister a few years ago. For some reason she ended up in Denmark.

I don’t really know my paternal family too well. There seems to be a lot of dysfunction there.

One of my aunts is an alcoholic. It was bad enough for her daughter to choose to move to her grandmother.

My ex-uncle (through aunt’s ex-marriage) is kind of a conman. He rips tourists off and things like that. He is very kind to his family but he’s also very impulsive and immature.

My uncle is a bit too fond of gambling. His wife is…nuts. She is probably OCD. She is hysterical about cleanliness and washes the ceilings once a week. When my uncle comes home she is ready with a bucket and washes the floor as he comes in and takes off his shoes. Their house is on the same property as the house where my grandmother lived, yet she was never allowed to visit them.


Several relatives have tried drugs in their youth.

A distant relative made a scandal for being a feminist. She went abroad (unaccompanied!) and she followed her own desires. It was another time.

Both my grandmothers were opposed to my parents getting married. I think they were both bi****s to drag their grandkid into their dispute.

And then there is me, of course. With my meltdowns, shutdowns, school problems, a former child ‘care’ services victim, and both having a temper and being “too” quiet, not to mention being a NEET living at home. To mention some of it!

As a kid I shoplifted at times but I was never caught.

After which experience, cousin spent a few days in an asylum, falsely accused by her family that she attacked her daughter with a knife. She was going to get a divorce but yesterday finally she decided to stay with her husband (what an idiot, if I were her, I’d do everything to make my family atone for what they did to me but my cousin was always just a not too smart simpleton). I was soooo excited all the time, finally a real scandal happening in our family. It was just like a good show staged for me.

She changed her mind on this subject again, now she's going to get a divorce. It's her final decision.

The psychologist to whom cousin turned for any advice on what she should do about this, asked her whether she ever had any suspitions her husband and daughter were in an incestuous relationship with each other Well, my mother claims this would be just too pervy even for them but the fact remains that they tend to share a bed (he sleeps with his younger daughter who is a child as well but in a non erotic way I guess - she'd tell us if something was wrong in this respect).

Maternal Side:

Underaged pregnancy (mother), child molestation (step-grandfather), wifebeating (step-grandfather), child abuse (mother, grandmother), child neglect (great-uncle), alcoholism (almost everyone except my grandmother), theft (great uncle was a firemen who stole stuff after putting the fires out), forgery/falsification of legal documents (grandmother), failed suicide attempts (mother).

My grandmother was very intelligent but had a taste for violent men. 1 of her husbands and 1 of her boyfriends were child molesters. Last boyfriend molested his own baby grandson and my grandmother helped him cover it up so he got away with it!

The funny thing is, everyone in the neighborhood seemed to think my family was the wealthiest/snootiest in the area...spoiled and aloof and above-it-all (if eccentric). My grandmother was a master at hiding the darkest side of our family dynamic and "protecting the family name".

This divorce is a major scandal in this branch of the family now. Her husband and daughter hired a murderer to finish her off - really; she was with her younger daughter home alone at night because husband and older daughter were out of town when she heard someone manipulating around the locker. This person was scared away by her and when cousin went to the window, she saw 4 men going out of their staircase. What else could they be planning to do to her than killing her in such a situation? Anyway, the next morning when cousin's family came back, her daughter was really surprised at her being alive - she said: "I thought, you whore, that you'd be stiff by now and you are still alive?"

Wow. Some fascinating stories here. The stuff of gothic novels!

I had an aunt and uncle who lived in a small, Midwestern town. The aunt had an affair with somebody important in the town ... the chief of police or mayor or somebody, not sure who exactly. But it was such a scandal in the town that they left and moved to another state.

Meanwhile, the uncle had some minor surgery and got hooked on the pain killers they gave him (at least, that's the story ... I suspect it was something more illicit). He hallucinated pretty bad, apparently. One night, he was high and became convinced that aliens had landed on the roof of their house. So he got a water hose and climbed up on the roof, thinking he would simply squirt them with the hose and they would leave.

So there he was, on the roof in the middle of the night, squirting water all over the place and screaming at the aliens to go away. He actually laughs about it now, which takes more self-confidence than I would have.

I also have a distant cousin, now long since deceased, who was a high school football coach in the deep South. We actually never knew these people, but the story has been told often at family gatherings. The man was a virulent racist, and most everyone suspects he was a Klan member.

But then he mysteriously disappeared from his job one day, and it was discovered that he'd run away and married one of the students at the school. Not only was the girl less than half his age, she was black.

I guess, yes. My mom has a different father than some of her brothers. (That's not the scandal.) Well, one of her brothers' father was a well known doctor in the small town my mom was raised in. When her mom got pregnant with my uncle in the 1950's, my mom's mom (she died before I was born, so it's hard to refer to her as my grandmother) pretended he was someone else's so that the doctor wouldn't be looked down on or even lose his license. My uncle didn't know his actual father was the doctor until years later & instead thought his father was my moms father, who had left my mom & her other brothers years before.

I know I didn't explain it right lol.

I sent an email concerning the case of my cousin to some program helping people in difficult situations. They just replied I believe I'll see my cousin on TV quite soon