25 people reveal the most fu**ed up thing they learned about their family

Trigger warning: This story contains details of sexual assault and violence that some readers may find distressing.

Every family has its fair share of secrets. Contrary to the "family goals" vibes they might project to the outside world, members of the same bloodline often share secrets they wouldn't want others to know out of fear that it would tarnish their family reputation. In many cases, family members even withhold information from each other in an attempt to avoid confrontation or separation of family ties. Redditor mykirto recently unearthed a bunch of deep, dark secrets when they hit the r/AskReddit forum with this question: "What is the most fucked up thing you found about your family?"

Here are 25 of the top responses to their questions. A word of caution: some of these are quite disturbing.

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"This is kinda dark but my inner child needs to let this out. My stepdad started molesting me when I was a freshman in high school. It lasted the entire school year. I didn’t tell my mom because her bf before he would do it too. I was aged 5-7, so I kinda thought what he was doing was normal. I talked about it with my best friend and she told me how wrong it was and recommended I tell my mom so she'd leave him. I ended up telling my mom that summer, and she told me I'd be ruining her life if I wanted her to leave him because of it. He stopped doing it after I told my mom but he'd still make nasty comments to me, saying it wasn't that good or my mom just never pays attention to him, and I'd catch him with his phone under my bathroom door when I was using it.

When I finally ran away from that hellhole senior year, I told my mom's two sisters about what my stepdad did and how my mom knew, hoping to get some sort of support after years of keeping it a secret, for 'mom's sake.' I told them because I knew they went through [sexual assault] as children so I really thought they'd be there for me. They tried convincing me it was all in my head. To this day my entire family welcomes my stepdad with open arms when they all know what I've said, and my mom and he know exactly what he did. It's sick. Anyone’s family hiring? Mine is broken." — Potential_Phrase7651 

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"My great-grandmother helped cover up a murder. Claimed the guy was a psychopath and attacked her daughter and granddaughter for no reason.

In actuality, my mum was going through a phase where she would try to get men turned on by rubbing her arse on them. This guy pushed her off and told her to f**k off. My mum took offense to this and claimed the guy was trying to take her clothes off. My grandmother, who was on all the drugs, came out of her room and stabbed the guy to death to protect her daughter. My mum told the truth after the guy was dead and they came up with a cover-up story so that they wouldn't get in trouble." — Tarique_007

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"My grandpa and grandma broke up for a few weeks in August 1962. In that one week, my grandpa got drunk one night and got the woman living across the hall from my grandma pregnant, and my grandma had a fling with a married man while on the late shift as a bartender and got pregnant herself. My grandparents got married and my grandma passed my Aunt Barb off as my grandpa's child. The other woman gave my aunt Joyce up for adoption. Both were born exactly a week apart.

30 years later my mom was getting married and visited my Grandma's sister to hand out wedding invitations. My Grandma's sister decided that was the perfect occasion to tell my mother out of nowhere that my Aunt Barb was not my grandpa's biological daughter. My mom was shocked and confronted my Grandma after the visit and who denied it. My mom then decided stupidly to keep it secret.
It was kept a secret from my Aunt Barb for 40 years until my aunt Joyce found my grandpa and looked exactly like him. That is when my aunt Barb had a DNA test done and confirmed she wasn’t his daughter.
It took my aunt barb 17 years to find her real father's family and she finally found them last year. They all accepted her into the family." — musiclife46 

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"I learned last year that my cousin is a pedophile and rapist. Long story short, he was caught and arrested for one crime, but the whole family suspects there were more. We also learned during this time that he'd sexually abused his younger, mentally disabled sister when she was a preteen. My older sister admitted to me last month that she'd caught him trying to do things to me when we were all little. I don’t remember this at all.

He's currently out on parole, still living with his girlfriend (who he knocked up when she was 17 and he was 25) and their two little boys. That whole side of the family just seems to be pretending that nothing happened. Every time I think about him I feel ill." — hobosama69 

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"My great Grandfather was a pilot in the Luftwaffe in WWII and took part in the bombing of England. The funny part is my other Great Grandfather flew for the RAF at the same time so there is a good chance that they had tried to shoot each other down at some point in time.

They met later in life when they both moved to Australia. Apparently, they had one conversation about it and agreed to never talk about it ever again, and became really good friends before they died." — Lau_wings 

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"My uncle knocked up his wife's 15-year-old sister while his wife was 6 months pregnant. Worst kept secret because the girl cousins were born like 6 months apart and looked exactly alike, but they all denied it. Finally, Ancestry.com confirmed it, but they still deny it and took down their profiles. On the upside, I have a new cousin that I've never met but we text." — susgrigs 

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"My great grandfather would lock my uncle in one of those big metal toolboxes you sometimes see in the back of trucks for hours as a form of punishment when he was a kid. I can't even imagine how hot it must have been being locked up outside in one of those during the summer. He must have been terrified. I see now why my uncle's a drug addict with a crap ton of mental health issues. And that's not even the worst thing my great grandfather did but that's not my story to tell." — Britt-chan1988

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"My grandfather was a classic psycho/sociopath who abused and manipulated my grandmother and his children while maintaining a reputation as a highly intelligent, extremely charming gentleman. My father as the eldest son was his primary target of abuse including things like showing up at his school, drag him out of class while beating him, and making him walk barefoot on asphalt all the way home in front of his car on a day where you could literally fry an egg on the surface. Once he was home he was forced to dig up the huge garden every day from sunrise to sunset without food or water for a whole month. My dad was 7 years old at the time. And he chased my dad all the way to the border to Afghanistan when my dad finally ran away and hitchhiked to Europe as a teen. I love my wonderful kind and softhearted father because he was able to break the cycle of violence. He has never once in my 40 years raised his hands on any of his children or been anything other than the most supportive dad you could imagine. Once he got his life sorted he went back to Pakistan with my mother and got his younger siblings educated, married, and set them up for life. He was never able to get an education (grandfather refused to pay his fees) but 3 of his 5 siblings are successful doctors and 1 is a geologist. Only his elder sister never got an education, but my dad got her out of an abusive marriage and supported her in building a good life for herself. And he was the shield that protected them for as long as my lunatic grandfather was alive. So yes my grandfather was fucked up and most of the stories of his horrific abuse remain untold but it made my dad the heroic backbone of a successful family, and that is the real story to tell." — LaSer_BaJwa 

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