My Sil Traumatized Me For Years Calling It A “Love Tap.” Then My Cousin-in-law Showed The Family A Video That Changed Everything. Was I Truly Too Sensitive?

Family Fallout

Over the next few days, Tom’s siblings started reaching out with their reactions to the lawsuit. His brother called to say he completely supported us and was cutting off contact with Denise. He said he’d watched the video multiple times and couldn’t believe he’d laughed at some of those incidents before understanding what was really happening. He apologized for not speaking up sooner.

Tom’s sister called with a different message. She thought we should handle this privately without lawyers in courts. She said airing family problems publicly was embarrassing and unnecessary. Tom asked how we were supposed to handle it privately when the family had ignored my complaints for three years. His sister didn’t have an answer but kept insisting there had to be a better way than lawsuits.

The family was splitting into camps. Some believed the abuse was real and serious; others thought I was exaggerating for attention or money. Tom’s extended family stopped inviting us to gatherings because our presence caused too much conflict.

Three weeks after filing the lawsuit, Lucille called with news. Denise’s attorney had sent a settlement offer: $2,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. Lucille said it was insulting given my documented medical expenses alone exceeded $5,000. That didn’t even include pain and suffering or the emotional damage from three years of constant abuse.

I told Lucille I was rejecting the offer. She asked if I was sure because going to trial would be stressful and expensive. I said accepting that settlement would feel like validating everyone who minimized my suffering. It would be like agreeing that three years of assault was only worth $2,000.

Lucille said she understood and would proceed with trial preparation. She warned it might take six months or more to get a court date but she was confident we’d win a much larger judgment if we went to trial.

Tom started having another crisis a few days later. We were eating dinner when he suddenly put down his fork and said he was struggling with the reality that his sister was genuinely abusive. He’d spent his whole life thinking of Denise as fun and energetic and a little wild but never as someone who would deliberately hurt people.

Accepting that she’d assaulted me repeatedly for three years meant accepting that his parents had enabled it and his whole family had failed me. It meant his childhood memories of family harmony were based on everyone ignoring problems instead of actually being close and loving.

Leopold helped him work through the grief of losing his idealized family image during their next therapy session. Tom came home and told me he was done asking me to consider Denise’s feelings. He said his focus now was on my healing and rebuilding our marriage. He admitted he’d been more worried about keeping his family together than protecting his wife and that had to change permanently.

Legal Maneuvers

The discovery process started two weeks later and Denise’s attorney sent over a motion claiming I’d consented to the physical contact by continuing to attend family events where it occurred.

Lucille called me sounding almost excited because she said this was the weakest defense she’d seen in years. She scheduled a meeting at her office and spread out three years of documentation across her conference table.

She showed every text message I’d sent to Tom asking him to make Denise stop. Every email I’d written to Josephine explaining how much the hits hurt. Every message I’d sent to other family members begging them to help me.

She also had Tom’s deposition transcript where he admitted under oath that I’d asked him dozens of times to get his sister to stop hitting me and he’d refused because he thought I was overreacting.

Lucille filed a response that basically destroyed the consent argument by showing I’d objected constantly and the family had ignored my complaints for three years. She said Denise’s attorney would probably drop that line of defense entirely after seeing our evidence.

A few days later I got a thick envelope in the mail from an address I didn’t recognize. Inside was a letter signed by three of Tom’s cousins who’d been at the anniversary party and witnessed the bathroom assault.

They wrote that they’d seen Denise hit me hard enough to knock me into the wall and they’d heard the sound my neck made when something popped. They said they’d been talking among themselves since seeing Bradley’s video and realized they’d witnessed Denise hitting me at other family events too but hadn’t understood it was serious until they saw me injured on the floor.

All three offered to testify in court if the case went to trial and they included their contact information for Lucille. I sat at the kitchen table reading their letter three times because after months of family members telling me I was making a big deal out of nothing having witnesses validate what happened felt incredible.

I called Lucille immediately and she said having multiple witnesses to the bathroom assault plus Bradley’s video made our case even stronger. She asked if I wanted her to contact the three cousins to get formal statements and I said yes because their support made me more determined to see this through to the end.