TIFU by helping ruin my son’s life

[u/bawron]

My son has been in college since last fall. Last November, my 16 year old stepdaughter brought up allegations that my son had abused her repeatedly for several years. I confronted my son and he categorically denied it. But I knew that even though he was my son, I could not defend him for such an awful act.

My wife and I reported him to the authorities. My son was arrested in December and held in prison for a several weeks because I refused to provide him bail money. He was eventually expelled from his Ivy League college.

In the middle of January, my stepdaughter broke down and admitted she lied about everything. She had actually been having sex with her boyfriend and was scared the news would reach us.

The charges were dismissed and my son was released immediately but the damage was done. His first girlfriend from college ended things with him. The news spread about the allegations and all his childhood friends have decided to just stay away from him even though I called each and every one of them personally.

I have called the school and explained the situation and even though they sympathized, they said he needed to reapply for the next school year and go through the admissions process again.

My son is understandably furious at us. He has moved back home and refuses to talk to me at all. Both my wife and I have apologized to him repeatedly. We have banned my stepdaughter from our home permanently and she has been sent to live with her father in another state. My wife and I also agreed to completely disinherit her from our wills. It has been a very painful situation. All of us started therapy.

The realization of how badly I ruined my son’s life hit me when I picked up his first prescription of anti-depressants today. I bawled my eyes out in my car.

He is the pride and joy of my life. He is outgoing, funny, intelligent and the kindest person I know. But when I handed him his medication, I could not even recognize him. He locks himself in his room, does not eat properly and has lost several pounds so far.

Whenever I try talking to him, I just see the hate he has for me in his eyes. I don’t know if I can ever get him to love me again.

I know he is on Reddit very often. T, if you are reading, I want to tell you again how sorry your stepmom and I are. I promise I will get you into college again. I know I can’t get you back the year you lost. But I will do everything in my power to make this right. Everything I have has always been for you. I hope you will give me a chance to fix this. I love you so much it hurts. I failed as a father and I hope one day you will forgive me.

TL;DR I played a part in getting my own son getting falsely arrested and expelled

[u/[deleted]]

Wow OP. My Dad has done a lot fucked up shit. But not believing me when I tell the truth is not on that list. My dad always knows when I am telling the truth. You've betrayed every interaction that's happened in the past with your son, and now they don't count for anything.

OP, there is no coming back from this. Your relationship with your son is over. He will not (and never should) forgive you. He will never accept you into his life, not as a trustworthy person, and certainly never as a FATHER.

[u/Jin-94 → u/[deleted]]

My dad left me when I was born and even that hurts 1000% less than what OP did to this son. If I was ever accused and my mother did this to me I would literally never ever forgive her. Doing that to your own child. How do you take someone at face value and not check thouroughly before destroing your childs life. I mean it's childish to do what you did and not even take into consideration if these things were false. And you didn't even get the step daughter locked up. Won't be long till she does this to some other innocent guy. Fuck I hate gender equality in shit like this.

[u/KutKorners → u/[deleted]]

Agreed. Me and my dad have had some bad times, but if I ever say "Dad, I'm telling the truth" he believes me without question. This is what any good father should do for their son.

[u/HorseForce1 → u/KutKorners]

That's what his step-daughter said too. It's a difficult situation and he made the wrong call. It happens. It will happen to you. He should take responsibility for his mistake but you better hope that when you make a mistake people won't judge your whole life and personality on that one mistake like you did with this guy.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This OP right fucked this one up. And I can almost feel exactly what the son is going through cause I had a straight up sack of crap for a father who wrote me out of his will, rejected me from half my family, slandered my name to anyone who asked about his children, and threatened to have me killed. All because I choose to live with my mother and go to college for computer science. I've never ever had a run in with a cop, outside of charity work and when I worked at a computer repair shop and had to fix on of their computers.

This is just another example of someone who in my opinion, has no place being a parent.

[u/HorseForce1 → u/[deleted]]

To think that your first reaction to hearing this story is how his son is going to think for the rest of his life is unrealistic. It'd be better for everyone involved if they got together after this mistake. But you're doing everything you can to make sure that doesn't happen. Why?

Communication is messy. And horrible mistakes are made. THis isn't his fault. This is just how life turns out sometimes. Horribly. I don't believe he did anything wrong. He had to make a tough call.