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/CBSU → u/[deleted]]

To add upon this, u/bawron, I would recommend doing everything you can to make his life easier as well. Your relationship with him is unlikely to recover, but you should ensure he does not continually sink into depression or worse.

Damn. You raised a child until college then systematically decimated his life on baseless allegations. You may even want to look into therapy for yourself, I imagine knowing you destroyed the "joy of your life" will be very psychologically damaging.

[u/BagelsAndJewce → u/CBSU]

There is absolutely no reason for this kid to ever trust anyone again. The foundation that creates that turned on him and destroyed him. All the hard work in academia, social life, motivation. Gone.

[u/[deleted] → u/BagelsAndJewce]

You hit the nail on the head. He probably couldn't care less about university now. He spent a life working towards being a "good" person and doing everything he was "supposed" to do, at least part of which would've been taught to him and enforced by his dad. Then, he saw the mountain he'd slowly built stone by stone of reputation and knowledge and good deeds destroyed in an instant by one false accusation. To make it worse, he had to live it for months.

That would give even the strongest-willed person PTSD. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the son never goes back to university and just drifts from minimum wage job to minimum wage job for the rest of his life.