The truth is the greatest gift I can give my family, even if they hate me for it
Recently, I had a zoom call with a second cousin of mine who I have not spoken to in many years. She is the daughter of my grandfather’s brother, but her father is my father’s age, and she is my age. She is my father’s cousin and of his generation, but she is my age. A consequence of large families with huge age differences between the older and younger kids. Her position means that she has more information about my grandfather’s family than I do. We met to talk about incest, sexual violence, and misogyny within the family, and she shared details with me about the patterns of incest, sexual violence, and misogyny in the Conlin family, going back generations.
During the conversation she shared with me that she has a relationship with my parents, and that she hoped this wouldn’t impact our ability to have a relationship. I told her that I understood the desire to stay connected to family, that I have tried many times to have a relationship with my parents, and that I didn’t judge her for it. I also told her that it worried me because I do not believe my father is a safe person. I shared with her all the relevant information about my father: As a child he screamed at my sister and I if we resisted, ran, cried, or expressed fear about our grandfather’s terrifying sexual behaviour toward us. As a child, I had sexual fear of my father, so much so that I rolled off the bed and slept on the floor when I had to share a bed with him. When my sister was child, she saw him masturbating with the door open, looking at pornography on the family computer, and when he saw her as he said was “Go back to bed.” I was left with the responsibility of dealing with my little sister’s fear and confusion about what she saw. When I was 17 and drunk out of my mind, being taken away from my parents’ house by a cop in an ambulance to the psych ward, I stood between my father and the cop, pointed at my father, and said “He’s a fucking pedophile!” No one followed up with me about what I said. My father told me, when I was 18, that he didn’t know why I was so upset about what my grandfather did to (hold me down forcibly and tongue kiss me against my will when I was 12), because his aunt did the same to him and he is fine. My mother insists that the “slippery slobberies” (the “game” where my grandfather would regularly forcibly lick the children’s faces and simulate making out with us) was “normalized as a Conlin game” and that all the Conlin men did this, and somehow this is supposed to be reassuring. When my sister was a teenager, after I had moved out, my father told her that she was his favourite and I was our mother’s favourite, gave her a cd for no reason, and started standing outside her bedroom at night while my mother was travelling and they were alone in the house together. My sister begged me, when she was 16, to take her from the house because she was so afraid of my father, and I did. When I told my mother this, she attacked me and called me delusional and a liar. When I wrote about this my mother threatened to sue me. My father has always spoken positively about my grandfather, even after I got the police involved when I was 15. He has never said that what his father did was wrong. He refused to go to therapy even when I said it was a necessary condition for having a relationship with me.
I told my cousin that incest is a family system and that I have good reason to believe my father is dangerous. I told her that incest and child sexual abuse are overlapping but not the exact same thing: incest perpetrators are often sexually violent and invasive with adult family members as well as children, therefore the threat has not passed simply because you’ve grown up. I told her that my father is sneaky and subtle, but that he is an incest perpetrator. After I said this, I watched the expression on her face that tells me a dissociated reality is surfacing. She told me that recently, while she was visiting my parents, she went to bed and then got up again to go to the bathroom. When she left the bedroom, she saw my father masturbating in the living room. My parents’ house is very ope concept with the hallway that lines the bedrooms overlooking the living room. The living room can be seen from practically everywhere else in the house. It is the least private place imaginable. Despite everything I already know about my father, this was a punch in the stomach. I was expecting to receive disclosures about the sexual abuse in the generation above my father. I was not expecting to receive a disclosure about my father’s current, active sexually abusive behaviour. I watched my cousin struggle with the realm of unreality. She told me it was probably an accident. I asked her if she would masturbate in the living room while family was visiting. She said no. She said maybe he forgot she was visiting — eve though they had just been hanging out. My father does not have dementia. His memory is fine. But in incest families, everyone reaches for any explanation, no matter how improbably, except for the obvious one. She told me that everyone “gets one.” As in one example of behaviour like this can be interpreted as a mistake. I don’t agree with that. I think all incest behaviour needs to be taken seriously, because there is always more. But given the history I described above, there is no way this can be described as an isolated incident.
After the call, I was deeply shaken. My entire family treats me like I’m delusional for saying that my father is sexually abusive. My mother outright calls me a liar and delusional. She has also literally said the words “Just because your grandfather did that doesn’t mean you have the right to drag your father into this.” My sister now says she doesn’t remember him standing outside her bedroom, or telling me that, but says nothing when I ask her why I moved her out of the house when she was 16 and I was 19. My brother asked me what exactly I am accusing our father of and then never responded to me again when I told him. I worked with an organization that does facilitated dialogue with incest families and invited my family to a facilitated dialogue but they refused to participate. No one will talk to me about my father’s behaviour or even entertain the idea that anything is amiss. I have to carry the weight of reality all alone and fight through my own intense incest brainwashing and dissociation. I felt for years that I “didn’t have enough evidence” to make such a serious accusation, even though I remember the terror on my teenaged sister’s face. For years I wondered if I was, as my mother insisted, just transferring the fear of my grandfather onto my father. It took so much for me to fight my way into reality and insist that yes, my father also displays incestuous behaviours. But even then, I was not ready for the revelation that in 2025 he is masturbating in the living room while his cousin is visiting.
After I absorbed the shock, I realized that I needed to warn people. I messaged my sister and another cousin who I know has a relationship with my parents. Both of them refuse to talk to me about the abuse in our family, but I needed them to know because they both stay over at my parents’ house. The fact that my father masturbates in the living room while family is visiting is a safety issue. I sent a message to both of them saying as much. The next day, my cousin messaged me to say that she assumed our conversation was confidential and that I had violated her trust by sharing this information within the family. She told me that my actions had caused ruptures in her relationships within the family that she is now trying to repair, and that she does not share my interpretation of my father’s actions. She said “I never experienced anything incestuous from your dad.” I replied and told her: Masturbating in the living room while family is in the house is objectively sexually abusive and incestuous behaviour. This is an objective fact and not a matter of opinion. The information must be shared because it is a safety issue. People who stay at my parents’ house need to know that they are at risk of witnessing my father masturbating. Expecting me not to share that information is expecting me to take part in the incest family system by hiding and protecting sexually abusive behaviour. My cousin has chosen to end her relationship with me and continue her relationship with my parents. I told her that it’s extremely dysfunctional that she considers it more acceptable for a family member to masturbate in front of her than for another family member to simply speak about the fact that that happened.
I have since messaged several family members: my brother, my mother, two of my father’s sisters, and one of my mother’s sisters who has a close relationship with my parents, telling them what my father did, how it fits into the existing patterns of incest in our family, and how it is dangerous, abusive, sexually invasive behaviour. I have been entirely ignored by everyone.
For so many years, I felt insanely guilty for speaking up about the sexual abuse in our family. I felt so much empathy for my parents and I know how painful this information is. It felt like I was creating the situation rather than simply speaking about it. And yet, despite the fact that I have tried to kill myself multiple times due to incest trauma, and it has affected every area of my life, I receive no empathy from my family. The family has closed ranks. I am the scapegoat. I am the one causing harm. I am the liar. I am delusional. I am “misrepresenting the facts.” They try their best to erase me and carry on as if I don’t exist. And for many years I let them do this.
I can no longer let them do this. Even though it was obvious before that my father is dangerous, I now know that he is currently, actively, perpetrating incest. His is an active threat. And my silence would be complicity. My silence would be allowing him to masturbate in the living room. My silence would put my family members at risk of seeing my father masturbating. While I can’t make my family heed my warnings, I can smash the realm of unreality wide open by refusing to be silent. No Dad. You can’t masturbate in the living room. It’s fucking disgusting and violent and wrong. And I will do everything in my power to stop you. I will do everything in my power to show people who you are. I will make it as difficult as I am able for you to perpetrate incest in our family. I am fucking done.
For a long time I felt like I was hurting my family by telling the truth. I now see that this is the most profound act of love that I could show them. I am receiving all their projections, their rage, and their erasure of me. I am alone screaming the truth, denied love and belonging, attacked with slander, and feeling all the pain that they refuse to feel. And I am doing it because I love them. And the incest has to stop.
Join us on December 28th at 5pm EST to discuss I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman. The zoom link will be sent out via this substack, or find it at clementinemorrigan.com on the 28th.
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Clementine Morrigan is an underground writer, cultural change maker, moral philosopher, and brazen truth teller. She is the author of numerous zines and books, including the cult classic zine Love Without Emergency, which will be released as a book with Microcosm Press in 2027. Her popular zine series Fucking Magic was released as a book with Revolutionaries Press in 2025. She co-hosts the podcast Fucking Cancelled with Jay Lesoleil. Her work is known for its unflinching engagement with taboo and difficult topics. She works for a world where the dignity of all beings is recognized and protected.