Donuel, thank you, I have printed out the document.

On my thread about "staying afloat"
I have been careful what I disclose about my blood relatives.
This however is, sadly, part of the family dysfunction.

It is some fifteen years since I became aware of hitting. I say became aware because I had already left and distanced myself, and I was neither perpetrator nor the battered person in this case. Don't want to say much more, but let's say I kind of stumbled across it, and of course I had previously been unaware between my distance and the family's concealment protocol.

Having stumbled onto this, I knew I could not live with myself as long as I went along with the great silence and pretended nothing was wrong. But I dreaded going to the authorities myself: They would want to build a case and there was little I could offer them.

After taking time to think it all through,
I wrote a letter. Not to perpetrator or victim.
But to, I can't be precise here, someone in the family "chain of command," I'll put it that way. I described the little bit of which I was aware. I pointed out that I could do something myself besides just standing by in silence. And I said that they ought to respond to the urgent need of the battered person, otherwise they would have no credibility at all with me.

I feel so embarrassed talking about this.
It shames me to report that there was no successful rescue,
I never even attempted such.
It would be wish-fulfillment to think of bringing someone to justice
and liberating the battered person from that way of life.
In fact the family has tightened up so much around the situation
that I cannot know if anything changed for better or worse.

My blood relatives know now that I am serious about
speaking to the authorities, even though in fact I didn't do so.
I guess that is a result.