My sister just accused my dad of molesting her when she was two. She has cut off all contact with him, and is close to doing the same with my mom. My sister has two children, which my parents are very attached to. It took my sister two years of therapy to arrive at this conclusion.
My father has been a police officer for almost as long as I have been alive (37 years). He has told me more then once that the only reason he ever wanted to be a cop is that he enjoys throwing assholes in jail. He hated writing traffic tickets because, "he didn't want to ruin some normal person's day." He is the only "spiritual" person in my immediate family, and though my sister and I pretty much view religion as a pox upon humanity, he always seemed to embody best parts of it. Honesty being his best and most unwavering trait. He is a much more moral person than I ever could be.
When i read my sister's email, blood rushed to my head even before my frontal lobe had fully comprehended what i was reading. She had been MIA twice in the last two years, for months at a time. My initial reaction was,"what if?". After some serious consideration... It just doesn't make any sense. I have to leave a lot of evidence supporting my father's innocence out for the sake of brevity, but at worst, I simply can't take my sister's side for the simple reason that exceptional claims require exceptional evidence... And all she has is her memories, drudged up by a therapist, from ~31 years ago at the age of two.
I will admit that it wasn't without some smugness that i would look upon my immediately family in years past and think, "well, at least i am a member of this awesome family that has no major drama and enjoys each others company." Now we are just as messed up as everyone else, and perhaps more so then many.
I have no doubt that my sister honestly believes she was molested by my father. I also have little doubt she is wrong. This imbalance has led to a lot of anger. Not so much for myself, but for my parents. I am child free (see /r/childfree) sterilized, and marrying a transgender woman this fall (yeah, cant make that shit up!). So no freaking kids here... And now my parents probably wont ever see their only grand children again.
My parents want me to keep in touch with her since they can't... So I have to for their sake... But honestly, I have little desire to. I am angry with her, and I know I can't change her mind... And my [italics] perfect [ /italics] family is ruined.
I apologize in advance for lack of obsessive editing as professional reddit lurker... I wrote this on my phone after a couple IPAs... What can you do?