Anonymous wrote:Spin off from the Utah post.

If your 23 year old son came across the country and told you "hey, someone went really wrong on my trip with my girlfriend. I snapped and XYZ...."

Would you turn your kid in? Or call a lawyer friend and follow the attorney's predictable advice to "say nothing?"

This would be hard.

Turn them in. Who wants that scum in my home

Anonymous wrote:I must be weird, but I guess my love is conditional. If I knew without a shadow of a doubt (e.g. confession & video) that my adult child had intentionally brutally murdered someone, a particularly someone vulnerable like a child, my feelings would change. I might pay for a lawyer simply out of duty and to ensure an orderly legal process, I would love them on some level still, but our relationship would change. No way in hell would I try to "hide" them or help them escape.

This isn’t weird. It’s normal.

I must be weird, but I guess my love is conditional. If I knew without a shadow of a doubt (e.g. confession & video) that my adult child had intentionally brutally murdered someone, a particularly someone vulnerable like a child, my feelings would change. I might pay for a lawyer simply out of duty and to ensure an orderly legal process, I would love them on some level still, but our relationship would change. No way in hell would I try to "hide" them or help them escape.

I think the hardest situation would be one in which the child swore innocence to you, but all the evidence clearly pointed to them being guilty. Would you believe them.

I will not protect a murder, even if they were my child. I would not pay their legal fees, especially with the information that they took a like with intention (or in crime of passion). I would remain their parent and try to find a peaceful place in my heart to be compassionate and loving to them. But not blindly. And not without them having significant conversation s with me and their father in regards to accountability; and if they were not remorseful in their actions that process would take longer. You cannot kill someone and expect it not be acknowledged. This is still loving my child unconditionally, but removing the magical thinking that they did not do something horrific to another persons child.

Anonymous wrote:Spin off from the Utah post.

If your 23 year old son came across the country and told you "hey, someone went really wrong on my trip with my girlfriend. I snapped and XYZ...."

Would you turn your kid in? Or call a lawyer friend and follow the attorney's predictable advice to "say nothing?"

This would be hard.

I would make them a nice meal and hug them. Suggest they go rest a bit. Then call the police while they they were in other room. Love them up but also gold them accountable. I don’t know if I’d help with an attorney, but I’d sit with them in court.

Why not both?

I would turn in my kid AND get them a lawyer.

I would tell him to come home. I would tell him not to speak to the police at all. I would retain an attorney.

Anonymous wrote:Of course not. I’d be horrified but I’m sure I’d help him hide the body if it came to that.

Wtf

Of course not. I’d be horrified but I’m sure I’d help him hide the body if it came to that.

Since this is anonymous: my children & my spouse matter more to me than anyone else (hypothetical grandchildren and direct descendants would go here as well), followed by extended family and very close friends. I would do whatever I thought would make the situation turn out the best way possible for those people. Since I have multiple kids, I have to consider the futures of all of them, so I would help the hypothetical murderer as much as I could in line with the law while still making sure the family name is harmed as little as possible. I'd say I must've misheard the confession, hire the best possible lawyer, and urge cooperation with whatever the lawyer suggested.

I would help them obtain counsel and the counsel would help them turn themselves in. Only exception might be if someone was trying to violently rape them and they killed the rapist in self-defense. In that case, if there was no way of getting caught I would not get them to turn themselves in.

I remember thinking about this during the Lululemon murder trial. There's something immensely tragic about the murderer's family to me. Sure - in a lot of cases, the family probably knew something was off with their kids, or frankly, were responsible for their child turning into a monster, but that case really stuck with me. The isolation and grief associated with losing your child to jail/worse, and the reality that you cannot express it because of what they did must be excruciating.

I would only allow them to talk to the parent who is a lawyer so that way anything they discussed would be inadmissible. That parent would tell them to do exactly what the guy in FL is doing... retain counsel and keep their mouth shut.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No I would not turn in my kid are you kidding???

I feel the same way.
As a parent, our love 💞 is very unconditional.

However if my son was Christopher Lee Watts & confessed to murdering his children (+ thus my Grandchildren!) I would never speak to him again.

Wow, I just started read this thread and I'm already disgusted.

Ok, so your son's wife, someone's daughter, is just a vessel by which to provide you with your beloved grandchildren. Her life does not amount to a hill o' beans, apparently. You sound like an awful narcissist mother-in-law. Horrible.