How do we handle abuser as a family?

[pjm19355]

My nephew abused my niece when she was between 5-13 years old when he was 12-20 years old. She is now 18. The police have been informed only recently when she decide to tell but cannot prosecute yet, not strong enough evidence only her word. My sister told 2 of us aunts (the sister of the nephew does not know and he does not know we know yet) to help protect our kids. He had moved away and is now back in the area which is what brought my niece to tell. Our dilemma is how to handle him right now since he doesn't know we know and the police have not confronted him yet. If we aunts approach him, it could hurt a legal case and upset my niece who is the victim and just dealing with the problem. It would also be dangerous to my mom who is elderly and dealing with the recent passing of my father. Two of us would like to confront him and tell him he is no longer welcome at family gatherings AT MINIMUM. We feel eventually this will all come out and will break up the family as I am fairly sure his mom and dad will not believe it. We are also concerned because he has a daughter who is just turning one. Where can we get help and guidance as a family? The niece is still trying to avoid dealing with this. The police are not able to talk to us because it is her case and she is 18 now. Where do we go and what do we do? How have others dealt with this? We feel he should be the one to make excuses to not be at family functions if this is not made public to the family right away. Right now we are having to see him at these gatherings and it is awful.

[suz]

Interesting, and it's hard for me to imagine this scenario or understand in order to give you advice since eveything is flipped in my case. There are many abusers in my family so, if anything, I opt out of family gatherings to not deal with the emotional chaos and confusion. They spread rumors about me to make me look like a bad person and seem to love the drama of it all, so I kind of imagine that they must be happy I'm not there. So unfortunately, it was easier to put myself in the nephew's shoes since it seems the world is against him. I don't know what he did, though.