This Mom is Visiting Her Son in Prison for SA, and Her Other Kids Have Completely Cut Her Off

There’s no instruction manual for parenting. And there is absolutely, positively no chapter for what to do when one of your children does something truly unforgivable, and you’re left to navigate the wreckage. We all think we know what we’d do, but the truth is, we have no idea until we’re in it. And one mom on Reddit is in the absolute thick of an impossible, no-win situation.

Let’s get the horrific part out of the way. This mom’s 24-year-old son is in prison. He’s serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for the s*xual assault of a young woman. And in a twist that makes this tragedy a million times more gut-wrenching, the victim was a friend of one of her daughters. The crime didn’t just hurt a stranger; it detonated a bomb in the middle of their entire family and social circle.

Now, before anyone jumps down her throat, let’s be crystal clear. This mom is not a monster. She is not making excuses for her son. She explicitly states that she thinks SA is the “most evil, terrible crime possible” and that she is “heartbroken” about his actions. She fully believes he “should 100% be locked up” and she “resents him so much” for what he did. She is under no illusions about who or what her son is.

But here’s the part that is tearing her apart. He is still her son. And she is still his mom. And she still visits him in prison. She can’t, in good faith, let her “boy be alone.” She says the thought haunts her.

Because she has chosen to maintain this sliver of contact, her other three children have completely cut her off. They are so disgusted and betrayed by her actions that they refuse to speak to her. She’s constantly reaching out, and the only response she gets is, “are you two still in contact?” When she says yes, the interaction is over. She is being forced to pick between her children, and she can’t.

She is completely and utterly trapped. She feels like a failure for what he did, but she also feels like she’d be a failure if she abandoned him entirely. She’s lost her son to his own monstrous actions, and now she’s lost her other children to her own maternal conflict. She wants her kids back, she wants to make everything okay, but she can’t bring herself to completely sever the tie to the child she raised.

And honestly, can you blame her other kids? Absolutely not. Their world was shattered. Their sister’s friend was violated by their own brother. Their loyalty is, and should be, with the victim. To them, every visit their mom makes is a slap in the face. It’s a fresh act of betrayal, a sign that she is, in some small way, choosing the perpetrator over the rest of the family. Their pain is valid and unimaginable.

But then, you look at the mom. What is the “right” thing to do here? Does a mother’s love just… stop? Even when her child has proven to be a monster? She’s not supporting his crime. She’s not bailing him out. She’s sitting in a prison visiting room, facing the living, breathing embodiment of her greatest failure. She is mourning the son she thought she raised while also, for reasons she probably can’t even articulate, refusing to abandon the one who is left.

This is a situation with no answers. It’s a tragedy with no upside. There is no right choice. There is no way for her to “win.” She can’t make everything okay again. It will never be okay again. She is just as much a victim of her son’s horrifying choices as everyone else, just trapped in a different kind of prison.

Is she the ahole for visiting him? I… I can’t. I can’t call this woman an ahole. She’s a mother stuck in an impossible, soul-crushing, heartbreaking situation. She’s just a person trying to navigate an unnavigable-sized grief, and there is no right way to do it.