One of my parents was adopted by their grandparents at birth and raised to believe that their grandparents were their parents and that their mother was their older sister. Very few people knew the truth, but someone who did came forward and told that parent of mine — with proof — so that they would have the truth, and gave them information on their biological father. I’m not sure how much information was given to them about their biological father aside from his former city and state of residence seeing as how he is now deceased, but not long after this I took Ancestry and 23andMe tests for a number of reasons. I began matching to several family members on this side of the family, which I expected and was able to place on the family tree of mine that someone added to their paid account giving me editor privileges over so that I could add people to my family tree as I answered questions through matches. However, the recent obituary of an aunt of mine on that side of the family (found through Google) surprised me, because I had expected my parent to be the oldest of the children that my grandfather had, and it actually turned out that this parent of mine was the youngest. Through gathering information from cousins’ family trees from this side of my family, Ancestry finally began giving me information about my grandfather that I had up until that point been missing, and suddenly everything made sense in a bad way that made my parent’s adoption make sense.

My grandfather was forty-five years old when one of my parents was conceived.

My grandmother was sixteen years old. Sixteen years old.

My grandfather had been married for decades to his wife, and counting off of the nodes on Ancestry if I’ve gotten this right — and I think I have — he’d already had six children by that point. Not only did it become apparent that my grandfather had cheated on his wife (who, might I add, he died married to, so I’m not even sure she knew about this and am unwilling to go down that rabbit hole at this time), but at the very least was a pedophile or an ephebophile — he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old teenager while he was middle-aged, and forty-five years old at that — and that he had quite likely committed rape. To add insult to injury, I found out through information supplied to me on Ancestry that he was only a year younger than my grandmother’s father — my great-grandfather — and that he was actually a few years older than my great-grandmother. Fortunately, he had nothing to do with the actual raising of my parent. He never met or knew this parent and is now deceased, which I have absolutely no problems with. (And for the record, I would like to take the time to state that I harbor no ill will toward the family members of his who quite likely knew nothing about all of this, had perhaps been misled about things if he ever did mention it [like my grandmother lying about “any child being his”, or something].) Ancestry and 23andMe prove clear, close relation to this family tree. The only person that I blame here is he who should be blamed and is long gone.

I do not blame family members of mine on his side for his actions, but I blame him for his own actions.