A breach of trust (in our home)...(Update)

[anneboleyn]

65. Excellent points! This happened to my husband's elderly mother

Last edited Fri Mar 10, 2017, 08:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Hekate's points are excellent and spot on. People like this guy count on good people not reporting their actions, and they will *definitely* continue their behavior. It will hurt others more, as Hekate pointed out, and his behavior will almost definitely become worse and more aggressive over time.

My husband had a very similar incident happen in his family years ago. In this case it involved workers and his elderly mother who lived alone at home. The workers, who were doing some minor repairs around the house, stole a bunch of "small" items, very similar to you OP (they stole some DVDs, video games that belonged to a cousin, music cds, etc). They also stole several pieces of jewelry that weren't literally valuable but had very high sentimental value (two of the items belonged to my husband's father who was deceased -- that was a great trauma for his mother. The items were never recovered). The incident also terrified my husband's mother as she lived alone, and this was in a small town, and the workers (who were from another town close by) knew that she was very vulnerable.

Anyway my husband and his siblings strongly debated whether or not to report the incident. Their mother was worried that they would target her if she reported them, and one of the siblings strongly argued that they should "let it go" and that it wasn't so bad, they could replace the items, etc. They DID report the incident, and it was a very good thing that they did, as the guys had ALREADY (within a matter of a couple of weeks) preyed on additional elderly persons and they had behaved aggressively and stolen more items (including cash from an elderly woman's purse).

As Hekate said, not reporting, even not appearing in court (and I can certainly empathize with your wife's feelings! It's great that you have an alarm -- do you have a dog or is it possible to get one just to help if she feels nervous at home?) help the person doing wrong and MAY expose others in the future to this guy's bad deeds.