Good Parenting

Buckle up, readers. It's time to do some reportage.

I have a twin sister that I do not interact with and rarely speak about. She is a terrible human being. I have accrued many, many examples of her terribleness over the years but she reached a new low (peak?) recently that I want to share here.

Her awfulness has gone on for so long, and manifested itself in so many unique and wonderful ways, that over the years people who heard my accounts have questioned my veracity. I must be exaggerating, because no one could be that terrible. Au contraire, good reader. Keeping in mind that people do not remember what happened, but instead remember what they remember (two different things), I won't go into a lifetime review - who has time for that? Instead I will give a brief account of her greatest hits, which are easily verified and known by at least two people.

In the past 10 years she has (in rough chronological order):
Defrauded my (gullible) folks out of over $20,000 by convincing them to pay for nursing school, enrolling, and promptly dropping out and collecting the money they paid for tuition. The fact that this was not even a surprise to those that know her is telling and says a lot about how impressively naive my folks are (especially my mother). She had been in regular contact with them but after she took the money she disappeared for seven months. Following her return my mother, who has displayed judgment in these matters that is best characterized as "suspect", welcomed her back with open arms. Because she is stupid. (This will be a recurring theme.)

My sister got married and my stepdad set up her and her husband by financially backing them in a business venture. (Yes this is after my sister stole the twenty grand; I know I couldn't believe it either.) My sister saw that my folks were reluctant to continue to finance her directly beyond the business funding so she 'accidentally' got pregnant, thus ensuring that she could continue to receive regular cash payments from my folks for the foreseeable future. At the same time she was married and pregnant and had a baby she was carrying on relationships with at least two other people (per court documents). And she convinced my mother that she needed to finance her divorce and move so she kidnapped the child and left her husband one day while he was at work. She claimed he was abusive but was unable to prove it as part of the divorce proceedings, but she got what she wanted: she didn't have to work and the money kept coming in.

Special bonus: she sued my stepdad (the real victim of the original $20k nursing school theft/fraud) as part of the divorce settlement because he was a backing partner in the business that he had financed for her and her husband. At the same time my mother was supporting her financially because my sister has no education, no marketable skills, no trade, and no job. The grandchild is her meal ticket / ATM.

My folks supported my niece and, by extension, my sibling for several years after that. They could not give my sister money directly because it never ended up going where it was supposed to. At one point my mother ran out of checks because she wrote them all to my sister and when my mother called the bank for more they had to triple confirm that she was not the victim of identity fraud. You would think this conversation with the bank would give a person pause (Bank: You're out of checks already? How can this be?// You: I'm doing this on purpose, everything is fine. // Bank: Srsly? // You: Oh yeah. Perfectly fine. // Bank: Umm, okay.). But behind every great loser there is an enabler, so here we are.

Eventually my sister had her oldest child taken away by the state of Oregon for abuse and neglect. I know this because the state of Oregon asked me to take her before she went to foster care. My folks fostered the child for a while until my sister realized that if she kept my niece at her place and neglected her she would be making money and so she took the opportunity to weasel her way back into my folks lives and reclaim the child. While she was doing that she stole everything at my folks house that wasn't nailed down. (I guess it's a good thing I'm not trying to get engaged because my parents and grandparents legacy jewelry is now at pawn shops in the Portland and Beaverton area. hashtag silverLinings)

My sister sending her obviously abused and neglected child to school eventually got the attention of the teachers so they called in the social workers and my niece was taken away from my sister for a second time(!). That was about a year ago. You would think, if you were a reasonable person, that my folks (idiots though they are) would be able to get guardianship at this point. Hahaha you're funny! No.

Instead my sister is weaseling her way back into the child's life again, and doing it in the most awesomely manipulative way possible. Here is a summary I wrote for a friend:

My understanding was that my folks were the child's legal guardian but it turns out they are not. So of course my amazing sister is now back in touch with them after no contact for ten months. Kid had christmas and a birthday and nothing from her mom but now she is back on the scene and filling her ear with bullshit. Good parenting right there.

Here's my sister in a nutshell: she is working her way back into her (abused) child's life like a cancer, telling lies, saying she's going to do this and that, etc. So she says she is going to drive down and visit her daughter for the first time in 10 months. Talks a big game like she always does, promises the moon. So the day comes and she doesn't have gas money. So she asks [grandmother, aka my mother, aka the enabler, who is fostering the child] for gas money and [grandmother] says no, because my sister is a cockroach. And then my sister goes into a rage fit at her daughter, blames [grandmother] for not being able to come see the kid, and blames [grandmother] for encouraging her to promise things to the kid, and then breaking her promises. [grandmother] looks bad (and probably feels bad, because she is weak), the kid feels bad, and it drives a wedge between the kid and [grandmother]. Is that some next level manipulation or what? I confess I wouldn't even be able to imagine doing something like that. Hats off to my sister for being an impressively terrible human being.

How is it possible that my folks don't have guardianship of the child? They had to take the kid away because of child abuse! My sister is Hitler with less ambition. The fucking worst.
//

So that's where we are as of today. 

So far it looks like my folks will be unable to get guardianship. My sister is a world-class manipulator and she knows exactly what to say to the courts and child services in order to get what she wants. My folks are old and emotionally weak and my sister has already outmaneuvered them numerous times; they are no match for her. Best case scenario is she gets run over by a bus and her oldest kid won't be raised by a sociopath. We can but hope. Barring that we can hope that my folks and the courts will figure out a way to do right by the child. We'll see.

See you out there. Thanks for reading.