Cousin stealing from me, and getting away with it.

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Well, I recently discovered that my 18yo cousin has been stealing video games from me. I confronted his mother about it, was polite, but she exploded in my face and claimed I was making "false accusations". The rest of the family went behind her and supported her reaction, and so my cousin gets away with theft. I guess being the nutcase in the family means that I can't have any valid complaints whatsoever, and that people can walk all over me without worrying about consequences.

They claim that all of the evidence I have is "circumstantial" and that nothing can be proven. Perhaps that is true, but the last time I saw a few of these games was when he was playing them at my apartment. He took the games out of the cases, and left the cases, so that's why I just recently discovered what he was doing. Not to mention, there was a second incident where I took some games over to my grandmother's house to play them there. One of those games went missing that very weekend, and the only other person in that house at the time was - yep, you guessed it. My thieving cousin.

Most of the family is chastising me for refusing to let him enter my apartment at this point. They tell me that I am being "paranoid", that I am "making false accusations", and that "maybe the games are sitting around my apartment somewhere" (yeah, right, I did some damn heavy spring cleaning in my apartment looking for them as soon as I realized they were missing - if they were in my apartment, I would have found them by now). It's always like this whenever somebody does me wrong - people bend over backwards to assume that it's symptoms of my condition, and everything is my fault.

So, having the stigma of being a schizophrenic Aspie means that my cousin can steal from me, and that I am officially not allowed to say a thing about it. This sucks.

He took the games from the cases. Call the police, tell them what you suspect your cousin of doing. Hopefully it will get resolved.

The only time I've had a mother blow up that quickly over a request about something that had gone missing in her daughter's presence, the kid was stealing and the mother very well knew it. (The girl's father later returned the item in question.) I'd say that your aunt also knows very well what her son is up to and feels powerless to stop him.

You have every right to keep him out of your home. I'd also suggest keeping your games in your possession from now on, since the rest of the family doesn't want to face facts. Maybe when their stuff starts going missing, they'll see the light.

I have contemplated calling the police on him, but the rest of the family tells me that if I do that, the police would only "laugh at me" for making such a claim based on only "circumstantial evidence".

Well, I believe the situation is already settled. He is no longer welcome in my apartment under any circumstances, and if anybody in the family wants to b***h at me about that, I will gently remind them that they are not paying the rent.

They wouldn't laugh at you, but they would tell you that unless there are specific identifiers -- individual unit serial numbers that you've recorded, etc. -- there's very little chance that they can actually do something about it. He'd likely just unload the games, anyway, and there's no chance of recovering them then.

What you're already doing is probably most effective.

"circumstancial evidence" "proof" what kind of people are these?
i thought MY family was stuck up, but if i told them that someone IN my family is stealing from me, they would be shocked by the theft. there wouldnt be any doubt about wether im being truthful or not.

how strange, to be so mistrusted. and i AM the lowlife loser scum of the family too, they just know that if i say something, then its true

The thing that annoys me the most is that his father does not even know what is going on. Everybody is screaming at me not to tell him, because "the boy is 18, doesn't live with his father, and he can't do anything about it".'

If anybody is able to force the truth out of my cousin, it would be him.

I'm officially not allowed to confront my cousin about this, either. The mother won't stand for it.

Most of the family seems to be bending over backwards to ensure he never faces the consequences of his actions. Hell, when he showed up at my grandfather's funeral a couple of months ago wearing a f***ing Slipknot T-shirt and talking about how much he hated God in the middle of a church service, and then making a speech engineered to draw attention away from grandpa and onto his foolish dreams of being a death metal musician, I seemed to be the only person there who was annoyed with him over his outrageous actions. Everybody else said, "he has problems, let him act them out, he'll grow up eventually". That's BS, if you ask me. If his father were there, he would have smacked the s**t out of him. Too bad his father is officially out of the picture.

I've been stolen by different siblings.
It hurts a lot when you realise that the unsaid borrowings and the loans have became their property and there's nothing or not much you can do about it.
They could do that because my father is out of the picture as well.
So I can relate to what you say and/or feel. It really shocks and hurts.

I can't believe that most of the family is letting him slide with his behavior by saying "he's 18 going on 12. he has mental issues. he had a troubled childhood. he's just acting out because of his circumstances. let him act out."

Hell, I have mental issues. I had a childhood that makes his look like DisneyWorld - as far as I know, he was not beaten every day, raped by people who were supposed to be in a position to help him, and belittled at every turn he made. Yet, there is a double standard at work here. He gets a free pass for his outrageous behavior because of his circumstances, while every minor display of discontent on my part is automatically dismissed as being BS.

Everybody seems to believe that by letting him act out his BS issues now, he'll eventually grow out of them without them lingering on. Geez, my family has some serious issues if that is what they truly believe.

Okay, you don't have to listen to what they are telling you.

1) If they telll you the police will laugh at you ... CALL THE POLICE ANYWAY and see. You have nothing to lose.

2) If they tell you not to tell his father ... CALL HIS FATHER AND TELL HIM exactly what they don't want you to tell him. Who cares if they tell you not to do it ... do it anyway, it might just solve everything.

Holy smokes! Talk about your toxic personalities!

About the only thing you can do in this situation is walk away from it. Think of it as self-defense. You wouldn't have anything to do with this kid or his mother if they weren't related to you and they obviously don't hold their relationship with you in much regard, so I'd suggest putting some distance between the three of you -- metaphorically if not physically.