Revenge/Justice suggestions needed (long)

[frostbrn]

I'm in kind of a tough situation right now, and none of my friends/relatives will give me any solid advice one way or another so I figured at least OOT would be able to provide me with some direction or suggestions.

Here's a quick background of my situation:

I'm engaged (to be married this summer), and my fiancée and I have a 1.5 year old daughter. Her real parents were divorced when she was very young (between 1 and 3 years old I believe) and her mom remarried shortly thereafter. Her stepdad (she pretty much considers him to be her father, although she also still sees her real dad quite a bit and has a good relationship with him as well), is a bit of a character. He's a former alcoholic, but hasn't touched the stuff in like 20 years or something, but he does have a bit of an anger problem that no one ever talks about. Earlier this year My fiancée was selling her car (we had 3 cars at the time) and missed a car payment as she thought she would have the car sold. It turns out that the loan on the car was old enough that the phone number they had on file for her was the number at her parents' house. So it was sometime in May that her stepdad (Dave) calls me trying to get a hold of my fiancée (Karen) to discuss why he is getting a collection call for her at his house. I tell her it is him on the phone and she doesn't want to talk to him. He then proceeds to start accusing me of spending money I don't have, shirking my responsibility of my family, and not providing for them. I take all of this in stride and do my best to nod through the phone call and end it as quickly as possible, but the guy won't let up and keeps pounding me with wild accusations basically challenging my manhood by saying I can't do what most men with families are supposed to do. So after about 5-10 minutes of his little tirade I tell him to [censored] off and hang up on him.

Fast forward to December, Karen and I are planning on going back to visit our families (we currently live about 2500 miles from them) taking our daughter with us. I haven't talked to her dad since the previous incident, and I told her that I'm not going to waltz right in to his house and act like everything is fine when he clearly was in the wrong and needed to make things right with me. She agreed with me, but we didn't really go into much detail discussing it. So she and our kid fly in about a week before I do (she decided to spend extra time there since she doesn't have any full time job commitments) and she had planned on staying with her parents for the entire 3 weeks she was visiting. They had said this would be find and had a room set up for her and the kid. I flew in on Christmas eve, and was going to meet up with them at a family get together at her parents house on Christmas eve night. During the day I went to an NFL game with my brother and decided to consume a bit of alcohol both to enjoy my time at the game and make my time at her parents' house a bit easier for me to take. So I show up at her parents house a bit tipsy (but not stumbling drunk or anything) and everything seems to be going fine. The next morning we (Karen, the baby and I) drive to my parents' house for Christmas which is about 2.5 hours from her parents' house. The plan was then that she would go back the next day with the kid to visit people from her side of the family while I stayed with my family for the week and visit my friends.

Fast forward to Friday the 30th, I'm still at my parents house (2.5 hours from her parents' house) and I get a frantic call from Karen telling me that chaos had just ensued. She was sobbing like crazy on the phone, so I only got bits and pieces of the story initially, but after about 15 minutes I got the whole story. Her stepdad had picked a fight with her about my showing up drunk and being unwilling to just "bury the hatchet" with him and forget about the previous incident. She actually went to bat for me and told him that I was looking to resolve the situation between the two of us rather than just forget it ever happened. This is when he flipped out, started throwing all of her luggage and things around her room, almost hitting my daughter with a large piece of luggage with one of his throws. The baby is screaming because he is screaming in Karen's face at the top of his lungs, so she says "I'm leaving" and goes to grab our daughter and get in the car. He then backhands her in the face (no marks when I saw her, but she said it was a full out blow) grabs our daughter and prevents Karen from taking her. She then runs out of the room grabs the phone and says "I'm calling 911". He puts down the kid and tackles her with the phone in her hand just as her mom walks in and the whole situation diffuses. She leaves right away, drives out to meet me and stay with my parents, however when her brother went to retrieve her things from her parents' house he said that their mom had talked with her stepdad and he had told her a completely different story AND SHE SIDED WITH HIM!

I told Karen that I absolutely wanted to press charges, but she didn't want to do it, so I told her that this would be his one get out of jail free card in terms of the police, but I would give him no such free pass and would have to do something about it. I was absolutely livid when I first got her panicked call and heard that he had hit her and almost hurt my daughter. My dad grabbed my shoulder to talk to me and I threw him into a door and broke the handle and part of the wood framing. I was initially consumed with rage, but now 4 days later the rage is gone, but I still feel like her stepdad needs to suffer some serious consequences by my hand.

So now I'm asking you OOT, what should my next move be? I am back 2500 miles away now, Karen is staying with my parents and gets back later this week. My main goal is not so much revenge that would make me feel better (although that is partially my motivation) as much as it is my desire to get the message through to him that he can't do whatever the [censored] he wants and just slough it off later on by "burying the hatchet". He's got a history of this (not hitting people, but just the attitude), he was actually fired last year from a job because of a blow up he had with a co-worker. So the result I'm really looking for is for him to realize that what happend was deadly serious and he can't act this way anymore, or at least not around my family.

Below are ideas I came up with on the plane ride home (I know I may be way off base here), so let me know what a better approach would be, or any better suggestions [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

-Water boarding (i.e. the kind used in the recent torture of suspected terrorists in the middle east)

-A major beat down (possibly a couple of broken bones included)

-Kill his dog (he loves the dog immensely) either while he watches or not

-Tie him to a tree in some remote location and leave him there for a length of time

-Sever a finger

-Super glue the end of his urethra shut

-force him to eat 1 ounce of my [censored]

-"brand" or tattoo him with some derogatory term that would be appropriate for the situation and/or his attitude.


Thanks in advance OOT!

[Colonel Kataffy]

Dude, until you can learn to not throw your own dad into a door just cause somebody else did something that pissed you off, you shouldn't do jack [censored].

[jhfranklin]

As long as you're with her, this problem will never completely go away. Of course, I hope those suggestions for revenge are only half-serious, because if you most of those things, you would be as messed up as he is. Just go up to him and tell him that the next time he ever touches her inappropriately the cops won't be the only thing he'll have to worry about. Amd mean it.

[goofyballer]

You need to shut him out of ever being a part of your family until he shapes up and does some serious apologizing, as well as admitting what really happened. If he loves your fiancee, and his step-granddaughter, then if this doesn't make him change his ways nothing will. All of these torture-like things you're suggesting will fix nothing and just ensure that he remains angry with you for the rest of eternity.

EDIT: Actually, question: which of these statements is true? Cause I'm confused.
a.) Her mom didn't know what happened, so her stepdad lied to her and her mom believed the stepdad rather than your fiancee.
b.) Her mom does know what happened, and is lying to cover up what the stepdad did.

I hope your fiancee doesn't have any desire to associate with them anymore after this kind of betrayal.

[Ron Burgundy]

It's 2500 miles away right? So just don't ever go to their house again. If he calls, hang up. Just keep your family away from him. If he breaks the law or threatens you, call the police.

Coming up with some silly revenge tactic is ridiculous and will only make the problem worse. Especially if you ever do have to call the police, he will then have leverage against you if he says that you cut off his finger, killed his dog, ate your [censored] et.

[Madtown]

[ QUOTE ]
Dude, until you can learn to not throw your own dad into a door just cause somebody else did something that pissed you off, you shouldn't do jack [censored].

[/ QUOTE ]

[frostbrn]

Thanks for the comments, I think that it's the dose of reality I really needed to hear. I know the right thing is just to cut him off from my family and let that be the end of it, but it still burns me inside to know that some dude, I don't even care who it was, hit and tackled my wife to be, almost seriously hurt my daughter and I just walk away saying "that's the last you'll see of us". I don't know, maybe I will settle down a little more about it a few weeks from now

[Ron Burgundy]

Also, if I were you, I would have called the police myself immediately after I got the frantic call from the fiancee.

[goofyballer]

[ QUOTE ]
it still burns me inside to know that some dude, I don't even care who it was, hit and tackled my wife to be, almost seriously hurt my daughter and I just walk away saying "that's the last you'll see of us".

[/ QUOTE ]

I know what you mean, but if he loves your fiancee and daughter, then your reaction is a serious punishment. Do you think he won't feel like [censored] when they don't get invited to the wedding, and he completely misses out on his granddaughter growing up? Even if he doesn't care, her mom certainly will.

[kurosh]

I would gently let him know if he ever touched my family again, I will kill him. Then I move on with my life.