My dad cheated on my mom when I was a toddler and when my mom found out about it she filed for divorce. My dad’s mistress was already pregnant by that point and it made things tense though I don’t remember too much of them interacting. My dad and his second wife, the mistress, had two kids together.

When I was 6 my dad got arrested for assaulting the guy my mom was dating at the time. And I mean he brutally assaulted him.

He was arrested on the scene and charged pretty fast. His wife dumped the kids on my grandparents and ran off. I guess they found out later she had died but I’m not totally sure on when they found that out.

I don’t even know why they never kept my dad’s other kids but I know CPS got involved and put the kids in foster care. And I know my grandparents looked for my mom to take them in and raise them with me. My mom refused and that was the end of it. They spent a lot of years in foster care.

My dad served time until I was 16 and then he was released. He got the other kids back after a year or two of working with CPS (or something). Don’t ask me all those details I just know what my grandparents said. I haven’t seen or had any contact with him since I was 6 and that’s the way I plan to keep it. A couple of times he almost went back inside because he was harassing my mom and even threatened her one time.

I’m 19 now. I don’t have much contact with my grandparents but the last two times I heard from them we fought. They were saying all this nasty shit about my mom and blaming her because dad’s kids were abused by several foster families and were left with all kinds of trauma. They said mom was gross and disgusting for letting them go into care. And they said the fact I hadn’t spent any time with the kids at all since my dad was arrested is further proof that she’s a disgrace to motherhood and personhood. I think they expected me to hate my mom like they do, to agree with them. But I don’t and it pissed me off that they were blaming my mom. So the second time they started that shit I told them it was not my mom’s responsibility to take in those kids and raise them and there were loads of other people to blame.

They told me I should not defend my mom and again said she was a failure as a mother. They said if she had loved me she would have wanted me to be raised with my siblings and the fact I don’t even call them that is loudly showing her failures. They said if she loved me she would have loved them for me and raised them and kept them safe. I told them if they wanted to assign blame they should look at the people actually in those kids’ family, starting with dad, their mom and them. I said all three of them had a duty to the kids my mom didn’t. I said they were the failures. They were failures as parents to raise dad to be who he is, failures as grandparents for letting their grandkids go into care and failures as people for blaming others for what their son ultimately set in motion.

They got offended and scolded me over the phone. I ended up hanging up on them, but from what I got they said I lacked empathy and compassion. AITA?