A close family member developed severe schizophrenia when he was a teen and no one in his large family noticed or did anything about it. It culminated in him murdering someone else in my family.

There were fucks given but almost none of them good. A courageous attorney got him through an insanity plea so he did his time in the state hospital for criminally insane youth. The guards and wardens were sadists, regularly beating the boys. Many kids were given shock treatments, burning away bits and pieces of their humanity. I believe that rape was pretty common in those wards.

When he got out the cops that were left seething that he he got out on a technicality spent the next few decades trying to set him up for another fall. The guy was already paranoid about the government (one of the main planks of his disease, the other plank being Jesus) and on again off again cop harassment pushed him to the edge of reason a few times. For decades after the crime when he would make friends, find a new hangout, get a new church someone would come and tell his new relations about his past. I'm certain this happened on some occasions but others are suspected schizophrenic delusions. I'm pretty sure it was members of law enforcement.

He's managed to live a very small life. He minds his own business, doesn't drink in public, engage in any illegal activities, kept many solitary hobbies.

I think most of the family has forgiven him but who knows shit is complicated. He had over a year of front page infamy as his case worked his way through the courts. Lots of people who didn't know him had strong words for him decades after the whole thing went down, they had fucks to give.

It's an enormous thing in my family, which almost never gets talked about, I can probably count the number of times it's been spoken about in my presence by those that were there at the time on one hand.