I just dont get Austin .. knowing what happened to Joy. Then the email he sent to Joe. It baffles me.
Yea his message down to the choice of words is so evangelical, I can't be shocked lol but it is disappointing given that he and Joy openly condemned Josh's actions many times.
I do think the fact that Joy had an actual relationship with Joe unlike Josh probably is at play here too. I will say on a human level, I think as a sibling this would just feel impossible to process because not only is it reckoning with the fact that ANOTHER one of your siblings has hurt children, but it's also having to confront the fact that this probably means they were also hurt like this at some point in their lives, and that just sucks to learn. And if I think of what Joy's said about Joe in the past, and try to put myself/my sibling in their shoes, (while I do know I absolutely would never give them any kind of monetary support or justify their actions) I think it would just be such a tsunami of complex feelings. It's not like you can just flip a switch and turn off 30 years of loving someone and idk.
Is it bad to say I would also want to tell my sibling I loved them? I don't think I'd word it as nicely though, and that's the main issue with Austin's message here is just kind of too....... nice. "I love you but I hate what you did, and I will have to support the victim's right to justice over any kind of leniency for you" would be more my flavor.
All of that being said, I would be remiss to point out that it's also extremely evangelical to only condemn these kinds of things when they directly affect your life unfortunately. Which maybe was the case with Josh and why they were not supportive of him at all (because of what he did to Joy), whereas they have a degree of separation from Joe's victim. It's probably a combination of all these things at once tbh and not any one particular motivation but ultimately, disappointing.
