'AITA for accidentally hurting my stepdaughter after she played a prank on me?' UPDATED 3X

"AITA for accidentally hurting my stepdaughter after she played a prank on me?"

I know the title sounds bad but please read and throwaway, plus fake names. I (38M) married "Judd" (44F) a few years ago and I acquired a step daughter, "Abi"(14F) as a result.

I dated Judd when Abi was 8, meet her when she was 9, and married Judd when she was 10. I'd say our relationship is ok, she doesn't act bratty towards me and respects me enough as her mom's husband. However there is one glaring issue about her and that is her pranking nature.

Abi loves to pull pranks. Some examples are her hiding my car keys with what looked liked 100 dubs in a box. I found them quickly because she failed to notice my keys have duct tape on them. Another one is when she hid in the fridge (something I still find very weird) to scare the first person who opened it.

Well last Wednesday, I arrived home and it seemed that I was the only one there. Only my shoes were at the doorstep and I even called out Judd's and Abi's names with no answer.

This is somewhat normal as Judd sometimes works late and Abi stays at school for extracurriculars. So I screwed around with my dog ( a German shepherd and husky mix for anyone that will ask) for a bit and then I decided to relive my myself.

When I got to the bathroom I noticed that the window cabinet was open. I though nothing of it at first and unzipped my pants but then I saw a shadow behind the shower curtains.

I though the worst and immediately punched the figure behind the curtains. Well as everyone may have guessed it from the title, it was Abi. She was making a prank video and I had not noticed that she propped her phone up on the bathroom cabinet with two cups.

I'm not gonna lie, I did not hold back. I punched her as hard as I could. Her nose looked broken and when I realized it, I flipped out and so did she. After maybe 5 minutes of freaking out I drove her to urgent care and informed Judd of the situation. Her nose was indeed broken and would need about 6-12 weeks of recovery.

Abi won't talk to me and as for Judd, she thinks that my action may have been justified but also thinks I should have approached with more caution which she has refused to elaborate on. So AITAH?

Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some of the top responses:

pdaeag writes:

YTA. Given how you’ve described the situation, you likely knew if was your step daughter and wanted to teach her a lesson. What she did was not ok, by any stretch, but if she’s a shorter girl, and you could see the shadow wasn’t that tall, was it necessary to punch hard? I’m finding it difficult to believe you didn’t realize who it was.

fdagha7 writes:

NTA. Get a copy of the video. If Abby starts bitching to people about how her stepdad broke her nose, you are looking at jail time. Get and keep a copy of the evidence that she startled you while you were peeing.

You need to sit Judd and Abby down and have a serious conversation. Filming without consent while someone is in the bathroom is a MASSIVE invasion of privacy and illegal in many places. If she did this to another kid, it could be considered child prn.

While you are in the bathroom, you feel vulnerable with having your pants down/genitals out. Those feelings increases the fight/flight part of the brain, and that you reacted on instinct. Pleas include to Abby that you love her, and never meant to hurt her.

poadgah writes:

YTA. Regardless of what she did, under the law you just abused your child. If she wanted, she could argue in a court of law that smashing her nose was not a justifiable "punishment".

Frankly you both should be apologizing to each other, as others have said while this is a learning moment for her, she's probably going to stop pranking for a while if not indefinitely it's also going to change how she forever sees you.

She won't see you as a place of comfort, but as the person who disfigured her. If you somehow feel like destroying her face wasn't a good enough "punishment", give her something light as a proper punishment, like a week of no phone. But you be warned she would probably hate you even more

dismal65 writes:

NTA, if everything went as you said and Abi regularly pranks people something like this was bound to happen at some point. Although incredibly unfortunate, as others have noted she was lucky this didn't get her klled.

There are stories all the time about kids getting shøt in the face for turning up unannounced at the wrong door. Hopefully she has learned her lesson and will stop doing these things once and for all.

I would like to add that I find prank culture incredibly wrong. A joke should make all parties ultimately happy. Stress and fear can have serious mental and physical consequences, and the 3 of you could benefit from family therapy/mediation to work through this experience towards a better relationship.

biopicka7 writes:

She was filming, in a fucking bathroom and you might well have had your dick out. Not only does she not get to not talk to you, she needs to be punished and have her phone checked for any other creepy shit she's filming.

She needs to have any prank video accounts on social media deleted and needs to have it made super clear to her that 99% of the pranks she sees online fall into two categories...

fake ones where everyone involved knows what's happening, so you know, people don't get scared and punch what could be an intruder in response, or video people taking their d&ck out in the bathroom, which couldn't be more of an invasion of privacy.

The other ones are assholes who often find themselves getting into legal trouble, are not funny but just abuse. The 1% of videos (being generous) are genuine pranks but are harmless, friendly and no one gets hurt and the 'victim' will general laugh at it as well.

Tell her to figure her shit out, stage them, or do harmless ones, but if she ever films anyone in a bathroom or bedroom, anywhere they should expect privacy again she'll lose access to a phone with a camera on it.

flaia0 writes:

You didn’t know who you were punching and thought it was a home intruder not Abi.

This was entirely dangerous on Abi’s part and she is lucky that she didn’t prank the wrong person that would react by pulling out a weapon. But her recording in the bathroom for the “prank” is entirely invasive since she’s violating someone’s privacy.

Abi needs a serious sit down to let her know that if she decided to prank someone at her friends house by recording & if their friends minor sibling comes in with her recording them using the bathroom, she would be charged with CP on her phone while trying to excuse it as her doing a prank and then charged with a felony.

She needs to know that her actions have consequences. I would definitely get Abi’s phone to see if she still has the recording of you before she shares it to her friends & delete it.

Judd needs to stop indulging/enabling Abi with her pranks and take this seriously of what her daughter has done.

Update 1 (11 days later):

Well this blew up big time. Let's address a few things. Abi's pranking nature isn't just situated on me, she has pulled pranks on her friends, the neighbors and at school. The school has called Judd several times about this as they have resulted in mild vandalism.

The refrigerator prank: she was 11 when that happened not a grown teenager. It was a brand new and very large fridge that my uncle bought and showed it off to every one. So she climbed in until he opened it again. Judd yelled at her saying that she could have suffocated in there and took her outside to scold her for a few hours.

The video it self: The video doesn't show the toilet at all just the shower curtain, however the issue still remains that this was a massive invasion of privacy. The video has been deleted and Abi has admitted it was purely her fault.

Update 2:

Its been a chaotic week, Judd still refused to elaborate on how the situation should have been handled. I showed the post as a result and she did a 180 turn.

She suddenly thought it may be time to stage an intervention and I agreed. We brought some of her friends as well as my cousin's wife, Jess. Jess is an officer from another state and Abi seems to respect her.

In this intervention we state how we were each affected by her various pranks and how in turn they affected her. Jess also spoke about how much of these pranks border on criminal territory, meaning she could be arrested or face "retaliation".

It seemed to have gotten to her and Abi cried a bit and promised to do better. When everybody else left, Jess stayed behind and brought to our attention about a disciplinary camp that we could send her to.

The program is 6 weeks long and involves group therapy, individual therapy and constructive projects (whatever that means), and is held at a University campus. The program apparently has good reviews.

Judd seems dead set in sending her to figure out her core problems. I'm a little hesitant about sending a kid away from home but I'm the step parent so I got no say.

Update 3:

Edit/Update: Ok I swear Judd must be following my posts because now she's taking back what she said and is now thinking about doing what I and you fellow Redditors suggested in the first place, weekly therapy. So we agreed that I'm gonna find a therapist and I'm gonna front the bill for it since she didn't take this seriously in the first place.