Recently mine (44F) and my husband’s (44M) families had a big get together at our home. We have an 18 year old daughter, who was excited because she would get to see her cousins “Sarah” and “Amy” who she loves.
At the party, her cousins arrived and my daughter ran over and gave each of them a hug. Their dad “John”, who is my husband’s brother (50M) laughed and asked my daughter “where’s my hug?”. She didn’t hug him, people kind of laughed it off and the moment passed. She and her cousins went off together, and I went to the kitchen to prepare food, thinking nothing insidious had happened. No more than fifteen minutes later, I heard my daughter yelling in obvious distress, and I dropped everything to rush out to the garden. There, I found John with a red mark on his face. My daughter was holding hands with Sarah. John went inside to get ice for his face, while Amy told me what happened.
It turns out that John had approached her and continued asking my daughter for a hug. The girls told him to leave her alone because she didn’t want to, and he’d continued trying to get my daughter to hug him. At the moment he actually got her in his arms she scratched his face.
After comforting my daughter, I confronted John, who did nothing but say “she scratched me”. By this point everyone heard what happened, including my husband who was furious. To our disgust, people defended John and demanded our daughter say sorry for scratching him. I said trying to force something on my daughter had been the reason for all this in the first place, so I wouldn’t be making her say anything. Most people left afterwards.
Family are blasting us for not making her apologize, but I think his very concerning behavior is where the focus should be. What can I do to navigate this situation? It’s a lot and I’m a little blindsided.
Tldr: My daughter scratched her uncle and my family want an apology from her but I’m more concerned about his behavior