Have you ever met a dangerous person and not known it at the time?

[Answered on Quora.com by Frances Ranch]

Our family had two children, my big brother by three years and me. My first memory as a toddler was him holding my head under water in the bathtub. I could see his face through the water, his cold, cold blue eyes looking at me through the bubbles of my breath in the water. If Mom hadn’t come home then, I think I would have died. He told her I slipped in the tub and he “saved” me. She never believed me, although I never lied and my brother was in trouble all the time. Another time he got a set of darts and forced me to stand in front of the wooden garage door while he played “circus” and landed one in my knee. I lived in danger and fear my whole childhood. High school was heaven for him, he joined a gang and left me alone. He was in trouble all the time with the law, which meant he was too busy to torment me. I chose to go to college 800 miles away, at the other end of California. It was Heaven, for the first time in my life I felt safe.