Can you afford to ignore the possibility of it being true?
What an upsetting and embarrassing dilemma:
- Mum might be imagining it completely
- Mum might have seen him show physical affection to his wife and confabulated that it was herself
- Mum might have misinterpreted him e.g. taking her arm to guide her and accidentally brushing her breast
- He might have done it
From anecdotes I have been told by family members,
some respectable elderly men do take the opportunity to grope women if they can get away with it. I do not wish to offend the majority of men, and those on TP are likely to be kind and caring types who would not do this, but it does seem to happen, however bizarre that might seem. As a woman, I would have to be attracted to the person before I might act upon my feelings, but gropers seem to be magnetically attracted to the body part without necessarily considering the person attached to it!
My widowed grandmother in her 60's was visiting a couple where the wife was her friend. The wife went out of the room to make tea. The man got up, walked behind my grandmother's chair, leaned over, and gave her boobs a good going over!
She was frozen with shock, and just then wifie returned, so nothing was said. He was cool as a cucumber, and acted as if nothing had happened. She often told my mother that she could not understand why she didn't shout "Hey, get off!" or something stronger. One reason was that it was a completely unexpected assault, and the other was that she didn't want to upset her friend (who probably wouldn't have believed her).
Someone else I know was groped by her BIL whenever he was left alone in the room with her. He also used to suggest a quick bunk-up when his wife went to the shops. He would chase her round the room laughing, but she was afraid of him. He would never have forced her, but he wouldn't stop talking about it, however much she asked him not to. She really doesn't know if he would have gone through with it if she'd said "All right, let's do it", and I think knowing the person concerned that it was a kind of teasing/bullying of someone who was timid and was also separated from her husband so he thought she might be missing the comforts of the marital bed. I also think he thought that somehow it was OK because she was his wife's sister. That might be OK in some tribal cultures, but not in England! Why did he think he could get away with it? Well he did, didn't he? He relied on her being too embarrassed and afraid of causing a rift with her sister.
A friend of mine was repeatedly groped by her FIL. This started to happen when she had been married for about 15 years, so it wasn't as if he had always done it. The trigger might have been her having her younger children, with him seeing swollen breasts, or thinking that she must have had sex to create the babies. Who knows.
He didn't actually touch her sexually. He would hug and kiss her, but hold on too long, even when she struggled to get away. Or he would brush against her in doorways, or hold her hand and stroke it when she passed him a cup of tea. Ughh! Creepy!!!
Her FIL denied everything when confronted by letter, but continued the behaviour. He was very cunning, sometimes waiting for days for a suitable opportunity. His greatest pleasure was to do it in front of witnesses, especially his wife, who apparently found it amusing and would sneer at her DIL saying she was over-sensitive and imagining things. It was a ghastly situation for this friend because the behaviour was not overtly sexual, so he always had plausible deniability.
My friend's family really didn't believe her and it caused a lot of tension. Then one day her FIL did it to his teenage grand-daughter and she realised what her mum had been complaining about. Once her father found out, he took steps to supervise his dad thereafter, but sadly the emotional damage had already been done to his wife.
The reason why I am writing all this is that if this man is groping your Mum she will get more and more upset and insecure, being at the mercy of someone who she depends on for support. I don't know how you are going to tackle it to find out if there is any truth in it, but I personally would not take the risk of it being just her imagination. You can see from my examples above that a groper's wife may have learned to ignore what she sees, or may even collude in the behaviour as a kind of power trip.
I sincerely hope that these people are blameless, but old age does not rule out abusive behaviour. Remember that vile old DJ that was in the news last year? Personally I always thought he was a cold, creepy, ugly sexual predator, but not to the extent that seems to have been the reality. I remember as a schoolgirl being asked if I wanted to go to an event at Stoke Manderville where I would meet him and declining the offer with alacrity.
I really, really hope that this is all in your mum's imagination and that you can find a way to set her mind at rest. You can only really do that if you are 100% sure that there isn't any funny business going on.