Like PF , I am compiling a record not a judgement. I once put it that we don't own what our ancestors did. If we celebrate the good that they did then we also must accept the bad.
Are you reading this my precious descendants 
Yes, same, compiling a record, not a judgement. May I offer a possible solution to the dilemma. I do up a SCAN DELL sheet perhaps each quarter and send it out to the older generation of my living relatives (so to around 20 or so at the moment, born between 1910 and 1928) .... I fill it up with newspaper cuttings gleaned from the free to search Australian National Library's website TROVE and from the New Zealand's Paper's Past (another great free to search website). I find the oddest cuttings that amuse me and which I think will amuse them too. Some of the cuttings will be about long gone ancestors actions (a divorce, a land application, a quarrel with a neighbour over property, a casualty list from WWI and the like). Some of the cuttings will be about the localities of their own childhoods, and some are just quirky things that I collect along the way. Consequently the oldies love it, they phone each other up, chat about various cuttings, phone me, pass on comments, I get to learn who was who, who was not 'shacked up' with who, who was bridesmaid, flower girl, who wanted to be same, etc, and I can ask the most indelicate questions and get their best responses, as their memories are stimulated by these sheets.
Here's an amusing cutting, everyone reading the SCAN DELL sheet loved it.... (and there's been several threads at RChat about the cutting)
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2177629 13 Dec 1817 Sydney Gaz
Enjoy, and hopefully you will find a way to gently introduce the uncomfortable info to the family ... you might be surprised at who already 'knew' but had not been focusing on that knowledge.
Re living relatives and uncomfortable info. There's many a family history group that has ethics policies. It is a no no to provide information about living people to others if that info could cause upset. I will look up and be back, I think I have a link to a large association of family history groups and their Ethics statement.
BACK http://www.gsv.org.au/images/stories/Forms/Ethics.pdf"Be sensitive to the hurt that revelations of criminal, immoral,
bizarre or irresponsible behaviour may bring to family members;" http://www.gsv.org.au/ The Genealogical Society of Victoria
Cheers, JM
