I don’t have that relative (and I’m not that relative), but having witnessed the phenomenon firsthand in other families, I do have an opinion about it.
It’s not always “perversion” just because someone else was raised to be more physical than you were. In a lot of families “normal touching” – which is not “molestation” – is a lot closer than in some others. My own family, for example, was very standoffish – we didn’t touch much at all. But we had neighbors who were very affectionate towards one another and touched all the time. It was sort of awkward when we would associate with them because their closeness made us somewhat uncomfortable, and I’m sure that our stiffness made them feel awkward, too.
But I learned from those experiences that different people have different comfort zones – and different upbringings! – that make manifestations of physical affection difficult to deal with (on both sides) between people with these differing views on “personal space” and “hugging” and touching.
This is not to say that “anything goes”, or should be allowed. Sometimes there’s a very good reason why you have a bachelor uncle who has never had a “normal” relationship with a woman (or a man, for that matter), and a lot of people are still in the closet regarding their sexuality, even in this day and age. So I’ve learned to accept a wider range of “touching behavior” among groups and families, especially when there are obvious cultural and ethnic differences in what is and is not okay.
And I still watch out that kids and infants are safe.
For the record, I was a near-victim of a suspected child molester when I was about 6 years old. Walking home alone from school one day (walking a mile home from school at that age was no big deal then) I was approached by a teenager who came out of his house and offered to show me “something neat” in his house. He seemed friendly, and I was interested, so I was all for it. I had walked in the front door and was on the bottom step to go upstairs with him when the kid’s mother came around a corner, saw me, saw her son, and yelled holy hell at him. Thinking she was yelling at me, I beat it out of there and ran home to apologize to my mother for doing whatever it was that had gotten me in such trouble. I still remember the friendly – and big! – policeman who came to visit us after that. I think he was about 8’ tall.