Sefer Chofetz Chaim hilchos rechilus chapter 3 halachos 2-4

Halacha 2: For example-If David told Chaim that Mike got a C on his test. Then Chaim went to Mike and told him I heard from David that you got a C on your test. Mike can’t now go to David and ask him how could you tell Chaim I got a C? By saying this Mike is also speaking rechilus about Chaim that he repeated what he heard from David. One should make an excuse that because he transgressed the mitzvah of lashon hara you can now tell the person spoken about what you had heard because he is a sinner and deserves to be called out, but that is not so because he is still part of ” Your nation” his sin did not warrant being detached from the Jews. Even if Mike didn’t say Chaim’s name that he heard it from him, but it can be obviously inferred, it is still forbidden to repeat. One shouldn’t make an excuse that I am not trying to give away the name so I can say that someone told me something about you. Unfortunately now adays many people transgress rechilus in this fashion.

Halacha 3: Even if you don’t send a message to the person spoken about, about what you heard from someone else but you tell other what you heard, using the name you heard it from or it’s obvious who you heard it from it is still rechilus because word spreads and it will get back to the person, who was talking about him and be will not be too happy, as we saw in Shabbos 33b by the case of Yehuda ben Geirim who said what he said to his household and it somehow got to the Roman government so Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai turned him into a pile of bones because he should not have told his family anything. Also in Sanhedrin 29a it sounds like you can’t tell anyone the results of each judge after a verdict, not just the guilty party because the guilty party will find out who was on his side and who wasn’t and will have hatred in his heart for those against him. Now even if you tell people don’t repeat what I have said and they are trustworthy then it must mean What was said is not so good even if it has a pareve or possibly positive slant to it, why then would you tell them to keep it a secret therefore it is still lashon hara. All the more so you can’t tell the relatives of what someone said about their son, parents, or even aunts, cousins etc. Because it is the nature of family to feel anguish out of hearing such things and to hate the people who speak about their family which will cause fights. This is straight out rechilus. There is a source in Shir Hashirim Rabba 1:39 that a father never wants to hear anything negative about his children even if told not to repeat. The medrish actually talks about how Hashem does not want to hear lashon hara about His children. Also we find a Sifri in Re’eh (87) that says that even though a child won’t be a messenger to give physical punishment to his parents for any other sin but for the sin of convincing others to do idolatry, if one of his parents try convincing him, he is the first in line who will have to stone them and cannot cover up and have mercy on them even though it’s a natural feeling. All other relatives it’s just logical that you will want to defend them if you hear lashon hara about them. Even though if a burglar is breaking into your house to steal you can kill him before he tries to burglarize you because since you are protective of your money your instinct is to defend it and then the burglar will want to defend himself and kill you so you can kill him first, and this we, assume applies even if the burglar is a relative or even your son, the natural instinct of protecting your property is so strong still in all in general a person is quick to defend his relatives against others attacks. The one exception to the burglary rule is if the father is the burglar because the father has such mercy on his child that even if he is a burglar he would not kill his son to defend himself if his son would try to defend his property, therefore his son cannot kill him.

Halacha 4: If the purpose of telling others how Shimon spoke lashon hara about Reuvain is so that people will rebuke Shimon that was discussed earlier (part 1, chapter 10, halacha 4) how to deal with that issue.