My ex was a grooming gang member AMA

[Libertyy]

I’ll answer literally anything, well my ex, I was underage and he was older than me by 5 years

Thanks for sharing op. Wishing you love and healing.
where there any physical or emotional, financial clues that you were being abused? Like secretive, drawing away from family etc?

Also, how would you suggest parents handle social media with children

My family have no knowledge at all, everything is a secret with me and my family, I don’t share anything with them because they’re religious so my family situation is a bit different in the sense that I won’t ask for their help if I need it. I resented my family for childhood abuse, I don’t have love for them so they made no difference to me in escaping from abusers, I became quite indifferent so the amount of affection they were giving me made no difference, I didn’t miss them either and the fact I didn’t share anything and had such a strained bond meant they wouldn’t have been able to stand in the way.

I’m so sorry you and your family are going through this. Unfortunately even the police do nothing unless they hear a statement from the young person themselves, they and other agencies can put plans into safeguard them but if the child or young person isn’t cooperating with the safety plans and won’t speak, there’s very little agencies can do unless they have evidence on the same offenders from other victims who are willing to speak up. We can fight and scream and argue and cry but that just pushes them further away from their parents, they have to realise themselves that they’re in a dangerous situation and once they do, only then you can help them fully, I know it’s heartbreaking because you want to save your child but in this case they have to want to be saved, it’s like when grown women are in abusive relationships you can only properly help when they’ve had enough. mitigate the risk to your other children if you have them. Continue what you are doing with your daughter, keep your home a safe space for her, so that when she wakes up she is able to come to you and say look this is what has been happening, I need your help, I want to stay away from these people and if she hasn’t met them and if you know she is befriending people online and you’re feeling uneasy about it, ask to be introduced and speak to them yourself, ask questions about the person, get to know who this person is, you have to speak her like she’s a friend rather than a daughter. Do you know why she goes back? Do they have blackmail on her, are they threatening her siblings and parents, are they giving her really expensive gifts and she’s enjoying the gifts and not understanding that it is part of the process?

Ask away I do not mind at all. I was bullied a lot during school, I had severe anxiety and multiple panic attacks and while I did have friends, they weren’t that fond of me and I was so detached at home that I wanted to gain meaningful relationships and bonds where I actually felt loved and wanted and not from people who had already, in my eyes, ruined it. So he was kept a complete secret from my friends, from my family, he was very clever in the sense that he was aware of all the warning signs and knew how to curb those so the schools didn’t notice, he never stopped anyone from going to school as he knew that the schools would become suspicious if our attendances dropped but our grades dropped, our performances at school decreased, we were getting into trouble a lot. Ours was not a conventional grooming, he was once a victim so he knew what to do to keep it more of a secret.

The gang was quite dispersed, they had their favourites and it was like they chose who they wanted to pimp out and who they didn’t. Ours was unconventional, we was split and me and my ex were Asian and the other victims were white and their other abusers (Asian) were similar ages to us and we all knew each other, I know the boys first though

. Lots of using girls to pay off their drug debts, some were usual pimps, some were there just to pay debts and then never to be seen, others were there because they were involved from the beginning and were interested in sexually abusing girls and it was quickly obvious who was who. My friends loved me and the others girls understood I didn’t want to be involved like the others but three of other victims hated me, referring to me as “Mrs x” (the ex’s name). There were white people also involved, they were his friends, but theirs was more one to one abuse between themselves and who they made to be “escorts”, a couple older white women were there and if I didn’t have the support of my at the time friend’s families I think I would have became an abuser because in my mind I was constantly comparing myself to my friends and the Asian perpetrators and they fucked so badly with my head.

He told the other victims that me and him were married and that he would physically make me hurt them because he knew I would never have done anything he said willingly, some of the lasses were bisexual so he used me to humiliate them because he was so homophobic

I have always naturally been shy, quiet, secretive, withdrawn because I was already abused by other people so I fit the warning signs anyways so nobody noticed. I had bruising on my thighs, I had constant UTIs, thrush, I was blacking out and I was self harming, I was having fights and arguments with people, my friendships with other friends were so strained, my mood did change a lot I was angrier I was so depressed and constantly used my red card at school and I did have jewellery that I couldn’t explain where it came from. But for my friends they were running away, going missing on Friday and Saturday nights, they were going to “parties”, we were all just so different.

I would say take an active interest in their life, enquire about their in person friends AND their online friends. Get to know your kids friends. Take equal interest in both, ask them where they met them and tell them they can be as open as they like, speak to the person yourself while they’re on video call, casual chit chat over a period of time is the key it uncovers a lot and will either confirm or disprove your suspicions. Unfortunately these days online friendships are inevitable, encourage them to tell you if they’ve made a new friend online, be open, understanding and laid back, but at the same time subtly parent them because you know teenagers just do what they like anyway behind your back and as a parent you have that responsibility to guide them, to keep them safe and and put them right, just be the person that you yourself would be happy to open up to.

I would recommend monitoring especially with younger children who do not pay their own phone bill, look at the internet history from your WiFi account if you need to, parental controls and a talk with them about the conditions so no lying about meeting someone at college if they actually met them in a shisha lounge or online. Open communication really is key, you’re in charge, you’re the parent. Make it clear to them that you only care about their safety and happiness and if they have a good friend online or in person that’s okay, but if they were making your child feel uncomfortable or asking them to do something that they knew they weren’t allowed to do or didn’t want to do and they were scared, they need to know that they can speak to you without you kicking off that it was someone online or that they went to a shisha lounge. Honesty is key.

Honestly as heartbreaking as it is, with some of the other Asian gangs many of the victims were actually from racist backgrounds so they knew they would have got more in trouble for “going off” with an Asian than they would getting abused by them, a couple I know of vaguely were disowned so were essentially feeling trapped. A few of them went with these men because they knew it would piss their families off and those girls were resentful because they were abused by step fathers, uncles, family friends and nobody protected them. Often times they were initially groomed by people their age then just passed on

Thanks for your insightful reply, @Libertyy. I feel what you have written is something all parents and even all adults should read and could learn from. I'm sorry about your experience.

Sorry I’m just gonna ask a few questions just so I can understand better, it may be that what I say changes depending on the context. How old is she? If she doesn’t live with you, how do you know she doesn’t meet up with them?

Removing devices unfortunately doesn’t work, if you think about it they’re your life line to your step daughter. When she has a device you’re paying for, it means there’s one less source of blackmail and control that abusers have over her. With the phone you pay for, you can see the numbers of the people she is contacting and you can yourself figure out easily who they belong to as you have access to that information. Whereas by removing a phone from her it does the complete opposite as like you said, they just provide her with a new phone that they pay for. This strengthens their hold over her and they can directly control who she contacts and they can then place her in contact with other abusers, or threaten her without you knowing since you have “no right” at all to check it since it’s not your phone, they can also alienate her so much more easier by threatening to remove her phone.

While I understand that you believe you were acting in her best interests as you believed this would, by removing her phone off her, the abusers can twist this in favour of them. For example, your step daughter appears to be quite attached to them as she’s been quite angry and not won’t speak to you and would know how to contact them again, so she’ll have complained that you have removed her phone and smashed the one they have gave her, so they’ll be like “oh see what I told you about your family, they clearly don’t like you being happy, but I’ll get you one since I love you and care for you and I want you to be happy, I wouldn’t do that to you” and that’s just how easily you’re the bad guy and they’re the good guys.

Thank you for your lovely replies. I hope I’ve answered people’s questions satisfactorily

I wish her all the love and healing, I hope she can in time move past what happened to her and to gradually connect with people similar to her so she can have fulfilling relationships and not have to be at the mercy of abusive people. Her reaction certainly indicates to me she is still in contact with them, especially since she’s shut off from the world including her family. It’s really sad to hear about this, I really hope she does have some good friends that care about her and check in on her. I’m so pleased to hear that she definitely has never met up with them, poor girl.

I’m getting there in terms of not letting it bother me every day, it is tough because I have developed so many questions because of it but I don’t think anyone ever gets over anything like this

How was your ex a victim? Sexual abuse too? It’s awful.

Thank you for answering@Libertyy , it is really eye-opening and must be very difficult for you to think about. Hope you don’t mind me asking but was there one person in charge and how did you get out?

Hi OP, I'm so sorry to hear your story, it's absolutely shocking

Can I just ask, were you going to school during this time? Was anyone there noticing anything?

Also interested to hear about how you finally got away from your abuser and what you are doing now

He was a victim of sexual abuse too as a child, he developed a huge resentment and hatred and eventually became an abuser. He refused to break the cycle, he kept having horrific thoughts and acted on them instead of seeking help.

i know this sounds awful but initially I was more of an observer. My ex said to me (who was in charge of us) that if I dared to disobey him this is what would happen to me, he kept me there to watch what was happening to those girls and kept reminding me that this is who I will eventually be like, that I need to do what he says, he threatened to marry me multiple times. The men had their favourites, they were multiple leaders but one for each and they’d routinely pass them around but took their favourites with them to show off when there was a bidding on girls to make money off their rapes. Usually there were other men from other areas too.

He told the girls that didn’t know me that I was married to him (which wasn’t true) and that I would harm them if they weren’t good enough to him. He said to one of the girls who was bisexual “you’d love it if I forced her to do things to you wouldn’t you” and he threatened to break all of the bones in my body and chop my hair off when I refused to hurt any of the girls, especially my friends. He smacked me and yelled at me so much till my head hurt and hurt my thighs, then threatened to chop my clitoris (he never did do this but I didn’t dare risk it) and forcibly dragged me with his fists digging into me that I knew I had no choice. All I could think was what if I’m hurting her, how do I do this so it doesn’t her but at the same time doesn’t cause him to hurt me badly.

So while he was making loads of money off pimping my friends out but became extremely jealous and possessive of me that he didn’t want anyone touching me, he used to pass me to his white friends because he knew I had trauma with white males as a child and after he used to take me to hotels and hurt me himself. Eventually I had vaginismus because of it all which meant that all penetration downstairs was impossible and I lost his baby, he tried drugging me and he said it didn’t feel as good, that I was no good to him any more,I managed to get out of it when a few men I know beat him up quite badly because of what he did to their friend’s sister and they didn’t know about what he did to me so when they found out they threatened to kill him with their own hands and said that if they saw him misbehave with me his life would be over. he hurt me for the last time and said he got what he wanted and told me he was going to destroy my life by hurting my friends and framing me, he said he was going to brainwash them into believing it was me because he used to drug them so when they were unresponsive he’d pounce and said he’d do that. And my friend who went onto having a baby with him, chose him over me. I told him I was going to tell his mum what he did to me and he told me if he did he’d kill me so I said to him I’m not scared of you any more, he called me a traitor asking why I defended the girls over him because he’s one of my own and they weren’t and told me that if I told his mum she would have had a heart attack and it would have been all my fault. Stupidly I believed him and I cried in front of him and said to him that he was my own why did he pass me onto other men who reminded me of my past and why did he do such a horrible thing when it’s not allowed anywhere, he scoffed at me and said if he had it his way he would have took me to Pakistan to marry me and make me have his kids or he would have killed me for ruining his reputation for my “behaviour,” he said I was worse than the white “whores” but then said he didn’t mean to Do anything to me and that he loved me.

He said he would have treated me so good if only I had just joined in with him and recruited girls for him. He said it was my fault and that he was sorry, he shouldn’t have but I couldn’t blame him for doing what he thought was right. He said he only wanted to humiliate the “queers” in the gang and he thought I’d have liked it.

@JuJuHeyHey the above paragraphs also answer your question about how I escaped

Yes my mood was affected quite severely at school, they didn’t notice anything he didn’t keep us off school because he knew that’s how he would get caught. But I was struggling with my mental health and constantly suicidal all through year 9 but I was usually like this from year 6 so nobody questioned much. He was also a victim as a child so everything his abuser did to him, so keeping him off school, him turning up with bruises meant that he made sure not to keep us off school, he made sure our bruises were hidden in our clothes, he warned us that if we repeated anything that we would never see the light of the day again and he told me I would be dealt with more harshly because he was training me to be his accomplice which is why I never told anyone because he told me I would get in trouble and arrested along with him so I was petrified. He told me my whole life would be ruined

Now if I’m honest I’m in and out of jobs, can’t focus on anything long term, can’t have a meaningful adult relationship because I still have vaginismus, my trauma has exacerbated despite trauma counselling and I’m plagued with ocd harm like thoughts about becoming like him because of how much he has fucked me up. I struggled to engage with my degree (healthcare) so I dropped out. I wish I had a happy ending but I don’t