How many women has this happened to (maybe triggering?)

[Mad8NR1]

I've just watched Dark Money on BBC1 and it's left me wondering. V different circumstances but it did bring up some stuff.

I started having sex much sooner than I should have, when I was 14. With much older men. Several men over the years between 14 and 18, not loads. Some were 18, some in their late twenties (when I was 14).

At the time I thought I was being very grown up, but I was also very uncomfortable with it at the same time.

I had a mental health crisis a year or so before this started so was quite shakey in the world. I was absent from school due to this for over a year and in that time my parents tried to encourage me to do things I was interested in. That meant theatres and music. I was given more freedom than a child that age should be, I think because my parents were frightened of stopping me doing things I had some enthusiasm for. I don't blame them, though I do think they should have had a tighter grasp of things. They did their best in a tough situation.

The men I was involved with were all theatre/music people. They all knew each other in some way. Some of them were known to my family, though not that well. Others not. None of them have gone on to be famous or anything, but one or two are very succesful in other fields.

Some were more coersive and manipulative than others. One tried to get me to be in a (dodgy) film. Topless. To which I said no.

Over the years I've come to understand that I was quite vulnerable and they probably took more advantage than I realised at the time. And I know what the law would say. But I've always felt iffy about how to label these 'relationships' (if you can call them that).

It led to a lot of problems for me and further mental health issues. I felt shame and guilt and a distorted sense of who I was as a person, where my value and self worth lay. It still does to an extent. Luckilly I am married to a wonderful, gentle, respectful man of integrity who I met over a decade later and is the only person who knows about any of this stuff.

And it just made me wonder, how common is this?

Sorry if I upset anyone. I'm still trying to unpack it all I guess. I've had psychological help for other things over the years and it's touched on this but never fully explored it.

Thanks for reading this far and sorry for the long post.

It's extremely common.
I'm not even sure what I want to say about this; just my mind thinking back to all the times I've encountered predatory men.

My DD told me she was flashed by some old creep in a van when she was 12.

I really hate the blame that is placed on young girls who have been victimised by these sickos. Saying they hav low self esteem, etc. etc. etc. like having high self esteem would mean it wouldn't have happened and somehow the young girl is responsible for that.

The truth is these guys are disgusting predators manipulating/abusing young girls who are still developing mentally emotionally. They are 100% responsible for their actions!

It is never the girls fault ever and we should have care and compassion for ourselves and others; not blamed and shamed.

I don't know what can be taught to young girls other than not to trust them. Older guys coming on to young girls are predators.

I had an awkward sexual encounter when 16, usual teenage stuff but didnt 'properly' lose my virginity till 18.

Whilst i wasnt 14, i was emotionally immature . I had alot of personal stuff going on. Feeling rejected and unwanted by my birth fathers family which resulted in me going out to get smashed most nights and the way i would feel loved and wanted was to sleep with men.

Looking back i was clearly vulnerable. At the time i would say its what i liked doing, i was in control. Tbh, i was lucky something serious didnt happen to me. Couldnt tell you how many men ive slept with 50-100. Only 2 ever meant something.

There were nights i would wake up and couldnt even remember the name of the person that was next to me. People around me would probably have called me a slut /wh$re

Reading through your posts, my experience was very different, i wasnt underage. Just meaning older men easily took advantage of me my warped sense and wanting to feel loved made me think it was all me .

2 different men when I was 14. You're not alone in not knowing how to judge those 'relationships'. Sometimes I view them like I did back then, but the rest of the time with my adult eyes, where it would be classed as abuse. I'd guess it's more common than people expect.

It's frightening to think back to my teenage years, and we're only talking mid '90s, so 20 or so years ago, and it really was different then. If you were 14 and had a 20 year old boyfriend or sleeping with the teacher everyone fancied it really wasn't viewed for what it actually is and these men went unpunished.
I hope that today attitudes are v different and society (and men) knows this isn't on. I'm probably being naive, my dd isn't in her teens yet and I really hope that when she is that she stays away from older men. Genuine question - is it still viewed "cool" to be going out with older boys/men when you're 14? (In my day it was...even my dh is older than me!)

Age 14 I was out in pubs clubs off my face being leered at by men in there 20s and 30s. As the end of the night approached the nen would make there move. Sadly, I had such low self esteem I would be flattered and leave with whichever one showed the most interest .
I'd wake up often miles from home and spend the next day with a huge hangover tling huge lies to my family who believed I had slept at my friend's house.

I was seeing a man of 23 when I was 15. My DF was not happy with this but I was very wilful and a bit out of control. I also slept with his 26 year old brother. My boyfriends have always been older and I engaged in a lot of risky behaviour all through my teens and early 20’s. I was also raped at 18.
Low self esteem, emotional neglect and parental abandonment all factored in my behaviour which was attention seeking and a cry for help.

I’m in my 50’s now and haven’t yet worked out relationships. I feel let down and exploited about that time of my life but generally try to put it behind me.

Yes, I went through similar, although not as serious as what you describe. Just a general thing of older (often much older) men pushing boundaries. I don't think it helped that I was curious about sex as a 14/15 year old but as they say, curiosity killed the cat. It took me until I was in my 30s to recognise that some of what I had experienced would be considered grooming, it never occurred to me that those men must have known I was a teenager and got a kick out of it I got into some situations where I was sexually assaulted because a man wanted to "go further" than I had intended. Things sorted themselves out once I got a long term boyfriend of my own age (although that was also problematic for other reasons).

I watched Three Girls a few years ago and that got me thinking about it all.

I think this is pretty common, there are always men looking to exploit the young, which is why there were so many strictures on young women's behaviour. Why a certain rock god isn't in prison is a continual mystery to me. If he lived on a council estate he'd have been subject to a baying mob.

I was 19 but looked a lot younger when I got involved with someone in their 30s. He seemed to like the fact I looked 15. He was controlling and kept saying I was meeting men. What got really creepy was his nickname for me was “son” (I’m female) and he kept on about anal sex which I kept saying no to. He also threatened to firebomb my house if I left him. He left to start his fortune in Wales.

I didn't have sexual experiences with older men but I did start having sex very young. Again at the time I though I was being very grown up and cool but I can now look back on that time and realise I had very little self worth and 100% thought I could buy respect with sexual favours. It makes me feel incredibly sad that I was so vulnerable and thought so little of myself. I have also worked within community education with young vulnerable young women, I am currently a SAHM but i definitely want to get back to that line of work eventually.

Yes, this happened to me too, from 13, older men. Not the theatre.

I *thought I was grown up, and being accepted into this more mature, sophisticated peer group. Actually, they were passing me round for sexual favours and laughing behind my back.

It's left it's mark. I can't form meaningful relationships, I'll never have children, I'll probably die alone.

I'm becoming increasingly angry at men and their entitlement.

Wow, so many stories. So many shit men.

It's funny how, reading about other people, it's really clear that the men involved were predatory at best and that no one should feel ashamed of things that happened to them when they were essentially a child. It's hard work to take that on board oneself though.

I wonder, too, how these men view themselves now. If indeed things have changed and this behaviour would be less acceptable now.

I contacted one of the men from my past not that long ago and basically said "I didnt understand it for what it was at the time but I do now. I hope life worked out and you're doing good things." I needed to have a voice as an adult, or something, before I could draw a line.

I think I expected that he was young and foolish at the time and had since grown into a decent 40 something adult who felt a bit sheepish about it. But I got a message back that said he remembered things very differently. Given that my age at the time is an undisputed fact I came to the conclusion that he is infact more of an arsehole now than he was then!

I hope we understand more now about the situations that lead young people to risky behaviour. I wish we could do something to tell those men we now know what shots they were.

shits

I knew quite a few girls who were in similar situations (not always with older men, sometimes boys a couple of years older). And with varying degrees of coercion. It’s fairly common for people to become sexually active before they understand the full implications. If anything I would say that no one fully understands until some time after becoming sexually active (although obviously in young teenagers the inexperience is magnified by an intellectual gap).

Me too. Sexually active at far too young an age age with teenage boys several years older than me. Lasting damage and has led to the break up of my marriage as I have huge hang ups about sex and relationships and the connection between sex and intimacy and sex as an expression of and within a long term loving relationship. When I am out of the long dark tunnel of sorting mediation and divorce I may get counselling and address it, although I fear it’s too late at my age, at least for me to have a long term, adult loving sustainable relationship which includes sex. It makes me very sad and a little angry with my parents for the completely laissez faire attitude to parenting. I made very sure my own children did not experience the same thing.

So is the answer to bring up daughters who don't think it's cool to have sex aged 13 or 14. Or bring up daughters who are not easy prey.

Same here OP. I know I wasn’t the only one in my friendship group - so many girls age 14,15 acting grown up, and giving up so much self respect in the process (is it dramatic to say giving up bits of our souls? That’s what it feels like looking back). I look back now with absolute horror, and I still strongly identify with what a previous poster said about life now feeling paper thin. Like you can’t wash it off. That said, as time passes I also feel more protective of younger me, which I think is good.

I hope it’s getting harder for men like that now. It was just so normal then - no judgement, not one of them had to hide what they were doing, I would think that it would come with more of a stigma now.

Sadly, I think this used to be very common. Young women were just treated as pieces of meat. I like to think things are changing now, but to say that the problem has gone away would, I fear, be very naive.

For me, it happened at school. Predatory boys, and predatory male teachers made sexual assault a daily reality. I thought it was normal for a long time. Discovering that it wasn't was a surprise - but it didn't do me any long term harm, largely because other issues (violent abuse/lack of love at home) were preoccupying me a lot more. I found feminism a real refuge and a real bolster in my relationships with men, too, which I think helped.

I see this all the time here. Shes 14 and old enough to be having sex. I've always detested this viewpoint. A 14yo is a child, not by any means close to being old or big enough. Sorry you went through that, sounds like you just had too much freedom as well.

Not me so much but my friend at the time. Used to go down the pub from 15. She’d go off with whichever bloke showed some interest. Her mother used to phone me worried. I always always told her she was with her older ex, who had a flat share. I felt sorry for her mum and wanted to protect both of them. The mother from the shame and worry. The daughter from her parents anger and making her feel ashamed. The adult me of course wishes I’d told her mother the truth.

I did see a man, who must have been 30+ when I was 15. Think missing tooth, biker (small cc, not biker biker). I then got horrendously bullied for the rest of my final year at school by another girl and her friends because he was her bf. I found out that he was neither. He had a pregnant gf, whom he lived with. Yes, I felt very cool. Not exploited, which is why I didn’t see much wrong with what my friend was doing at 15/16.

It makes me angry reading this thread for you all. Parental neglect intentional and unintentional is the start of it and then bloody preditarary men.
I had an emotional and physically abusive childhood. I’m thankful in an odd way that I was scared of men so if anyone asked me out I’d say “no” i was and still am vulnerable.
I’m just divorcing an abusive man - I think about dating but I’m still scared to be honest.
For those that haven’t found peace 🌺

Musician - double my age when I was a teen. Wasn’t till I got older I realised how creepy it was.

On the other side of the coin a guy a lot older had the chance to have sex with me but after he asked my exact age and realised I was a virgin he kindly got me home safe and refused to sleep with me, tried to tell me to wait until the right time etc came along. So a mixed experience.

Me. And plenty of girls I knew. Sex at 13/14/15 with older teenage boys and men.

I don't know why, really. I was bullied a bit in school, but my friends weren't, and we all came from "good" fairly solidly middle class homes, there were no issues really. I agree with a PP who said it's not just girls who are vulnerable because of their background, it's because some men are horrible.

I will say though, that our parents were perhaps the first wave of liberal when it came to sex, and this meant that although there were lots of discussions around the theme of "teenagers will have sex if they want to, so it's better they stay safe" this in some ways made it seem that having sex was an inevitable part of your teens, and in that black and white thinking many young people have, it made it quite difficult to say no and to draw lines in the sand. It was only about five years after losing my virginity that I realised that sleeping with someone once didn't mean i had to do it again, and that it was my right to say yes to one thing but no to another, and if a man pressured me, he was the dickhead.

I think sometimes I wish my parents had been a bit harder on the "just say no" line, as then I would have felt I could "blame" them, if that makes sense, when trying to say no to men.

That could just have been my personality though. But sometimes I'm not sure if they move towards the whole "they're going to have it so have it safely" approach has been handled as it should. Teenagers absolutely need to know about the facts around their bodies, sex and contraception, but I think it still needs to be framed within "here is the knowledge but save it for later, you should not be doing this underage and 16 is really the bare minimum"

Lost my virginity at 14 to a 25 year old, it was the start of things to come for most of my life really, although I did settle and get married when I was 21. I’m now 37 and divorced, I still manage to get myself in to similar situations where I’m take advantage of.

I now have a 15 year old dd and I hope things are different for her and her younger sister.