My friend thinks I was assaulted. I don't

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A very unpleasant conversation with a friend about a mutual friend took place yesterday. I'd appreciate some help getting my thoughts straight. I feel rattled.

I was having lunch with a gang of old friends yesterday. A mutual friend was mentioned, let's call him Alan. Alan and I were close friends for years since our late teens. We hooked up sometimes during single periods and at one point or another both of us separately broached the topic of giving it a go for real but it was never mutual or the timing was off. I am very fond of him but in recent years haven't seen him in person for various reasons.

In the intervening years my friends at the lunch knew him through different channels. One of them told a shocking story about him. I was utterly horrified and pressed for details. She seems to have the information fourth hand. It's about Alan allegedly having sex with one of her friend's friends when she was too drunk to consent and possibly unconscious (I say possibly as the woman herself is unclear on whether she had blacked out).

To note : I know of this woman and her circle. They are heavy drug users and lead chaotic lives. I've heard a lot of similar stories circling over the years about some of the other men. I've been talking to Alan a good bit online recently and he has stopped drinking completely and hasn't taken drugs in well over a decade. I briefly wondered if this was why.

I was digesting this news and asked who the source was. My friend was unimpressed at my response and asked why I didn't believe it. I said it was hard to absorb, I had never had any indication he could be capable of that. He has always been absolutely lovely to me. We would frequently go out for dinner alone or stay in each others houses.

At that point my friend looked shocked and said he had pretty much done the same to me in our early twenties. I had no idea what she was talking about then I remembered and started to laugh.

Background from twenty odd years ago - I had phoned Alan one day sobbing that I'd been dumped and was heart broken. He said he would be straight out. We went to the local bar and lined up a load of shots on the bar. The usual melodrama of that tine. Neither of us remember finishing them and predictably we woke up in bed together. We were also very embarrassed as we tried to piece together the rest of the evening and kept receiving snippets of info from random people who we had run into.

She said he was preying on me as I was vulnerable. I argued that if anything I took advantage of him and I knew exactly where that night was going to end up. We'd slept together previously. He actually liked me for real as it turned out and had asked me out properly the following week but I turned him down as was pining for my ex. We went back to being friends afterwards and had a couple of flings over the next ten years.

A debate ensued about how we lie to ourselves as we can never accept that we have been a victim. I know this happens but I really don't think I am.

Yabu : he was a predator even then and you are deluded
Yanbu : he may well be a rapist now but that doesn't change what happened in the past - two mates behaving like idiots and no harm done

I don’t think anyone disagrees that it would unequivocally be rape if true… But in the interests of accuracy it should be “what someone said that someone else said that someone else said that someone else said happened to this woman”, not “what happened to this woman”.

I also know what you mean about groups having their own set of cultural norms. When I was a teenager a friend of a friend tried to rape me. And by tried I mean, he pinned me down and forcefully removed my clothes while I frunklely repeated no and tried to push him away. He only stopped because another friend walked past and told him to. Anyway, that whole circle of friends still, some twenty years later, think it's hilarious. It took me a good decade to realise that what had happened to me, or almost happened to me, is assault.

Yes of course! It was horrific to hear.

She was going off in an excited tangent and I kept asking "who specifically said this to you? Did you speak directly to the woman in question? Who did she herself tell?" And my friend got irritated and asked why I wasn't accepting it as truth especially as i had a near identical experience.

No Alan did not assault you from the story you told. Your friend needs to stop using you in the smear Alan campaign. It's not right.

If your friends telling people he assaulted you I wouldn't believe her 4th hand story of him assaulting someone else.

It might be nicer if you all stopped gossiping about friends of friends sexual assaults when you're out for lunch.

Hopefully someone has actually made sure the alleged victim is OK.

Personally I'd be fucked off with a friend telling anybody anything about my sex life!
The fact it isn't true and she is using it to strengthen another woman's (possible) encounter/rape is awful.
In your shoes I would tell your friend to do one.

It’s not for anyone else to tell you if you have been assaulted but it does point to a pattern of behaviour on his part which has culminated in this horrendous assault on a woman. He’s a rapist but that doesn’t mean anyone else gets to tell you what your own personal experience was.

How come of two people go out drinking to excess, the only person who can be sexually assaulted is the female?

Also ‘fourth hand’ information about Alan is basically just gossip and spreading rumours

But surely it's not for you to say he's a rapist if it turns out the woman herself doesn't think he's a rapist?

Again, we don't know what the woman says or thinks, only what someone says someone else says someone else says the woman says.

I'm all for believing the victim but this is like some tawdry gossip game.

This was my take on it also. The friend relaying the story loses credibility as it's not hers first hand and her misrepresentation or yours makes it seem like she wants it to be true. I would be annoyed she's using you as validation of another's situation. There's no way to know what happened

Your friend shouldn’t be gossiping about Alan and the other woman, and she shouldn’t be telling you how to feel about something that happened to you.

Did he target her?
If he was off his face with drink and drugs, surely he is vulnerable too? Yes, it's women that get raped but if both parties are off their face with substances, who knows what the real scenario was.

Sometimes you can deduce based on the circumstances you wake up in.

I really think it's gross that this is a lunch time catch up topic. Dissecting a friend of a friend's alleged rape.

Is that not exactly what she's saying?

"Yabu : he was a predator even then and you are deluded
Yanbu : he may well be a rapist now but that doesn't change what happened in the past - two mates behaving like idiots and no harm done"

She's not saying he did or did not assault the other woman.

She's saying it doesn't mean that he assaulted her 20 years ago just because they were drunk.

Grown adults who get drunk together and go to bed together aren't sexually assaulting each other unless there is some kind of coercion or something. People often make stupid decisions under those kinds of circumstances. So no, not assault.

It's very difficult to say what went on with this other woman, assuming the story is even accurate. People can black out without actually being visibly more impaired than anyone else at an event. Especially if they are taking drugs as well as booze, and especially if they do that kind of thing a lot. I've known people to do all kinds of things like cook, wrap presents, etc, and be able to remember none of it the next day.

It's not an unreasonable idea that drunk sex might always be a bad call, because there really is no way to draw a line around it. There are a lot of grey areas, where you can't really know how the other person is, for everyone involved. And that leaves room for predators to have plausible deniability.

There is a good argument that no one should get that impaired and have sex, and that no one should get impaired like that at all. But the fact of the matter is that having risky sex for many people is part and parcel of that whole lifestyle, and there are even lots of more moderate partiers who get drunk specifically in order to have sex, because it helps them lose their inhibitions. And it's legal for adults to make that kind of decision.

There's a good chance that anyone hanging out in that kind of environment a lot, and partaking, will get into bad situations at one time or another, including having sex with someone who is more impaired than they think, or doesn't remember later.

Well Alan sounded very keen to see you when you told him you had just had a break up and were presumably vulnerable. I think a decent person would be supportive but not cross the line. What if you'd regretted it and got back with your bf. Would you have still felt the same?

It's possible that you felt fine with how that night went but someone else in the same situation (very drunk) may not have.

The fact Alan was willing to have sex with a drunk woman (how drunk could he have been to get it up?) means it probably wasn't a one off.

But the 'friend' is wrong for calling out your situation in front of others. It's none of their business and they shouldn't be gossiping about others either.

This. And you are right to actually question the word of someone who uses drugs!

Of course he is a predator. He is a man FFS!

Tough one! If you had said no would it have still happened? If Alan had said no, would it have still happened?

With the other person- who knows what the circumstances were specifically but if they feel that were assaulted i.e. they said no or they were too scared to say no.

Does it show a pattern- that would be the question for me? I.e. if I am drinking and around Alan do I need to be aware that he might not be able to distinguish signals?

I am the woman Alan originally assaulted (obviously I don't know if I am the one OP is referring to as there are a lot of predatory Alans around).

Alan had consensual sexual relationships as well as being a rapist, like pretty much all rapists.

Whether anyone was assaulted or not both your friend and Alan sound a little gross, I wouldn't contact either of them again.

how do you know they are heavy drug users?

presumably not from actually being around them yourself but someone telling you…. and yet you’ve accepted as gospel

They all heavily abuse drugs and drinks. I don't know them personally beyond the odd chat or have any involvement in that lifestyle.

but you accept this as the truth on the basis of someone telling you

I’m not saying these issues shouldn’t be discussed - they obviously should - but it sounds like a very intense lunchtime catch-up.