I was bullied at the age of 15 in school - the type of bullying where people spread vile untrue rumours about you. My bullies locked me in a storeroom with a very unpopular boy then said I’d performed a sexual act on him when the reality was we were both fully clothed at all times and had not even touched each other all the time we were in there! A ‘friend’ walked me to this particular room one break time when they set me up - I don’t actually remember any of the conversation preceding this event - I don’t realise how she ‘led’ me up there iyswim - I was a very naive people pleaser.
These rumours subsequently went round the school and even reached kids in my neighbourhood who went to a different school but had friends/relatives in my school. The bullies were my group of ‘friends’ supposedly- I was unpopular before this incident and had no one else to go round with. When they realised they’d been successful at setting me up like this - they all laughed including a group of boys who were in there to watch.
The rest of my schooling was horrendous - I was unpopular, fat, unattractive. There was also very humiliating graffiti about me in the toilets - you can just imagine.
I was physically but more often emotionally abused by my alcoholic father and stepmum. I was an only child.
My parents didn’t believe my side of the story about this ‘incident’ - they thought because I didn’t tell them about it after it immediately happened - only when the school had phoned them a week later - that I was lying and a sexual incident had in fact taken place. They couldn’t grasp that the reason I hadn’t told them initially was that I didn’t want this awful traumatic experience to have any more oxygen. My Dad took this whole thing as a green light to ramp up his emotional abuse of me.
Thd teachers and headmaster were all USELESS - think MASSIVELY victim blaming.
I only told one person what really happened this week. He is a friend who is my age - would’ve been same school year - but went to a different school. It was a huge relief emotionally for me to be able to tell someone. He didn’t know me when I was 15.
For context, both me and the friend that I told went to state comprehensives in the same town but I went to a very predominantly middle class one while he went to a very predominantly working class comprehensive. Also my parents are indeed very snobby, middle class who behaved atrociously behind closed doors, while he comes from a very definitely working class family.
The reason I mentioned the social class context was because I feel it was good to tell him due to the fact he wouldn’t have really known anyone at all at my school - completely different demographic. I think you feel things are more objective in relation to things like this if the person you tell has no connections with anyone in the place you experienced trauma, if you see what I mean. So .. you know - I’m not implying that every middle class family or most middle class families are snobbish or anything.
I do still feel affected by this. When one person who’d been at my school mentioned this ‘alleged’ incident in a recent Facebook message - I had an actual physical reaction.
This traumatic experience happened to me in the early 2010s - I’m late 20s now.
AIBU to have waited all this time to tell someone what really happened, despite all the gossip- and finally feel a huge sense of relief as I’m finally getting some emotional support for it?