OMG i have come to an uncomfortable realisation about something that happened many many years ago

[belcantwait]

i dont even know what made me think of it (actually it might be the current storyline running in Eastenders ).
when i was 13/14ish i worked in the local hotel where we lived it was in the middle of nowhere really but v popular for wedding receptions and the like.
any way i worked there every weekend and the odd evening and the head waiter was always very 'attentive' to me. i just used to think it was a great laugh and it made me feel grown up that he found me attractive. basically it was silly flirting , him making innuendos all the time, it led on to him groping me etc and also me geting stoned with him back at his house where we would go in secret. i should add that he must have been late twenties. . i cant even remeber how it all ended. i cant remember if he had sex with me
am really embarassed that its taken me so long to work all this out and that really this wasnt the 'normal' thing to happen. now i cant stop thinking about it because altho it didnt bother me at the time- i was clearly infatuated with him and all this attention- now i am a mum of 3 and the thought that he could now be a fully fledged child abuser makes me sick to my stomach. how caould i have been so stupid to think this was all ok , to not tell anyone and to actually encourage him??? no idea what happened to him, i think he may have got the sack. the thought of it all is making me feel so sick and ashamed. esp the fact that i cant remember.

It was not your fault, you were young. Repeat: it was not your fault.

When I was young, about 11, the husband of my parents' friend was always making slightly inappropriate remarks to me. He once asked me to "give him a kiss" (he never touched me). I felt VERY uncomfortable in his company but my parents would let him take me out, saying that he was fond of me (in a father-daughter sort of way) & it was nice for him. I never spelled out to them exactly what he said but even so, we're talking 30-odd years ago when people weren't as aware. He's long dead, but I still think about it.

is it v bad that i just CANT remember tho? i mean i keep trying. why dont i know? i do remember one particular day when he took me back to his house and i got really really stupidly stoned, was literally green fgs. i dont remember anything at all about that morning. anything could have happened.

and what if in the meantime he has gone on to do far far worse things to other girls (or boys- i dont think he was too fussy)? i could have prevented that had i spoke nout at the time. i just thought it was ok, you know not anything sinister. i thought i was so grown up

bump

it was not your responsibility and not your fault at all. these type of people are clever and manipulate children very cleverly.

Yes but you weren't grown up though were you? If he had gone on to do other things it would not be your fault at all - you were a child at the time. It is only now you are an adult with children of your own that you realise what might have happened.

If anything had happened in the episodes you can't remember I would have thought you would have come to realise soon enough when you weren't stoned.

I second what scampadoodle says it was not your fault. and also as rearinganuglyhead says, these type of people are very clever and manipulative. I had an short-lived experience which I didn't remember until something triggered the memory. It took quite a few years to stop it being at the forefront of my mind all the time. The man is long dead. However unfortunately the possibility of it happening to a child especially my own is never far from my mind. So if anything at least it makes us more aware and because of this I always tell my own never to do anything just because it's an adult or friend or relative etc even and sometimes especially when it's someone I feel okay with because my parents invited my "dirty old man" into our home because they trusted him.

i dont know maybe i have in some way blanked it all out. i was a very sexually active teenager from a ridiculously young age . i probably wouldnt have thought twice about it at the time

I worked in a place that sounds extremely similar but when I was 18. And what you describe sounds kinda familiar. Have you considered that in those small places any new face and one that the protagonist isn't related too is a big draw and just because you were under age does not mean he was necessarily a paedo.
I mean, don't be scared that it was your age that was the main attraction and therefore it was all the tip of a sick iceberg.

I don't mean to belittle your concerns in anyway, but I do know what those country hotels are like and I too have had a couple of evenings with the head waiter where I came home with one shoe . Of course being an older teen it just left me with a feeling of being a gullable slapper and I can understand how your memories have descended in to fears. But it is not necessarily as bad as you are painting it.

Stop watching East Enders. It's rubbish since Phil left.

PHIL?????? OMG that has shocked me more than anything lol i didnt even notice he had gone. where has he gone?lol

If you'd have had sex you'd remember - contrary to popular wisdom, we remember trauma rather more than we forget it. The repressed memory movement has been revealed as more the 'created' memory movement - so don't worry any more about that - really.

And you also need to get it in perspective - if you were past puberty you were not the victim of a paedophile.

Has he gone? That was a stab in the dark. I'm in Australia now and only get EE on UKTV and only then while I waiting for Antiques Roadshow to come on (it's the regional accents I crave)

Phil Hasn't left.

"And you also need to get it in perspective - if you were past puberty you were not the victim of a paedophile."

"just because you were under age does not mean he was necessarily a paedo"

Seconded Suzy. The thought that you were a victim of a paedo is much more traumatic than a more compex scenareo, that doens;t exclude him being very stupid. I just mean that you will cause yourself more pain making an event that had not bothered you before into somehting now.