To be very concerned that this woman has children (trigger C.S.Abuse)

[Thechangednameoftheday]

Name changed for this for obvious reasons.

When I was twelve years old I made a friend, through a mutual friend, who was sixteen coming on 17 at the time.

No obvious problems at home and she came from a good family, supportive parents etc. Relatively nice life. I mention this incase anybody wonders whether she was vulnerable.

I however came from a single parent family, absent father and poor motherly parenting provisions. I was a bit of a lost soul. Damaged if you will.

The 16 year old (I'll call her J) would often go around with older guys (20-30) and would encourage me to tag along, drink and take drugs. It was commonplace for her to sleep with the men, often at her initiation. I firmly believe there was no grooming involved, she knew what she was doing and didn't receive payment or any incentive to go these things. She pursued these people for a 'good time' and enjoyed the lifestyle.

I looked up to her and began imitating her behaviour, drugs, drinking and having sex with older males. J encouraged this.

J would tell some of the men I was older (15) and tell me to do the same, but for the most part they knew how old I was.

As I got older I distanced myself from J because I felt increasingly extremely uncomfortable about the lifestyle, still just a child myself I was aware enough to know it was wrong. I developed other, healthier friendships.

I was friends with J from 12 years until almost 15 years old.

Now as an adult I reflect on this period of my life with sadness, shame and disgust. I stumbled across J on social media today by accident, she came up in our mutual friends, and I'm left with alot of conflicting emotions including anger toward her and confusion as to why she would have encouraged those things when I was just a little girl.

I couldn't fathom replicating her behaviour, when i was 16 I looked at a 12 year old as a young child and despite my own past would have reported anything of the sort to the police, not encouraged it.

My DM knew about some of this, useless as she is she didn't encourage me to report it. She is what people would call 'slow' and just didn't seem to get that you need to protect your daughter from things like this. I think she thought it was all my choice, which it was, but I was caving to peer pressure and at such a young age don't have the capacity to give righteous consent in the first place.

J now has children of her own, as do i. I feel uncomfortable about somebody with her attitude toward underage sex (which I now acknowledge as child abuse) having children.

I feel it's too late to do anything about all of this, it was years ago and I have no proof but I'm left with scars that pop up every now and then like today.

AIBU to feel this way towards her? At 16-17 can she be excused as just knowing no better? Is my anger misplaced? fwiw I am angry at the males too, but she was my friend.

Unshriven genuine question how were the 16 almost 17 year olds parents supposed to protect her? Do people really think that parents of people that age know where they are all of the time? I was out drinking and clubbing at 16 and I came from a normal home. My parents frequently thought I was staying over at my friends house, they just didn’t know I was going out drinking first. Given that no one actually knows what happened in this girls life before that point how do we know she wasn’t just rebelling against a strict upbringing? Having sex with men in their 20s and 30s at 16 almost 17 is a bit off but perfectly legal.

To say first and most importantly , I’m really sorry OP that all this happened to you. I’m sorry too for the tone of the posts toward you on this thread. No one but you can know how the situations played out, all the posts here are making assumptions and extrapolating. I really think you’d be best finding a counsellor experienced in talking to survivors of sexual abuse, and trying to unpick and come to terms with this in a safe space with professional help. The anger, sadness and disgust has to go somewhere, and while it’s definitely better you aim it at J than yourself, ultimately it’d be more healing for you to work through the feelings and decide a course of action with a professional who can help you. Much love to you x x

A perspective though to consider .... J may have been treating you the way she did because she’d been taught to by someone treating her like that. Bullies often bully because they’ve been bullied and have learnt the behaviour, but now become the powerful one. Perhaps J had been targeted at 12 too, and taught to ‘party” and seek out sex, drugs, risk taking behaviour, maybe she was vulnerable to it because of emotional neglect, emotional abuse or childhood sexual abuse. None of that of course excuses passing on the hurt to you and she definitely abused you , but it might explain. people are seldom “evil”, there’s usually a reason that man passes on misery to man. So sorry you were a recipient and that no one protected you. You are absolutely justified to feel anger towards j, your mum and the men.

But another way of looking at is, YOU protected you. You survived, you made better friendships, you moved on in life, you didn’t pass the misery in. You are obviously a good, string, clever woman and you should be totally proud of who you are and how you lifted yourself out of this situation and looked after yourself. Well done OP, you are brilliant , and you will continue to be.

Ultimately the truth in life is that moving to a place of forgiveness is better for a person l’s health and happiness than retaining anger, fear, disgust. It’s somewhere to work towards. Try to get some help x good luck x

I don't think I'm ignorant.

If there was evidence to show she had been groomed/abused as an underage child then I'm sure my thinking would be very different.

As I've said many times there's just nothing to suggest the fact, aside the general consensus that 16/17 year olds pursuing casual sex must have been exposed to grooming or sexual abuse beforehand.

16 and 17 year olds these days, and in years that have passed, have knowingly and willingly had sexual relationships with older men.

I know of a few people who were sexually active at that age but would never have lead a 12 year old to behave the same.

This was an almost 17 year old taking a 12 year old around and encouraging said 12 year old to go with men for goodness sake.

I didn't know her pre-sixteen so can't speak for whether or not there was inappropriate conduct back then, but I was privy to seeing her seek out and pursue casual sex very often.

I don't think the reasons she did that are relevant to my trauma to be completely honest, even if she was abused as a child (no evidence to suggest such) then why does that explain away her then doing that to me?

It doesn't.

If somehow I heard tomorrow that she had been abused when she was younger she would absolutely have my sympathy but that would only be a reason, at a push, but never an excuse for the way she treat me.

For people who haven't RTFT and I don't blame you, she bullied me mercilessly for the duration of our "friendship"

Could that be justified on the basis of assumed abuse too?

I'm speaking from my point of view having spent years in her company several days a week.

I think to the posters who are attacking me, if your 12 year olds were being pushed into sex with men in their 20's and 30's by an almost 17 year old you would be screaming blue murder about the older girl. I have no doubt about that.

Bornlazy

Having sex with men in their 20s and 30s at 16 almost 17 is a bit off but perfectly legal.

But hanging around with a 12 year old, and enticing sexual behaviour isn't.

The behaviour of the other child suggests she was groomed.

People with boundaries in place recognise that.

I am not questioning your own commitment to the protection of your children, Unshriven, or your ability in that regard.

She can't recognise that the other child, althouth a few years older, was also abused by men.
She therefore won't recognise red flags when they appear for her own children (male & female).

What I am challenging is your confident assertion that neither the OP nor her partner are able to protect their children.

She recognises that she was raped.
She recognises J's bullying of her.
She recognises that she was a victim of J's and she knows how J caused it to happen and what it was about her life when she was 12 that made her lean on J.
The relationship she had with J was one that involved emotional and psychological abuse, and it actually doesn't matter whether J was herself groomed because her concern doesn't have to lie with J, only with realising what she herself went through. The OP sees the emotional and psychological abuse.

At the age of 15 she had the solid instincts and great strength to cut J out of her life and has managed to start all over again with a job, a partner, a home, and children. She has moved from the area and has low contact with her neglectful mother. She has managed to put all the pieces necessary for successful parenting together.

Thank you once again for the supportive comments and encouragement to seek counselling. I've been thinking about it alot this evening and I'm fairly sure I will do that

But she blames J, the other abused child.

So she won't recognise the people abusing her own children, or their friends.

Sorry what evidence is there to suggest J was ever abused, bar the fact she was having sex with older males at 16-17-18? @Unshriven

PS. I'm blaming her for encouraging and pressuring me to have sex with these men, NOT for the fact they did it

Unshaven I get that I really do but it doesn’t make her blameless. At what age is the cut off point? She was still doing it at almost 19. If she continued grooming children into her twenties would that be justified as she herself was groomed?

Or what if she was just a total sicko who enjoyed toying with a 12 year old because she could? It’s the whole nature or nurture thing.

I would think that the OP would be more likely to overly protective of her children and would suspect abuse more readily than most

I'm gobsmacked that people are so adamant that she was abused with absolutely no evidence to suggest the fact

Yet the person who was raped at 12 years old at the encouragement of this girl is torn to shreds.

Absolutely ridiculous and I'm not the only person to say so. I've had numerous inboxes echoing the same from people who don't want to post here because the tone has been well and truly set.

Sorry Unshriven my iPad is determined your name is not a word

OP, she wanted a side kick in order to attract more men/attention. She obviously wasn’t getting any kind of loving interaction at home so sought it in older men.

She’s not necessarily going to treat her kids as she did you, because she wasn’t your mom in the past scenario, she, as I said, was your sidekick.

There is no 'So she...'

She rightly blames J for the bullying and the rapes and the drugs, and it doesn't matter that J may have been abused.

It only matters that J exposed her to experiences that she might not otherwise have suffered.

She is not responsible for J and she owes J no sympathy. It is not a given that if you suffer sexual abuse or physical abuse or neglect as a child that you must turn into an abuser and all your abuse of others is excused or must be seen with a big 'BUT in her defence...'

She doesn't have to recognise that J may have been groomed by the men in order to recognise that children who come from homes where they are neglected and with parents who don't parent can be vulnerable to exploitation by men or women, because she had that experience herself and she recognises that.

I totally agree with you thechangednameiftheday. Folk tend to forget that there’s a person behind these posts. A person remembering being raped and sexually abused, bullied and neglected at 12. Moving to a place of empathy and forgiveness for the potential reasons for J’s behaviour might be a tidy little theory on an anonymous post in AIBU but this is a persons life. There’s alot of ground to work through before that becomes a possibility. And right now it’s a side show that is upsetting the OP.

Thechangednameof theday if you can take one positive thing from this thread it’s your ability to stick up for yourself. At the start you were almost cowed by the tone of some of the posts but now you are able to speak up and defend yourself. So well done - you are doing brilliantly.

She probably looks back on this time now and realises that she was a child and not equipped to make those decisions even if she felt 'grown up' at the time. She probably reallises that those men took advantage of her.

By the logic here, if your twelve year olds were pressurised into sex by a much older teenage "friend" that teenage friend is blameless if they (assumingly) had ever been groomed themselves.

I would bet my house on it that wouldn't be the opinion of the (decent) mother of the child it happens to.

Countless threads on here about other children being bad influences for minor indiscretions, but god forbid we think bad of an almost 17 year old for dragging a 12 year old around and giving them drugs, drink and pushing them into sex. Bullying them to boot.

The world has gone mad. Well, MN.

No wonder so many adolescents get away with murder, quite literally in some cases.

Oh they had a bad past.

By age 16, regardless of what happened to me, I absolutely knew that her behaviour was foul.

If such manipulation can be explained away because of ones own trauma, or such behaviour is nature bound to happen because of ones own trauma, why didn't I do the same?

If I instigated the abuse of a 12 year old at aged almost 17 would I fuck try and pin that on my own abuse.

Again for the 100th time there was never evidence to say she had been abused.

She was a very intelligent girl, capable of manipulating not only me but also her parents (who seemed very protective actually) managing to convince them she was somewhere else whenever she wanted to go and 'party'

Again, her words not mine.

I'm exhausted. I'm going to de-stress

If you're talking about J, SignedUpJust4This, then the fact that she is in contact with one of the rapists contradicts that assertion.

Thanks for the kind words PPs

Yes for those who have forgotten or haven't RTFT She is still in touch with one of the men who raped me at 12 despite having a daughter not that much younger.

Still a naive and gullible easily lead person in her 30's then?

Nope. Not in my book.

To be honest op, your friends behaviour was shit and it does sound like she was abused, though that's not an excuse for her bringing you around these men. I can definitely understanf she pressured you into situations you were uncomfortable with.

Still, there is no way that she was the cause of you being raped by these men. Grown men can tell that a 12 year old girl who hasn't even started her periods in not in her mid teens - grown men shouldn't even be partying with underage kids. It's not her fault that adult men in their 20s and 30s raped a prepubescent child.

I know that she can't be blamed for the action of rape

But she exposed me to it, pushed me into it and encouraged it.

She can be blamed for that.

Unsure how anybody can be certain she was abused. All you've read is a portrayal of her from aged 16. Nobody including me can know what happened before she was legally able to consent to sex.

I had a friend in school, same age as me (13) who always hung around with older boys.. late 20s etc. I remember feeling uncomfortable but so desperately wanted to fit in so went along with it. Drink. Drugs. All nighters in hotels with multiple men until I was raped at 14 by one of these older men.

The only anger I had towards my friend was that she never believed it happened. Looking back now as a 30yow with 2 daughters I was sexually exploited by OLDER men. My mum had no idea & still doesn’t as to what went on and who I was with.
I was groomed with attention by older men when I was vulnerable. She came from a good home, money, together parents and ended up pregnant at 15 with her 27yo boyfriend who beat her up after and went to prison.
I however came from a home of domestic violence, extremely vulnerable and poor. Works both ways.

I do believe that both you & your friend we’re both groomed by these men in life at the time. If your friend had of been much older I would be more to agree with you but she was still a child herself.

It seems like you want to pin most of the blame on a 16 yo girl, instead of the adults in their 20s, 30s and beyond who were neglecting their kids and plying underagers with booze and drugs.

She didn't instigate any man raping, if a man chooses to rape a twelve year old, that is entirely his responsibility. She does sound like a horrible person and should have known better.

J was the person who introduced the OP to the men, brought her to parties, plied her with drugs and drink, encouraged men to try their luck with the OP if she herself turned them down, and was not partly responsible for the rapes?

To cast all the blame on the men and absolve J of guilt is really absurd. J used the OP for her own purposes just as the men did.

Whether she wanted a power trip, a handy substitute if she thought a certain man might get nasty if she turned him down, or some other reason, if the end result was that the OP was browbeaten, drugged and raped, then J shares responsibility for those experiences.

There is such a thing as a female sociopath or psychopath.