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.

I'm surprised that anybody would suggest a 12 year old having sex with somebody in their 20's to be a choice

Read it again. You did choose to do so, but that 'choice' was due to coercion and grooming ie it was not an informed choice, and any decent person would not judge you. The same compassion should be shown to J, which is what you are failing to do.

Nothing suddenly changes in a person when they become 16. Whilst the law on consent changes at that point, a person's ability (and indeed, vulnerability) to make rational choices is still very much developing.

@LilouBlue is spot on. Op it’s not an either or situation, just because you were vulnerable doesn’t mean that she wasn’t vulnerable too. To be in that situation and to think that was appropriate suggests no one was Safeguarding her or providing her with appropriate boundaries.

She was obviously troubled to behave like that in the first place, and I think the facts that (1) you looked up to her (2) your view of the past is understandably focussed on the wrongs you suffered mean that you can't be objective about the situation and can't reasonably judge what the other girl's mindset or experience was.

Why was it not a choice for you, but it was for her, just purely because of her age? Say your 16 year old DID do the same, would you blame her and say she should be ashamed, she brought it on herself?

There aren't degrees of this that make it less wrong for one person than another. If a wife says no to sex with her husband, after they've been cuddling and kissing all night on the sofa, and he does it anyway, that is no less a rape than a woman being dragged kicking and screaming into bushes by a stranger. But the former is far more likely to happen.

You were very young, you can't even begin to know everything that went on in her home life. When I was that age, my best friend always seemed to have the "perfect" family. I loved spending time at their house because they seemed like such a solid family unit. Even my mum says that she would have cited them as the ideal happy marriage and family. A few years later the dad left, after it being revealed that he was sleeping with all and sundry. My friend always suspected, and it tore her up, but her mum buried her head in the sand as she was madly in love with him and wanted to keep her family together (no judgement on her at all by the way) so the dad carried on being a selfish wanker. Nobody knew.

I can understand why people would suggest she was groomed too based on her age, however my experiences with her didn't arise from grooming where these men were concerned.

I do accept that at 16 she will be considered vulnerable, but I absolutely stand by my gut feeling that she shouldn't have been roping 12 year olds into it. A 16 year old knows not to give drugs and drink to younger children.

She wasn't plied with drugs by these people, she would go to get them from dealers known to her.

Adding random people to MSN and asking them to meet up and party isn't grooming. I know what grooming is.

A 16 year old is legally permitted to have sex and is assumed to know what they're doing, a 12 year old is not.

I remember being at a party and a guy was trying his luck and she wasn't interested and not attracted to him, had no problem rejecting his advances and said to him "why don't you get together with (me) instead"

I do have anger towards her yes, a part of that is because I was threatened with being beat up by her numerous times during the friendship and afterwards. If we had a falling out I would get lengthy messages threatening me with XYZ.

She wasn't a particularly nice person by any accounts and I shouldn't have been friends with her in the first place but I looked up to her alot and saw her as a role model.

Very interested in your opinions even if they disagree with mine

If you believe she encouraged and groomed you, is it not feasible that she was in a similar situation at age 12 and didn’t manage to get out? Her behaviour was not that of a girl living a happy and secure life.

You met her when she was 16.You have no clue of what may have happened to her as a child or young teen.

Abused children often become promiscuous in later teens.

*Nobody made you drink or have sex with older men, that was a choice.

WHOA. So many things wrong with this statement. The OP WAS A TWELVE YEAR OLD CHILD. No child can consent. Nice bit of victim-blaming going on here.
It is true J was groomed and abused. It is ALSO true that a victim of grooming and abuse CAN AND WILL abuse and groom other children.
Please stop having a go at the OP.

Both of you were children.

YABU

I'm sorry for you childhood experiences and I don't think YABU to be affected by it still.

I do think you're misdirecting the blame though, adult men supplying and having sex with young teenage girls and children are the ones to blame. One hundred percent them.

Men like these don't have to supply expensive items to manipulate a teenage to consent and it's often about leading convos to make someone think they are making the choice for themselves. You can be very close to someone and not know their vulnerability too.

This screams of grooming. I think you need to be more angry and concerned about the men who had sex with children having kids of their own than your friend who sounds like she's been a victim herself.

That doesn't mean what happened to you wants wrong, but the responsibility, fault and blame lies with the adults here.

I think your friend was groomed and extremely vulnerable, she just hid it being 'tough'. She wasn't much older than you and knew no better.

Like you, she is probably quite different now. She hasn't done anything for which to be reported to SS - yes she was a bad influence when you were a kid but she was a kid too; for all you know she could be a devoted wife and mother but you don't have to be in contact with her. If it bothers you, block her.

I have blocked her.

When I say ‘will’ I do not mean all children who are abused will go on to abuse others. I just mean that it is a possibility. Some, a small proportion, will.

Hadn't seen your latest post. My opinion is slightly changed given that she was aggressive in other ways and threatened you. I still absolutely 100% think she was groomed/abused. But like Madame says, abused children can sometimes (not sure I like your way of saying 'CAN AND WILL', it's not all that common) groom other children and it does now sound with your added info that this was possibly the case.

Your anger is justified but misplaced I think, ultimately.

You were abused. What she did to you was wrong. No one can know the motivation behind her behaviour. It's definitely not normal for the average 16 yo to act as you describe.

Everyone is probably correct in assuming that she was abused and groomed at some point before you met her. This makes her a victim too.

But it also doesn't change the fact that you were abused. And that much of it was influenced by her. Meeting her has had an awful impact on your life. It seems that you were luck to get away at 15. She too will have grown up and changed.

I feel ver sorry for her and do see her as a victim. This doesn't excuse what happened to you and you are allowed to be angry and blame her.

Why do you think a 16 year old from a stable home would be seeking out these situations? Why would a 16 year old be looking for validation through sex with men they had just met?
Something lead your friend to that place, and it is highly unlikely it was her waking up one day and deciding to try out sex with a random.

A 16 year old knows not to give drugs and drink to younger children.

20-30 year old men know not to do it to 16-year-olds too, which is why it is considered grooming.

You were abused. So was she. You want to blame her and that's just the wrong person to blame.

A woman was jailed quite locally to me, not so long ago, for giving alcohol to and encouraging a much younger girl (13) to have sex with multiple men.

The girl who got into trouble was 17 or 18 at the time of the offences, she was sent to prison for it.

She was vulnerable too in some way, to behave like that in the first place. Bad past.

The courts still saw fit to imprison her.

I'm not suggesting I rake up the past and report J based on how I feel, but it's interesting that the majority of MN users commenting here see J as innocent whereas the law certainly doesn't, in a similar case.

I absolutely stand by my gut feeling that she shouldn't have been roping 12 year olds into it OP please don't think anyone is saying it was OK. It wasn't. But you have kids of your own, this is typical behaviour from a 15/16 yo who has a healthy home life and childhood of her own. Be angry at her, that's your right but you assume you can know her motivations from knowing her at 16. You didn't know her at 12. Who were her friends and what did THEY do?

A 16 year old knows not to give drugs and drink to younger children and yet grooming and abuse can convince many people to do something they know deep down to be wring.

She wasn't plied with drugs by these people, she would go to get them from dealers known to her and how many nice girls from nice homes have their own selection of drug pushers without there being something darker going on?

You were both grooomed, whether she can recognise that now is another matter. You don't have to add her on social media or antyhing.

I've no intention of having anything to do with her, we are both late 20s now and have had no contact for many years.

The last time i saw her eight or so years ago she sneered at me, unprovoked.

Perhaps she has a different take on the past to me.

She was a bully at 16 and still a bully in her early 20's so she doesn't seem to have changed that much.

I have only read your original post as to be honest that's enough.

You say you're concerned now that she has a child of her own. Why?

People who are abused can make brilliant parents

people who have had shitty childhood can make brilliant parents

people who behave in a way that you don't think is acceptable can make brilliant parents.

Unless you have concrete actual proof that her child is in danger then you've got no business even thinking about her. If you need help to get over what you feel has happened to you as a child, if you feel she genuinely committed a crime and groomed you, then get help. Don't perpetuate bollocks about the parenting of Abuse victims.

YABU and it may be a good idea to seek some support about what happened to you.

I'm not perpetuating no bollocks thanks

I've explained the title of my OP in a later post

I didn't say she shouldn't have children

I'm allowed an opinion and welcomed others

I wonder how many of you would feel if your 12 year old was being lead around to have sex with adults by a 16 year old.

I shouldn't have posted here whatsoever.

Cheers