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 think you are directing the anger you should feel at these men and your mum towards this girl.

She sounds like she has behaved badly, and has a lot to regret. But the people who raped you are the ones responsible for their behaviour, and your Mum is responsbile for the neglect you grew up in.

She was only 16, and her behaviour doesn't sound normal at all. For a start, where were her parents while she was out having sex with adult men? And asking the men to have sex with you instead of her, sounds like she developed a tactic to avoid having to have se with people she didn't want (not a good one, obviously), so she possibly had encountered no consesual sex before

Maybe you should consider counselling to work through your feelings abou this, it must be very hard to deal with the anger and confusion

OP you are getting such a hard time Was your “friend” still encouraging you to have sex with men when you were almost fifteen and she was what eighteen almost nineteen? That is not a child, groomed or not, and some of the blame has to lie with her.

I think maybe there is the possibility that when she was a little younger than when she was when you met her someone may have introduced her to that sort of behavior, the morality and legality of which I will leave you yo decide. But if you were able to remove yourself from the situation then you are very strong indeed op x

It s exceedingly naive of you to think because she came from an outwardly respectable home she had no problems. You are placing yourself as victim and her as monster. Where were her loving, stable parents in all of this? If my 16 year old was out taking drugs and sleeping with older adults I'd know about it because they should be safely at home doing homework and having dinner and watching TV with me. A young girl could only be doing this habitually if she is neglected by her parents in some way.

Difficult because when I was 12 and approached by older men via older girls for sex (grew up on a council estate with a prostitution problem) I said no. I appreciate that your childhood might not have been the best but neither was mine (abusive mum, absent dad, was kicked out of the house many times ‘just because’). You and this 16 yo girl were definitely manipulated and groomed and instead of blaming her you should be going after these men who thought it was acceptable to sleep with a 12 year old

OP, I am sorry about what happened to you. It was awful and should not have happened.

The fault 100% lies with the animals who groomed her and later you. An average 20/30+ year old man would not want to buy alcohol for and sleep with a 16 year old. They were in the wrong.

Quite possibly J was groomed herself as a pre-teen and saw nothing wrong with what was happening.

Hi OP, it sounds like a lot of what happened to you was really traumatic and horrible, well done for getting yourself out! It is really hard to overcome something like that on your own. Have you thought of trying a session or two with a therapist to work through some of your current feelings? You still seem upset and rightly so, this could be helpful if you want x

I haven't wanted to talk about any of this before now because I've felt too ashamed.

I didn't think I would be flamed as much as I have here so thought it was a safe space I could discuss this anonymous.

I think some posters have been quite cruel and could have said what they wanted to say differently.

I have listened to the alternative opinions, I don't have to agree with them all, but I've been listening and taking things on board to help me process things. I've felt this way for many years so my apologies if a handful of comments don't prompt a 180 of my thinking immediately. I may feel differently tomorrow, next week, next year etc.

I feel even more crushed now after posting than I did an hour ago when it all came back to the forefront of my mind so one thing I have learned is not to come to AIBU with delicate matters.

I'm devastated that somebody has suggested my stance/opinions mean I'm putting my own children at risk, how dare you and how you could even reach that conclusion is ridiculous.

I haven't reported J or anybody else. I don't wish her harm. These are my feelings that I'm trying to process, that's all.

I need to stop replying to this thread because I'm just upsetting myself further so I'm going to do as I said and how hide it for myself after I post this.

Thanks

thechangedname

I think everyone can sympathise with you about the anger your early experiences have left you with, and understand that you need to blame someone, quite rightly, for putting you through them.

But I would like to say two things.

Firstly, the anger , shame and unhappiness you feel are not healthy emotions to hold on to and you need to find someone to help you deal with them . I think a rape crisis centre could be a good starting point , they will know how you can access help in your area.

Secondly, you are directing the blame at the nearest and most obvious person you associate with your experiences, but the real people responsible for your abuse were the men who took advantage of your vulnerability. And the abuse that you went through is about vulnerability, not age. I hope in time you can accept that although J was a little bit older than you she was also seen by those predators as a vunerable person, just as you were. She was , and probably still feels, as much a victim of their evil as you were and are.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time, op; obviously this woman making an appearance on social media has triggered memories but I'm pretty sure both of you see things differently now. You're grown up!

Just block her, she isn't part of your life now. Your useless mother and the unpleasant men who took advantage of you were far more to blame than the girl who was obviously being exploited and couldn't tell right from wrong.

She's now an adult and a parent and unless you have very current knowledge of who she is, how she parents and her mental state, yabvu to suggest that she treats her own children the same as she treated you. It's entirely possible she looks back on that time in her life with the same regret and discomfort as you do yours, and has her own mental scars. Even if she still has a lot of issues - which she clearly did as a 17 year old - it does not mean she's encouraging or facilitating her own kids to drink, take drugs and have sex with random adults!

I can totally understand that you'd feel angry toward her, and that you're still dealing with that period in your life. I'm sure there are many dysfunctional reasons why she took it upon herself to draw you into her lifestyle, and in an ideal world and in an ideal 'friendship', she would have looked after you. But she was barely (not even, actually) an adult, with her own problems.
Understandably you're still viewing this, with a child's perspective, as a betrayal of trust - but your anger is misplaced. Your parent(s) are far more responsible than this woman could ever be.
Hope you can find some peace with it all - have you thought about some kind of counselling?

If you are both late 20's and she has a child close to the age you were then, does this mean she got pregnant when you were involved with her?

Your "friendship" carried on for 3 years? So you were 15 when it finished which made her 19??

These threads are a bit triggering for me

In my own experience this is a lonely existence for a teenage girl and they often want ‘company’. Myself and my best friend fell into something similar and horrible, with an older girl. The older girl had some serious issues of her own, not that we knew about them at the time and I could wonder if you are talking about the same person, except I know the girl is now a woman with a full blown heroin addiction and might not even be alive now.

My best friend was from a nice family with money, she was still very very unhappy though. ‘Normal’ happy girls do not do this sort of thing for fun. It is what they grew up thinking was ok, but as you know it’s so damaging and I would say yes a 16yo was probably a very damaged person and maybe still is

I wouldn’t report her though for her own DC, I would focus on healing. People could look at me the same way - I am horrified at the person I was back then, and the product of a very unhappy childhood. I’ve done everything I can to give my DC a lovely childhood and protect them

@Thechangednameoftheday, please don't feel ashamed. It was not your fault- it was the fault of those adult men! You were a victim.

Please, please consider some counselling If you feel like it would help you.

I'm sorry for the harm you suffered in the past, but you really must leave J alone. You have no idea what was behind her behaviour when you were both children (it is fairly likely that she herself was every bit as much of a victim as you were) and you have no idea how much she has moved on now. It would probably benefit you to look for some support for yourself, but trying to arrange some kind of 'punishment' for J would be very wrong.

OP, no blame attaches to you.

The older girl certainly groomed you.

Though she might have been groomed herself, a victim also, it does not mean that she is without blame. When men groom women-children for sex, they often pressurise the very young women to provide further young women. She might have had a 'boyfriend' who was powerful in the group and so no-one would press her for sex she didn't want. That's a speculation but sometimes abused young women seek protection from a 'boyfriend'.

The blame does not lie mostly with your parents, what rubbish. It lies mostly with the abusers. We could live in a world where children left unprotected by their parents are protected by the community, not exploited.

My mother was a bitch. She was a bitch in part because of the abuse she suffered as a child. As an adult, as a human being, I can empathise and understand, and I can be sorry for her and the life she lived. But the child in me, who suffered her emotional abuse, can blame her for not providing the love and care I needed.

Posters seem to want you to be understanding of the other young woman's position. If you want to do that, you probably can. But at the same time you can be rightfully outraged and hurt about her influence on your life. You are entitled to be angry. Be angry with her. Be angry with the men. Be angry with your parents. Be angry with a society that covered up abuse rather than making itself a safe place for it's children.

It is also inevitable that you will be concerned that she has children. As many have said, abused people don't necessarily become abusers, but I don't know how anyone who had been through that would avoid wondering.

Counselling, perhaps Rape Crisis, maybe Social Services and the police. When you're ready.

If she sneers at you again, give her a steely look. You know who she is and what she did.

I don’t think people are being mean - the point is that happy girls don’t act like this. It’s not an enjoyable life. It’s outside of what is ok and normal. Which is why people think she was possibly a victim too in her own way, for her own reasons and didn’t have the knowledge or tools to have a ‘normal’ friendship. A girl behaving like this around men, very transnational didn’t learn this from nowhere

I was very like J at 16 in some ways. I had sex with older men because it was what I thought was expected of me. I thought I had to have sex with people who wanted me to. Being desirable was also a massive part of my self worth and as you describe, I would seek out people to "party" with. It came from some deep seated emotional issues and relationship difficulties I had with my parents. I was not sexually abused, and not groomed in the traditional sense. I was however taken advantage of by adults who should have known better.

I'm now very very different to how I was then. I've grown up lots, processed my issues.

Just because J appeared ok and incontrol doesn't mean she was.

I am sorry OP, so sorry that you got dragged in this cycle. And it's completely understandable your angry with J. You want to hate J I bet because she in your mind she betrayed you and J should have stood up for you.

But J was not acting in the right mind of a 16 year old with responsibility to know right from wrong. She was vulnerable too and in a normal situation I would completely agree that she was awful. But this girl may have had situations that happened to her to make her react like this which you are not aware of, because why would J want anyone to think she was weak especially you as someone who looked up to her. She was a child herself being praised and encouraged by disgusting predators who took advantage of you both.

I wrote this OP because I was raped at 14 by my older boyfriend which lead to me to my own predator who I met online. A monster who groomed me online before my 16th birthday then met me and proceeded to ruin years of my life. I was not a switched on 16 year old. I was still very naieve. But I believed I was a big girl making my own (his) decisions.

I, like you carry alot of anger and resentment for the things I cannot change. I understand you were younger and your friend encouraged you but I believe your friend was being encouraged by something or someone also.

Grooming comes in all shapes and sizes I am sorry that you had to see J again and these memories had to be brought up. These men are dispicable, I'm sorry to 12 year old you that no one was there to protect you.
Funnily enough I saw my monster on facebook today he's in my block list. I hugged my child a little tighter and swore nothing or nobody would hurt her how they did me. You have DC use your anger to teach them.

I always think in some way if I had to go through alot of pain and hurt for my child to learn from my mistakes every bit is worth it, so she will never know what that is like.

Your feelings are valid OP, talking to a counsellor to work through this would certainly help. Sounds as if this older girl was a lost soul herself, almost certainly groomed, and leading a chaotic life.

*transactional

And yeah it’s ok not to forgive her and be angry. But just stay out of her life. Any revenge won’t help you.

I can’t believe how cruel some people are being on this thread.

Thechangednameoftheday it would cross my mind as to the possability of her being sexually abused by an older family member, family friend or a person that was known to her as a young child.

That would be my initial thought.

I do empathise with how you feel and i am sorry that this happened to you.

You need help and support to deal with these emotions not an internet forum