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 am not advising therapy so that you would develop a different perspective on J.

I advise it so that you can lay the shame to rest.

Please do not be burdened by shame about what was done to you .

It is such a heavy weight to carry around, so soul crushing.

Therapy is for you, just so that you can wake up every day and love and accept yourself.

You were so very unlucky that the first poster set the trend for the first pages of responses. There is good advice on here re counselling and putting yourself first. You do need help as it's now coming back to haunt you. Suppressing is only ever a short term fix.

Lastly, I am inerested by the automatic assumption that J was abused/groomed herself. I mean I can see that someone who is ben groomed wouod behave that way. But does it automatically mean that anyone wo grooms anpother person/a child has been abused/groomed themselves?
aka I think thisis a simplistic analysis. J might or might not have been groomed. t could certainly be an explaination but I doubt this is the only one.

I agree with this.

But at the very least, J came from a chaotic home and was not treated with kindness, respect or love.

I disagree with Lilou.
The OP can focus her anger wherever she feels it is warranted.

There is no right or wrong to feelings.

I don't want revenge on J or want her to suffer in any way, as I said before these are all just feelings (my holding her responsible for alot of what happened)

I'm not about to open a can of words and go after her in any way shape or form

You can call the NSPCC and speak anonymously about your concerns for her children.

FWIW I don't think she's abusing her children. That never occurred. I see I worded my OP badly.

What I was concerned about, was the fact she has a daughter not too dissimilar to the age I was, and was concerned / wondering whether her thought processes had changed and whether she would safeguard her own 12 year old from similar behaviour.

OP how old are you now? I'm 33 and at 14 was out trying it on with bouncers for free entry and lifts home, and older guys for drinks in bars and pubs. The 90's and very early 00's this was pretty much common place. Barely anyone would've batted an eye at a 14/15yr old snogging a 30+yr old bloke in a club, or going home and fucking him in his car, apart from his girlfriend maybe.

Wasn't legal but half the Police would offer the same to girls in town in the 90's ffs. Grim. But it happened.

@Thechangednameoftheday

I could fill another three pages with examples of the horrible things J has said and done during the time I knew her but I won't waste my time because it's very clear that she is above reproach here and all of her wrong doings are as a result of being groomed, allegedly.

Darling. There are some shit heads on here who haven't put across what they mean very well. But very few people, even on this shitty thread, mean that J is above reproach.

I mean this in the gentlest way, I think what you're refusing to read here is that J may not be the one who deserves most of your ire. That directing your anger and sadness at her may be your way of keeping distance from the real crimes, the clear cut abuses - the ones that your parents and rapists perpetrated. It's ok to need to do that. You're on a journey and, in a way, being angry with J might mean you are just trying to take the next step in that journey.

I have been through what you are going through, I am about 10 years older than you and I was about the same age as you when it happened... I also hated my co-victims, especially the ones who were slightly older than me and had slightly more power than me. Some of them were awful to me, really awful. Some of them threw me to the wolves and seemed to laugh at it.

Now 10 years on from that stage I can see that I needed to concentrate on them, because I wasn't yet ready to face the horror of seeing the adults in my situation with any clarity. I focused on other children and very young "adults" instead.

Now on the other side of all that, my rage is focused on the criminals, and my co-victims, even the ones who weren't very nice people etc., get compassion.

I also noticed that I couldn't give myself compassion until I gave my co-victims compassion. Because everything I hated about my co-victims, on a very deep level, I believed I was guilty of myself. It really hurt to see that.

Trauma recovery is a journey op. I'm sorry that you are on it. You are not alone. I send you my love. I hope what I've written doesn't hurt too much. xx

I'm almost 30 myself

I wouldn't be concerned about her being a parent. She is now an adult. She may have been unwittingly groomed/sexualised and her behaviour seeking out the company of older men was most likely her wanting attention (feeling special) and wanting to appear/feel more grown up than she was (both of which can be natural). Unfortunately many teens feel like the way to feel grown up is to have sex with older boyfriends. And of course, she is meant to find it enjoyable or at least pretend to. It's likely that, given your circumstances, you were more mature for your age in some respects. My guess is that she saw you as a friend rather than a child. If she saw you as much younger/more childlike she wouldn't have wanted to hang around with you. I doubt that she felt particularly responsible for you. I'm afraid that it is what it is. She was still a victim of sorts herself. She would certainly have been taken advantage of, mislead with feelings, strung along etc by these men. They certainly used her, even if she didn't realize it at the time. And if they used her, then, in some respects that is a form of grooming. Victims don't always feel Like victims at the time or feel forced into something. It can take years before they realise what occurred.

It’s really hard to know
My best friend never had children as she never healed from her pain
I did have children and had girls. I find it very hard now they are older and am very over protective of them.
Some people don’t change, and some children will be out there doing similar. People always think they don’t want it for their kids but often they are ignorant about what is going on

I’m a little worried about you after some of the horrible responses you’ve had, as is typical to many OPs on AIBU so please don’t take it personally.

Return to your original questions-
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.
You have answered them yourself several times and only you know what truly happened. Here is not the place to find peace of mind. You tried to step away earlier, maybe try again and take away that the many decent people who posted are deeply sorry for what happened to you as a little girl

AIBU is the wrong topic.

I think hating the girl that introduced you to the abusers is understandable. Misplaced but understandable.
You could do with some solution, do you know any of the abusers so that you could report to the police?
Some counselling would help you make sense of the why.

Sorry those men took advantage of you and abused you.
It wasn't your fault, the blame is all theirs

Reading every reply and grateful for the time taken to respond to my post

I do agree that out of everybody responsible, J isn't the one I should be focussing the majority of my anger toward.

I feel that way toward her because I looked up to her alot and feel betrayed.

I'm very low contact with my mother as I do hold her hugely responsible for my childhood, so I don't think it's all J's fault.

The men I am angry at, absolutely. There are a few that stand out to me and I stumbled across one of them recently too. Again, social media. I hadn't seen his face for a long time but there he was.

This particular man J still has a relationship with, I don't know on what level. I will admit I did look on the friends list and see whether they were in touch. They were.

Subconsciously this may have added to my anger toward J.

If one of those men is in contact with J, and J has children around the age you were when he was abusing you, that would worry me. I don't know if it is an actionable worry, but it is creepy.

Wishing you peace, OP. I'm sure it's been hard to relive all those memories in this thread.

This particular man J still has a relationship with, I don't know on what level. I will admit I did look on the friends list and see whether they were in touch. They were.

Oh OP, I have so done this exact thing, so many times. It's such a horrible feeling, my blood ran cold as ice every time I saw connections like that. So hard.

You were just a child. I'm so sorry this happened to you. I hope that in time you are able to put this burden down and leave it there because you didn't do anything wrong. You have absolutely nothing at all to be ashamed of. Nothing.

If it is any consolation, if I’d had an older girl take me to places that were unsafe while I was so young and vulnerable, I’d be angry too. There was still a power relationship there, she was older, and you were significantly younger.

This was a a couple of months or so ago and then she came up in my suggested friends today, and I spiralled.

I've since blocked her on SM, as well as the man I mentioned. Not that I expect they would ever contact me but seeing them isn't healthy for my state of mind.

I should have done the blocking before. I don't know why I didn't. Curiosity probably.

I think its harsh to judge someone on their previous lifestyle.

The crux of the issue lies in what her lifestyle is now

I think it’s irrelevant why J did what she did or how she’s living now. What relevant is how this is still impacting you OP and it’s hurting you. (Of course it is- you were abused!) I absolutely recommend counselling for you. Not to change your opinion of J- your opinion of her is yours based on your experience of her. But to help you process this and start to let go of the pain and anger. Because as right as you are to feel angry about what happened to you- that anger is only hurting you and has no impact on the people who caused it. Counselling can help you come to terms with it and work right through these feelings so they aren’t no longer a source of pain for you.

I wonder if you want to protect her dc the way no one protected you. I think that is quite understandable if that’s the case.

Would you feel better if you made a statement to the police .
Who knows maybe other girls were in your situation and have already reported it .

J sounds like a damaged individual who pushed her own self loathing onto you. She acted out the abuse happening to her ( even if she apparently sought it out and looked like she was in control, she was clearly not ) and she in turn abused you. Abuse is often cyclical like this and Im so sorry that you were a vulnerable child who got caught up in this. The adults in your life should have known better. J should have known better. You were badly let down. None of it was your fault

I’ve just seen that you you know some of these men ,and you have seen them ..I think you should report it to the police ..why should they get away with it