Dad hanging round outside bathroom *MNHQ Content warning for abuse*

[Househunter2025]

I was reading a thread that just got deleted and it's really made me think.

When I was a teenager my dad used to hang around outside the bathroom and my bedroom - I always found it really creepy but nothing else ever happened so I didn't really think it was abusive behaviour - but I always found it really creepy and couldn't stand being near him or alone with him. Never mentioned it to anyone before.

In my 40s now and it still bothers me. I'm hyper aware of my kids dad or other males on the family doing anything to them and it feels beyond all proportion. I don't think other parents have this fear.

A couple of posters on the other thread said they had experienced similar and I was about to reply but then it was deleted.

Don't know what I want from this thread really. I wouldn't mention anything to family - parents are elderly. I don't have sisters. Just want to come to terms with it and put it in perspective I guess.

This

Just want to say I also experienced this. I don’t want to go into details. It was a family member so related by blood not a step parent. I also believe it’s more common than we like to believe. Everytime a thread is created about this I want to comment but often feel unable to, I just felt I had to reply here. I also read the thread that was posted earlier. I really hope the girl is okay.

Two of my mom's cousins, who had their own kids of our age at the time, were making sexual remarks about my sister developing breasts. She might have been 10yo at the time. They then proceeded to ask her to pull up her shirt to show them. 😩 No, I never told anyone and neither did she to my knowledge.

Yes, I agree. I have known at least five women who were abused, and none of them went to the police. Even today the conviction rates are pathetic. Imagine the 1970s and 1980s! If you were a 15-year-old girl and your stepdad came into your room at night, where would you turn? I don’t think the police wanted to know. Their attitude would have been “well we can’t prove it, so what do you expect us to do?”

As for further back in history - say, the 19th and 18th centuries - I can’t imagine the horrors that took place in the orphanages and workhouses and factories. Writers like Dickens don’t dare go there. He occasionally hints at such things, but no more. In reality, I should think the Victorian orphanages and workhouses were crawling with men like Jimmy Saville. If you were poor, you just accepted rape and abuse as one more misery, along with hunger and cold and lice and overcrowding.

Threads like this put things into perspective for me and I know if anything happens to me then my kids might not be safe. I know I am the best person to keep them safe. I need to focus on being healthy and try to live a long life! Sorry I had to share that I’ve just been feeling so low I need to get better and focus on my kids. I think as mothers we are the only ones who can keep our kids safe.

Yes. No shade on my mum as times were different. I’ve had 2 stepdads. A very bad one and then a very very lovely one, who is still in my life. But it’s still a 50/50 chance and so not worth it for the bad ones.

Just wanted to send huge hugs and love to all of you.

I'm so sorry this happened to you

When I read threads like these, I just think, “I’m absolutely sick of men”.

Shame on the women who allow their partners to get away with it.

Same here porn all out in the open. My dad used to 'accidentally' touch my breasts and bum, brush past me constantly, and still did that up until a few years ago when one day I screamed at him and told my mother what he was doing - she said she would call the police on me and I was thrown out of their home.

Around the same time I had a flash back of me being at home alone with him as a teenager and he told me that I was in trouble and must never tell my mum, I had to pull down my pants and he smacked my bare bottom, threw me out of the bedroom and locked the door behind me. I remember the shock. I completely blocked this out until my 30s and had a big flashback, I confronted him and he just said that I was always playing up and he didn't know how to manage me.

I also remember him making a video of me in my bikini and I didn't think anything of it but now I realise what he was doing the sick fucker...it's so sad and depressing. I have no trust in men and doubt I ever will.

That is exactly what I feel. I would never ever ever do that.

I'm with you.
I'm 29, but just can't imagine bringing a man in my dc 2 life.
I can't trust many men and worried the impact it will cause my dc on their childhood

My biological father, who was married to my mother well before I was born, was my abuser.

I think it's vital to know and be aware that there's a whole range of behaviour that isn't necessarily actual physical/sexual abuse 'on' the person but is very damaging mentally and often easier to hide and quite often not noticed or sometimes not mentioned as the young person isn't always 100% aware or 'doesn't like to discuss or mention' I know myself that I experienced a couple of things that I didn't realise at the time were seriously inappropriate from male relatives.

This is similar to how I feel - uncomfortable but sometimes wonder if it's me imagining things. I've spent a long time trying to think of a specific thing that happened but there was never anything that definite - the hanging round outside the bathroom thing was the main thing, I used to wonder if there was a camera in the tap. This was the 90s so highly unlikely. I felt like he was always watching.
I don't think I have felt that creepy feeling with many other men, so it probably isn't just me.

Too right

My older brother often entered the bathroom when I was in the bath. No lock on the door as younger siblings and parents removed it for safety. 😞 I used to wedge the door shut, it worked for a while, then he clocked my defence and pushed the door harder to open it. Always said he didn’t realise I was in bath (utter rubbish, judging by where is eyes fixed on my body before I would scream him out the room and cover my bits). He would take a quick glimpse up and down as he said “oops, sorry”
I used to lay in the bath with a flannel across my boobs and another over my vagina area in case he came in. I never told my mum or dad. It would have been brushed under the carpet. Of that I am sure.
He was early teens at the time and I guess desperate to see a real naked body. I just don’t know how violation of women and girls is so ingrained and why so many of us don’t just smash the bollocks out of this behaviour rather than be shamed and silent.

I second this !!!!!!

I'm so sorry 😞 sending love and strength to you all affected by this, truly awful for you x

My mum moved my stepdad into the house we shared together when I was 16 years old. Thankfully he was lovely and nothing happened but she had only been with him a short time. Now I have my own children I can't help but think how utterly selfish she was / is. I would never do that personally. I was off to uni two years later.. just wait for ffs.

👏🏼👏🏼

When I was a teenager my older brother suddenly started to come into the bathroom as I was having a bath, pretending to look for one thing or another. Once, he looked behind the bath curtain and ‘jokingly’ touched my breast. This only happen for a short period of time and then he stopped. I guess he was curious but I can’t understand how men can feel any sexual arousal for family members. The thought of anything sexual with my brothers or father fills me with the deepest repulsion imaginable.

Why are some men such scum? And it’s not only to do with sex, it’s also to do with their arrogance, with their selfishness, laziness, cruelty. I spent my childhood dreaming that I would grow up and one day meet an amazing man who would be everything I ever wanted and I’m just so disappointed to realise that I will never have this in this lifetime.

I’ve got a partner of nearly 5 years. Rarely sleeps over when my teen dc are here. I feel he’s a good person and has his own dc and we are talking of him moving in. I didn’t introduce him for 2.5 years … I met his kids first to see what kind of father he was first but it’s not a guarantee but nothing in life is. As mums, we always need to stay on guard more than anything.

It's horrible you experienced that. I don't see why other thread was removed.
What is wrong with some men?
I remember when I was 15 my bf's dad glowered at me after I showered wearing a towel and groped my butt once in the hallway when he offered us a lift. He was revolting.
My bf just laughed when I told him.

Thanks. I'm glad it was for the right reasons.