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.

Does anyone have an recommendations for resources for healing/processing this type of thing? I am not in the UK (but British). At the beginning of a (late) journey (hopefully) following childhood rape and sexual assault by a family member, but really struggling. I don't have anyone to talk to (I don't want to talk to family/friends) and would love a community around this. Have been trying online therapy, and it is fine, but I feel like something is missing.

My friend at 13 was raped by her step father;he gave her glasses of wine then did it.I never asked her if he'd tried anything since.

When she 15 her mum went on holiday for two weeks with female relatives and her step dad invited his cousins 15 year daughter to stay "to keep my friend company as they were the same age and got on well".

The cousins daughter slept in his room in his bed the whole time and my friend could hear them having sex.

When her mum returned home my friend and her brother told their mum what had happened while the away.Needless to say the police were involved and there was a court case and a divorce;my friend found the courage to speak up about being raped.

OP, for a moment there I thought I’d started this thread myself.

Yes, my dad used to hang around the bathroom, when I was around 12ish especially. I think he used to try to be in there when I was getting ready to get in the bath, ie undressing or wanting to undress, and he’d pick that time to try and have a “chat”. Never very interested in chatting to me otherwise.

We had a lock on the bathroom door but no one ever locked it, it was like an unwritten family rule that we just didn’t do that.

Once when I was 12, I’d been sunbathing in the garden and I think there was some kind of row with my dad, and maybe my brother. I went upstairs to have a shower (and probably to get away from him/them) but I must have had a feeling my dad was going to come after me - I remember deliberating whether to take my swimming costume off or not, and deciding to keep in on, just in case.

Sure enough he came in. And marched over and pulled the shower curtain right back, while I was in there. Even though I must have half expected it, I still remember the shock; he wouldn’t have known I still had my cossie on. But he did it anyway.

I started locking the bathroom door after that, although it had frosted glass panels all the way down so I never felt really secure in there, and used to slide down inside the bath as deep as possible in case anyone (he) came past.

My mum just moaned at me for locking the door, supposedly because she couldn’t get access to the airing cupboard while I was in there any more.

This one episode, and another worse one, stand out against a backdrop of years and years of feeling watched and creeped on, and low-level boundary violations. As others have said, it really messed me up. It really is horrible not feeling safe, or respected, in your own home, among your own family.

Thoughts with all those who went through similar. Sad how many of us had dads/stepdads/brothers etc who couldn’t be trusted.

That's very very easy to say.

That's very very easy to say you would report it. Would you really if you can't prove it? What if the person is dead?

This thread is one of the saddest things I've ever read.

Yet impossible to do

I don't think that's the case. I think that OP has every intention of supporting her daughter.

That was not the reason the thread was taken down. The OP was clear that she intended to do the right thing.

Some despicable men about, in positions of trust.

Sexual attacks of any description (child or adult) are incredibly hard to report. Sorry, I can't use certain words and this thread is triggering the shit out of me. I wish I could fix everyone's suffering. Much love.

This is so sad. I’m so sorry to everyone who has experienced this. I am recently divorced and there’s no way I would move a man into my house now. I just couldn’t do that to them - they are my utmost priority.

Fucking hell I'm shocked at how common this is 😔

As a young women, I had some creepy bosses/lecturers doing dodgy stuff, but a father doing this to a child is a whole other level. Unbelievable just how far men will sink.

There's been a few debates on mn about whether men should work in nurseries, and usually posters pile in to say that it's completely unreasonable to have concerns about this. However, after reading this thread, I'm not so sure...

I am so sorry to hear about these stories. Lots of love and hugs for every one.

Sadly, some men abuse their own children. Billy Connolly's dad fiddled him.

I have a friend who talks about her dad getting into bed with her on holiday when she was 16. She said he said he was drunk and thought it was her mum. She said she never believed him.

They have a strong relationship now which I find baffling but recently she has been trying to develop a kind of grandad relationship between him and my daughter- FaceTiming, asking for birthday messages, trying to make us spend time all together.

i have created distance and not engaged in these requests because my job is to protect my daughter.

Ex 'D'P had a fetish for skirts. Caught him eyeing up my then dd13 once while she innocently wore one. Admittedly i doubted myself in what i saw. Though only a few days later I borrowed his phone to check something and his YouTube showed he had looked up 'kids sleeping at sleepovers' and 'doctor body inspection of young girls'. When I delved deeper he also seemed to have a fascination with 'girls unbroken hymens'.

Sick b*stard was gone immediately.

I think like many you're in denial about the fact that lots of us are talking about our biological fathers, because it's too awful.

I understand why, but it does have an impact - it means that no-one's looking over here because they're all looking over there.

I did (mum's boyfriend). No actual proof of what he'd done as it was decades later. He was sentenced to 13 years in total. Ranged from watching me in the bath right through to rape. He died in prison.

This is appalling I am so sorry that these things happened to you and were said about you. I am devastated for you

Oh Boiled, I'm so sorry.

I’m so sorry for all that everyone has experienced. Me too unfortunately. It most be rife ans I’ve encountered quite a few rotten reptiles which had lead to a massive distrust of men.

First was a man who worked for my parents when I was about 8. I used to be sent to deliver him lunch and he would corner me/ tickle me and get his hands inside my pants and talking dirty to me.

Then my older brothers when I was about 12. One aged 3 years older used to tickle/over power me and try to get his hands in my pants.

Another brother 4 years older than me used to do the same and would fall out with me telling me that I’d soon be letting all the boys do it to me around the back of the disco. He used to wank in front of me,show me porn mags and tell me disgusting things that I shouldn’t have known at that age. I remember begging not to have to share a room in a B and B with him when we were on a miserable holiday. I confronted him a few years ago and we are now very much estranged.

When I was about 13 my mum took me to see a consultant as I had problem periods. It was a private appointment so it was at his house. The appointment was finished, my mum paid him. I was in a gown for some reason and mum went to get car as I went behind the curtain to change. Whenever she had left he said “Oh I have forgotten to do something I need to do a check” and he put his fingers inside me. I never questioned. It and never told anyone.As an adult looking back I realise it probably was abuse.

Lastly I had a tutor for English when I was 17 as my teacher was crap and we didn’t do anything - not even the right books. I had a part time job and paid for it. He was a retired teacher. Lessons were in his house , his wife and his teenage disabled child used to be in the house. He would sit on the other side of a desk with both his hands down his trousers smirking at me,

My gp did this when I was a student.

He put cameras in the bathroom at the surgery fgs. No apology from the surgery or NHS when he was convicted.

Disgusting brute...and it's shocking your mother didn't kick his perverted sorry arse out of the house immediately.

I hope he goes to jail.

I bet your instincts were spot on OP. Intuition isn’t illogical, it’s the result of all the real information your subconscious mind has processed. Professionals who work in the field of violence/abuse prevention say one of the powerful things you can do to protect yourself is always trust your instincts.

I so wish I'd reported my abuser when I had the chance, but felt unsupported, and was told by family that he was probably dead.

I realise now they just didn't want the ''fuss''.

Bitterly regret not going to the police independently in my early 20's {The abuse was from 9 yrs}