family friend

sms harassment

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I was being harassed through text by a friend of my father for over a year long. I was 15 at the time the men was 52. As it started with seemingly innocent texts I managed to convince myself that my discomfort was an overreaction. Over time however it got really bad with him regularly sending me porn, pictures, links to all kind of sexual related content and self written stories about kids having seks with adults. This was a man I had grown up with and who had seen me naked from baby on to the point that it got really uncomfortable. But the bathroom doors didn’t always have a lock when our two families rented a house together. So when it got really bad I didn’t dare to tell anyone because he was a friend of my father and I was scared to mess up there relationship because of things I had convinced myself where harmless. One day I got really mad because every time he texted me I felt so disgusting and uncomfortable that it ruined my whole day. I decided to confront him as objective and adult like I could. He started guilt tripping me, telling me he was lonely, that he was in love with me and that he needed me to keep him from depression. I persisted however and got him to back off, but by the time I managed I was so shocked that I got a panic attack. This was the scariest thing that ever happend in my life but luckily my best friend came to my aid after two hours of freaking out. She gave me an ultimatum to make me tell my parents. who took me very seriously and made me go to the police after which I found out I wasn’t his first victim. He had harassed his stepdaughters in ways that were far worse than me and there were even more girls. What I never managed to tell my parents is that I have been struggling with panic attacks ever since and often don’t feel save. That my fathers touch sometimes makes me really uncomfortable even though I know he would never harm me or touch me inappropriately. It’s been getting better year by year but I realise that it will still take a lot of time as I still sometimes experience triggers. The worst thing is that I still feel like I have to defend my feelings, that I still feel like I have no right to be scared and I can’t get rid of that feeling which makes it hard to talk about.

Met with silence

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I was 13. Or maybe still 12 when it happened. My aunt, who was responsible for my safety that week of my 13th birthday, was only about 10 feet away. I could hear her laughing, drunk, while being groped herself by 2 or 3 men in the kitchen of her Las Vegas condo. I was passing out drunk, on the couch in her living room. I looked up to my aunt so much back then… I didn’t have a strong mom and I looked to my aunt for guidance. The man was one of her friends. He was in his 30’s at the time. It happened during the bon voyage party to celebrate my aunt and I leaving for a cruise through Mexico. This was the aunts birthday gift to her 13 year old niece, a booze cruise through Mexico. The booze cruise was a 7 day trip filled with alcohol and men. The aunt not only allowed but encouraged her 13 year old niece to consume alcohol for the first time. Making the niece her drinking buddy for the trip. The young girl wanted to tell but didn’t know how. She didn’t feel safe telling her drunk aunt and ruining the party. The mass amounts of alcohol helped to mask the confusion and pain for the next 7 days. But, when the niece got home, the alcohol wore off. She told her mom; the aunts sister. It wasn’t a conscious decision. She was too young to think like that. It was like the truth bubbled up inside of her and forced itself out. She felt better. She gasped and was able to catch a deep breath for the first time once the truth was out. She felt the relief of the pit in her stomach leaving for the first time since it happened. Even as just a little girl, she knew the difference between right and wrong and she knew she had done the right thing. Her mom was going to protect her. There’s no way she’d let them get away with this. Days went by. Weeks and months… NOTHING. WAS. DONE. The mom and her sister decided to do nothing about it. No therapy or treatment was given. Not even a conversation. Not another word. The young girl was strong and brave enough to tell! Only to have it met with silence by the grownups around her. The feelings of invalidation, disappointment, confusion and fear… the messages that this instilled in the young girl proved to last a lifetime. I wondered for years why nothing was done. If it was because they didn’t believe me or if it just didn’t matter… This reaction from the women in my life, of just turning a check, ignoring, and allowing a thing like this to happen, spoke loudly and was lifetimes more painful and destructive than the molestation itself. It took almost 30 years for it to come up again. When the niece finally started asking, “why was nothing done?” which was still, met with silence.

Jana W

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When I was abou 13-14 years old, I remember, a friend of our family and actually my sister’s godfather, started “coming over” quite a lot. It was just like him visiting us and chatting drinking coffee with my mim and myself, who were usually at home (after school). He himself had a daughter and a son, quite closed to my age. So, He started coming over for nearly everyday and was everytime very interested in what I was doing. So interested that my Moment was Wanderung why eh came over so much and why eh was so interested in me. He wouldnt stop asking me questions like “Do you have a boyfriend yet?” or “i would Understand why the boys Must like you” or would comment about my apperance, my eye-liner or something else. One time he even commented about my tits (“oh you have big tits for your age, good for you, I’ve Heard men/boys Must like that.”) next to my mum (she Said nothing in response). I also Never knew how to respond to that. Also, when i was Reading a magazine for teenagers (called “BRAVO”), which everybody read at my age, he Flickend through it and showed me the Pages of a naked Boy and girl (“Dr. Sommer” would answer to questions about the body) and making commented about them. It made me Feel very uncomfortable and i didn’t want him to come over and be always at our home anymore, but on the other side i couldn’t go anywhere else, which made me feel trapped and I didn’t say anything because I felt ashamed and didn’t Know if that behaviour was right or wrong. So in the end my mum Asked him about it and he confessed he had crush on me (or something like that) and wouldn’t come over anymore. My sister was very sad, because he was very nice (like you are actually to a child) to her and I felt very guilty about it. I felt like i destroyed a family’s friendship. I can say after that I was seriously scared about men and didn’t want anything to do with them for a long time. I didn’t Tell my sister anything, until she was 18.