Child Grooming: I Can't Wrap My Head Around It

[Lady of Longbourn]

Sometimes they would send me things. Letters, pictures, gifts. I thought it was all so great and I felt very special.

 

[cherryblossom]

I know I've said this before, but I really think you are being too hard on yourself.

Teenage girls are needy. I know I was. And I'm sure many others here were too. Hormones are flying all over the place, and pretty much every teenage girl feels like they are different or don't belong. So attention from anyone, seems like a good thing.

Those guys knew exactly how to 'groom' you. They sent you stuff, they took notice of you, they complimented you. They are not stupid. Therefor they know that what they are doing is unlawful. They know what they are doing is morally wrong.

It makes no difference to me how it is dressed up. The law is there to protect minors because they are not mature enough to understand the implications of what they are doing.

If it was okay for a 13, or 14 year old to have sex (consented of not), then there wouldn't be a law against it.

They were predators, they knew exactly what they were doing, and it made them feel powerful. They didn't give a second thought to you, and your feelings.

You didn't make a mistake, in my opinion. You were just being a kid, and doing what kids do. All kids like presents and attention. There were no mistakes made. You behaved like a typical kid, and they were paedophiles. They knew exactly what they were doing. And you were the innocent party.

Yes, I said innocent. As in no blame, no shame. Completely innocent.

 

[cherryblossom]

I should have known better.

Just to put the ball in your court - do you think other 13, 14, 15 year olds who have been raped by someone they know, 'should have known better'?

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Cherryblossom,

I feel ridiculous right now. My brain keeps trying to argue with your logical. How sad is that? Trying to figure out all the ways in has to be my fault and how to tell you that "No, you are wrong becasue I did this, this and this..."

Those guys knew exactly how to 'groom' you.

Yes, years and years later I still see it as my fault, my blame and up until a few years ago I didn't see it as abuse but normal. It took me awhile to realize how wrong it is and it took me barely talking about it to realize how much it hurt me.

I bought a book yesterday about sexual abuse and it lists all the ways to be abused. Even sexually suggestive phone calls are on there with adds more sexual abuse to my plate. Like the married guy who would call me and tell me all about how he just slept with his wife and how we wants to sleep with me.

I am hoping the book will help open my eyes. I am tired of feeling so hard headed about it all. Tired of fighting what I know was wrong and thinking still like the abused person I was. I should know that I am in control now, no longer abused and I know better.

no shame

It's going to take a long time until I feel no shame.

A lot to think about. Thanks for listening and replying.

 

[cherryblossom]

You're not ridiculous Ayesha. Very far from it. You still believe that in some way you were responsible for what happened (which you weren't!)

It comes back to those things we think we should have or could have done differently. Which is exactly how I thought for a long time. But realistically, when there are predatory people around who will stoop to any level, what difference do our actions make? If you hadn't gone to his house maybe he'd have just grabbed you off the street and dragged you down an alley. That's just one example, I won't bore you with more. But you don't know that if your actions had been any different, whether the outcome for you would have been any better.

Unless we stay in a locked room and have no contact with the outside world, we can't control other peoples actions.

The way I see it, there are no good reasons for one person to rape another. There are no good reasons for an adult to abuse a child. I don't care what the victim/survivor said, how they acted, what they wore, the blame always lies with the perpetrator.

 

[Britt.f7]

For the longest time my stepmother would hold these painful letter's I use to write my father over my head. Like a wait until you have children one day kind of thing. In her eyes, therefore in mine, I was the one in the wrong to even say anything. It took me a long time until I realized, wait, whoa, I was a child. Even if those letters were filled with blasphemy, I was a child, in my teens, who wrote them and I was responding out of hurt. They were adults. Instead of acting like the injured party, they should have helped. It took a long time for me to understand and forgive myself for this.

This is how I see you. A child. You were in your teens, but you were still a child. Hopefully someday you will get to where I got and forgive yourself for the child you were. Those other people were adults. They should have known better, handled it differently. They should have nurtured you.

I remind myself this at all times when I start to feel bad about something in my childhood. They were ADULTS. It makes a difference. I look at my teens and know that their way of thinking is nothing like an adult. I treat them as their age requires and I remember that, now, I am the ADULT.

I know I can, as other's, tell this to you until I am blue in the face, but none of this was your "fault". Someday I hope you will actually see and feel this. It is a cleansing release.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Ayesha, firstly, you are a child emotionally at 13, 14, 15, 16 and way beyond that if you have never been taught what caring behaviour and emotional support should look like. So that wasn't your fault at all.

I'm ashamed to admit, that I was groomed at 30 years old. I met him on a spiritual forum, and he acted like the all knowing, all seeing guru who could lead me out of all my weaknesses. He played on my guilt about abuse, and sold me the idea that if I acted like the strong woman I should be, and stopped hiding behind the innocent child act, men wouldn't abuse me. It made sense, and I wanted to be a strong sensual woman. But his methods were to get me to talk dirty to him over the phone. After I stopped it, and he went very cold and eventually blanked me, I still made every excuse in the book, because I didn't want to admit to myself that I'd been so gullable.

But, talking from my own experience, (it might be very different for you), but sometimes it's easier to blame myself for being an idiot, than to admit to my vulnerabilities and the need to be loved and taken care of by someone that led to me trusting him. The latter brings tears to my eyes, but to beat myself up about it doesn't.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I saw my therapist today and I tried talking about it but I kept closing up. It didn't go in depth has much I as I wish it could have. It will take time for me to talk about it becasue I so desperately don't want to say anything.

There are two things that make me feel worse:

1) The people in my life who knew and didn't help me or blamed me.

This made me feel like it was a secret. My secret and it was my fault to be found out. And becasue people knew and didn't help....Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. It was some how my fault. My mother buying me a webcam made me feel like it was okay.

However at the same time I knew it was wrong and that is why I cried.

Confused.

2) I did it all myself. I could have just shut off my computer.

Therapist wanted to know if there was anyone else on the forum who had been trafficked like me? Trafficked? Me?! That sounds so...serious. He told me they were predators and they looked the internet for people who were vulnerable and they could exploit.

He also wanted me to go to the mall and see the young teenage girls and then ask myself if I would blame them.

I can't remember everything that was talked about. I feel so confused and shaken right now. I don't want to deal with all these feelings coming up.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

There is a big mass of guilt, angry and shame. It feels like a big knot in my chest that will have to be slowly unraveled.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Well done for talking about it. Be gentle with yourself as you work through it.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I could barely think straight being in his office. He knows what I want to say. But my brain jams and it wont come out. I can't say it out loud. I trust him and we talk about a lot of things but not very much about that.

He wants me to write it down and bring it to him. Or get creative and bring that to him.

 

[Meadowsweet]

That sounds like a really god idea.