Kay

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     Grooming has been such a prominent thing in the millennial and Gen Z generations. I feel like the majority of people know someone who has been groomed, or have been groomed themselves. When it happened to me, I had no idea that it was happening, I just thought I was in love. There are quite a few things I don’t remember about my teenage years, and the first is I don’t remember where I met this man who we will call Josh; I know it was online, but that’s all I remember. I was 15 or 16 at the time, and he told me he was 36. I found out later, when he got arrested, that he was actually 42. Not sure why he lied about four years, it did not make it any better. I can’t remember if I was 15 or 16 when we first started talking, and that was a big difference according to the police and what charges they could press on him. I think they went with 16 because that was the evidence they had, but I really think I was 15. Regardless, it was an unhealthy relationship. He was a pedophile. We met from what I can remember a total of 5 times. My friends found out about him and told an older adult friend of ours, who told our pastor, who told my parents. My family and I were visiting my sister who worked at a summer camp with no phone service when a call came for my mom from the pastors wife who said to take my phone asap and that she’d explain everything when we got back. Everything that happened after that was a blur. I don’t know what order the events happened in, and I think it all happened over a span of a few weeks, but what I do remember is that I had a rape kit done, met with a detective, tried to commit suicide, went to a mental hospital where another patient sexually assaulted me there, had to trick my abuser into “meeting with me” so that he could be arrested, and did not leave my room for five days straight. I guess the take away from my story is to enjoy your childhood and teenage years as much as you can. You are not “more mature for your age” or an “old soul in a young body” you are literally a child, and that is what these adults see when they look at you. You are not “different from other teenagers”, please believe me when I say that these abusers, pedophiles, will say anything to get you to fall for them. You will grow up and be able to do adult things eventually, so don’t skip your childhood wanting to do those things now. It took me awhile to seek out therapy, until I was 21 actually. I started going to therapy for a completely separate problem but then brought up my abuser and grooming and realized I had never processed my emotions and feeling of that time in my life. It took me 6 years to be able to speak about it to someone. My family never brought it up, my friends never spoke to me about it, and I was left to deal with the heartache alone. So if you are or have gone through something similar, please find support. Do not go through the grieving process alone. You were sought out because of the fact you were a child. It is not your fault this happened to you.