Thread by @MadelaineLucyH

Ok this is a bit harrowing but we do need to talk about it.

You know this whole “why did the police ignore grooming” thing in the 2000s?

Well I was a kid in the 2000s. I was born in 1996. And I want to talk about what society thought about “girls making bad choices”

🧵

So I had a friend when I was 12 who had been a victim of grooming by an older boy, and she’d been moved to my school after being bullied. She was what was called “promiscuous and precocious” in 2007. Now we’d say traumatised and vulnerable. Anyway.

She started dating this boy in our class and sent him nudes. This was flip phone era and totally new. When he broke up with her, he showed everyone. The whole school saw. The school called HER into the headmaster’s office to discuss it.

The next day, we had a big assembly with the whole school, about how dangerous and stupid it was to send nude pictures of yourself, and how it was a criminal offence and you’d go to prison. Yes: if you, a 12 year old, sent someone a nude, YOU would go to prison. This is 2007.

No word about it being bad to share nude images of a child without their permission. No word about how your boyfriend shouldn’t abuse your privacy or even to go to an adult. No: we would go to prison. If the adults found out what we had done, we would go to prison.

So the boys worked out that if a girl had sent them a picture they could make her do anything. They would demand oral sex, sex, sex for their friends, whatever they wanted. They’d film girls giving them head and then threaten to “send them to jail” if they didn’t comply for more.

The boys started pulling up our skirts for “banter”. This grew to molesting. When a boy did it in front of a male teacher, I was asked to stay behind after class. The teacher quietly advised me to wear gym shorts under my skirt to “avoid any more embarrassment.” It was MY fault.

So all the girls now wore shorts under their skirts, just to protect ourselves from the unpunished abuse of the boys in our classes. As we got older- 13, 14, adult men started getting interested in us too.

Another assembly. We, girls, weren’t supposed to be STUPID and FOOLISH and trust men to help us. To be honest with us. Not to hurt us. We watched a video where a girl got into a car after missing her bus and was raped. It was her fault. We shouldn’t be like Jess Who Got Raped.

Problem? Well, the girls who had been groomed by grown men by that point didn’t want to get into trouble. They didn’t want to be slut shamed and called stupid and irresponsible. They were incredibly ashamed. So now grown men could get away with it: just like the boys in our class

…had already done.

We had learnt, absolutely, that if you were sexually abused, exploited, or violated, it was your fault and you would be punished.

If you went to an adult for help, it would be your fault for not wearing shorts, sending nudes, or trusting your uncle.

This is the culture I grew up in. This is MY childhood. My privileged, recent childhood. I’m 28. I can absolutely understand why the police didn’t do anything. Society thought we were sluts, whores, and asking for it. Not *children*.

Sorry this is long. I’ll end on one memory that has haunted me, if I may:

I’m 15 and it’s a hot June day in Cambridge. My 14 year old friend wants to get alcohol and drink it in the park. I don’t. I’m terrified of getting into trouble.

She goes up to a random man standing outside of a newsagents and asks him to go buy her vodka. She’s clearly a child. So am I. He’s in his forties.

He asks her if she’s single. Something in me is uncomfortable. “No, come on, let’s go,” I say, grabbing her arm.

He turns to me, his face furious, and says “No, don’t tell us what to do. You are staying. You both are.” I want to run but I can’t leave her with this strange man. He grabs my shoulder and her arm and tries to pull us into a side road.

I’ve had enough by this point and I run and run and run all the way to Cambridge station. I stand there and text her non stop. Eventual she saunters up and triumphantly shows the bottle. “It’s just head, Mads,” she says. “It’s no big deal.”

She was 14. Had she done it before? 🧵

I’ll wrap up the obvious on the last post for those who didn’t get it: I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened because a) I would get in trouble over the alcohol and talking to strangers b) I didn’t want to get arrested over it