Jennifer

He gave up more for me than my parents ever did.

Hello, my name is Jennifer. I do not know much about this and I am not a sex offender but I do know one. He was accused of molesting me for a year and a half when I was 15 to 16 years old. The cops took me in a room and wouldn’t let me go until I made up a story about having oral sex with him.

Please tell me what to do.

He was nothing more than my friend.

I was born to parents who were still children themselves, and drug addicts. So when we moved from my grandma’s house, I had to start watching the other kids more on my own. You could say I had to grow up at age four. My father was very abusive of my mother, and later, so was my step dad. Even though my father would never admit it, my step brother seemed far more important to him than I could ever be. I could never be good enough because I wasn’t the son he never had.

At age six or seven, my mother’s drug dealer rubbed his penis against my feet. I laughed as I told my mother and step dad because I felt embarrassed of the way he molested me, and they laughed too. I pushed it as far away as possible as they continued to take me there. Soon after that we lived in these apartments where a boy of about 15 would take me under his apartment and make me show him my vagina while his older friends watched and laughed.

Skipping ahead a few years, my father got full custody of me and my mother got partial custody. My father’s girlfriend was pregnant so I was forced to do everything: dishes, laundry, vacuuming, etc. When my sister was born, she couldn’t breath on her own and only lived for four months. The last time I saw her, I held her when her breathing tube came out and she started gasping for air.

Eventually I went to live with my mother again but when I was twelve, we were taken by CPS and I went to live with my grandparents. It was there that I started doing the chat line thing where I was talking to everyone I could and being tricked into sending dirty photos and cyber sex. I met many guys in an Internet teen chat site from twelve to 14 years old, and I sent many of them graphic photos of myself.

I spoke to many sex offenders.

There was one guy when I was 13 years old who spoke to my friend, Mary, and me. He had us send him dirty photos and talk dirty to him. He was planning on coming down here to meet and have sex with us both. Once when he thought I was out of the room he told Mary that he thought she was so much prettier and hotter than I was or would ever be. It made me feel sick because he still wanted to come and have sex with her and with me. My contact with him quickly ended.

There was another guy that really made an impact on my life. I remember how he made me feel and that was shaky, sick, and uneasy. This man was 50 when I was 13. He spoke of meeting up with me and taking me to buy panties and bras so I could model them for him in a hotel room and he wanted me to bring any younger girl friends I had. He told me stories of how he started having sex with his daughter when she was four years old when his wife was out. He said he would have her bring her little friends over from elementary school and have sex with them as well. He told me a group he was a part of for many years where fathers would get together and fuck each other’s daughters. He told me he had sex with his daughter until she was around 20. He had me call him Daddy and make up stories of having sex with my own father.

It pains me to the core even still that I was not as smart as I am now to know to turn him in. I really wish I would have turned those two men in because who knows what they have done to other little girls after me.

There were two times that I went to meet someone off the line before my friend.

The first was with a 37-year-old man. He had two daughters, one a year younger than–me, and the other was about six or seven. We went to see a movie, knocked up. I felt uncomfortable the whole time. I just wanted to leave. He held my hand and I didn’t know how to say no. Later he told me how he would have just fucked me right then and there, that he didn’t care about my age.

The other guy was Al. He also knew my age. We planned on meeting at the park. I had my little sister, who was one year old, with me. I saw him before he saw me. My stomach knotted and I knew that this was a very bad idea. So even though he was pissed at me, I just ignored him and went home.

So at the time I met my friend, my problems consisted of detesting my parents and being addicted to phone sex, chat sites, and sending sexually explicit photos. At this time, I was involved with Phil and Dan.

Phil, I was convinced loved me and I did whatever he wanted because I just wanted to be good enough for someone. We met on the Internet teen chat site and he told me he was 23. Phil would only talk to me when he was “horny” and that’s when he called me to talk. He wanted me to touch myself while he listened. Of course, I did whatever he wanted. I mean, he “loved” me, so why wouldn’t I? I sent him graphic photos, the same photos that I had sent to many other men.

At one point, my guardian (my grandma) accused me of stealing her camera. I flipped and managed to get thrown in a mental hospital for two weeks and it did nothing but mess me up more. The only reason I got out was because the depression meds put on a smile like everything was better. As soon as I got out I took myself off the meds because I have always feared becoming addicted to drugs.

About a month after the mental hospital, I discovered the phone chat line, where I met Dan. I quickly became infatuated with him for he was the first one to get me to really laugh. I was convinced I loved him as well. Dan and I had phone sex many times and I also sent him explicit photos. He lived on the other side of the country and was 37 years old. We spoke for eight months before he met a girl that he liked. When he told me that he just wanted to be friends, it ripped my heart out because I thought once again I was not good enough. We remained friends though for a couple of years. It bothered me because he still wanted to have phone sex even though he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and she had miscarried twins.

Phil and Dan didn’t find out about each other until I met my friend.

I met him on an adult chat line. I remember that moment so well. He had left the line but I listened to his message and he gave me his number. I called him because there was something different about him. His voice was so soft, so sincere, so broken, and yet the strongest I have ever heard. He told me his real name and his real age of 34 but, although I was 14, I told him I was 19.

We spoke for hours that day once we got into phone sex. But that was it. For a while we were only friends and rarely had phone sex. Our conversations started light, speaking of pleasant things. We would talk about the earth and the animals. He captured my heart when I heard the pain in his voice over the sight of a dying deer. He had deer that would come up to his house and he would feed them. He would sit outside and talk with me on the phone. I learned that he was an alcoholic, a full blown alcoholic. He told me so many things about himself, about his father and step-mother, and his cat that he had to put down a few months before. It ripped him apart. I understood that pain all too well.

He said he found me easy to talk to and that he loved the way my voice sounded. But of course, he wasn’t the first to say so. In the beginning of this I was just playing around but within a week, I found so many differences in him when I compared him to the rest of the guys I spoke to. My mother knew I was speaking to an older guy. It wasn’t anything different than what I was doing before. I would still get other guys off and I would send them naughty photos. I never really enjoyed it. It made me sick but I wanted to feel like that because I felt I deserved it. For a few months, this game of mine continued, but slowly it was turning into a friendship.

I have nightmares, so vivid that sometimes I wake up hyperventilating. My friend was there even if it was 3 am to comfort me over the phone. I would cry and he would listen. He would stay on the phone with me while I slept because I felt safe and stronger when he was close to me mentally. What he and I had was more mental and emotional, not physical. He too would cry from nightmares, fears, family. He didn’t manipulate me, if anything, I did it to him. You see, I listened and I knew his pain so well that I knew the things I could say that would prevent him from leaving. He gave up more for me than my parents ever even considered.

I met him in person a month before I turned 15. I told my guardian that I was going for a walk. I walked across our property, taking the back way to where we had planned to meet. When we first met face-to-face there was nothing negative, no bad feeling. He looked down into my eyes for a minute and asked if he could hug me. It felt like I was hugging someone that I had known for more than all my life. I related to this man in my mental state, which isn’t the most sane, I guess.

Over the next year and a half, we held hands and we hugged. That was the extent of it. We had one French kiss before he knew my age but nothing after that because I wasn’t comfortable nor was he and he never pushed me.

One time — I’d known him for more than a year and was 16 by then — we took a trip to the bay where he walked the shore with me and showed me a creature I had never seen in person before and still I don’t recall the name but I picture it perfectly in my head. He bought me dinner and drove me around the city as it was getting dark. We got lost for a moment but then found our way. We stopped at a gas station where I used the rest room and on my way out of the store he just hugged me so intently and so sincerely. The feeling of safety that I felt — it makes me cry now.

It was two months later that he got in trouble.

He was drunk and I didn’t know how to drive. He was swerving and I refused to go home. We were pulled over and I was questioned repeatedly. The cop yelled at my friend, calling him a sick fuck. Eventually they let me out of the car to go to my guardian. She had lied and said she didn’t know how old my friend was but she knew very well.

Some cops came to see me. One of them got in my face, asking me if I was going to cry like a little juvenile. He made me sit in the back of his SUV. He kept coming back, asking me, “Did you two have sex? Did you do anything?” I told them no because we hadn’t. I was honest with them and told them my friend and I had shared sexual photos and a few videos.

I thought if I was honest they would listen to me. I was wrong. After I had a panic attack in the back of his truck, the cop drove me to speak to a detective. I was in a small room with two strangers, two men. I was afraid and I wanted out of there. I sat there for at least an hour and a half repeating myself, saying we hadn’t done anything that he was my best friend. They kept threatening to get me into trouble for being a liar. After an hour and a half, I just gave in and told them I had oral sex with my best friend.

I gave the date furthest away and I put details in the story that would prove I was lying. Like the fact he was driving his jeep when he didn’t get it until a year after I said the sexual contact took place. I thought I’d have a chance to do something about this fake story but I didn’t. The only other time I spoke to someone official was when they had me come in to tell me that I could not to write him in jail anymore or he’d get in more trouble.

I was sent to victim counseling and went for about five or six sessions. The counselor knew all along I wouldn’t stay with it. They thought I was molested by Eli and damaged by that. I stopped going because I felt the purpose of the counseling was to convince me of that.

I will be 18 soon and I want to know if there’s something I can do. He is an innocent man who was punished for wanting me safe. Please help me do something. No one here will tell me anything. I found out about a week ago that my guardian went to a court trial when she said she hadn’t gone to any. I am being lied to here and I do not like it.

I was also wondering if there was a way to change the fact that he is forbidden to have any contact with me for three years due to probation regulations.

I just wish I could have fought for him because he believed in me and everything I stand for.

Will anyone ever make me feel safe again? Probably not.

Six years now I have known him and he still has never pushed me in a sexual way — maybe to get a job and things like that, but that is it. Six years, and he still gives me strength to strive forward.