When you were a child or teen, did you ever have an adult make a pass at you or behave in a sexually inappropriate manner to you?

Yes.
I remember once someone put their hand on my back and asked me to sit on their lap. I smacked their arm away hard and said no. End of story.

I don’t remember who it was, I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t think it was that big a deal at the time I think. Looking back I might have told if I’d seen it as dangerous like I do now.

I want to say it was a school employee, or someone on school grounds in elementary school in Florida. No idea though.

As a four or five year old girl, a neighborhood girl came over to baby-sit me (it was her first time, usually her older sister would do it, whom I liked very much). As soon as my parents left, she knelt down and said, “Give me a hug!”, so I did. Then she said, “Give me a kiss!”, and shyly I pecked her on the cheek. Then she said, “No, give me a real kiss,”, and proceeded to show me how to french-kiss. Then she made me promise not to tell my parents, that it was ‘our little secret’. Well I had just seen a Saturday Morning Special about how if doctors or teachers touch you and tell you ‘it’s our little secret’ to tell your parents. So, when my mom came home, I told her, and she was very disturbed and said she and my dad would talk to her. After they did I asked what happened, and my mom said she cried and hugged her teddy bear and was very sorry. She was the daughter of one of my mom’s best friends, so I imagine it was very awkward. The weird things is that I didn’t remember it until one day in class as a sophomore in high school.

@nocountry2: I know what you mean about not remembering it, I’m not sure how deeply you were affected but I think if it isn’t major abuse the tendency is to dismiss it as just a weird couple of minutes and bounce back like children do. With my experience I honestly don’t remember thinking about it until ten or so years later, when someone asked a similar question and through the conversation it turned out someone I knew had a similar but far more disturbing experience. Then it just popped into my head again. Occasionally I forget about it even now, like a lot of childhood memories, I need the right reminder for it to crop up.

Weird how brains work, eh?

Thankfully, no. Never.

Yes and the perpetrator happened to be a school district employee and it happened only one time. It wasn’t something exteme but it was inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor, by any definition.

I have never told anyone (up until now and here on Fluther) and no one ever found out about it. The person that did this to me approached me about a week later and was very afraid what would happen if anyone found out and they told me not to talk about it. Since I found this person repulsive for what they did to me and for their abnormal behavior, it happened to be easier than I expected to shut them out of mind and forget the incident before too long. I was young and I thought this was the best course of action to take at that time.

Yes and I should have pressed charges but I didn’t tell anyone. He’s dead now anyway.

Yes, multiple times.

The first time I can remember inappropriate attention from adults was when I was about five-years-old. It was during Summer and my family and I were at a river, enjoying the day. I remember two adult men staring at me, to the point that it made me uncomfortable. I told my mom and she was keeping an eye on them the entire time. At one point, I was laying on a towel in the sun – mom, dad and sister all present – when the two men walked by me, at my feet. One of them said, “Damn, you could bounce a quarter off that tight, little ass” and the other man replied, “Mmmm” while smiling and staring at my ass. My mom heard them, jumped up and tried to attack. My dad had to physically hold her back while she was screaming at them, telling them that if they came anywhere near me or tried to do anything that she would murder them.

There were many other instances while I was growing up where men gave me and my friends extremely inappropriate attention, before any of us had even fully developed. They all knew how young we were and they just didn’t give a shit. Some were strangers, some were fathers of my friends, some were teachers. It’s a never-ending list.

You know all those female teachers that have sex with their students.

Yeah, i wish that was me.

@Triiiple no, you don’t.

@jbfletcherfan Yes, yes i do.

What are you, amurican or something? What’s the point?

I was molested by a family member and didn’t tell anyone until I was an adult. I have worked long and hard these past 30+ years to try to undo the psychological damage that was done.

I am at the point where I have accepted that I have no reason to feel shame because someone took advantage of my innocence. I have also recognized how what happened has shaped aspects of my personality, like my compassion, and I can’t imagine being me without it.

So I no longer blame that for everything that’s wrong in my life… doing so only kept me a victim. Now I am a survivor, and I aim to thrive.

@zenfarian—Same here. :( [hugs]

Yes, and I didn’t remember it until now, reading this thread. I was molested by a cab driver, and I jumped out of the car and ran like hell back to my dorm. I don’t remember the run back to my dorm, but thinking back now it was at least 3 or 4 miles and I didn’t stop running for a second. I spent hours locked in the bathroom showering and scrubbing my body and mouth. My roommate came back after I’d already been scrubbing for quite some time and after an hour or so started screaming through the doorway that she knew something happened and I needed to tell her what. I told her, and she was very supportive, but agreed not to tell any authority figure after I begged her not to. The last thing I wanted was for my parents/friends to find out and treat me differently. It was also easier to block out and forget if she was the only one who knew. As far as I know now, she’s the only one who knows except for whomever’s reading this now.

As many of you already know, I had an uncle that molested me for years, until I was 13 years old and fought back. My entire family knew about it, but never called the police or kicked him out of the house or anything. (Side note: I did try to press charges once I was an adult, but at the time they occurred, the crimes were considered misdemeanors, and the statute of limitations was up.)

I think this experience marked me in some way, because there were several other instances in my life, involving different men. As a teenager, I even got to thinking that it was cool to have adults interested in me, and had several consensual relationships with grown men. Looking back, I’d like to punch them all in the dick. Except the uncle… he was stone cold crazy. For the abuse I suffered at his hands, I blame my mother. Out of everyone in the family, she had a duty to protect me and she did not.

so you don’t think i’m being nosy without posting my own confession (when i asked it i was at work and didn’t want to get into it) when i was 11 i used to go to the local community center (religiously named but we just liked it for the pool) and they had a youth group, and i used to go there sometimes by myself on weekends when my mom was busy studying for her MBA. so i would hang around the rec room and i got to know the security guards. there were two, a black guy and a spanish guy. i kind of got a crush on the spanish guy. he was about 33. i was not flirty because i was only 11, i just thought he was cute. one day he asked me if i wanted to make the rounds with him, when he went around to the rooms to make sure the doors were locked before the building was closed. so we went in elevator to top floor, which was like 8, and we went into this dark room, and he checked the windows while i stood there waiting. it was lit by outside, it was twilight, so it was not totally dark. so he comes over to me and asks me if he could kiss me. i said yes, and i stood there with my eyes closed and mouth closed. he said “open your mouth.” i did, and he kissed me (my first kiss). we did that for about five or ten minutes, and then we went back out to make the rounds. we ended up in the boiler room, and he kissed me some more in there and opened my shirt and sucked my tits. i did not find it exciting because it was all new and scary. he told me he would “make me a woman” another day, and said something about going through the procedures, which was scary to me because i didn’t know what he meant and i didn’t want that. so when i left, took the bus home, my grandmother lived downstairs from us. she was babysitting, as my mother was in the library studying. so my grandmother was kind of mad and suspicious about why i was late (it was maybe 6 at night but for an 11 year old that’s late) and i called my friend mary on the phone to tell her, not knowing my grandmother was downstairs listening. she told my mother, who confronted me some days later. she sat me down and told me she knew something happened. i told her he kissed me. he disappeared from the community center, and what i did not know until years later is that she called the manager of the center and told him and told him that if he didn’t fire the guy she would call all the parents of kids and tell them. he told her “maybe she wanted it” and my mother said “she could not want it, she’s 11 years old.” so that was the end of the guy making me a woman at 11.

also, what is interesting is that in my work, i hear a lot of women (only because i mostly work with women) telling me that someone did something sexually inappropriate to them,, molested them, etc. i’d say about 80% have had this happen. also, with my friends, most have had some incident happen. most have had it happen with someone that was not a stranger. it’s quite common. it seems like most didn’t tell anyone at the time.