K*ll All Men

Beware The Internet

Picture this, it's 2011, you and your friends are listening to Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO, drinking Monster and trying to think of how to pass the time. "Omegle!" someone says. You've never heard of Omegle, so of course you want to check it out.

We all know how that goes down, you match with someone with a black screen or one of those automatic videos playing, so they're obviously not real, but you talk to them anyway. I was naïve enough to do this man, many times, and was still surprised by the outcome every time. I was 12 when I started using Omegle, and a late bloomer, so I was an excellent target for disgusting old men. Several times I would meet a guy with 'no camera', talk about how old we are and where we live. Of course they would always be one year older than me. Then they'd add me on Facebook, where they would have a really sketchy looking profile with no friends and only one photo of some unknown stock image teenage boy. I fell for it because I was quite desperate, everyone else at school was getting boyfriends while I was just getting bullied. In those few days before finding out they were creepy old men, I would feel so special because I'd finally found someone who thought I was pretty, and that certainly clouded my judgement. One some occasions I was even stupid enough to send a few explicit pictures when they asked for them, because I was really convinced that they liked me and that I was more than just a fat child.

It wasn't just Omegle that was a breeding ground for paedophiles. Kik Messenger was nothing but a cesspool of creepy, catfishing cockheads who would prey on young, vulnerable teenage girls. I used it to talk to everyone in the first couple of years at school, even my school friends. I daren't even hazard a guess at how many grown men I was speaking to thinking they were my age. Everyone I met online would be added on Kik, whether it be from Omegle, Blendr, Vine, Instagram, etc. One man in particular I remember talking to for the longest, I met on Vine. I don't remember his name since this happened so long ago, so I'll call him Matt. I was 13 when I met Matt. I'd seen one of his vines and he looked cute in his profile picture, so I followed him, and we started talking. He told me from the beginning that he was 20, but we carried on speaking anyway. I convinced myself that I must have seemed mature enough for a grown man to like me as himself instead of pretending to be younger, so that made me feel pretty spectacular. He was so nice and kind, he always told me I was beautiful and that I deserved to be treated like a queen. Within a mere few days we were already saying 'I love you' to each other, and by the time it had been a week, he was telling me that he wanted to sleep with me.

I had no idea what love or relationships were supposed to be like. Growing up I always thought you had to be together at least a year before you could know if you really love someone, and I didn't think you could have sex until after that, so being told that someone loved me and wanted to sleep with me after a week changed my entire perception of relationships. At this point I had it in my head that I must have been wrong, and that you could actually fall in love immediately and that would be enough. I didn't realise until a couple of years later that I'd been groomed. I spoke to Matt for, at most, a few weeks, and the longer we spoke the more he made it obvious that he didn't actually love me or care about me at all, he would just end up asking me for pictures and videos more and more often, and I kept sending them, thinking maybe they just weren't good enough and I needed to do better for him to keep loving me. Eventually I realised what was happening, I'd seen other girls talking about similar experiences they'd had with men online. I read about what happened to them and I noticed that my relationship with Matt mirrored what had started out in their relationships. A little too late, I decided to tell him I wasn't comfortable with what was happening, and of course he tried to change my mind, but I'd been warned about that as well, so I stood my ground.

Matt wasn't the first man like that I'd spoken to, and certainly wasn't the last, but it was a learning curve for me, and I was definitely more careful with who I let myself be vulnerable with. So this is a note to all the youngsters who don't know anything about relationships or grooming or creepy old guys pretending to be your friends, they are not your friends, grown men don't have any business talking to you when you're so young. If a man tells you that you're mature for your age, he's lying, and you believing him simply proves him wrong. Groomers will tell you what you want to hear so they can gain your trust, that's what grooming is. They groom you so that you'll do anything they ask you to do, and then they'll take advantage and exploit you.

If this happens to you, or already has, or is currently happening to you, you'll probably be told that it's your fault, either by your groomer or by anyone else who finds out about it. When my parents found out about what had been happening to me, I was grounded, had my phone taken off me and was given a big lecture about internet safety. I don't resent them for punishing me, I realise I had to learn my lesson somehow, but at the same time I knew it wasn't completely fair that I was getting punished for being manipulated, while all the guys got off without any consequences, happy to do the same thing to someone else. From me to you, it's not your fault, it never will be your fault. Of course some precautions are good, build up a few barriers so you're not just throwing yourself at everyone willy nilly, but if someone take advantage of you, that makes them the bad guy, not you. No matter what anyone says, you are a victim, not the perpetrator. I've been in a situation of feeling like it was my fault for falling for it, and getting into trouble every time I spoke to someone online certainly didn't help me feel any better, but I know now that I was just naïve and had no way of knowing any better.