Dealing with a harassment/rape complaint?

[Firefly]

I have been a prominent member of an on-line social group for the last couple of years. I have been very active in the group, but unfortunately this has caused a bit of resentment against me from some of the older members. They often started rumors about how I was only there to hit on young women, spread false rumors about me to the new women members etc etc. I tried ignoring these people because I thought for the most part, if I just kept on being involved, then people could see what I really was like.

A few months back, I had a one night stand with one of the members of the group who was visiting from overseas. She seemed really cool with it at the time. At the beginning, she told me that she "really wanted to f*ck me"" and admitted in the morning she was really interested in another guy but he was ignoring her so she decided to go with me. I tried contacting her a few times after but she did not respond, so I figured she just wanted a one night stand.

A few days ago, I saw that she had put a public complaint against me on the group forum, saying that I had gotten her drunk and raped her while she was unconscious. Shortly after, I received a message from one of the older members, saying he and the other older members were going to warn every member of the group against me and I should not come to any more events. He also accused me of taking advantage of younger women. I will point out here, this guy is a 41 year old who spent the last couple of months acting as an orbiter around this girl (who is 19) so I suspect there might be a bit of jealousy involved. I disputed the complaint, and the girl was forced to change her comment on the forum to say she felt taken advantage of and that I had manipulated her into sex. She also said she could not remember the whole night but her (male) friends and other members of the group has all told her that she had been taken advantage of.

I am now trying to work out what my next step should be. I think this is a case of a woman being shamed into reframing a consensual one night stand by her friends. However, I am aware that people will use this against me within the social group. Should I bother still being involved, or just walk away? To be honest, I was thinking of leaving the group as it was taking up a lot of my time anyway. I also was beginning to realise that people were taking the comments against me seriously, and I was getting a cooler and cooler reaction in the group. At the same time, it has been one of my main social avenues for years, so I am a little apprehensive about leaving. I also am worried that leaving will be seen as evidence of guilt. Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[backbreaker]

you hit a nerve with this post man so this might be quite long.

I've been there man. trust me i've been there. on both fronts, the "community jealous" front and the "rape" front and at one time, both at the same time.


Few years ago , I was in AA for about 3 of my first 5 years of soberity. In AA you have what's called a home group, or a parituclar meeting you go to everytime they meet, they check up on you when you don't come in, etc to make sure you aren't screwing up, all that stuff. I had 2 of them.

In one of them, there was this particular girl that was new. There are actually some cute women in AA so seeing a cute girl was nothing new.Also at the time I was dating someone, and even if i weren't I refuse to do antyhing with a girl in AA that doesn't at least have a year clean for reasons I won't get into in this thread.

With that said, the girl took a liking to me quickly but would not come out and say it. I'd be lying if I said she wasn't cute. she was. Plus, she was not what you think of when you think of a drug addict. family had a little bit of money, she drove a lexus, worked in an office 9-5 job, liked to work out (or so she said). She told me, or told the group that one of her "triggers" was her weight, and she was in fact belemic, and she wanted to get in the routine of working out so she could contorl her weight so she didn't relaspse. She asked if she could come to the gym with me (I mean I'm not Jay Cutler or anything but it's pretty ovbious I work out), I, honeslty just being the helpful guy I am, say sure. she isn't the first person to ask me to go to the gym with me. most will go 1-2 times and then make excuses, but still I try to help.

so she comes with me, and keeps coming. gets to a point she just meets me at the gym everyday. we go swimming.


to make this as short as possible, eventualy, like 2 weeks later she asks me if I want to go bowling with her, and i decide to to just nip this in the ass andt ell her look, you are cute and I am sure you are a great gal but I know where this is going and I'm in a relationshi

p but you are more than welcome to still come to the gym with me but we need to leave it there.

so what happens? the police actually meet me at the AA meeting the next day, she accused me of rape basically. she said I had touched her in some places and abused her. lol we never even kissed. I doubt we ever hugged.

I hired a lawyer and got out of it quite quickly once it was clear as day she was just a scorn woman, but i was quite tramatized by the event. my GF and I didn't have sex for a few weeks behind that. I just couldn't touch her. that fvcked me up.

she couldn't even look me in the fact. she ended up relasping a few weeks later and the last I heard she was getting gangbanged for vidican pills


But what really messed me up, at the time I had about 4 years clean. I had sponsees in AA, I was at eveyr meeting they had for a few years.. here this cute white girl comes along, with what, 2 months clean, and every guy in the room sides with her.

It got so bad no one would talk to me. I eventually left AA behind that and dont' regret it 1 bit.

that told me all I needed to know.

A few things.

first and foremost, figure out what you did wrong. though I swwar on my son, i didn't touch her, I knew good and god damn well this girl liked me and even thougH I had no intention of doing anytihng with her i still strung her along. had i nipped it in the ass quicker, it probably would not have progressed like it did.

with that out the way, this is pretty much why I am somewhat of what you would call a loner. I don't have a huge group of friends, and everyone thinks you are arrogant but the truth is, it's not possible to have a huge group of people aorunmd you when you are killing it in life. they were making my life worse.

I would come to meetings and all the girls would ask "who is he" or "does he have a GF" or would try to sit by me.. when my GF didn't come with me (who isn't in AA but would come just beucdase she wanted to be with me) i would always have a girl try to sit next to me and always get girls to try to talk to me after meetings. always. pissed guys the f off. said yu know what, i don't need this. oDudes would just randomlly start **** for no reason at all. One dude just called me an uncle tom in the middle of a meeting for simply responding to one of his questions. I just got up and left. That was actually my last meeting ever. lol my sponser dropped me after a few years because a girl he liked asked him am I single lol, he got pissy behind it and wouldn't take my calls. Even though I had no intention fo talking to girls there, i wanted to get and stay clean and regardless of that, the guys would get their egos in a ****ter becuase the little girls they had crushses on wanted to date me. so they took their anger out on me

just showed me that all the **** they preached, not one of them actually practiced it and it was all to me bull****. There is a big time control dynamic in AA. I did evertyhing my sponser aske dme to do for 3 years damn near, and drops me beucdase a girl he had a big crush on, liked me. what i relasped behind that? that actually did kinda hurt my feelings, this is a dude I grew pretty close to and called everyday, and kinda looked up to him a little, just told me to GFTO basically. had i not had 4 years clean i rpobably would have reaspsed. I kinda felt like AA rejected me but the further I got away from AA I realized, it wasn't me that was f'ed up.

I had the same phenemonom happen on another "forum", a horse racing forum. There are 2 dynamics to this.. first, most guys who play the horses are in their 60's. I'm not even 30 and it's clear as day I have probably forgotten more about horse racing handicapping then most of these "old timers" ever knew. which can piss older "vets" off. I don't say that to be arrogant but i'm a fvcking boss when it comes to horse racing. this is what I do and I do it quite well. Secondly, i'm young, i'm attractive, and as I hav estated countless amojunts of times on this forum there are young attractive women who love horses and who work in tth eindustry, who were on the forum, and all of them or at least most of them would gush over me and guys hated it. Even on a forum, you can tell I'm a well rounded guy. I can talk about virtually anything within reason. I love history, I love jazz, I love horse racing, I work out everyday, and guys girls will always say "wow backbreaker you are a really interesting dude, i bet you have no problem with the ladies" or something along those lines. I mean I just try to blend in, but I can't really blend in becuase I'm not everyone else if that makes any sense. I really don't try t draw attention to myself, I just draw attention to myself becuaed I am who I am, though I don't make any excuses for being who I am.

lol, so one of the guys, eventually got the idea to try to race bate me off the forum, since it's common knowlege I'm african american. so he would just go behind me and make racist comments, then he changed his profile pic to a pic of amos and andy. he called my GF a mudshark, and because everyone (the old guys) on nthe forum were on his side, beucase they were "tired of my act", with my "act" being just me being backbreaker.. everyone here has known me for quite a while, and i've in 10 years never been suspsended from this forum.. anyway, a few girls tried to talk to me through the forum, eventually the forum became a let's AMOG backbreaker (that wasn't my name lol) on every post" forum. I'm pretty thick skinned, and the racist stuff never really got anywhere with me. If you want to get under my skin mentioning my race isn't the best way to go about it.


the last straw fo rme ws that the owner of the forum, needed some help with the forum from a development perspective. to be such a nice guy, I offered to do it free of charge, lusing my compaines manpower. It was about a week's worht of work. free of charge. so then when the upgrades were made there was like a 10 page post everyone was giving the dude thanks and he didn't mention my name once, which honeslty I didn't care too mucha bout but it still told me the type of cat I was dealing with. Then he went around and started telling people that someone hacked the site and the person who hacked the site happened to live in monrovia CA. little did he know I wasn't even in the country at that time (I was in england with my wife)..

and at that point i said you kno wwhat.. why am i honestly here? it's not worth it. I love horse racing but I don't nor will i come and defend myself everyday.

so i withdrew myself from the forum. at the end of the day it's just the internet.

In that situtation, in a situtation where people are doing that, that would not be going on if the mods were in on it. There is a reason I and other susccessful people have been here for decades. The fact that all that went down on that horse racing site, could not have happened with out mods. lol, there is a smaller horse racing site I visit, and have for a much much longer amount of time, since 2005, and when i was posting on there one day one of the posters from the ohter site tried to AMOG me there and they mods basically told her to take that **** somewhere els and that was that.


anyway, this is why I am what you would call a loner. I don't keep very many male "friends". I have guys I know for certain things, but I don't condisder them friends. it's impossible to keep friends who aren't on your level whatever that level is, i need friends on that level.

but in groups, espcially online groups where there is a male, female dyanmic, you may as well forget it lol. the white knight ism is too strong

 

[Nutz]

I have been a prominent member of an on-line social group for the last couple of years. I have been very active in the group, but unfortunately this has caused a bit of resentment against me from some of the older members. They often started rumors about how I was only there to hit on young women, spread false rumors about me to the new women members etc etc. I tried ignoring these people because I thought for the most part, if I just kept on being involved, then people could see what I really was like.

A few months back, I had a one night stand with one of the members of the group who was visiting from overseas. She seemed really cool with it at the time. At the beginning, she told me that she "really wanted to f*ck me"" and admitted in the morning she was really interested in another guy but he was ignoring her so she decided to go with me. I tried contacting her a few times after but she did not respond, so I figured she just wanted a one night stand.

A few days ago, I saw that she had put a public complaint against me on the group forum, saying that I had gotten her drunk and raped her while she was unconscious. Shortly after, I received a message from one of the older members, saying he and the other older members were going to warn every member of the group against me and I should not come to any more events. He also accused me of taking advantage of younger women. I will point out here, this guy is a 41 year old who spent the last couple of months acting as an orbiter around this girl (who is 19) so I suspect there might be a bit of jealousy involved. I disputed the complaint, and the girl was forced to change her comment on the forum to say she felt taken advantage of and that I had manipulated her into sex. She also said she could not remember the whole night but her (male) friends and other members of the group has all told her that she had been taken advantage of.

I am now trying to work out what my next step should be. I think this is a case of a woman being shamed into reframing a consensual one night stand by her friends. However, I am aware that people will use this against me within the social group. Should I bother still being involved, or just walk away? To be honest, I was thinking of leaving the group as it was taking up a lot of my time anyway. I also was beginning to realise that people were taking the comments against me seriously, and I was getting a cooler and cooler reaction in the group. At the same time, it has been one of my main social avenues for years, so I am a little apprehensive about leaving. I also am worried that leaving will be seen as evidence of guilt. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Sue them for defamation and slander. /thread

I'd even go so far to advise them they've done fuct up and you demand a public apology along the lines of:

We've made a big mistake recently by accusing a member of this group of something that didn't happen and have censured the false accuser. Please accept our sincerest apologies.

 

[Scaramouche]

Dear Firefly,
Back away from this issue,let sleeping dogs lie,no good will come from attracting more attention to yourself.....A man is wrong when he is right,of course when he is wrong,then he's wrong to bvuggery.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Sue them for defamation and slander. /thread

That's why the forum made her change her statement. Feeling manipulated is not the same as 'I was raped.'

The problem with slander suits is that all of the burdens of proof are on the plaintiff. You'd have to prove that the sex was consensual, which is pretty much impossible.

 

[mrRuckus]

Frankly, I don't even care about rape. Women have beaten the caring out of me. I just assume they're all false allegations until the guy is convicted.

Of course, by saying this to anyone, it makes me the bad guy instead of the women who betray their own kind by making the false accusations that cause me not to care.

 

[Firefly]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think I will just walk away, as there is not much point to me spending so much energy trying to clear my name when there are so many people wanting to believe the worse of me. I think the hardest thing is that there have already been a few people I thought of as friends and whom I had helped out previously who have sided with the girl; I guess one way to look at it is in the long run, I am better off without these people in my life. Still a bitter pill to swallow though.

 

[azanon]

Few years ago , I was in AA for about 3 of my first 5 years of soberity. In AA you have what's called a home group, or a parituclar meeting you go to everytime they meet, they check up on you when you don't come in, etc to make sure you aren't screwing up, all that stuff. I had 2 of them.

I don't have the patience to read all of that, but I did read this far. Isn't AA a religious based group where belief in God is considered essential to the success of their program? And you're an atheist, right? I guess my real question is, what gives?