Beautiful Queens, this is my first post but it’s time to speak out. I saw a post earlier about vetting for pedophiles, and thought I would share my experiences. Please do add more. I can sound blase about it now because I’m much stronger, but it hasn’t always been this way.

For context, I was in my final year of school (aged 17, he was 25) when it first happened, but thinking about it now it had started 2 years before that. He had singled me out and begun grooming me as a 15 year old. He was my history teacher and I really was very good at history so that was probably part of my appeal to him. He also coached me rowing, so on the surface we had a lOt oF sHarEd IntEreSTs. Ugh. He will henceforth be known as the Burger King because he was fat as f*** and looked like Henry VIII.

Red flags which are obvious to me now as a 28 year old but went straight over my head when I was 17 and was being groomed by a Burger King.

  • Really small touching, very early on. In rowing he would physically correct my posture or hand position in a way which was innocent to a casual observer. Once time I nearly fell in the river and he made a big fuss of grabbing me by the waist. I was 15.

  • Making really disgusting remarks to me about girls he taught, ostensibly to boost my confidence. He told me one girl had weird shaped boobs and that mine were much nicer. He told me about one of my friends who wore a really low cut shirt on purpose in one of his lessons and he could see her nipple and he was dead cert she was doing it on purpose. Another of my friends was clearly “a prude but obviously ready for sex”

  • “You’re so much more mature than all the other girls in your year”

  • Made me a ‘Bob Dylan for beginners’ mix CD to have “a guiding hand in [my] developing music tastes”

  • Was obsessed with any sexual activity in his actual classroom. It must have been part of the fantasy. He was unfortunately the first person to make me orgasm (in his classroom) which probably made him feel like he was introducing me to the adult world.

  • He was so so so careful to curate a professional image at school. He would drip feed information to the other teachers about me coming to see him “with my issues” to alleviate any air of suspicion. He said it was to protect us, but now it is so painfully obvious it was to protect himself if I ever saw the light and made an allegation.

  • He also said we would never have full sex until I had left school. (Just his daily blowjob until then) he said this was the right thing to do, but again, it is now painfully obvious this was to protect himself from my possible allegations.

  • He made sure to build a positive relationship with my parents. On parents evenings he would discuss my future and university prospects with them and on the outside it looked like he had my best interests at heart. They actually liked him for a while and supported the relationship when I left school.

  • I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about it. He encouraged me to stop speaking to my friends in case I let slip.

  • His friends were passive at best and enablers at worst. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone either, but he actually told all of his (non-teacher) friends. He got no reaction out of them, one actually said “well I wish I was f***ing a 17 year old).

  • He was possessive of his little teenage prize. Didn’t like me wearing ‘revealing clothing’ for anyone but him. I went to visit him once in the summer holidays right after I left school and he wouldn’t let me leave his flat “in case people saw and I needed to do that for him to protect him” one day I opened the curtain and he actually told me off (like the schoolgirl I was) when he got back. I felt lost and confused and couldn’t understand my feelings - I now know that that is what being gaslit feels like. But it’s easy for a predatory teacher to gaslight a student.

I’m sure I will think of more, but I’m going to stop before I just get angry.

Oh and P.S: I would highly recommend “My Dark Vanessa” by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It’s fiction, but intensely focused on the experience of a teenager being abused by her teacher. I felt so seen. I couldn’t put it down, even though some scenes made me so angry I felt physically ill.

Peace and love, this sub is golden.