A few months ago my son introduced my H and myself to an 18 yr. old girl on the internet. She had been sexually abused from the ages of 8-17 (by an man 45-50 yrs. old, a friend of the family, also married) and my son thought we could help her. We talked to her for many hours both on the computer and on the telephone, many of the conversations revolving around her sexual abuse. Well a month ago, I found out that my husband had been having both computer and phone sex with her for almost a month. She finally "freaked" out about what was happening and demanded that he put an end to it and tell me. She said she never wanted it, but went into the "victim" mode when it started. She has never given us her address or phone number, so she had to call him when these things happened. They also exchanged letters with with disgusting "things" in them. (she gave us a po box) When I found out, she emailed me copies of everything. <BR>My H has gotten the help of a therapist to help him understand how he could do this after 27 years of what we both thought was a very good marriage. (another slam to me my H was 44, she 18) After his crying constantly, apologizing dozens of time, and swearing it will never happen again (which most men in his position would do), I find myself with these questions: If I forgive him and try to rebuild our marriage immediately (which is what I want), am I teaching him that it will be "easy" for him if he should ever want to do this again? Was she completely a victim in this considering that she made the calls, sent letters too, made private rooms in euchre and invited him into them so they could have their "privage conversations", and taught him how to delete things from the computer so that I would not find them? I keep thinking that maybe she is messed up enough emotionally that she didn't know what she was doing, which makes what he did seem even worse. Any thoughts on this anyone?

Dear Margaret,<P>I have heard that victims of sexual abuse sometimes continue their own story ... This woman may have had a twisted emotional relationship with her one-time abuser. Maybe a close relative abused her that time, someone whom she, being a minor, needed. Maybe she "consented" to the abuse, for fear of losing this person who was both abusing her, and caring for her at the same time. Her feelings for the abuser may have been ambivalent: There may have been child-like, needy love, accompanied by the fear of losing this love if she did not have sex. Maybe she now gets sexual ideas as soon as she is talking to a caring, daddy-type figure, because that is the way she learned it. <P>She may have "wooed" your husband. She may have made sexual allusions and offers to him. These might have taken him by surprise. I guess that not all men will spontaneously say "no" when an 18-year-old offers them a nice little sex-adventure. ...<P>All this would, of course, not excuse the unbelievable stupidity of your husband, but it might at least explain how this could have happened.<P>I think that your husband could have simply fallen for her "offer". Initially, he may have been taken by surprise. I guess he doesn't know a lot about sexual abuse, like most people. <P>Whatever the case may be, this woman should have talked to a professional helper, not to well-meaning lay people like you. <P> ***<P>There's also the OTHER possibility that this woman could be a total fraud. (In a way, I find that the whole story stinks.) You were never able to check up on her story. You were never able to check up on her identity. I would not rule out the possibility that this whole thing could be a trap, and this woman's aim might be compensation. <P><BR>I don't know whether this helps, but it's what occurs to me. <BR>If this were my husband, I guess I'd hold on to him, and I would, eventually, forgive him, too. However, I would take a long time to overcome the intense ANGER which this kind of behavior would cause in me. <P>Greetings,<P>dD<BR> <P> <P><P>------------------<BR>Byte: What the mosquitoes do.<BR>Bit: What the mosquitoes did.<P><BR>

The person who abused this young woman was not a family member, but a friend and business partner of her father's. Her parents were close friends with his family. I do believe it happened. This man has spent time in jail for his actions and there is presently more charges against him. This young woman tells me, and my husband does not deny, that he made the first move. He started it all. Exactly what was her part in the beginning I don't know. She tells me that she said no several times but he kept "coming at her" everytime they "talked". She claims that the years of abuse finally took over she gave into it all and the relationship then became reciprocal, although she claims that she at notime "wanted it." She did tell him, after he expressed his feelings for her that she had had a crush on him for a while. I believe she is looking for a father figure in her life (her father treats her badly, blames her for the prior abuse). <BR>I want to continue with my marriage, I love my H very much, and I believe he loves me, although he seemed to lose sight of that for a while. She told me that all the while during the time this was happening, he continued to tell her that he loved me (but he also told her that he loved her). He even once told her that he didn't know why he was doing this since the sex between me and him was very good.<BR>The problems I am having seem typical according to what I am reading here. I want to know every detail, and he is not willing to talk about it much. Says he wants to forget it happened. Sometimes things are just fine and something will trigger my memory and I start thinking about it all over again. Then I do get angry. But is it in the best interest of our marriage for me to deal with that anger myself or to vent it on him all over again? <BR>You know, like many others, I thought I had the perfect marriage. He has always treated me like a queen, complimented me both in private and in public, held my hand, helped me around the house, made a good living, been a good father, supported me in whatever I wanted to do, made love to me often and looked at me while doing it. So what happened. What made him step away from me and share such intimacy with someone else?

Margaret,<P>Margaret is my mom's name <P>This young lady you are speaking of strikes me as someone who is extremely manipulative. This is coming from someone who is also a manipulator - there is something in her actions that is speaking out loud and clear to me. <P>Perhaps I am seeing her a little harshly, but I am just going to say what I think here. I see an attention-seeking self-centerd victim here - and it's such a shame she sucked innocent people into her little game here. Sure, she may have been abused, but she learned QUICK how to use this to her best advantage. *sigh.<P>Maybe she did her part to encourage your H to feel that she *needed* him. I'll bet he's having a hard time sorting out everything he's feeling right now. But in the end, he may reveal that perhaps our over-grown teenager here was much more the aggressor than he realizes right now. This is not to say that he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, which he should. Just a little insight on what he may have been dealing with.<P>Just a thought, anyway. I have hope that the two of you will get thru this painful and confusing ordeal. I also hope you boot her out of your lives for good. I doubt very much that she realizes the full impact of what she's done to your family, and I doubt that she has the capacity to care.<P> MY heart goes out to you and your family. Sorry if I sound harsh towards the girl, again, but once you crunch away the candy coating, it's easier to find the tootsie roll center of truth <P>Khyra<P>PS I agree with possibility mentioned by dD that she could be a fraud. Hmmm, right? <p>[This message has been edited by Khyra (edited December 06, 1999).]

This post consists of two parts which are based on two opposite assumptions:<BR>1) that the girl's story is true<BR>2) that the girl's story is untrue<P><BR>1) If it has been firmly established that your husband actually started this business, then that *does* change matters in my opinion. <P>In this case, it doesn't matter so much whether this young lady's story is actually true (for the most part) or not. What will matter to you, as a wife, is whether your husband deliberately engaged in these activities, or whether he was dragged into them. It looks like he deliberately engaged in these activities alright. That is tough, and I feel sad for you.<P>You wrote: <BR>"She has never given us her address or phone number, so she had to call him when these things happened. They also exchanged letters with with disgusting "things" in them. (she gave us a po box) When I found out, she emailed me copies of everything." -- Well, regardless of her having possibly been victimized badly in the past by someone else, she cannot claim to have been just a victim here. She is over 18, and SHE called. <P>If I were you, I would insist that my husband talks about the details, mainly, about his reasons, and also about his "non-reasons" (If he believes, or says, that he can't make out a clear-cut reason, it certainly doesn't mean that there isn't one. Nothing happens without a reason, cause, incentive etc.. That's simply a law of nature, and to claim that something happens "just like this", "out of the blue", is on the same level as claiming that the earth is flat. However, he may not always be aware of his reasons). I think that it may be very important for you to be given the chance to form an opinion on how and why these things happened. Your husband may find it easier to talk about his reasons if he feels that he can rely on your continuous friendship, regardless of what he says. <P>The anger is a more difficult problem in my view. I think that your anger is perfectly justified. Your trust has surely been shaken badly. And the story is somewhat more complicated than I initially thought, because there were *feelings* involved on your H's part (I will never understand how a man of over 40 can have anything but "fatherly" type of feelings for an 18-year-old. But then, I'm not a man). I guess you'll have to control your anger in order not to lovebust and do further damage to your marriage. However, you're only human, and so you can also not pretend to be at ease with something which, in reality, leaves you very, very uneasy. If you were to pretend feelings of ease and forgiveness which aren't real, then you would end up being deliberately dishonest. That also wouldn't be good for your marriage (in my opinion, this is how one creates "skeletons in the cupboard". Old grudges which, although allegedly "forgiven and forgotten", tend come to life again during later times of conflict). So I guess the best way may be something in between. Maybe you can be honest about your feelings, while controlling expressions of anger in so far as you are able to (without choking on them).<P>Please note that your H had, as you said yourself, "COMPUTER and PHONE sex with her". The fantasy element would have been extremely strong in this whole business. I think that lots of guys who would engage in virtual sex with people whom they can neither see nor touch wouldn't necessarily have real sex with someone ... This is something in between real sex and masturbation fantasies. Wish-fulfilling, reality-excluding nonsense -- until reality suddenly comes back. <P>You said that your (email and phone) conversations frequently revolved around this lady's abusive sexual experiences. This may have been a previously unknown temptation for your husband. He repeatedly spoke about topics which are, under normal circumstances, strictly private. He talked to someone who probably was, in a sick way, "open" to such things. Also, it is quite possible to "suggest" topics and emotions in a conversation. Our conversation partners may not always notice that they are being led somewhere. ... I know that it would be quite possible for me to make my conversation partner believe that he "started something" which was previously suggested by me, in an underlying way. Many people are able to do that. <P>I see a real problem with these pseudo-therapeutic conversations over the Internet. Unless you are a therapist, you cannot help someone who has a genuine problem of the sort you described. Even a therapist could hardly be helpful via the Internet. Too much is missing in Internet conversations. You don't see your conversation partner's gestures, facial expressions, her surroundings. You cannot check up on the truth of what she is saying. This whole setting leaves FAR too much room for fantasies to set in. I very much doubt that your conversations could at all help this woman, but the topic sure tempted your husband in an unforeseen way. <P>Also, I believe that mere "talking about the problem" isn't always good for people who have a problem. While it makes sense to talk about certain topics if one lacks information, or if one's conversation partner is an expert whose contributions may be particularly enlightening, continuous conversations about "problems" may be rather harmful at other times. People like this girl might be tempted to focus on her bad past, instead of focusing on building a healthy future for herself. I think that it would be good if all of you terminated the contact with this girl. She should see a health professional instead. <P>2) As for the POSSIBILITY of this whole thing being fraudulent, I *STILL* consider this possible. I am not saying that it IS fraudulent, I am saying that it MAY WELL BE SO. You wrote:<P>"She has never given us her address or phone number"<P>"I do believe it happened. This man has spent time in jail for his actions and there is presently more charges against him."<P>I still think that the story stinks.<P>If you neither have the girl's address nor her phone number, then it is actually POSSIBLE that the person who you believe you were talking to DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. How can you check up that there is, at all, an 18-year-old whose name is [....] ? How do you KNOW, FOR CERTAIN, that your conversation partner is just one person, not a team of people? Well, I guess that you can be fairly certain that you two didn't relate to a male, since your husband was obviously speaking to a woman on the phone. However, this woman could also be 35, and she could be a very experienced conductor of conversations for a certain purpose, yes?! -- I realize that it is very hard to BELIEVE that this could be the case. However, fraudulent pretense, *especially* wrt. matters related to sex and interpersonal relationships (!!), does happen REGULARLY in the Internet. (If you do not believe me, do an online research wrt to such "games".) <P>Is there a technical possibility to see the phone## of people calling you., so as to allow you to note down numbers, and trace the calls, if need be? If you can get a device which allows you to check up on calls, I would recommend you to get it, just to be *a little bit* on the safe side. If I were you, I would also *tape* all future calls by this lady to your private phone. (Just in case future calls come in.)<P>How do you KNOW, FOR CERTAIN, that a particular man is spending time in jail for a given, defined crime? Did you read the court documents on this particular case? Did you find the victim's name in them? Did you READ any other *authorized* descriptions of how the alleged crimes were factually committed? Names, places, dates? Do you know the place and the date of the court's verdict, the archive, the # under which the case has been filed? If you were given the name of a particular man who allegedly serves time in a particular jail, did you check up whether that person is really to be found there? How did you get know about the further charges against this particular person? If you have merely relied on the girl's statements, then, as much as it is POSSIBLE that the young girl is not who she says she is, it is also POSSIBLE that the perpetrator does not exist. <P>You wrote:<BR>"They also exchanged letters with with disgusting "things" in them. (she gave us a po box) When I found out, she emailed me copies of everything." <P>You speak about LETTERS here. Your husband didn't send the girl floppy disks with files on them, or email files, he sent her LETTERS. Snail mail, yes? I.e., sheets of paper, handwritten, or typed, possibly including pictures, or items, in an envelope with a stamp on it, sent to her po box. -- Well, my question would be:<BR> HOW did this girl EMAIL you COPIES of these LETTERS? Did she take the trouble to scan in your husband's letters? Did she then send you image files which show how the letters looked? Or did she have her scans processed by an OCR program first, in order to convert them into proper text files?! Or else, did she re-type everything your husband wrote, word for word? -- Just wondering. It strikes me that she went to an enormous amount of time-consuming trouble, just to be able to serve you the evidence by EMAIL. <P>I do not mean to be arrogant when I hamper on the contradictions and strange aspects of your story. I just think that, for the sake of your husband, you should perhaps make sure that all of you haven't been victimized (?!'). It may just be possible that you will yet see all of this in a completely different light. It is at least POSSIBLE that your confidence and your feelings of pity for a victim have been abused ... either as a "joke", or on grounds of neurotic behavior (self-importance, narcism, confabulation, pathological lying ... Many possibilities there), maybe for the purpose of blackmail, or for the purpose of getting future compensation out of you.<P>dD<P> <P>------------------<BR>Byte: What the mosquitoes do.<BR>Bit: What the mosquitoes did.<P><BR>

The letters were scanned into her computer and sent to me via airmail. There is no question about my husband having written them. It was his handwriting.<BR>I don't want to give you the impression that we were actually trying to be counselors to this young woman. She is getting professional counseling. However, because she seems to have a problem with meeting people since the abuse ended, her counselor told her that the internet would be a good beginning for her - a place for her to talk to people. Many of our conversations were just normal everyday stuff that anyone would talk about. However many of them centered on the abuse. We did not offer her advice as to what she should or should not do, just listened to her. Many times I would tell her that I was not qualified to help her, that she should consult her counselor.<BR>My son began talking to her over a year ago, and they thought themselves to "be in love". However, when he would press her to meet him, she would refuse saying she was not yet ready for an actual relationship of that kind. When he came home from college for summer break, he "introduced" us to her, hoping that if she got to know us it would make it easier for her to meet him. We have talked to her, both on the net and on the phone since last June. Somewhere along the way, our son lost interest (he wants a real life relationship and got impatient), but we continued to talk to her. She just seemed to "cling". She also talks to my son's best friend and my sister. <BR>Anyway my H and I continued talking to her. I felt some red flags go up on occasion, felt maybe he was becoming a little too interested in talking to her, but when I would confront him he would assure me that I was being ridiculous. And of course the conversations were all there in icq history. I could read them anytime, and they both knew that.<BR>Then they started playing euchre together. Well in Yahoo euchre, you can make a private room and only those you invite can come in. Voila! Privacy, and no one can trace it. This is where it happened. This is where he first came on to her. Now they are both a little "fuzzy" on exactly what happened. She said she refused his advances several times (over a period of several days) and he kept making them, but he says he really doesn't remember her being that much against the idea. He does remember her telling him that she had "had a crush on him for a long time", but not until he made the initial advance. I don't know and I guess it really doesn't matter much now. Anyway, whatever the conversations were, it advanced to phone sex(3 times)and letters (2 or them). She also sent him letters. She sent them to his work, so she could be sure I would not get them. It was during this time that she began talking to my sister and began hinting to her about what was going on. Of course my sister guessed and asked her point blank. By then this young woman had already called my H and told him that she didn't want to be doing this and that he was going to have to tell me. He wanted to get out of this whole thing without telling me, but she insisted that I be told. I don't know what her reasons were.<BR>Their plan was that he was going to tell me that he had "come on" to her a few times and that she had freaked out about it. They would not tell of her part in it. My H said he did not want to hurt me anymore than necessary by telling me how far it had gone and if he told of her part in it he would have had to told it all. (I personally think he wanted to save his own butt) The letters they sent each other were very incriminating and were to be destroyed.<BR>He told me just that much information in a letter on a Tuesday morning and of course you can imagine the scene that followed. Then we both went to work, had obligations that needed to be met, and we needed the time to think anyway.<BR>From work I emailed her and asked her to call me. She did and I told her I knew. I talked to her off and on all day, continuing to think that she was very much a victim too. She emailed me copies of those letters. Some things were blacked out, and when I asked her about it she said they were "too gross". I later found out that those things would have tipped me off that she had participated willingly.<BR>When I confronted my H with the letters on Tuesday night, he couldn't believe that she had sent them to me. He told me that she promised that she would shred them, which she may have done, but she scanned them first. He admitted everything about the phone sex and the computer stuff they had done. He told me that he had started it, but that she reciprocated. He said that there were times when she was the instigator. That doesn't comfort me, though, because he didn't have to go along with it. He also said that even though he told her he loved her, he was lying, that he never had any such feelings for her, only lust. Why do men always seem to confuse lust and love?<BR>As I said before, my H has always treated me well and respected me, so I was both shocked and appalled at what had occurred. He was suicidal (and I truly believe it was not an act, I have never seen anyone in that state before, and it was only that first night, not since). He said that he would do whatever I wanted him too, leave or stay, or whatever, but that he wanted to stay.We are both born again Christians, so I have to be on the side of working it out. Besides when I pictured myself living without him, it hurt more than living with "this". I even at one point questioned his salvation, but I have come to realize that even Christians can make terrible mistakes.<BR>He said that it was like he "wasn't himself" like he was on the outside watching. He said after each "episode" he would repent and determine to not do it anymore, but then there would be the next time and he did.<BR>His therapist has put him on prozac for a while for depression. She says she thinks that he was always suffering from depression and that a whole series of things such as mid-life crisis (which I think is a cop-out) and the possibility of losing his job, and maybe we had drifted from our closeness some,<BR>all could have contributed to this happening. She also mentioned the idea that he was "set up". I don't know. He says he never really planned it, that it "just happened", but I think he must have thought about it before.<BR>Anyway, I am coping as best I can. I don't know why this happened, but we can only go from here and try to make "lemonade" from our "lemons". Her brother said that maybe it happened for a reason. Maybe my H was a prime candidate for an affair and maybe this was better than if he had become involved with someone in real life. He said maybe she had a lesson to learn and getting involved with my H like that kept her from getting involved with someone who would really hurt her. I don't know. I am a very strong person, but I have lost something that I was very proud of - a marriage that had been faithful for 27 years. Sometimes I mourn the loss of that. <BR>Our marriage is going to make it. We both want that. In some ways it is better now than it was before. It's a shame that something like this has to happen to shake us up and make us do what we should have been doing in the first place. We always said "I love you" several times every day, but maybe it was just words, and we didn't hear each other. I guess you never appreciate fully what you have until it is threatened to be taken from you.<BR>In closing I just want to say, that I do believe her story about the abuse, and I don't believe that she set out for this to happen. I do think that she has a problem relating to men in any way but sexual and that may have been part of the problem. She may have may inuendos that my husband picked up on without even realizing it. <BR>I don't know why I felt the need to write all of this. But thanks for listening. It really helps to have someone to talk to. My mother passed away two years ago and my sister knows, but she is out of state, and probably gets tired of talking about it too. My H won't talk about it with me much. I guess he has his own demons to chase away. He just wants to close his eyes and make it all go away. <BR>Once again, thank you for listening to me and any comments you have will be very much appreciated. Happy holidays to you.

Margaret,<P>Do you realize how lucky you and your H are? If you read on this board about the number of affairs that start on the internet and end up with the spouse having an emotional affair, then a physical affair, then leaving, you should know that this situation is a little different.<P>Your H is repentant, he never had an emotional affair (phone sex, I don't know what you call sexual letters) nor did he have a physical affair. Further, he never wanted to leave you for Lolita. I realize that this is not something casual but it is also not nearly as difficult to handle as the full blown EA, PA and I'm out of here.<P>In some senses this was almost internet pornography. Please think about this. Your H was indeed pulled into this by perhaps his weaknesses but also by this "innocent" little girl who conveniently blacked out the parts that would incriminate her. Given the percentage of marriages in which affairs occur, you have come out relatively easily.<P>Please try to work on this whole thing. I doubt you will need to punish your H. He is doing a perfectly fine job of that. In fact you may find yourself trying to get his self-esteem back to par. It is and should be pretty shot about now. <P>You have received some good advice from the people posting here. My advice is thank the Lord this only went this far and that you have an H that loves. You have been blessed although I know you don't think so now.<P>God Bless You and Your H.<P>JL