Ok so normally I don’t post personal stuff on here, but I saw something today that made me remember this and I knew I had to post it somewhere.
When I was 14, I was really into digital art and online forums where people could post and discuss their paintings/drawings. As someone w/adhd and social anxiety, the internet was somewhere I felt I could be myself and be in control of my social interactions. It wasn’t as intimidating as making friends or talking to people in real life, and I built genuine social skills on there. However, I wasn’t aware of how dangerous these digital communities could be.
I had (still do) a really great relationship with my parents growing up, and they made sure to have the discussion with me about stranger danger and how you should never give away personal info online, all the classics. I never really hid anything I did on the computer from them, and they trusted me completely. They monitored our internet that was considered acceptable by most parenting standards (i.e. server blockers for adult content, etc.). But none of that mattered when I met someone on a discussion board who convinced me to meet up with them irl.
Obviously, looking back on it now years later, it was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. Even at the time, I remember being a little scared when this person asked me to meet them at a public park. They were one of my online ‘art buddies’, ppl who critiqued and gave advice for your submissions, and we’d ‘known’ each other for a while. They complimented my sketches, gave me great tips on how to draw better, and I was really inspired by all the works they posted. Then the conversations meandered naturally from our posts to our lives, casual talk like how we hated homework but liked our teachers, our siblings were annoying, etc.
WARNING: DESCRIPTION OF GROOMING AHEAD
Then, one day they messaged me complementing my self-portrait that I had posted. It was by no means realism, more of a cartoon version of myself, but their flattering words were enough to make my introverted,14-year-old self swoon. I was so shy in school, no one even knew i was there half the time, let alone told me i was beautiful. It made me feel special, valued, less alone. Looking back now, I see it for what it was. But at the time, those words only made me trust this person more. So when they mentioned that they lived in my city and asked if I wanted to meet up at a public park, it wasn’t a huge red flag to me. It was a public place, right? It’s not like they were asking for my social or my address or anything. And they wouldn’t be picking me up in their car, the park was close enough to my school that I could bike the 4 miles there myself. We were just gonna hang out at the picnic tables for a couple of hours, no big deal.
Even though I’d seen this park before, I’d never actually been to it. My parents never took us there, and I always just assumed it was because there were other, closer parks to our house that were just as nice. It didn’t seem sketchy to me as I rode up closer, other than the fact that some of the playground equipment was rusty and the swing set had overgrown weeds on it.
I remember this day so clearly even though it’s been 10 years now: I was pedaling up this mini-hill that went thru a neighborhood, and the park was at the bottom of the hill on the other side. I remember stopping at the top of the hill to catch my breath for a second on the sidewalk, and I looked down at the park. From where I was standing, I could see the picnic tables and the parking lot. My friend had been messaging me on my phone, and had been updating me ever since I left school on my bike. They said they were already there and had been waiting for me for the past 10 minutes, and that when I arrived I’d be able to find them really easily because they had a red convertible in the parking lot, and they had managed to get us a table that we didn’t have to share. I texted them when I left, asking if there were a lot of people at the park that day. Their reply was really distinct, because instead of ‘yeah, kinda’ or ‘not really’, they texted back; ‘Super crowded, some kind of birthday party at the gazebo- All kinds of moms lol’ . Reading that gave me assurance that I didn’t know I needed, and that’s why I remember the dread and fear I felt when I looked down at the park.
No party, no kids, nothing- the gazebo was empty, the playground deserted, everything was just quiet.
Except for this one man sitting at a picnic table, who had to be at least my father’s age. There was a gray sedan parked in the lot (i’m assuming his, but I don’t know), and the man was looking down at his phone as he sat at the table.
I texted my ‘friend’ again, still hidden by the garage wall of someone’s house where my bike was parked at the top of the hill. My ‘friend’ was supposed to be a guy my age who was wearing a pink floyd t shirt and black jeans. I asked him, ‘is there food at the party?’
I got an instant reply; ‘Yeah, a grillout- smells amazing but i don’t think they’ll let us have anything lol’.
I turned around and got on my bike, looking over my shoulder every 5 minutes, terrified that this guy might have seen and followed me. Thankfully, there was never anyone behind me, and I didn’t stop until I got home. I went to my room and deleted my entire account from that website, blocking my ‘friend’ first and deleting all of our conversation history in a panic before making sure every trace of me was gone forever. I sat there in my room for a while just staring at the wall.
I don’t know for sure if the man that I saw had anything to do with the person I was messaging- I don’t know him or why he was at the park. All of these things are connections I drew from what I knew via the website and our conversation, and what I could see with my own eyes. But more powerful than any of that was the immense, strong gut feeling I had wash over me when I was about to meet that person. Something just felt very, very wrong. I was still happy and excited to meet them, but that happiness was soured by that innate reaction of dread and foreboding that just screamed at me to go away.
I never told my parents about this, and still haven’t to this day. I know they would blame themselves for me being lured by this person (if that was in fact what happened), and that is the last thing I want- they did everything right.
That’s my entire point in posting this: my parents did everything by the book, took the experts advice, had an open and trusting relationship with me, and monitored our internet access. But I still made this happen, I still got my way, and I’m convinced that it’s by sheer luck that I’m still here today. I got up the courage to ask them one day, about 3 years after all this, when we were driving by that park why they never took us there as kids. My parents told me that park was notorious for drug use and crime, and that there were no working security cameras anywhere nearby.
There have been so many people in my situation who unfortunately never came home. Please please please be careful who you talk to on the internet, and be even more careful about the excuses you tell yourself to justify why it’s ok for you to be communicating with strangers. I convinced myself that this was just a fun meet up with a friend, that it was safe because it was on a public property, and that it was ok for me to go by myself. I will remember this experience for the rest of my life.
