Abusers masquerading as victims in a survivor group



Well-known member
Dec 4, 2013
TW: mentions of abuse, etc.

Such a long story.

(This person isn't a part of this forum; I just need to rant, because this has been building up for a while, and I don't know what to do next.)

I'm part of a couple of survivor and mental health groups on Twitter, and there are two people - a married couple - who were a part of these groups for a long time, and have recently been outed as being sexual abusers. That is, two people, separately, told me that they had sexually abused them in one way or another - and I felt a responsibility to bring this to the attention of the admins of these groups.

The first was the most serious, and that person was too traumatised to bring it to anyone's attention - they had only managed to tell *me* several years after the fact. I sat on this information until another person I connected with, who had met up with the pair, told me a similar story. By this point, I felt a responsibility to share this information with admins (while keeping their privacy safe) on their behalf - so that other people didn't fall into the same trap.

I couldn't just sit on my hands, watching them try to make connections with vulnerable people, knowing what I knew.

This was very difficult to do without mentioning any context, and I was sometimes met with either silence, or disbelief. Eventually, people did start to listen to me, and they were banned from these groups.

Since then, I've taken it upon myself to warn people who might be going to meet up with them.

They've both blocked me because I confronted them about something else (the first thing I found out was that the husband *wasn't* himself a survivor, which he *never* said, but then he admitted to it when I confronted him - he was basically pretending to be a survivor in order to gain survivors' trust, but I didn't realise how bad that breach of trust was at that point).

But I search for his username. And I don't see his Tweets, but I see what people have said in reply to him - and whenever I see anything like, "Yeah it would be cool to meet up!" (especially if that person is a survivor of CSA), I warn them.

This was going pretty well until this person left Twitter entirely.

I felt somewhat at ease with the situation, knowing that I could monitor him and warn whoever comes their way. But now I feel powerless. I don't know whether they've changed usernames (they were using pseudonyms anyway), and I don't know where they've migrated to - and who else they're going to try this with.

I've contacted social services in their area - they live in America and I live in the UK - but to no avail. I told them they were preying on vulnerable adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and was given an email to the department that covers their district - but I haven't had a reply in months.

This is taking an undue toll on my mental wellbeing. When I go to type anything on my phone, his username comes up immediately in my autotext - because I search for him so much. I know I'm doing it too much, but it's hard. It's hard to know what he, and they, have done, and not do anything about it.

P.S. I know there's a possibility that what these two people told me isn't true, but I feel it's best to warn people who might go to meet up with the couple anyway, because there's a chance it might be true. I just give them the accusations I've been told and leave them to make up their own minds.

I could have warned the second person. The first person had told me what they'd done to them before. But I didn't feel it was my place. So the second person ended up meeting up with them and was put into a traumatising situation, but thankfully wasn't as vulnerable as to be so completely groomed by them as the first person was.

I feel responsible, but powerless. And I'm obsessing. I need to let myself free of it - because I can't stop all the sexual abusers on the Internet - but because I *know* about this, I feel like I should do what I can, but I don't know what to do now.

I still Google their usernames (they're pretty distinctive) and monitor them that way. So I do pick up when they make some kind of presence on another website - but *only* under those usernames. And I can't keep doing this.

Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading this long post! I hope it was clear. I appreciate it.
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Well-known member
Jun 14, 2017
That's a sad story to read Katya, I think that you have done everything in your power to make people aware. That is the best you could have done.

Thing is, anyone can pretend to be anyone on the internet and I have been taken for a fool a few times over the years. You have done what you can, that is all you can do.

Perhaps you have become stuck in a kind of hypervigilance? I have done that also, and still do it.

Twitter or FB can you take a break from it?

I think it would help though if you spoke to someone like NAPAC, either by email or call them. I find them very helpful although I do not call on them so much these days. I am a member and they will listen especially with regards to the internet stuff and will advise and support. You can pass information onto them in confidence too.

Here is their link. www.napac.org.uk

Sorry I can't wrote more, not so well today. All good wishes to you hope this is some help.:)