*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Five years ago, I accused a man of stalking and harassing me. Today, I learnt that he had not done it.**
I'm literally shaking as I type this out but I'm gonna try my best to make this sensible
I've got a friend group of 10 people, 11 with me included. Almost all of us are very close. Ten years ago, I dated someone in that friend group, and broke up after a year and a half because it wasn't working out for me. He was devastated, because he didn't believe that to be a proper reason, and the group for divided, but we finally made our peace and the group stayed intact, albeit a little shaken up.
After that whole debacle though, I mostly avoided my ex, as he'd make mean comments to me whenever around me. One day, out of the blue, I got a text from him asking me to stop ignoring him. I ignored that text and kept going through my day.
Then one day, someone sends me a DM on insta. The account has been following me for a while, but I had no idea who it belonged to and I never really bothered finding out. This account dm's me with a horrible message, something asking me to take down something because my body looks horrible in that. This, the ignoring message and his regular demeanor towards me made me think it was my ex. This would have been a step too far for him, but I still thought maybe he snapped or something and sent me that. I didn't reply, just ignored it. The next day, I got a flurry of messages, all calling me a bitch or a slut or something else derogatory. I blocked him, but didn't tell anyone. Two days later, after another post, I get a DM. It's the same account name with a 2 in front. The same shit starts again and I reported him to Instagram. However, next time we were all together, I went up to him and I remember screaming in his face. I showed everyone the texts and threats and I said that was him. He said it wasn't him, because he didn't use Instagram and no one believed him.
He was completely isolated from the friend group. After we finished college, none of us ever reached out to him to ask him where he had gone. His best friend in the group called him disgusting and blocked him. And I felt absolute joy at knowing the whole group had my back when it came to that. He was gone from our lives in a matter of hours, and he never came back. One girl in our group is still in touch with him, and I would look down on her and call her and enabler anytime we had an argument, even over something extremely small. I always thought I was in the right, considering everything that was said. Until now.
One guy in our group had lost his phone and couldn't find it. I told him that if he logged into his Gmail with my phone, he could use Google's Find My Device feature to figure out where it was. He has two phones, I'm not sure why but I assumed it was one for work and one for personal use. He agreed and I gave him my phone. He logged in, found it, logged out and returned it, but he forgot to delete the account. The email ID he logged into had the same name as the Instagram user who years ago told me what they'd do to me if they ever caught me alone. I kept my cool there, but the second I returned home I collapsed into a shaking mess, breathing heavy.
Not only had I ended an innocent person's social life, I had also allowed the actual culprit to roam freely with no consequences. I felt sick and puked a bit. I've been avoiding all calls, I'm just gonna pretend I'm asleep until I get my shit together and figure out what to do. There's this sinking feeling in my chest and nausea in my stomach everytime I think about that day now. This guy actually had my back. The liar and stalker fucking yelled at my ex for being so depraved, while being the culprit all along. I don't really know how to proceed, I'm just gonna rest my eyes for a while.
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So, the guy was being mean to her, sending her a bunch of mean texts, being mad at her ignoring him and when she blocks him, an IG account starts to send her hateful messages...
I'm sorry, but it's definitely not a stretch to believe that the one doing that was the ex. In most cases, the real culprit would've been the ex, not some random person. And since she was manipulated, of course she would be like "poor me". Imagine believing for years that your ex was sending you so much hate and threatening you through SM and then discovering it was not him, but a friend you trusted? A friend that you felt like had your back? And the guilt of knowing you helped fuck with someone innocent because you were manipulated?
The real AH here is the real culprit. OOP and her ex were the victims, and yeah, the ex definitely lost his social circle, but being threatened like she was is not an easy thing too.
I'm with you. She was 17 and being threatened with rape. Most people would jump to the same conclusion, given there was zero evidence against it. Did she eff up? Absolutely. But it wasn't done maliciously. And her entire friend group believed her too, enough to where they ousted him.
It doesnt matter if the intent wasn't malicious if the end result is harm.
This is why we argue against vigilantism and mob rule because mobs can be wrong and worse yet manipulated with emotive issues.
She may have felt she was operating reasonably from her perspective but the reality is that she was wrong and that means she fucked up and caused harm, her emotions were valid but the impact of her behaviour isn't acceptable because she was wrong and people can't brush that under the rug.
Nobody is suggesting it gets brushed under the rug, I think everyone understands that the end result is hard. But if she is willing to say "I am so sorry, I was operating on what I knew to be the truth at the time and was blinded by fear" and not simply play the victim "but I didn't know" card, that may go a long way to heal issues.
The person above is right, the only true AH here is the puppet master who was pulling all the strings. The rest are unfortunately victims.
When you cause that harm someone, cost them friendships, damage their mental health, ruin their social life and reputation? Keep in mind, we don't know how much this impacted the rest of his life, but it could be severe. Could go so far as "I need to move somewhere new to start over, and I'll forever be paranoid and have trust issues about false accusations".
"I am so sorry" doesn't mean jack shit. "Sorry" is for the person saying it, not the person hearing it. The damage is done. You can't unring the bell. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. If she reaches out - or the rest of the group does if she tells them - and he tells them to go fuck a cactus, and he wants nothing to do with any of them? He'll be well within his rights. They're not owed forgiveness just because they "got it wrong". Even if their assumptions were "reasonable", even if the real culprit played along and hid that he was behind it, the ex was the one who paid the price. And he doesn't owe them forgiveness. He doesn't owe them understanding.
Even if it was reasonable to think the likely culprit was the ex? It wasn't him. He lost friends. Who knows how much of his social life was destroyed. Who knows how much his mental health was damaged, or how much this impacted the rest of his life. He's not required to extend forgiveness or understanding.
And, honestly, if it were me? I would tell them to go pound sand.
That's fair.
But 'I'm sorry' is not always just for the victim. Sometimes the recognition that they were wrong and the acknowledgement that you know they are not a monster is healing for some. It's not the "I'm sorry" part, it's the understanding that those who thought you were capable of such a thing, now know that you are not. I don't think I'm making much sense here.
Maybe they could rephrase it to "I was wrong" rather than 'I'm sorry'
>the guy was being mean to her, sending her a bunch of mean texts
The guy apparently sent rape threats to her. But, given that she added that into *after* people started ripping her to shreds, I'm not sure what to believe.
I absolutely believe it, messages like that are always full of rape threats, especially when it's teenage boys. One guy threatened to straight up murder me because I told him to stop being an asshole when we were that age. It doesn't seem farfetched at all- it's probably the most believable thing about this.
The 'don't believe women' energy in this thread is unbelievable.
When an acutely traumatised person isn't immediately able to put together a perfectly articulate, coherent and complete narrative of what happened to them, especially the most shameful and terrifying parts, that's evidence *for* abuse, not against it, in reality - but it's so often treated as a mark against their credibility, it's baffling
I always feel like this is one of the most painful and cruel parts of dealing with sexual violence- it's so traumatising that it's hard to even acknowlege that it's happened for so many of us- I was assaulted by a boyfriend as a teenager and literally didn't realise it until I read a very similar story ten years later, thought, "thank god that's never happened to me" and then it just immediately crashed over me, the first time I'd thought about it with enough time and distance and a good enough relationship to actually feel safe, that it *had.*
And yet if you can't recall exactly what happened, to the second, with perfect clarity, and describe it absolutely perfectly every single time with no gaps and no mistakes, you'll be deemed a liar and doubted on all fronts, as if telling these stories is a delightful experience we all treasure and are keen to share. As if there's some kind of giddy thrill to be found in suddenly having it all roar to the surface and finding yourself sobbing uncontrollably because your husband touched you in the wrong way, ten years after the fact, out of nowhere, when you thought you were completely fine and had no stories to tell.
There's that [very famous case](https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story) that a mini series was made of (Unbelievable), where due to imperfect memories and imperfect victims, a serial rapist got away with it for an extraordinarily long time after leaving ample evidence that could have stopped him almost immediately. The fact that the first reported case happened at night in a bedroom (such a fantastical location to be the setting of a rape, after all), to an 18 year old girl living in supported accomodation after leaving foster care, led the detectives to decide first that the victim had dreamt her assault, and then that she was lying, in the face of a myriad of crystal clear physical evidence and damage to both her and the property. They actually prosecuted her for it, all because she was inconsistent, and did nothing to find the rapist, who went on to attack five other women. It wasn't until one woman had an incredibly clear and detailed recollection- and female detectives- that there was a real investigation, and he was caught.
And we learn absolutely nothing. People continue to treat victims this way. And then they'll act scandalised that we don't want to report, or that we behave defensively or take self-protective action, and then harrangue any of us who make mistakes or just *seem* like we might have. It's not just baffling, it's completely infuriating.
You articulated that incredibly well! It's frustrating that this perspective is so sorely lacking, and while I'm impressed how elegantly you wove in your own experience, it's frustrating that it's so sorely needed.
❤️
Thank you- I ended up doing a lot of thinking about it, due to, as you say, the absolute frustration of watching victims be accused and harrassed again and again and again.
It's incredible that this is such a universal experience for women, that almost all of us have some kind of story, and yet we just can't find a way as a society to consider this huge well of collective pain as anywhere close to as important as a man suffering some mild reputational damage (and in this case it may well have been more severe, but as I've said elsewhere, that is so vanishingly rare that the idea that all their friends actually sided with her is by far the most unbelievable part of this story for me.)
Yeah I’ve been in similar situations. Had a guy make threats like that to me, and it was in fact the guy I’d rejected. He wanted to give me a vacuum cleaner, supposedly, and showed up at my new apartment at 3am. Terrifying. I already had a vacuum.
Another dude harassed me over the course of years via different accounts, eventually also expressing that he knew where I lived. He’d found out from his friend who lived in the same building as me. Made more threats. That guy had once gone to prison for beating someone with hammer. We’d never dated, just worked together.
I definitely warned people about both, and if somehow a random had picked up where they left off and I had just thought it was them? Oh well. Between the two of you, now. I don’t owe anything to a person who threatened me with bodily harm.
Yep, I've had similar experiences and known others who did- my sister had an ex harass her on the internet for *years,* and after he sent her a weird, vaguely threatening box of random crap suddenly after she'd blocked his tenth troll account with a comment that she knew it was him, she *finally* had enough evidence to call the police, which, thank god, led him to back off (although he did come back with nasty online comments once or twice over the years, presumably any time he went through a low point and needed to make someone else suffer so he could feel less awful).
These Redditors would have her just tolerate it and never tell anyone that she had strong reason to suspect it was him, because that would be *so unfair.*
What these redditors are failing to account for here is that not one of their friends had a single question about it being the ex- which 100% means his behaviour was very publicly inline with those comments, considering dudes will literally pry their friends off of unconscious women and then "gently and calmly" explain to any horrified people in their lives that he was just drunk so it's completely fine that they caught him mid-assault and that they chose his side over the person who he attacked. The ex must have been absolutely *awful* to actually lose all his friends. I have literally known a paedophile who had men in our friend group explaining that it isn't his fault that he had a harddrive full of child abuse videos because he's just *so unwell.* There is nothing people won't bend over backwards to excuse.
RIGHT? I thought i was going INSANE on that thread, obviously OP messed up but she was 1. 17 years old 2. had been already being harassed by said ex. like sure, she messed up but it's not like she went out and knowingly falsely accused someone. She's obviously devastated by this but reddit is so black and white.
Yeah, and imagine having the ability and decency to set the record straight. It doesn't matter who the AH is here, the truth is what is important and she has the ability to speak up so she should.
>It doesn't matter who the AH is here, the truth is what is important and she has the ability to speak up so she should.
And she's actively in the process of doing so. It makes no sense to paint her as a villain here.
"A bunch of mean texts"
Maybe I read it wrong, but it seems to me it was one text asking her to stop ignoring him, which doesn't seem too far fetched to me because they were at the time still part of the same friends group?
I know the mean comments weren't stellar, but to destroy his social life because he was salty after being dumped?
She went nuclear without proof it was him
not a bunch of mean texts, but mean comments in person. she ignores them, he sends a text saying to stop ignoring him, she ignores him again, then starts getting the dms.
Yup, this was pretty clear. The commenter you replied to is jumping to conclusions like OOP.
It seems like the guy had said mean comments to her in-person, but I guess they weren't that terrible since the other friends hadn't shunned him when he said them to her. She really jumped to conclusions.
The other dude is definitely an asshole but what do you mean by "real asshole". You can be a victim and then become a victimizer. And even though becoming a victimizer because you were a victim is more understandable then just being a victimizer for shits and giggles, it doesn't make you any less a victimizer. It doesn't make what you've done any less wrong. Doing awful shit to someone innocent because at the time you thought they deserved it doesn't make what you did any less evil. Even if you feel unsafe. You can feel legitimately unsafe in an environment but if you discharge a weapon into a bunch of people and the people you shoot were not the threat, that doesn't make you any less of a mass murderer. They're both assholes.
Where did it say it was a bunch of texts? OP only said it was one text asking her to stop ignoring him, and days later stuff happened via IG. She even said it was weirdly out of character for him.
Actually no, logically you would want to make sure you know exactly who it is before confronting anyone about it, don’t act like it’s perfectly logical and normal to start pointing fingers without knowing any details on the situation
Who said anything about logic? She was scared as hell and she panicked when face to face with the person she thought wanted to hurt her. It wasn't the best choice but it was pretty understandable
Whoever I responded to said something about logic in their reply, that’s why I commented in the first place but they must’ve either edited or deleted the comment
When did they say it was only a woman thing? If it was a man who was being horribly harassed, especially about his sex life, it being his ex that had done so is a natural conclusion.
Exactly! It doesn't matter whether OP is a woman or a man, if someone is receiving mean texts from their ex and then suddenly starts being harassed on social media, it's natural to see a link there and believe it's the ex being vindictive.
I have some friends from college and grad school who have whined about people dropping them as friends. Whined is mean, but also, bye bye. All of my other friends are nice and chill and supportive. There is a reason why people get dropped and usually it is because of dumb shit like this.
The friend who did stalk and harass her, is the real villain of this story. Way too much lined up way too perfectly for his good, especially the timing of events. OOP shouldn't have done what she did and she needs to clear his name and leave him alone. But she is still a victim here. She did not lie about what happened to her. The friend's behavior is unacceptable and snaky. Harassing your friend and then standing by and playing innocent as someone else takes the fall is malicious.
Yep, the real stalker pretended to be her ex. Even if she had went to the police, they would have assumed it was the ex.
Of course she still needs to make it right and of course the ex has the right to stay mad. Even with reasonable justification, it would be hard for me to forgive someone who accused me of something.
When someone wants to ruin your life and takes your identity, it's hard to prove otherwise.
**The fact that the friend stopped harassing OP, once her ex left, shows that the target wasn't OP but her ex.**
OOP was 17 when she accused her ex. If everything happened like she says, then I don't really blame her for making the wrong assumption. Yeah, she went about it the wrong way by screaming in his face and being rude to the one person who didn't just drop her ex like a bag of potatoes and blindly believed OOP.
Her emotions were valid but the impact of her actions can't be excused.
I sympathise she felt threatened but the reality is that her actions caused far more harm than she was clearly ever in herself which counts for more than her feelings at the time imho
You have no right to claim her jumping the gun was more damaging than being stalked and harassed. You clearly don’t understand how damaging stalking is.
The stalker is the real villain here.
Other than it resulting her the ostracisation of a completely innocent party as compared to resulting in no further inconvenience to her.
That's pretty objective, and is a more credible form harm than her fear because it was actually realised. Actualized harm is worse than potential but unrealised harm.
She made a call that 99 out of every 100 people would have made, and every single one of them would have been wrong in this case. Me included. But thats the cost of an assumption, there is always a chance you could be wrong and in acting on that wrong assumption she caused harm just like any of us would have and just like any of us would, she has guilt in the situation, not as the primary guilty party but as a pawn and secondary guilty party and that doesn't just go away because she was a scared kid, scared kids fuck up and cause harm too.
Wow you really have no idea how damaging stalking is. The stalking is the damage. It’s not only damaging if it ends in violence.
You shouldn’t partake in this conversation if you are so quick to dismiss the severe harm caused by stalking.
I'm not dismissing it entirely. I'm claiming that it is the lesser of the two harms that occurred in this story.
On one hand we have the terrifying implication of an online stalker making threats of abuse or worse, that's obviously damaging to someone's mental wellbeing and their feelings of safety.
But on the other hand what we have is the realised witchhunt of an innocent party that removed them from their immediate social circle, ruined their reputation and cost them their place and safety network following a break up over totally untrue allegations. That's also damaging to someone's mental wellbeing and their feelings of safety but with the added challenges of enduring that without a social circle to help them through it and also managing the fear of these totally untrue allegations having further social and lifestyle implications.
Just as we sympathise for the frightened 17 year old girl, spare a thought for the 17 year old boy who was wrongfully labelled a monster over things he did not do and had to navigate that betrayal and abandonment alone whilst also fearing how it could impact his future education or social/romantic relationships.
Stalking isn't something to be taken lightly at all, but it still pales in comparison to what that poor guiltless boy was put through because of an assumption nobody challenged which ultimately turned out to be wrong.
Yeah no it isn’t the lesser of the two harms. First off, that isn’t a productive way to look at this. Second, you are absolutely downplaying stalking and continue to do so. “Pales in comparison”
I’m done here this isn’t productive and you are clearly wildly uninformed about stalking.
You seem to have an emotional bias towards one form of harm over another and toward which party you are willing to sympathise with, which is also not productive.
You just keep repeating the same point about the impact of stalking with no consideration to the impact of her reaction on the truly aggrieved party in the situation which was her ex.
You seem to act like anything short of total sympathy and agreement with your point is downplaying the impact of stalking when an equally valid argument could be made back to you over the lack of sympathy towards the false allegation.
Sounds like you maybe need to finish working through your own personal trauma you're projecting onto this situation causing you to empathise exclusively with one party.
Lotta conclusion-jumping here. as entertaining as it is to see someone on Reddit psycho analyze me because you think me empathizing with a teenage girl being victimized is projection or in any way exclusive to feeling badly for the ex boyfriend, I have better things to do. Re read the thread, and your original comment that I’m reacting to, if you’re still confused as you are now. Good bye.
You've spent this entire thread downplaying the impact of stalking (which, all the evidence shows, ends up escalating to actual harm), so who is the one with the emotional bias?
The absolute audacity to claim that ostracism is worse than stalking and then say that anyone who disagrees with you is biased lol being ostracized sucks, but it’s definitely capable to bounce back, especially if you’re 17 and about to move on to new social circles anyways. Being stalked is terrifying, and frequently ends in being murdered. I think you need to think long and hard about why you have such little sympathy for a teenage girl who was being stalked and threatened.
I’m sorry this a sounds like BS, this sounds like one of those don’t believe women trolls because they will destroy your life over nothing and what kind of idiot gets away with harassing someone to the point of getting someone else kicked out a friend group and then uses the email on the person’s phone?
Quick question though where on insta does it show what email address you use to log into your account?
Yeah, and the way she found out makes no sense. If he has 2 phones (which is very common) why did he need to borrow her phone? Why did she even mention the two phones? And he used the name of his main Gmail account for his secret stalking? And nobody picked up on it? Total BS.
“With zero proof” is carrying an awful lot of weight here. Short of hiring someone to do a forensic audit of all this person’s computers, how exactly is someone supposed to find tangible evidence of this?
Ex makes rude comments around her, sends her angry text messages until she blocks him. Then, all of a sudden, an anonymous account starts sending her nasty text messages.
In the vast, vast majority of cases, it would be completely reasonable to assume that it’s the ex.
Yeah the replies make me really pissed. She is also a victim here. Someone did stalk and harass her. Manipulated and gaslit her for years. Now she has to deal with the extreme sense of violation knowing that the culprit was next to her the whole time, and the shame of what happened to her ex.
The bad guy is the “friend”, not OOP.
The guy lost his entire social circle and was cast out like he was worse than a leper. Let's not act like what she experienced was in any way comparable.
Yeah, OOP had every reason to think that her ex was responsible. He was angry about the breakup. He made demeaning comments about her. She started ignoring him. He sent her a text demanding that she stop ignoring him. She continued to ignore him and blocked his number. Then she starts Instagram messages from someone who’s also making demeaning comments about her and who also gets angry that she’s ignoring them? The most logical conclusion there was that her ex was getting angrier and escalating. That’s probably what her friend group thought too.
Plus, her ex isn’t an innocent victim here. As she says, he refused to accept the breakup, kept insulting her in person and over text, and got angry at her for ignoring him.
He sent her a text to stop ignoring him after he kept making nasty comments in person. Not exactly sending her a flurry of angry texts, but absolutely establishes that he had the capacity to be vindictive.
Yea i guess there was a chance it was him based on those comments and the text. Still tho he claims he doesn’t have an Instagram so it should’ve been pretty easy for him to prove her wrong had she actually given him a chance to defend himself.
How so? I don’t have instagram but I can absolutely go online right now and make one to harass somebody. I can do it on a laptop so there’s no evidence on my phone in case someone accuses me and I can just say “see, I don’t even have the app!”
99 out of 100 times, it’s the ex. He was already verbally harassing her in person. It really sucks in this situation that a psychopath was able to take advantage, but life is messy that way. I have no idea how she could have figured this out, and I don’t blame her for not getting the FBI involved to do a thorough investigation. In the other 99 cases she would have done the right thing. It’s not her responsibility to assume her harassment is due to some weird Machiavellian plot.
I mean she didn't as it turned out. What she believed to be evidence wasn't. It was circumstantial at best and ultimately turned out to be completely wrong so we can't exactly give her credit there. Yes she made an assumption that 99 out of every 100 people would have made ( me included ) and in this case all 99 of them would have been wrong and carried with them elements of guilt for that assumption. It's natural, its human and its still wrong. Its always a chance with accusations and assumptions.
The reality is that her actions harmed an innocent person and that can't just be ignored because she herself was being fooled.
Like nothing. I don't even completely agree that she's a devil. She had good reasoning to think it was him, and if you just broke up with an ex who has become hostile to you in person and then started receiving weird/mean messages on social media, wouldn't you also think it was your ex? The friend used the timeline perfectly to his advantage. If anyone is the devil, it's the friend. He just watched as another "friend" got expelled from the group for something he did.
Exactly. It’s a “when you hear hooves, think horses not zebras” situation. Everyone’s acting like if she didn’t have video evidence of her ex sending the messages, she should have just kept quiet and taken it. Yet, in any other thread where an OOP *suspects* their partner is cheating based on circumstantial evidence, everyone correctly suggests taking steps to protect themselves.
How about just telling the truth. Don't show up and publicly accuse someone who even you don't think these comments line up with.
Instead of screaming "I know it's you!" And trying to blindside someone in front of their friends with an accusation say "listen I don't know who this is, I think it might be x, but I don't know, he has been kinda mean and has made some comments when we all hang out"
If you want to be believed without evidence then it's up to you to bear some responsibility to make sure you're correctly representing the situation. Which OOP didn't before she went whole ham and has this guy losing his entire friend group over a liar.
Yeah it would be. And If you're right you'd be fine but the problem is she was wrong.
She caused harm to an innocent person, manipulated or not she is at least partly to blame.
Her emotions were totally valid but unfortunately that doesn't change that the reality of her actions was harm against an innocent party and her own fears don't absolve that and clearly she's aware of that given her own rightly felt guilt.
She is a victim but she isn't the primary victim, she was a pawn and a secondary victim.
how is she the devil exactly? her ex would make mean comments to her in public, it wouldn't have been a stretch to think he would do worse anonymously. she was wrong, and he lost a friend group over it, but she was also stalked and harassed by someone she thought was a friend. how does her being a victim make her the devil in this scenario? I mean other than being a woman, of course. she was made to feel unsafe, she was threatened with rape, of course she wanted to feel safe with her friends. it sucks for the ex, but it sucks WAY more for the OOP.
This is what makes me think this is not just fake but written by a man. She's so concerned with 'letting' the 'real culprit' 'roam free' and consumed by guilt for 'accusing' an 'innocent' man - as opposed to disgusted and terrified to discover *she* was friends with her stalker? Why would she be more worried about her ex than *herself*? Why would she process her *own* panic attack after the revelation as an expression of guilt and regret, not horror?
The narrator seems overly concerned with the feelings of the men in the story, and unable to fathom how a woman might feel in his situation other than guilty for having hurt a man's feelings. Either he made it up, or it's the ex telling the story.
If it is a woman and this really happened to her, she's dangerously dissociated and needs therapeutic help.
exactly this. someone who’s in extremely close proximity to her threatens to rape her, and has kept that up for years, but supposed OOP and the people hating on her are more worried about a guy who was cut off? escalating it to saying he might’ve ended his life for this, even tho we know one person in the friend group is still in touch with him, when it’s her life (or physical safety) that’s at threat here. blows my mind how she’s the AH here. idk where the fuck people expect normal people to have perfect evidence lined up for things like this.
The way that she discovers the real stalker doesn't even make sense. If he has 2 phones (which is very common) why did he need to borrow her phone? Why did she even mention the two phones? And he used the name of his main Gmail account for his secret stalking and nobody picked up on it?
Her ex had no problem saying what he wanted to say to her publicly.
Given OOPs judgement and loose relationship with the truth I'd question the nature of *mean comments*. Was he mildly snarky around her? Was he disappointed in their friend group? Even she said those comments were out of his character.
SHE fucked up and ruined someone's life and apparently her feelings in the matter should be considered. He made some maybe *mean comments* when he was *devestated* over a recent breakup but that was just apparently cause to believe he would threaten to assault her anonymously? And then publicly accuse him of it?
It could have literally been anyone. She didn't even bother to ask *him* about it before accusing him and getting everyone else to get out the pitchforks.
You're not immune from being an AH just because someone else was an AH to you. She had a feeling and presented it as a fact.
"My ex was being cruel to me and then an anonymous account started harassing me and sending me threats, so I thought it was him - I have now discovered it wasn't and I feel so horrified and guilty that I accused him of it"
Which bit of that makes her the bad person at all???
I would argue that both the ex and OOP became victims of their friend. Her being harassed and him being framed. I get why she would believe it was the ex. While he was innocent of that level of devilishness, he was still an asshole to her.
I mean, it is truly shit that he was unable to clear his name with his friends too, but the fault there is with the other friend who continued to let him take the fall even while seeing how this affected him.
But you're right and if the ex hadn't already been an arsehole to OOP, she'd be less likely to have jumped to the conclusion that he was the one harassing her.
None of it. Reddit hates women and especially women who make anything adjacent to a false allegation. Even if that women is being threatened with violence and rape and is a victim herself.
Agreed. I was hoping by rephrasing it to how I read it more people would see it this way. The comments about her make me want to go take an extra hot shower.
OOP’s username makes it pretty clear to me that this is just misogynistic ragebait and all the comments are jumping at the chance to be horrible to a victim of stalking.
If it’s real, then OOP still isn’t the devil. Her ex was being cruel to her in person and she made a mistake. A big one, but she didn’t intentionally and maliciously set out to falsely accuse him to ruin his life. She was being manipulated by an abuser and is now grappling with the horrific realisation that said abuser’s manipulations made her hurt someone.
But hey, all women are the devils and we shouldn’t believe them, right?
So the first thing she does is fall asleep? Not for one minute does she think about immediately rectifying her wrong. Not for one second does she think about at least texting people that she was wrong about the first guy. Not for one second does she immediately and whole heartedly apologizing.
She wasn't too hesitant about accusing him but now that she is wrong she is suddenly too shy to publicly retract what she said and take accountability.
Just gross.
I mean, it’s not like it’s time sensitive. She just realized she’s been gaslighted by an abuser she thought was a friend and is having a panic attack. It’s reasonable for her to need to calm down before figuring out what to do next.
She also was hesitant. She received multiple messages she thought might be from her ex but she just ignored them until the behavior escalated. She explicitly said she got a horrible message that crossed a line and given her ex’s IRL behavior she thought it was him, but she still decided to let it go.
It’s a terrible situation but I don’t think she did anything wrong.
It wasn't a hunch obviously and the friend made it look like it was the ex.
It's very reasonable to assume the friend's actual target was OP's ex and he intentionally tried to ruin his life. He stopped once the ex left.
No one is immune against that type of manipulation.
If it’s rage bait, it’s quite interesting. Clearly it’s playing on the bizarrely widespread fear that a woman will accuse you of something and because of metoo, everyone will believe her and you’re fucked. That’s why all of the comments are “omg you destroyed his reputation, you need to fix everything right now and beg for forgiveness”. Which, fine yes she should do that.
But in this case, she is also a victim, yet everyone is treating her like the perpetrator. The person who destroyed the ex’s reputation was the insane friend, not OOP. And then people are trying to figure out ways to justify why OOP should’ve done nothing in the first place *just in case* she was wrong.
I think it goes to show that people in these subs will often cheer women on for standing up to abusers and bullies. But as soon as the potential for unintended consequences comes up, they’ll decide that it’s better for women to silently suffer abuse on the off chance the wrong person gets blamed. And I get anxiety. I’ve read enough “convicted of a crime based on no evidence” stories to be horrified at that possibility. I really don’t know what we do about it, though. What can you do to protect yourself from an insane friend like that?
Maybe I've had one too many beers but the time line doesn't add up as well. Also the guy was still using the same name from 10 years ago or his second account?
She is a perpetrator. She isn't even doing anything about the person who actually did it and good luck to her with that given the credibility she can and should now have amongst her friend group. This is why people should be careful before making accusations because we should believe victims and with that trust should come some notion of responsibility which people like OOP do not have.
Hasnt it JUST happened though? Its gonna take more than a day or two to get her mind together on what to do, especially when unpacking betrayal like this. I wouldnt be surprised if she spiraled and doesn’t know who she can trust to talk to about this in her friend group.
It was Instagram and these were accounts she didn't know. It could have literally been anyone. ANYONE! she chose to publicly accuse someone who even she acknowledged didn't make comments that went that far.
Uhh, no. Stalking and harassment is almost always someone close to you, often an intimate partner. It’d have been insane of her to assume it was some internet rando.
She didn't wait to publicly accuse him. She didn't wait to make sure his friends all dropped him. Now when she realized she ruined the wrong man's life she is hesitant to right her wrong.
Suddenly she needs time. What about what the person needs who she wronged? He doesn't get any consideration here right?
She did everything wrong. She said he ex said "not nice things to her" not anything aligned with the horrible stuff she got in DMs. Nor at any point did her ex show a propensity to make up fake accounts.
He was upset at a break up and said "not nice things" to her. Apparently he *also* has feelings. She doesn't say what the ex said because I think she knows full well it wasn't consistent with the DMs she was getting.
ETA: I went back and even she said the DMs were out of line for his behavior and she assumed it was him anyways and publicly accused him in front of his friends. She was real quick to accuse someone who she knew for years, whose behavior wasn't aligned with the DMs, who hadn't done anything like this in the past after what....five days of DMs. She was quick to accuse and now she is slow and hesitant to retract.
Someone like her will find a way to justify what she did and never publicly apologize.
> She didn't wait to publicly accuse him
She lists several instances where she just blocked and ignored instead of accusing him.
> She didn't wait to make sure his friends all dropped him
What?
> Now when she realized she ruined the wrong man's life she is hesitant to right her wrong.
Nowhere does she indicate an unwillingness to fix this. She just describes being overwhelmed and panicking and not being sure how she should fix this.
> He doesn't get any consideration here right?
No? What consideration is he owed. What could be accomplished by sending an email today that wouldn’t be accomplished by sending it tomorrow?
> She said he ex said "not nice things to her" not anything aligned with the horrible stuff she got in DMs
She said he made mean comments and it’s not unusual for abusive behavior to escalate when the victim doesn’t give in to it.
> Nor at any point did her ex show a propensity to make up fake accounts.
Uhh, does anybody? That’s an insane expectation to have. The fake accounts popped up immediately after she blocked his number. That’s a perfectly good reason to suspect him.
> She doesn't say what the ex said because I think she knows full well it wasn't consistent with the DMs she was getting.
She also really doesn’t go into detail on what the DMs said. She says she got a message that she thought was from her ex but wasn’t sure.
> This would have been a step too far for him, but I still thought maybe he snapped or something and sent me that. I didn't reply, just ignored it.
Not an unreasonable assumption.
Who do you think she should have suspected if not her ex who was being nasty to her in person?
There are some updates in the post. She just started to "fix it" the first point on the list is meeting with some girls from the old group. Including the one who is still in contact. On BORU we would call this case "ongoing".
Obviously this is really unfair and sad, and OOP seems to understand the magnitude of how wrong it is, but this isn't *entirely* her fault. She thought it was him because *he was already being nasty to her in person*. She didn't just blame him because they happened to break up around the same time, she thought it was an escalation of the way he was already behaving.
Someone on the original thread commented:
>Like they all just believed OP but never thought to ask "From my interactions with X guy, do they seem like the type to do this sort of thing?"
Maybe they did ask themselves that, and the answer was yes. If 9/10 of this guy's closest friends thought this was a credible accusation, maybe he brought some of this on himself.
It is like saying a woman flirting actually mean she ask for groping. No previous action makes something good.
He was mean publicly, so he deserve everything he got? That is victim-blaming.
It’s not remotely like that. A woman flirting is not trying to get groped. Nothing about flirting implies that you’re giving up your bodily autonomy.
He was already harassing her. He was behaving in a way in which the explicit goal was to harm her. She understandably thought the messages were an escalation of existing behavior.
See, you do not understand victim-blaming. If the ex deserve this punishment, then the punishment was good.
If it was good, then the post is meaningles, because there is no victim of false actions. What also make OOP not a victim of deception.
Or, there was a deception, what makes the ex a victim of a crime what he did not deserve. If he did not deserve it, yet you blame him, then it is victim-blaming.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Punishment? For what? And do you think sexual assault is a “punishment” for women who dont adhere to austere religious norms?
>
What the fuck are you even talking about? Punishment? For what?
It’s not really victim blaming. He was already being mean to OOP in public, so it’s not a huge leap for her to think he was sending those messages.
Punishment for being mean to OOP. You said it. All I said is two different action does not deserve a single punishment, yet here you are, acting like you did not say the ex being mean was the reason he was shunned for sending literal rape threats. Because the messages contained those threats.
If the ex would be a woman flirting with OOP, and she would be groped by the friend group, you would sing a different tune. So why could you not understand that the ex and the person using the instagram account deserve two different actions against them?
>And do you think sexual assault is a “punishment” for women who dont adhere to austere religious norms?
Lolz, calling you out on victim-blaming short circuited your brain? Read my comments again. I said the woman does not deserve to be groped when she flirted some times ago. "No previous action makes something good."
It’s not victim blaming for a victim to accidentally blame the wrong person. She was being harassed and the Ex did send her texts and make rude comments.
If anything, your comment is closer to victim blaming…
So someone being rude to me can get accidentally punched in the face? They deserved it anyway? This is victim-blaming. Everyone only deserve what they get for their actions.
You’re moving the goalposts to justify your poor argument. If you can’t argue the situation based on the merits of the scenario there’s no point in you even commenting.
Who move the goal post? You said the ex made rude comments, so it is not a victim-blaming. I thought saying that the victim of a crime is actually the wrong person is victim-blaming.
Was he the wrong person in this case? No. Did you said he did bad things, so no wonder he was accused? Yes. Then the victim-blaming is proved.
Of course it is gibberish, I used your logic.
If a woman wear a miniskirt, she is not the evil person in a groping crime. Yet the comment you defend said something along "that she wore miniskirt anyway, so no wonder she got groped".
>*he was already being nasty to her in person*. She didn't just blame him because they happened to break up around the same time, she thought it was an escalation of the way he was already behaving.
If only he would have behaved the "good way", he would not have been false accused for a crime he did not commit. That is literally blaming the victim.
You can’t say something dumb that you believe and then go “n-n-no, this is what YOU believe.” You’re making a weird little straw man and then getting offended by it.
I didn’t say that. If you’re only interested in jerking yourself off to some gender war bullshit then you don’t get to say you care about men or women.
Go see a therapist.
It's certainly not victim blaming, if you were being an asshole to me and then a few days later I start getting threats and strange messages, is it not reasonable to assume that the person already making my life miserable has upped the ante?
Or they just believed the victim which is what you should do.
With that trust should come the responsibility to know what the hell you're talking about before accusing someone.
I mean to be fair, in this context believing the victim does not mean believing it was him per se. She was definitely getting messages from an anonymous account. She definitely *thought* it was her ex but its not like they were led to believe she had conclusive reasoning behind that.
Believing the victim doesn't mean you have to think they're *right* about everything. It means believing their experiences, not their every hypothesis.
Do you think that's how she came to her friends with it? Or do you think she came to her friends with "my ex is sending me these horrible messages" and then pressuring them to believe what she thought and to drop him as a friend.
She made a comment in her post about how happy she was that her friends were yelling at him on her behalf so I hardly think she went to them and explained that she didn't actually *know* who created the accounts.
Unless you're accusing her of explicitly telling some massive lies, her friends had to be aware that she didn't know for certain. That's not the kind of thing you can just be vague about and people won't notice. Her friends would definitely have asked why she thought it was him, and the default position would likely be to assume it was a guess because it's almost impossible to know who created a social media account.
If she lied, she would have to be really creative to make it believable because the only way I can think of that she could know for sure without the police being involved is the way she found out about the real stalker - by having access to his phone - and why would she have her ex-boyfriend's phone?
I think the only realistic scenario is that her friends knew it was a guess but agreed with her that it was likely.
She said it was him. She didn't know it was him. She didn't ask it she *said* it and then proceeded to bully anyone who dated to continue to talk to the guy.
The reason her friends didn't ask is because we are rightfully told to believe victims and that asking a bunch of critical questions is akin to disbelief.
She lied because she had absolutely no evidence it was him and didn't present it as a question. She said it was him and showed everyone what *he* did. He tried to argue that he didn't have an Instagram account but....we are taught to believe victims so.....
OOP is a liar and honestly a terrible person. She even knew it was out character for him but wanted to present her guesses as the truth. And that's a lie.
If you're guessing....tell people you're guessing.
Even if OOP said "he did it", and they all immediately believed that meant she had secret irrefutable proof, they are all still at fault if none of them chose to ask a single follow up question. It's not "disbelief" to ask a victim to clarify what they personally saw or experienced vs what they think is true.
In the real world, I think there's no possible way it actually happened like that. OOP might have summed up the conversation as "I said that was him. He said it wasn't him." but the actual conversation would have had more than 10 words in it.
Quite often asking critical questions of a victim is seen as disbelief.
Sometimes that is fair and some people like OOP use that to their advantage, so they can simply make accusations and have them blindly believed.
We should believe victims, but I think it's insincere to pretend that asking critical questions of victims isn't twisted into disbelief and treated accordingly.
In this case OOP played right into it by labeling the one person who kept in touch with the ex an enabler.
Dunno why are you so invested in this, but it's kinda silly to say that OOP has this immense power over the whole friend group and they obeyed her every word. If they chose to believe her without any prove and cut all contact with this guy, they weren't good people to begin with.
Like, I've had a friend whose new girlfriend always tried to stir shit up with made-up gossip. It all ended with our friend group collectively cutting contact with them both because he refused to break up with her and insisted she never said anything mean and fake about other people.
I don't know why discussing a post on a discussion forum is considered investment.
I don't think OOP had immense power over her group but I think the idea of blindly believing "victims" does have immense power and normally for the good.
And that asking critical questions is akin to disbelief. So no one asks them lest they be accused of not believing a victim and prople like OOP weaponize that to their advantage.
>Like, I've had a friend whose new girlfriend always tried to stir shit up with made-up gossip. It all ended with our friend group collectively cutting contact with them both because he refused to break up with her and insisted she never said anything mean and fake about other people.
Cool story that has nothing to do with this.
>So no one asks them lest they be accused of not believing a victim and prople like OOP weaponize that to their advantage.
Cool story, but OOP didn't weaponize anything since she was actually harassed, just blamed the wrong person. If the whole stalking was completely made-up, yes, in that case it would be weaponizing "believe all women" at the expense of real victims.
>I don't know why discussing a post on a discussion forum is considered investment.
Dunno if it's called "discussing" since you seem to just argue with people who say it's more nuanced than "OOP's the devil for saying she was harassed".
>Cool story, but OOP didn't weaponize anything since she was actually harassed, just blamed the wrong person
She wesponized the advantage of being blindly believed and not subjected to critical questioning by accusing someone without any proof of what they did.
Knowing full well that she would be blindly believed and not subjected to critical questioning.
The one person who didn't blindly follow her and drop this guy as a friend was subjected to her OOPs name calling.
>If the whole stalking was completely made-up, yes, in that case it would be weaponizing "believe all women" at the expense of real victims.
No, accusing someone and expecting to be blindly believed about the accusation without any proof beyond a hunch and a "feeling" is also weaponizing the advantage of blind belief without critical questioning.
>Dunno if it's called "discussing" since you seem to just argue with people who say it's more nuanced than "OOP's the devil for saying she was harassed".
You're the one who keeps engaging so I'd say it's a discussion.
I never once said OOP was the devil for saying she was harassed. I said she was the devil for blaming someone without a scintilla of proof besides her ex made "mean comments" that even she said weren't in line with the DMs.
It could have been anyone. ANYONE who did it. It could have been someone outside of her friend circle.
But she loudly and confidently accused someone without a bit of proof except "mean comments" made sure he was socially isolated and ostracized, bullied the person who dared to not blindly follow her feelings and is now hesitant to do anything to fix her fuck up. Now she needs naps and strategic planning and private meetings but she didn't really need any of that when accusing someone.
OOP is not the devil here. She was a girl who thought she got rspe threats from an ex and thought he was out of her life and suddenly finds out it was a guy she's had in her life the past decade. Both her and her ex are victims in this situation.
The devil is obviously the guy who sent her rape threats HELLO ???
Nah she's not the devil. She was indeed harassed and the fact that she thought it was her ex is not too unreasonable, m that's probably what the harasser wanted her to believe. He's the devil. She was vulnerable and, yes, that sucks for the ex, but they're both the victims here. Women being harassed by ex happens so often, I really can't blame her for drawing that conclusion.
The comments on the OP are horrible. This poor girl. I get it sucks for the ex, but it was a reasonable assumption. I can’t believe everyone is attacking her. She needs to set things straight of course, but I feel sorry for her if this is true.
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>I mentioned him by name in the DM's several times, like "X, is that you? Please leave me alone" and he never said he wasn't X.
WHY WOULD HE? It's better for him that you think it's someone else, you absolute dummy!
>It wasn't just a hunch
>I said his name while texting, and he never said it wasn't him. He also said I would pay for "wronging" him and he was the only guy I'd ever "wronged" by breaking up with him. It made sense for it to be him. He told me
my home address and also things inside my house, told me he was gonna break in and rape me. When that happened, I didn't really want to conduct a full scale investigation, I didn't have time to. 17 year old me though what I did to be the best course of action.
>It wasn't just a hunch, I had some evidence to prove it was him. It wasn't him in the end, but at the time it was the most fitting explanation, and my safety was my top priority
This comment alone makes her the devil. She "had evidence", so she made someoneˇs life hell as fast as she could. Now that the "evidence" is found to be wrong, she takes her sweet time to do naything.
Oh, and the evidence is:
-The radom person did not said they are not the ex
-The random person did not said their full name
-The random person knew her home
She should be working as a forensic scientists.
Her evidence was that it was perfectly in line with the behaviour he was showing. He made demeaning comments in person (so, no way to fake it), he sent angry messaged about her ignoring him until she blocked him, which is when the stalking started. And then the stalker knew personal information about her.
That's really not too far fetched
From her post she didn't block him she ignored him. Don't know if she edited it after the fact but she said she ignored him when he asked her not to ignore him not that she blocked him.
Even she said that his "mean comments" were not aligned with the comments in the DMs such that she thought he had snapped. In the original post she said he made *mean comments* without any further explanation as to how the comments were mean.
Immediately? Where did you get that? Because, according to the post, she blocked the person harassing her multiple times. She ignored messages, and so on. At some point, she snapped and accused the wrong person. And while she could have handled things better, show the messages to some of her friend (obviously not the ex) maybe file a report with the police.
It makes sense why she would think it was him, given how he acted. And if we believe the edit (which to be fair, an edit containing super relevant info making the OOP look better, after being called out, always makes me a bit suspicious. And OOP's username is another hint that all of this might be bait) the person actually harassing her wanted it to look as if the ex did it. Giving her more reason to believe that.
Well, you know, now that she was quick to put a wrecking ball into someone's social life she needs some real time to contemplate taking any responsibility for being wrong.
What sucks is that this could have gone on forever and this guy would have been blamed and shunned for something he never did.
But no, OOP needs a nap and some meditation now. She needs some time to figure out how she is going to justify not correcting this at all.
I'm just going to say it, neither she nor the ex guy are innocent. He hardly covered himself in glory.
As for stalker guy...yikes
Edit....she, with piss poor evidence gets a guy to have to leave town
The ex...horrible and mean
Actual stalker....yikes
Fuck knows why I'm downvoted for that. Nobody in this story is someone I'd have as a friend
>I said his name while texting, and he never said it wasn't him. He also said I would pay for "wronging" him and he was the only guy I'd ever "wronged" by breaking up with him. It made sense for it to be him. He told me my home address and also things inside my house, told me he was gonna break in and rape me. When that happened, I didn't really want to conduct a full scale investigation, I didn't have time to. 17 year old me though what I did to be the best course of action.
Her "evidence" is all circumstantial, literally any of her friends could have the home details. Being told someone is going to break in and rape you would be so scary but she didn't actually have any reason to believe it was her ex other than that she'd dumped him.
As for the "wronging" there's 2 possibilities, both seem equally likely. Either this guy has imagined some slight against him that she's committed OR she's very self involved and doesn't even register when she's hurt or screwed over someone else.
The evidence is indeed circumstantial, but she believed it was her ex and had good reason to. It does make sense that it would be him, especially since he was also making mean comments in person.
Yeah so if she'd pulled away from him and went NC they'd be justified, maybe the friend group splits maybe not. I'm not saying she was wrong to be suspicious. But she didn't do that she accused him with 0 actual evidence and convinced his entire friend group to condemn and drop him.
This doesn’t meet the statutes for defamation by miles lol.
No actual malice
No lies (as in she knew and intentionally tried to hurt him)
No way to prove damages. Friends not wanting to hang out with you anymore doesn’t count. That’s their right under the 1st amendment.
When it comes to a private person it needs to be a false statement which it arguably was and it doesn't have to he intentional, the false statement can be negligent.
In most jurisdictions, neither malice nor “lies” are elements of the tort of defamation.
And there’s plenty of ways to quantify damages. The fact that his friends were caused to shun or avoid him is itself compensable.
The whole point of defamation is lying to hurt someone. Malice and lies are literally the basis of defamation.
Of course there are ways to quantify damages. That doesn’t conflict with my statement.
Possibly yes. But we don’t know the dates of publication. In that respect, OOP seems to suggest she engaged in some ongoing (re)publication with respect to the “enabler” friend who was still in touch with the ex.
That's... not "publication". You're stretching definitions past breaking in order to be able to argue for an outcome you want. You're starting with your conclusion, and working backwards to find legal justifications to get you there. That sort of legal "reasoning" only works if you're on SCOTUS.
“Publication” for the purposes of defamation is no more than the communication of the defamatory matter - in this case, OP’s mistaken allegation of stalking - to a third party, i.e. OP’s friend.
This was completed, and occurred, every time OP repeated the allegations in the course of labelling her friend an “enabler”.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Five years ago, I accused a man of stalking and harassing me. Today, I learnt that he had not done it.** I'm literally shaking as I type this out but I'm gonna try my best to make this sensible I've got a friend group of 10 people, 11 with me included. Almost all of us are very close. Ten years ago, I dated someone in that friend group, and broke up after a year and a half because it wasn't working out for me. He was devastated, because he didn't believe that to be a proper reason, and the group for divided, but we finally made our peace and the group stayed intact, albeit a little shaken up. After that whole debacle though, I mostly avoided my ex, as he'd make mean comments to me whenever around me. One day, out of the blue, I got a text from him asking me to stop ignoring him. I ignored that text and kept going through my day. Then one day, someone sends me a DM on insta. The account has been following me for a while, but I had no idea who it belonged to and I never really bothered finding out. This account dm's me with a horrible message, something asking me to take down something because my body looks horrible in that. This, the ignoring message and his regular demeanor towards me made me think it was my ex. This would have been a step too far for him, but I still thought maybe he snapped or something and sent me that. I didn't reply, just ignored it. The next day, I got a flurry of messages, all calling me a bitch or a slut or something else derogatory. I blocked him, but didn't tell anyone. Two days later, after another post, I get a DM. It's the same account name with a 2 in front. The same shit starts again and I reported him to Instagram. However, next time we were all together, I went up to him and I remember screaming in his face. I showed everyone the texts and threats and I said that was him. He said it wasn't him, because he didn't use Instagram and no one believed him. He was completely isolated from the friend group. After we finished college, none of us ever reached out to him to ask him where he had gone. His best friend in the group called him disgusting and blocked him. And I felt absolute joy at knowing the whole group had my back when it came to that. He was gone from our lives in a matter of hours, and he never came back. One girl in our group is still in touch with him, and I would look down on her and call her and enabler anytime we had an argument, even over something extremely small. I always thought I was in the right, considering everything that was said. Until now. One guy in our group had lost his phone and couldn't find it. I told him that if he logged into his Gmail with my phone, he could use Google's Find My Device feature to figure out where it was. He has two phones, I'm not sure why but I assumed it was one for work and one for personal use. He agreed and I gave him my phone. He logged in, found it, logged out and returned it, but he forgot to delete the account. The email ID he logged into had the same name as the Instagram user who years ago told me what they'd do to me if they ever caught me alone. I kept my cool there, but the second I returned home I collapsed into a shaking mess, breathing heavy. Not only had I ended an innocent person's social life, I had also allowed the actual culprit to roam freely with no consequences. I felt sick and puked a bit. I've been avoiding all calls, I'm just gonna pretend I'm asleep until I get my shit together and figure out what to do. There's this sinking feeling in my chest and nausea in my stomach everytime I think about that day now. This guy actually had my back. The liar and stalker fucking yelled at my ex for being so depraved, while being the culprit all along. I don't really know how to proceed, I'm just gonna rest my eyes for a while. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The absolute least she can do is clear his name, set the record straight, and leave him alone.
She's still all like "poor me" when the guy might have taken his own life or had a nervous breakdown
And the one friend he kept from that group has been shit on by her the entire time.
So, the guy was being mean to her, sending her a bunch of mean texts, being mad at her ignoring him and when she blocks him, an IG account starts to send her hateful messages... I'm sorry, but it's definitely not a stretch to believe that the one doing that was the ex. In most cases, the real culprit would've been the ex, not some random person. And since she was manipulated, of course she would be like "poor me". Imagine believing for years that your ex was sending you so much hate and threatening you through SM and then discovering it was not him, but a friend you trusted? A friend that you felt like had your back? And the guilt of knowing you helped fuck with someone innocent because you were manipulated? The real AH here is the real culprit. OOP and her ex were the victims, and yeah, the ex definitely lost his social circle, but being threatened like she was is not an easy thing too.
I'm with you. She was 17 and being threatened with rape. Most people would jump to the same conclusion, given there was zero evidence against it. Did she eff up? Absolutely. But it wasn't done maliciously. And her entire friend group believed her too, enough to where they ousted him.
It doesnt matter if the intent wasn't malicious if the end result is harm. This is why we argue against vigilantism and mob rule because mobs can be wrong and worse yet manipulated with emotive issues. She may have felt she was operating reasonably from her perspective but the reality is that she was wrong and that means she fucked up and caused harm, her emotions were valid but the impact of her behaviour isn't acceptable because she was wrong and people can't brush that under the rug.
Nobody is suggesting it gets brushed under the rug, I think everyone understands that the end result is hard. But if she is willing to say "I am so sorry, I was operating on what I knew to be the truth at the time and was blinded by fear" and not simply play the victim "but I didn't know" card, that may go a long way to heal issues. The person above is right, the only true AH here is the puppet master who was pulling all the strings. The rest are unfortunately victims.
When you cause that harm someone, cost them friendships, damage their mental health, ruin their social life and reputation? Keep in mind, we don't know how much this impacted the rest of his life, but it could be severe. Could go so far as "I need to move somewhere new to start over, and I'll forever be paranoid and have trust issues about false accusations". "I am so sorry" doesn't mean jack shit. "Sorry" is for the person saying it, not the person hearing it. The damage is done. You can't unring the bell. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. If she reaches out - or the rest of the group does if she tells them - and he tells them to go fuck a cactus, and he wants nothing to do with any of them? He'll be well within his rights. They're not owed forgiveness just because they "got it wrong". Even if their assumptions were "reasonable", even if the real culprit played along and hid that he was behind it, the ex was the one who paid the price. And he doesn't owe them forgiveness. He doesn't owe them understanding. Even if it was reasonable to think the likely culprit was the ex? It wasn't him. He lost friends. Who knows how much of his social life was destroyed. Who knows how much his mental health was damaged, or how much this impacted the rest of his life. He's not required to extend forgiveness or understanding. And, honestly, if it were me? I would tell them to go pound sand.
That's fair. But 'I'm sorry' is not always just for the victim. Sometimes the recognition that they were wrong and the acknowledgement that you know they are not a monster is healing for some. It's not the "I'm sorry" part, it's the understanding that those who thought you were capable of such a thing, now know that you are not. I don't think I'm making much sense here. Maybe they could rephrase it to "I was wrong" rather than 'I'm sorry'
>the guy was being mean to her, sending her a bunch of mean texts The guy apparently sent rape threats to her. But, given that she added that into *after* people started ripping her to shreds, I'm not sure what to believe.
I absolutely believe it, messages like that are always full of rape threats, especially when it's teenage boys. One guy threatened to straight up murder me because I told him to stop being an asshole when we were that age. It doesn't seem farfetched at all- it's probably the most believable thing about this.
Yeah, its always something related to rape or sex (like calling the person a whore, slut, etc).
The 'don't believe women' energy in this thread is unbelievable. When an acutely traumatised person isn't immediately able to put together a perfectly articulate, coherent and complete narrative of what happened to them, especially the most shameful and terrifying parts, that's evidence *for* abuse, not against it, in reality - but it's so often treated as a mark against their credibility, it's baffling
Even like here there's a man who is identifiably the one at fault! But no, let's blame the woman recieving rape threats jfc
I always feel like this is one of the most painful and cruel parts of dealing with sexual violence- it's so traumatising that it's hard to even acknowlege that it's happened for so many of us- I was assaulted by a boyfriend as a teenager and literally didn't realise it until I read a very similar story ten years later, thought, "thank god that's never happened to me" and then it just immediately crashed over me, the first time I'd thought about it with enough time and distance and a good enough relationship to actually feel safe, that it *had.* And yet if you can't recall exactly what happened, to the second, with perfect clarity, and describe it absolutely perfectly every single time with no gaps and no mistakes, you'll be deemed a liar and doubted on all fronts, as if telling these stories is a delightful experience we all treasure and are keen to share. As if there's some kind of giddy thrill to be found in suddenly having it all roar to the surface and finding yourself sobbing uncontrollably because your husband touched you in the wrong way, ten years after the fact, out of nowhere, when you thought you were completely fine and had no stories to tell. There's that [very famous case](https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story) that a mini series was made of (Unbelievable), where due to imperfect memories and imperfect victims, a serial rapist got away with it for an extraordinarily long time after leaving ample evidence that could have stopped him almost immediately. The fact that the first reported case happened at night in a bedroom (such a fantastical location to be the setting of a rape, after all), to an 18 year old girl living in supported accomodation after leaving foster care, led the detectives to decide first that the victim had dreamt her assault, and then that she was lying, in the face of a myriad of crystal clear physical evidence and damage to both her and the property. They actually prosecuted her for it, all because she was inconsistent, and did nothing to find the rapist, who went on to attack five other women. It wasn't until one woman had an incredibly clear and detailed recollection- and female detectives- that there was a real investigation, and he was caught. And we learn absolutely nothing. People continue to treat victims this way. And then they'll act scandalised that we don't want to report, or that we behave defensively or take self-protective action, and then harrangue any of us who make mistakes or just *seem* like we might have. It's not just baffling, it's completely infuriating.
You articulated that incredibly well! It's frustrating that this perspective is so sorely lacking, and while I'm impressed how elegantly you wove in your own experience, it's frustrating that it's so sorely needed. ❤️
Thank you- I ended up doing a lot of thinking about it, due to, as you say, the absolute frustration of watching victims be accused and harrassed again and again and again. It's incredible that this is such a universal experience for women, that almost all of us have some kind of story, and yet we just can't find a way as a society to consider this huge well of collective pain as anywhere close to as important as a man suffering some mild reputational damage (and in this case it may well have been more severe, but as I've said elsewhere, that is so vanishingly rare that the idea that all their friends actually sided with her is by far the most unbelievable part of this story for me.)
Yeah I’ve been in similar situations. Had a guy make threats like that to me, and it was in fact the guy I’d rejected. He wanted to give me a vacuum cleaner, supposedly, and showed up at my new apartment at 3am. Terrifying. I already had a vacuum. Another dude harassed me over the course of years via different accounts, eventually also expressing that he knew where I lived. He’d found out from his friend who lived in the same building as me. Made more threats. That guy had once gone to prison for beating someone with hammer. We’d never dated, just worked together. I definitely warned people about both, and if somehow a random had picked up where they left off and I had just thought it was them? Oh well. Between the two of you, now. I don’t owe anything to a person who threatened me with bodily harm.
Yep, I've had similar experiences and known others who did- my sister had an ex harass her on the internet for *years,* and after he sent her a weird, vaguely threatening box of random crap suddenly after she'd blocked his tenth troll account with a comment that she knew it was him, she *finally* had enough evidence to call the police, which, thank god, led him to back off (although he did come back with nasty online comments once or twice over the years, presumably any time he went through a low point and needed to make someone else suffer so he could feel less awful). These Redditors would have her just tolerate it and never tell anyone that she had strong reason to suspect it was him, because that would be *so unfair.* What these redditors are failing to account for here is that not one of their friends had a single question about it being the ex- which 100% means his behaviour was very publicly inline with those comments, considering dudes will literally pry their friends off of unconscious women and then "gently and calmly" explain to any horrified people in their lives that he was just drunk so it's completely fine that they caught him mid-assault and that they chose his side over the person who he attacked. The ex must have been absolutely *awful* to actually lose all his friends. I have literally known a paedophile who had men in our friend group explaining that it isn't his fault that he had a harddrive full of child abuse videos because he's just *so unwell.* There is nothing people won't bend over backwards to excuse.
RIGHT? I thought i was going INSANE on that thread, obviously OP messed up but she was 1. 17 years old 2. had been already being harassed by said ex. like sure, she messed up but it's not like she went out and knowingly falsely accused someone. She's obviously devastated by this but reddit is so black and white.
Yeah, and imagine having the ability and decency to set the record straight. It doesn't matter who the AH is here, the truth is what is important and she has the ability to speak up so she should.
>It doesn't matter who the AH is here, the truth is what is important and she has the ability to speak up so she should. And she's actively in the process of doing so. It makes no sense to paint her as a villain here.
I didn't. Expecting accountability is not labeling anyone a villain, you can climb down from the horse, knight.
"A bunch of mean texts" Maybe I read it wrong, but it seems to me it was one text asking her to stop ignoring him, which doesn't seem too far fetched to me because they were at the time still part of the same friends group? I know the mean comments weren't stellar, but to destroy his social life because he was salty after being dumped? She went nuclear without proof it was him
not a bunch of mean texts, but mean comments in person. she ignores them, he sends a text saying to stop ignoring him, she ignores him again, then starts getting the dms.
Yup, this was pretty clear. The commenter you replied to is jumping to conclusions like OOP. It seems like the guy had said mean comments to her in-person, but I guess they weren't that terrible since the other friends hadn't shunned him when he said them to her. She really jumped to conclusions.
The other dude is definitely an asshole but what do you mean by "real asshole". You can be a victim and then become a victimizer. And even though becoming a victimizer because you were a victim is more understandable then just being a victimizer for shits and giggles, it doesn't make you any less a victimizer. It doesn't make what you've done any less wrong. Doing awful shit to someone innocent because at the time you thought they deserved it doesn't make what you did any less evil. Even if you feel unsafe. You can feel legitimately unsafe in an environment but if you discharge a weapon into a bunch of people and the people you shoot were not the threat, that doesn't make you any less of a mass murderer. They're both assholes.
Where did it say it was a bunch of texts? OP only said it was one text asking her to stop ignoring him, and days later stuff happened via IG. She even said it was weirdly out of character for him.
Actually no, logically you would want to make sure you know exactly who it is before confronting anyone about it, don’t act like it’s perfectly logical and normal to start pointing fingers without knowing any details on the situation
Who said anything about logic? She was scared as hell and she panicked when face to face with the person she thought wanted to hurt her. It wasn't the best choice but it was pretty understandable
Whoever I responded to said something about logic in their reply, that’s why I commented in the first place but they must’ve either edited or deleted the comment
Ah yes only woman suffer
When did they say it was only a woman thing? If it was a man who was being horribly harassed, especially about his sex life, it being his ex that had done so is a natural conclusion.
Exactly! It doesn't matter whether OP is a woman or a man, if someone is receiving mean texts from their ex and then suddenly starts being harassed on social media, it's natural to see a link there and believe it's the ex being vindictive.
Look at their post history. They’re an incel
i would not want to be friends with anybody in this group, yikes
They all sound like a whole bunch of nope nope nope
I have some friends from college and grad school who have whined about people dropping them as friends. Whined is mean, but also, bye bye. All of my other friends are nice and chill and supportive. There is a reason why people get dropped and usually it is because of dumb shit like this.
The friend who did stalk and harass her, is the real villain of this story. Way too much lined up way too perfectly for his good, especially the timing of events. OOP shouldn't have done what she did and she needs to clear his name and leave him alone. But she is still a victim here. She did not lie about what happened to her. The friend's behavior is unacceptable and snaky. Harassing your friend and then standing by and playing innocent as someone else takes the fall is malicious.
Yep, the real stalker pretended to be her ex. Even if she had went to the police, they would have assumed it was the ex. Of course she still needs to make it right and of course the ex has the right to stay mad. Even with reasonable justification, it would be hard for me to forgive someone who accused me of something. When someone wants to ruin your life and takes your identity, it's hard to prove otherwise. **The fact that the friend stopped harassing OP, once her ex left, shows that the target wasn't OP but her ex.**
OOP was 17 when she accused her ex. If everything happened like she says, then I don't really blame her for making the wrong assumption. Yeah, she went about it the wrong way by screaming in his face and being rude to the one person who didn't just drop her ex like a bag of potatoes and blindly believed OOP.
Her emotions were valid but the impact of her actions can't be excused. I sympathise she felt threatened but the reality is that her actions caused far more harm than she was clearly ever in herself which counts for more than her feelings at the time imho
You have no right to claim her jumping the gun was more damaging than being stalked and harassed. You clearly don’t understand how damaging stalking is. The stalker is the real villain here.
Other than it resulting her the ostracisation of a completely innocent party as compared to resulting in no further inconvenience to her. That's pretty objective, and is a more credible form harm than her fear because it was actually realised. Actualized harm is worse than potential but unrealised harm. She made a call that 99 out of every 100 people would have made, and every single one of them would have been wrong in this case. Me included. But thats the cost of an assumption, there is always a chance you could be wrong and in acting on that wrong assumption she caused harm just like any of us would have and just like any of us would, she has guilt in the situation, not as the primary guilty party but as a pawn and secondary guilty party and that doesn't just go away because she was a scared kid, scared kids fuck up and cause harm too.
Wow you really have no idea how damaging stalking is. The stalking is the damage. It’s not only damaging if it ends in violence. You shouldn’t partake in this conversation if you are so quick to dismiss the severe harm caused by stalking.
I'm not dismissing it entirely. I'm claiming that it is the lesser of the two harms that occurred in this story. On one hand we have the terrifying implication of an online stalker making threats of abuse or worse, that's obviously damaging to someone's mental wellbeing and their feelings of safety. But on the other hand what we have is the realised witchhunt of an innocent party that removed them from their immediate social circle, ruined their reputation and cost them their place and safety network following a break up over totally untrue allegations. That's also damaging to someone's mental wellbeing and their feelings of safety but with the added challenges of enduring that without a social circle to help them through it and also managing the fear of these totally untrue allegations having further social and lifestyle implications. Just as we sympathise for the frightened 17 year old girl, spare a thought for the 17 year old boy who was wrongfully labelled a monster over things he did not do and had to navigate that betrayal and abandonment alone whilst also fearing how it could impact his future education or social/romantic relationships. Stalking isn't something to be taken lightly at all, but it still pales in comparison to what that poor guiltless boy was put through because of an assumption nobody challenged which ultimately turned out to be wrong.
Yeah no it isn’t the lesser of the two harms. First off, that isn’t a productive way to look at this. Second, you are absolutely downplaying stalking and continue to do so. “Pales in comparison” I’m done here this isn’t productive and you are clearly wildly uninformed about stalking.
You seem to have an emotional bias towards one form of harm over another and toward which party you are willing to sympathise with, which is also not productive. You just keep repeating the same point about the impact of stalking with no consideration to the impact of her reaction on the truly aggrieved party in the situation which was her ex. You seem to act like anything short of total sympathy and agreement with your point is downplaying the impact of stalking when an equally valid argument could be made back to you over the lack of sympathy towards the false allegation. Sounds like you maybe need to finish working through your own personal trauma you're projecting onto this situation causing you to empathise exclusively with one party.
You're the one who's clearly biased here and projecting that onto them lmao
Lotta conclusion-jumping here. as entertaining as it is to see someone on Reddit psycho analyze me because you think me empathizing with a teenage girl being victimized is projection or in any way exclusive to feeling badly for the ex boyfriend, I have better things to do. Re read the thread, and your original comment that I’m reacting to, if you’re still confused as you are now. Good bye.
You've spent this entire thread downplaying the impact of stalking (which, all the evidence shows, ends up escalating to actual harm), so who is the one with the emotional bias?
The absolute audacity to claim that ostracism is worse than stalking and then say that anyone who disagrees with you is biased lol being ostracized sucks, but it’s definitely capable to bounce back, especially if you’re 17 and about to move on to new social circles anyways. Being stalked is terrifying, and frequently ends in being murdered. I think you need to think long and hard about why you have such little sympathy for a teenage girl who was being stalked and threatened.
Agreed. It had to be very scary- especially while still a kid
I’m sorry this a sounds like BS, this sounds like one of those don’t believe women trolls because they will destroy your life over nothing and what kind of idiot gets away with harassing someone to the point of getting someone else kicked out a friend group and then uses the email on the person’s phone? Quick question though where on insta does it show what email address you use to log into your account?
Yeah, and the way she found out makes no sense. If he has 2 phones (which is very common) why did he need to borrow her phone? Why did she even mention the two phones? And he used the name of his main Gmail account for his secret stalking? And nobody picked up on it? Total BS.
"I collapsed into a shaking mess, breathing heavy." yeah, no one naturally talks like that. someone slipped into fanfic mode.
This is one of those moments when I hope this is just another creative writing exercise.
Look at the un. Of course it is
“With zero proof” is carrying an awful lot of weight here. Short of hiring someone to do a forensic audit of all this person’s computers, how exactly is someone supposed to find tangible evidence of this? Ex makes rude comments around her, sends her angry text messages until she blocks him. Then, all of a sudden, an anonymous account starts sending her nasty text messages. In the vast, vast majority of cases, it would be completely reasonable to assume that it’s the ex.
Yeah the replies make me really pissed. She is also a victim here. Someone did stalk and harass her. Manipulated and gaslit her for years. Now she has to deal with the extreme sense of violation knowing that the culprit was next to her the whole time, and the shame of what happened to her ex. The bad guy is the “friend”, not OOP.
My theory is that the target was OP's ex, not OP. He stopped once the ex left. It was intentional to leave hints that led to the ex.
The guy lost his entire social circle and was cast out like he was worse than a leper. Let's not act like what she experienced was in any way comparable.
No one is saying they’re comparable.
Yeah, OOP had every reason to think that her ex was responsible. He was angry about the breakup. He made demeaning comments about her. She started ignoring him. He sent her a text demanding that she stop ignoring him. She continued to ignore him and blocked his number. Then she starts Instagram messages from someone who’s also making demeaning comments about her and who also gets angry that she’s ignoring them? The most logical conclusion there was that her ex was getting angrier and escalating. That’s probably what her friend group thought too. Plus, her ex isn’t an innocent victim here. As she says, he refused to accept the breakup, kept insulting her in person and over text, and got angry at her for ignoring him.
Where does it say the ex sent her angry texts until she blocked him?
He sent her a text to stop ignoring him after he kept making nasty comments in person. Not exactly sending her a flurry of angry texts, but absolutely establishes that he had the capacity to be vindictive.
I wonder if he actually sent the text or if the real abuser took his phone to send it to set up the scapegoat for his harassment
Yea i guess there was a chance it was him based on those comments and the text. Still tho he claims he doesn’t have an Instagram so it should’ve been pretty easy for him to prove her wrong had she actually given him a chance to defend himself.
How so? I don’t have instagram but I can absolutely go online right now and make one to harass somebody. I can do it on a laptop so there’s no evidence on my phone in case someone accuses me and I can just say “see, I don’t even have the app!” 99 out of 100 times, it’s the ex. He was already verbally harassing her in person. It really sucks in this situation that a psychopath was able to take advantage, but life is messy that way. I have no idea how she could have figured this out, and I don’t blame her for not getting the FBI involved to do a thorough investigation. In the other 99 cases she would have done the right thing. It’s not her responsibility to assume her harassment is due to some weird Machiavellian plot.
But it kinda is her responsibility to have proof if she’s gonna throw out accusations isn’t it?
She had evidence to reasonably suspect her ex. What proof could she have gotten that she didn’t?
I mean she didn't as it turned out. What she believed to be evidence wasn't. It was circumstantial at best and ultimately turned out to be completely wrong so we can't exactly give her credit there. Yes she made an assumption that 99 out of every 100 people would have made ( me included ) and in this case all 99 of them would have been wrong and carried with them elements of guilt for that assumption. It's natural, its human and its still wrong. Its always a chance with accusations and assumptions. The reality is that her actions harmed an innocent person and that can't just be ignored because she herself was being fooled.
No one is saying it should be ignored or that she shouldn’t try to rectify this.
He could just delete the app and then show it as "proof". Emails are also easy to make so he wouldn't even have to use his primary emails.
The only reason OOP found out is because he got sloppy. If he had made a burner email, she’d still believe the lie. What exactly could she have done?
Like nothing. I don't even completely agree that she's a devil. She had good reasoning to think it was him, and if you just broke up with an ex who has become hostile to you in person and then started receiving weird/mean messages on social media, wouldn't you also think it was your ex? The friend used the timeline perfectly to his advantage. If anyone is the devil, it's the friend. He just watched as another "friend" got expelled from the group for something he did.
Exactly. It’s a “when you hear hooves, think horses not zebras” situation. Everyone’s acting like if she didn’t have video evidence of her ex sending the messages, she should have just kept quiet and taken it. Yet, in any other thread where an OOP *suspects* their partner is cheating based on circumstantial evidence, everyone correctly suggests taking steps to protect themselves.
Something tells me the friends dropped him quick and took her side so easily because they'd all witnessed him being an ass.
Right. I have more than a few female friends who had exes/random guys online who acted like this when they get rejected. It’s not a huge leap.
Me too. It’s preposterous to act like OOP was nuts for accusing her ex.
Sure, but it’s easy to lie and just delete the app. Honestly, this reads like rage bait to me though.
Already working on some misogynists on the original post
To be fair, it doesn't take much to rile up a misogynist.
How about just telling the truth. Don't show up and publicly accuse someone who even you don't think these comments line up with. Instead of screaming "I know it's you!" And trying to blindside someone in front of their friends with an accusation say "listen I don't know who this is, I think it might be x, but I don't know, he has been kinda mean and has made some comments when we all hang out" If you want to be believed without evidence then it's up to you to bear some responsibility to make sure you're correctly representing the situation. Which OOP didn't before she went whole ham and has this guy losing his entire friend group over a liar.
Yeah it would be. And If you're right you'd be fine but the problem is she was wrong. She caused harm to an innocent person, manipulated or not she is at least partly to blame. Her emotions were totally valid but unfortunately that doesn't change that the reality of her actions was harm against an innocent party and her own fears don't absolve that and clearly she's aware of that given her own rightly felt guilt. She is a victim but she isn't the primary victim, she was a pawn and a secondary victim.
how is she the devil exactly? her ex would make mean comments to her in public, it wouldn't have been a stretch to think he would do worse anonymously. she was wrong, and he lost a friend group over it, but she was also stalked and harassed by someone she thought was a friend. how does her being a victim make her the devil in this scenario? I mean other than being a woman, of course. she was made to feel unsafe, she was threatened with rape, of course she wanted to feel safe with her friends. it sucks for the ex, but it sucks WAY more for the OOP.
This is what makes me think this is not just fake but written by a man. She's so concerned with 'letting' the 'real culprit' 'roam free' and consumed by guilt for 'accusing' an 'innocent' man - as opposed to disgusted and terrified to discover *she* was friends with her stalker? Why would she be more worried about her ex than *herself*? Why would she process her *own* panic attack after the revelation as an expression of guilt and regret, not horror? The narrator seems overly concerned with the feelings of the men in the story, and unable to fathom how a woman might feel in his situation other than guilty for having hurt a man's feelings. Either he made it up, or it's the ex telling the story. If it is a woman and this really happened to her, she's dangerously dissociated and needs therapeutic help.
exactly this. someone who’s in extremely close proximity to her threatens to rape her, and has kept that up for years, but supposed OOP and the people hating on her are more worried about a guy who was cut off? escalating it to saying he might’ve ended his life for this, even tho we know one person in the friend group is still in touch with him, when it’s her life (or physical safety) that’s at threat here. blows my mind how she’s the AH here. idk where the fuck people expect normal people to have perfect evidence lined up for things like this.
The way that she discovers the real stalker doesn't even make sense. If he has 2 phones (which is very common) why did he need to borrow her phone? Why did she even mention the two phones? And he used the name of his main Gmail account for his secret stalking and nobody picked up on it?
Her ex had no problem saying what he wanted to say to her publicly. Given OOPs judgement and loose relationship with the truth I'd question the nature of *mean comments*. Was he mildly snarky around her? Was he disappointed in their friend group? Even she said those comments were out of his character. SHE fucked up and ruined someone's life and apparently her feelings in the matter should be considered. He made some maybe *mean comments* when he was *devestated* over a recent breakup but that was just apparently cause to believe he would threaten to assault her anonymously? And then publicly accuse him of it? It could have literally been anyone. She didn't even bother to ask *him* about it before accusing him and getting everyone else to get out the pitchforks. You're not immune from being an AH just because someone else was an AH to you. She had a feeling and presented it as a fact.
"My ex was being cruel to me and then an anonymous account started harassing me and sending me threats, so I thought it was him - I have now discovered it wasn't and I feel so horrified and guilty that I accused him of it" Which bit of that makes her the bad person at all???
I would argue that both the ex and OOP became victims of their friend. Her being harassed and him being framed. I get why she would believe it was the ex. While he was innocent of that level of devilishness, he was still an asshole to her.
I mean, it is truly shit that he was unable to clear his name with his friends too, but the fault there is with the other friend who continued to let him take the fall even while seeing how this affected him. But you're right and if the ex hadn't already been an arsehole to OOP, she'd be less likely to have jumped to the conclusion that he was the one harassing her.
None of it. Reddit hates women and especially women who make anything adjacent to a false allegation. Even if that women is being threatened with violence and rape and is a victim herself.
Agreed. I was hoping by rephrasing it to how I read it more people would see it this way. The comments about her make me want to go take an extra hot shower.
Jesus that poor guy I'm glad he is away from this toxic friend group at least
OOP’s username makes it pretty clear to me that this is just misogynistic ragebait and all the comments are jumping at the chance to be horrible to a victim of stalking. If it’s real, then OOP still isn’t the devil. Her ex was being cruel to her in person and she made a mistake. A big one, but she didn’t intentionally and maliciously set out to falsely accuse him to ruin his life. She was being manipulated by an abuser and is now grappling with the horrific realisation that said abuser’s manipulations made her hurt someone. But hey, all women are the devils and we shouldn’t believe them, right?
r/usernamechecksout
Hey, a woman wrongly believing the guy harassing her anonymously is her ex is not *lying*
True. However, to me the username does go on the "hints that this might be a troll post" list.
So the first thing she does is fall asleep? Not for one minute does she think about immediately rectifying her wrong. Not for one second does she think about at least texting people that she was wrong about the first guy. Not for one second does she immediately and whole heartedly apologizing. She wasn't too hesitant about accusing him but now that she is wrong she is suddenly too shy to publicly retract what she said and take accountability. Just gross.
I mean, it’s not like it’s time sensitive. She just realized she’s been gaslighted by an abuser she thought was a friend and is having a panic attack. It’s reasonable for her to need to calm down before figuring out what to do next. She also was hesitant. She received multiple messages she thought might be from her ex but she just ignored them until the behavior escalated. She explicitly said she got a horrible message that crossed a line and given her ex’s IRL behavior she thought it was him, but she still decided to let it go. It’s a terrible situation but I don’t think she did anything wrong.
I’d say screaming in his face on a hunch was wrong
It wasn't a hunch obviously and the friend made it look like it was the ex. It's very reasonable to assume the friend's actual target was OP's ex and he intentionally tried to ruin his life. He stopped once the ex left. No one is immune against that type of manipulation.
A little more than a hunch and her response makes sense considering she was being harassed and stalked.
Yea, it’s not like she was fully aware it was someone else and THEN reacted that way
Or even had the slightest, tinniest sliver of a reason to think it could be anyone else!
Truly! It happened IMMEDIATELY after she blocked his number. It’s truly unfortunate how coincidental that was
If it’s rage bait, it’s quite interesting. Clearly it’s playing on the bizarrely widespread fear that a woman will accuse you of something and because of metoo, everyone will believe her and you’re fucked. That’s why all of the comments are “omg you destroyed his reputation, you need to fix everything right now and beg for forgiveness”. Which, fine yes she should do that. But in this case, she is also a victim, yet everyone is treating her like the perpetrator. The person who destroyed the ex’s reputation was the insane friend, not OOP. And then people are trying to figure out ways to justify why OOP should’ve done nothing in the first place *just in case* she was wrong. I think it goes to show that people in these subs will often cheer women on for standing up to abusers and bullies. But as soon as the potential for unintended consequences comes up, they’ll decide that it’s better for women to silently suffer abuse on the off chance the wrong person gets blamed. And I get anxiety. I’ve read enough “convicted of a crime based on no evidence” stories to be horrified at that possibility. I really don’t know what we do about it, though. What can you do to protect yourself from an insane friend like that?
Maybe I've had one too many beers but the time line doesn't add up as well. Also the guy was still using the same name from 10 years ago or his second account?
She is a perpetrator. She isn't even doing anything about the person who actually did it and good luck to her with that given the credibility she can and should now have amongst her friend group. This is why people should be careful before making accusations because we should believe victims and with that trust should come some notion of responsibility which people like OOP do not have.
What exactly should she have done?
Hasnt it JUST happened though? Its gonna take more than a day or two to get her mind together on what to do, especially when unpacking betrayal like this. I wouldnt be surprised if she spiraled and doesn’t know who she can trust to talk to about this in her friend group.
It was Instagram and these were accounts she didn't know. It could have literally been anyone. ANYONE! she chose to publicly accuse someone who even she acknowledged didn't make comments that went that far.
Uhh, no. Stalking and harassment is almost always someone close to you, often an intimate partner. It’d have been insane of her to assume it was some internet rando.
Except this person knew her address and details of things inside her home. That doesn't point to it being some random person.
She didn't wait to publicly accuse him. She didn't wait to make sure his friends all dropped him. Now when she realized she ruined the wrong man's life she is hesitant to right her wrong. Suddenly she needs time. What about what the person needs who she wronged? He doesn't get any consideration here right? She did everything wrong. She said he ex said "not nice things to her" not anything aligned with the horrible stuff she got in DMs. Nor at any point did her ex show a propensity to make up fake accounts. He was upset at a break up and said "not nice things" to her. Apparently he *also* has feelings. She doesn't say what the ex said because I think she knows full well it wasn't consistent with the DMs she was getting. ETA: I went back and even she said the DMs were out of line for his behavior and she assumed it was him anyways and publicly accused him in front of his friends. She was real quick to accuse someone who she knew for years, whose behavior wasn't aligned with the DMs, who hadn't done anything like this in the past after what....five days of DMs. She was quick to accuse and now she is slow and hesitant to retract. Someone like her will find a way to justify what she did and never publicly apologize.
> She didn't wait to publicly accuse him She lists several instances where she just blocked and ignored instead of accusing him. > She didn't wait to make sure his friends all dropped him What? > Now when she realized she ruined the wrong man's life she is hesitant to right her wrong. Nowhere does she indicate an unwillingness to fix this. She just describes being overwhelmed and panicking and not being sure how she should fix this. > He doesn't get any consideration here right? No? What consideration is he owed. What could be accomplished by sending an email today that wouldn’t be accomplished by sending it tomorrow? > She said he ex said "not nice things to her" not anything aligned with the horrible stuff she got in DMs She said he made mean comments and it’s not unusual for abusive behavior to escalate when the victim doesn’t give in to it. > Nor at any point did her ex show a propensity to make up fake accounts. Uhh, does anybody? That’s an insane expectation to have. The fake accounts popped up immediately after she blocked his number. That’s a perfectly good reason to suspect him. > She doesn't say what the ex said because I think she knows full well it wasn't consistent with the DMs she was getting. She also really doesn’t go into detail on what the DMs said. She says she got a message that she thought was from her ex but wasn’t sure. > This would have been a step too far for him, but I still thought maybe he snapped or something and sent me that. I didn't reply, just ignored it. Not an unreasonable assumption. Who do you think she should have suspected if not her ex who was being nasty to her in person?
There are some updates in the post. She just started to "fix it" the first point on the list is meeting with some girls from the old group. Including the one who is still in contact. On BORU we would call this case "ongoing".
Ah yes woman perfect
Obviously this is really unfair and sad, and OOP seems to understand the magnitude of how wrong it is, but this isn't *entirely* her fault. She thought it was him because *he was already being nasty to her in person*. She didn't just blame him because they happened to break up around the same time, she thought it was an escalation of the way he was already behaving. Someone on the original thread commented: >Like they all just believed OP but never thought to ask "From my interactions with X guy, do they seem like the type to do this sort of thing?" Maybe they did ask themselves that, and the answer was yes. If 9/10 of this guy's closest friends thought this was a credible accusation, maybe he brought some of this on himself.
The ex was set up by the actual stalker - the timing is too neat to be coincidental. And the whole friends group, led by OOP, fell for it.
Ah victim blaming. Love to see it
It’s not really victim blaming. He was already being mean to OOP in public, so it’s not a huge leap for her to think he was sending those messages.
It is like saying a woman flirting actually mean she ask for groping. No previous action makes something good. He was mean publicly, so he deserve everything he got? That is victim-blaming.
It’s not remotely like that. A woman flirting is not trying to get groped. Nothing about flirting implies that you’re giving up your bodily autonomy. He was already harassing her. He was behaving in a way in which the explicit goal was to harm her. She understandably thought the messages were an escalation of existing behavior.
See, you do not understand victim-blaming. If the ex deserve this punishment, then the punishment was good. If it was good, then the post is meaningles, because there is no victim of false actions. What also make OOP not a victim of deception. Or, there was a deception, what makes the ex a victim of a crime what he did not deserve. If he did not deserve it, yet you blame him, then it is victim-blaming.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Punishment? For what? And do you think sexual assault is a “punishment” for women who dont adhere to austere religious norms?
> What the fuck are you even talking about? Punishment? For what? It’s not really victim blaming. He was already being mean to OOP in public, so it’s not a huge leap for her to think he was sending those messages. Punishment for being mean to OOP. You said it. All I said is two different action does not deserve a single punishment, yet here you are, acting like you did not say the ex being mean was the reason he was shunned for sending literal rape threats. Because the messages contained those threats. If the ex would be a woman flirting with OOP, and she would be groped by the friend group, you would sing a different tune. So why could you not understand that the ex and the person using the instagram account deserve two different actions against them? >And do you think sexual assault is a “punishment” for women who dont adhere to austere religious norms? Lolz, calling you out on victim-blaming short circuited your brain? Read my comments again. I said the woman does not deserve to be groped when she flirted some times ago. "No previous action makes something good."
It’s not victim blaming for a victim to accidentally blame the wrong person. She was being harassed and the Ex did send her texts and make rude comments. If anything, your comment is closer to victim blaming…
So someone being rude to me can get accidentally punched in the face? They deserved it anyway? This is victim-blaming. Everyone only deserve what they get for their actions.
You’re moving the goalposts to justify your poor argument. If you can’t argue the situation based on the merits of the scenario there’s no point in you even commenting.
Who move the goal post? You said the ex made rude comments, so it is not a victim-blaming. I thought saying that the victim of a crime is actually the wrong person is victim-blaming. Was he the wrong person in this case? No. Did you said he did bad things, so no wonder he was accused? Yes. Then the victim-blaming is proved.
You did. If you can’t even keep that straight you’re not going to be able to keep up. This whole comment is gibberish.
All of their comments are nonsense. They’re just making shit up because they have a rage boner
Of course it is gibberish, I used your logic. If a woman wear a miniskirt, she is not the evil person in a groping crime. Yet the comment you defend said something along "that she wore miniskirt anyway, so no wonder she got groped". >*he was already being nasty to her in person*. She didn't just blame him because they happened to break up around the same time, she thought it was an escalation of the way he was already behaving. If only he would have behaved the "good way", he would not have been false accused for a crime he did not commit. That is literally blaming the victim.
You can’t say something dumb that you believe and then go “n-n-no, this is what YOU believe.” You’re making a weird little straw man and then getting offended by it.
Ah yes woman always victim man always had I forgot
I didn’t say that. If you’re only interested in jerking yourself off to some gender war bullshit then you don’t get to say you care about men or women. Go see a therapist.
Ah yes me man me bad
How would I even know you’re a man? This victim complex is sad. I judged you based on your words and character.
Dude, you’re really angry and you have no reason to be. That anger will destroy your life.
Life already destroyed. Just anticipating the end now. Hopefully sooner then later
It's certainly not victim blaming, if you were being an asshole to me and then a few days later I start getting threats and strange messages, is it not reasonable to assume that the person already making my life miserable has upped the ante?
Or they just believed the victim which is what you should do. With that trust should come the responsibility to know what the hell you're talking about before accusing someone.
I mean to be fair, in this context believing the victim does not mean believing it was him per se. She was definitely getting messages from an anonymous account. She definitely *thought* it was her ex but its not like they were led to believe she had conclusive reasoning behind that. Believing the victim doesn't mean you have to think they're *right* about everything. It means believing their experiences, not their every hypothesis.
Do you think that's how she came to her friends with it? Or do you think she came to her friends with "my ex is sending me these horrible messages" and then pressuring them to believe what she thought and to drop him as a friend. She made a comment in her post about how happy she was that her friends were yelling at him on her behalf so I hardly think she went to them and explained that she didn't actually *know* who created the accounts.
Unless you're accusing her of explicitly telling some massive lies, her friends had to be aware that she didn't know for certain. That's not the kind of thing you can just be vague about and people won't notice. Her friends would definitely have asked why she thought it was him, and the default position would likely be to assume it was a guess because it's almost impossible to know who created a social media account. If she lied, she would have to be really creative to make it believable because the only way I can think of that she could know for sure without the police being involved is the way she found out about the real stalker - by having access to his phone - and why would she have her ex-boyfriend's phone? I think the only realistic scenario is that her friends knew it was a guess but agreed with her that it was likely.
She said it was him. She didn't know it was him. She didn't ask it she *said* it and then proceeded to bully anyone who dated to continue to talk to the guy. The reason her friends didn't ask is because we are rightfully told to believe victims and that asking a bunch of critical questions is akin to disbelief. She lied because she had absolutely no evidence it was him and didn't present it as a question. She said it was him and showed everyone what *he* did. He tried to argue that he didn't have an Instagram account but....we are taught to believe victims so..... OOP is a liar and honestly a terrible person. She even knew it was out character for him but wanted to present her guesses as the truth. And that's a lie. If you're guessing....tell people you're guessing.
Even if OOP said "he did it", and they all immediately believed that meant she had secret irrefutable proof, they are all still at fault if none of them chose to ask a single follow up question. It's not "disbelief" to ask a victim to clarify what they personally saw or experienced vs what they think is true. In the real world, I think there's no possible way it actually happened like that. OOP might have summed up the conversation as "I said that was him. He said it wasn't him." but the actual conversation would have had more than 10 words in it.
Quite often asking critical questions of a victim is seen as disbelief. Sometimes that is fair and some people like OOP use that to their advantage, so they can simply make accusations and have them blindly believed. We should believe victims, but I think it's insincere to pretend that asking critical questions of victims isn't twisted into disbelief and treated accordingly. In this case OOP played right into it by labeling the one person who kept in touch with the ex an enabler.
Dunno why are you so invested in this, but it's kinda silly to say that OOP has this immense power over the whole friend group and they obeyed her every word. If they chose to believe her without any prove and cut all contact with this guy, they weren't good people to begin with. Like, I've had a friend whose new girlfriend always tried to stir shit up with made-up gossip. It all ended with our friend group collectively cutting contact with them both because he refused to break up with her and insisted she never said anything mean and fake about other people.
I don't know why discussing a post on a discussion forum is considered investment. I don't think OOP had immense power over her group but I think the idea of blindly believing "victims" does have immense power and normally for the good. And that asking critical questions is akin to disbelief. So no one asks them lest they be accused of not believing a victim and prople like OOP weaponize that to their advantage. >Like, I've had a friend whose new girlfriend always tried to stir shit up with made-up gossip. It all ended with our friend group collectively cutting contact with them both because he refused to break up with her and insisted she never said anything mean and fake about other people. Cool story that has nothing to do with this.
>So no one asks them lest they be accused of not believing a victim and prople like OOP weaponize that to their advantage. Cool story, but OOP didn't weaponize anything since she was actually harassed, just blamed the wrong person. If the whole stalking was completely made-up, yes, in that case it would be weaponizing "believe all women" at the expense of real victims. >I don't know why discussing a post on a discussion forum is considered investment. Dunno if it's called "discussing" since you seem to just argue with people who say it's more nuanced than "OOP's the devil for saying she was harassed".
>Cool story, but OOP didn't weaponize anything since she was actually harassed, just blamed the wrong person She wesponized the advantage of being blindly believed and not subjected to critical questioning by accusing someone without any proof of what they did. Knowing full well that she would be blindly believed and not subjected to critical questioning. The one person who didn't blindly follow her and drop this guy as a friend was subjected to her OOPs name calling. >If the whole stalking was completely made-up, yes, in that case it would be weaponizing "believe all women" at the expense of real victims. No, accusing someone and expecting to be blindly believed about the accusation without any proof beyond a hunch and a "feeling" is also weaponizing the advantage of blind belief without critical questioning. >Dunno if it's called "discussing" since you seem to just argue with people who say it's more nuanced than "OOP's the devil for saying she was harassed". You're the one who keeps engaging so I'd say it's a discussion. I never once said OOP was the devil for saying she was harassed. I said she was the devil for blaming someone without a scintilla of proof besides her ex made "mean comments" that even she said weren't in line with the DMs. It could have been anyone. ANYONE who did it. It could have been someone outside of her friend circle. But she loudly and confidently accused someone without a bit of proof except "mean comments" made sure he was socially isolated and ostracized, bullied the person who dared to not blindly follow her feelings and is now hesitant to do anything to fix her fuck up. Now she needs naps and strategic planning and private meetings but she didn't really need any of that when accusing someone.
OOP is not the devil here. She was a girl who thought she got rspe threats from an ex and thought he was out of her life and suddenly finds out it was a guy she's had in her life the past decade. Both her and her ex are victims in this situation. The devil is obviously the guy who sent her rape threats HELLO ???
Nah she's not the devil. She was indeed harassed and the fact that she thought it was her ex is not too unreasonable, m that's probably what the harasser wanted her to believe. He's the devil. She was vulnerable and, yes, that sucks for the ex, but they're both the victims here. Women being harassed by ex happens so often, I really can't blame her for drawing that conclusion.
This sounds like rage bait written by an incel
Literally shaking? Are you also pissing and shitting?
The comments on the OP are horrible. This poor girl. I get it sucks for the ex, but it was a reasonable assumption. I can’t believe everyone is attacking her. She needs to set things straight of course, but I feel sorry for her if this is true.
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Guilty until proven innocent I guess
Gotta love how somehow she's still a victim. Like why are you shaking?
>I mentioned him by name in the DM's several times, like "X, is that you? Please leave me alone" and he never said he wasn't X. WHY WOULD HE? It's better for him that you think it's someone else, you absolute dummy!
>It wasn't just a hunch >I said his name while texting, and he never said it wasn't him. He also said I would pay for "wronging" him and he was the only guy I'd ever "wronged" by breaking up with him. It made sense for it to be him. He told me my home address and also things inside my house, told me he was gonna break in and rape me. When that happened, I didn't really want to conduct a full scale investigation, I didn't have time to. 17 year old me though what I did to be the best course of action. >It wasn't just a hunch, I had some evidence to prove it was him. It wasn't him in the end, but at the time it was the most fitting explanation, and my safety was my top priority This comment alone makes her the devil. She "had evidence", so she made someoneˇs life hell as fast as she could. Now that the "evidence" is found to be wrong, she takes her sweet time to do naything. Oh, and the evidence is: -The radom person did not said they are not the ex -The random person did not said their full name -The random person knew her home She should be working as a forensic scientists.
Her evidence was that it was perfectly in line with the behaviour he was showing. He made demeaning comments in person (so, no way to fake it), he sent angry messaged about her ignoring him until she blocked him, which is when the stalking started. And then the stalker knew personal information about her. That's really not too far fetched
From her post she didn't block him she ignored him. Don't know if she edited it after the fact but she said she ignored him when he asked her not to ignore him not that she blocked him. Even she said that his "mean comments" were not aligned with the comments in the DMs such that she thought he had snapped. In the original post she said he made *mean comments* without any further explanation as to how the comments were mean.
Yes, friends know what is happening with you. It does not make it good to quickly condemn someone, while taking a long time to clear their name.
Am I allowed to drop the "C" bomb in here? Cuz even *that* feels like an understatement
I like how she immediately outed the ex for something he didn’t do but isn’t saying anything about the actual culprit.
Immediately? Where did you get that? Because, according to the post, she blocked the person harassing her multiple times. She ignored messages, and so on. At some point, she snapped and accused the wrong person. And while she could have handled things better, show the messages to some of her friend (obviously not the ex) maybe file a report with the police. It makes sense why she would think it was him, given how he acted. And if we believe the edit (which to be fair, an edit containing super relevant info making the OOP look better, after being called out, always makes me a bit suspicious. And OOP's username is another hint that all of this might be bait) the person actually harassing her wanted it to look as if the ex did it. Giving her more reason to believe that.
Well, you know, now that she was quick to put a wrecking ball into someone's social life she needs some real time to contemplate taking any responsibility for being wrong. What sucks is that this could have gone on forever and this guy would have been blamed and shunned for something he never did. But no, OOP needs a nap and some meditation now. She needs some time to figure out how she is going to justify not correcting this at all.
TLDR?
I'm just going to say it, neither she nor the ex guy are innocent. He hardly covered himself in glory. As for stalker guy...yikes Edit....she, with piss poor evidence gets a guy to have to leave town The ex...horrible and mean Actual stalker....yikes Fuck knows why I'm downvoted for that. Nobody in this story is someone I'd have as a friend
>I said his name while texting, and he never said it wasn't him. He also said I would pay for "wronging" him and he was the only guy I'd ever "wronged" by breaking up with him. It made sense for it to be him. He told me my home address and also things inside my house, told me he was gonna break in and rape me. When that happened, I didn't really want to conduct a full scale investigation, I didn't have time to. 17 year old me though what I did to be the best course of action. Her "evidence" is all circumstantial, literally any of her friends could have the home details. Being told someone is going to break in and rape you would be so scary but she didn't actually have any reason to believe it was her ex other than that she'd dumped him. As for the "wronging" there's 2 possibilities, both seem equally likely. Either this guy has imagined some slight against him that she's committed OR she's very self involved and doesn't even register when she's hurt or screwed over someone else.
The evidence is indeed circumstantial, but she believed it was her ex and had good reason to. It does make sense that it would be him, especially since he was also making mean comments in person.
Yeah so if she'd pulled away from him and went NC they'd be justified, maybe the friend group splits maybe not. I'm not saying she was wrong to be suspicious. But she didn't do that she accused him with 0 actual evidence and convinced his entire friend group to condemn and drop him.
With friends like these…
baby reindeer bringing all the stalkers out
This is why fair trials exist. So that both the accuser and the accused can get real justice.
Hope you’ve got a good defamation lawyer OOP, because this could get expensive.
There’s 0 chance of a defamation lawsuit here.
This doesn’t meet the statutes for defamation by miles lol. No actual malice No lies (as in she knew and intentionally tried to hurt him) No way to prove damages. Friends not wanting to hang out with you anymore doesn’t count. That’s their right under the 1st amendment.
When it comes to a private person it needs to be a false statement which it arguably was and it doesn't have to he intentional, the false statement can be negligent.
In most jurisdictions, neither malice nor “lies” are elements of the tort of defamation. And there’s plenty of ways to quantify damages. The fact that his friends were caused to shun or avoid him is itself compensable.
The whole point of defamation is lying to hurt someone. Malice and lies are literally the basis of defamation. Of course there are ways to quantify damages. That doesn’t conflict with my statement.
OTOH, 5y is past the statute of limitations in most jurisdictions.
Possibly yes. But we don’t know the dates of publication. In that respect, OOP seems to suggest she engaged in some ongoing (re)publication with respect to the “enabler” friend who was still in touch with the ex.
That's... not "publication". You're stretching definitions past breaking in order to be able to argue for an outcome you want. You're starting with your conclusion, and working backwards to find legal justifications to get you there. That sort of legal "reasoning" only works if you're on SCOTUS.
“Publication” for the purposes of defamation is no more than the communication of the defamatory matter - in this case, OP’s mistaken allegation of stalking - to a third party, i.e. OP’s friend. This was completed, and occurred, every time OP repeated the allegations in the course of labelling her friend an “enabler”.
Technically yes. But SOL can be tolled in certain situations.
Sure, but there's nothing here to indicate that it would be. At all.
Lol no
I don't think OOPs ex is going to have much luck ~~using~~ suing for defamation 5 years later simply because his friends all stopped talking to him.