Was I groomed?

At the risk of revealing my age, let me take you back to the dawning of the new millenium.

The world was changing, technology was evolving and my parents very kindly allowed a very excited 15 year old to have my own digital cable box in my own bedroom.

Digital TV was brand new to the UK. We already had cable but the number of channels was quite limited and there was little interactivity. When Cable & Wireless announced their new digital TV service complete with being able to send email direct from your TV, being able to order a pizza through the TV for the first time, a magic red button interactive TV service to replace teletext and most exciting of all, games such as armchair football manager, I was overjoyed.

I was a keen football fan and loved playing championship manager, but the prospect of playing a similar game from the comfort of my bedroom was the key seller. An engineer came and hooked up a shiny new digibox to my 14″ bedroom CRT TV and away I went.

The advertised game was much delayed, and it was very underwhelming when it did eventually arrive but that didn’t matter, I found another “app” for want of a better word called Leisure District where users could play games like hang man, noughts and crosses, and casino style slot machine games. Leisure district was well ahead of its time, it was social media before social media was invented.

You earnt points whilst playing the game which you could use to send virtual flowers to other members. There was a library where users could upload their own poems and short stories. You could send private messages to other members. It was so exciting when you logged in to see the button that told you that you had new messages.

I used to write a bit of poetry, not particularly good poetry, but it was an outlet for me so I uploaded some and started getting lots of messages from different people, mostly of the female variety.

At school I was quite shy, I wasn’t good at speaking to girls so to have girls approaching me was quite a shock, and a massive boost to my self esteem. People seemed to like me. It became an obsession. I’d spend all day in front of a screen typing out long messages using an on-screen keyboard. It took forever but the validation I got from it was addictive.

In the outside world I was an awkward, unattractive teenage boy. On leisure district I could express myself. It was a learning tool for me. I spoke to lots of girls and began to get an understanding of what motivated them and their interests.

The age range was huge, I’d be talking to girls who said they were the same age (some of whom were lying and were actually younger), some of them were old enough to be my parent. I didn’t really care, I’d talk to anyone in that virtual world.

Some of the women started asking me intimate things and they would reveal sexual things about themselves. One woman, who was a single mum in her thirties told me she wanted to take my virginity. She knew I was 16, she knew I was still at school but the fact that I was so naive about women seemed to be a turn on for her.

It was hugely exciting. Her I was, a 16 year old boy, hormones raging and these women wanted to do things to me and wanted me to do things to them. I learned a whole new dictionary. I found that I could transfer my ability to write into an ability to write things that women enjoyed hearing.

There was another older woman from yorkshire that asked me for my phone number so that she could speak to me. Back then it was still the days of dial up modems to access the internet. You could either use the internet or the phone, so I had my own separate phone line mostly for the purpose of using the internet.

She rang me and lets just say she was enjoying herself whilst talking to me, and trying to coax me into doing things to myself at the same time. It was a very weird experience.

I actually owe Leisure District my marriage. I formed three real relationships through Leisure District. The first girl, who was my age was more in love with the idea of me than anything else. After building a relationship for months, we finally decided to meet. I was worried about being rejected, she convinced me that wouldn’t happen. We met up once, in a cinema in her own town with her friends present too but there wasn’t really any chemistry and my fear of rejection came true.

Occasionally she would message me, stringing me along with the hope of a relationship because she wanted my particular writing talent.

The second girl was much more successful. She had lied about her age when we were first talking, she said she was 16 but she was actually 14. By the time we met she was 15. It was completely different, there was chemistry and we were very close. I would visit her and she would visit me, but I would go pick her up to make sure she was safe and we would go back to my town together.

During this whole time I would lean on another girl as my agony aunt. She was 4 years older than me, we had lots in common and lived quite close to each other and after she helped me deal with things when the relationship with the second girl fell apart, we thought we’d give it a go ourselves. I’ve now been with this woman, my soul mate for over 19 years, in fact, I’ve been with her now for longer in my life than I’ve been without her.

We were quite lucky. The leisure district app was pulled with no warning from the cable service. Unsurprisingly, because of the amount of sexual content aimed at children through the messaging system. We had only exchanged email addresses shortly before. Had we not, I would have had no way to contact her.

I never felt that there was anything wrong throughout this whole experience. It was hugely beneficial for my confidence and led me to the love of my life. That’s still how I feel, however when you look at the events on paper, ok, I wasn’t under 16 at the time but I was also clearly very young. Would we view the same story taking place today as what we now call grooming?

I never courted the sexual content. I learned quickly and saw it as a bit of a game and a confidence booster but I started off very innocent. I wasn’t forced into anything, there were never any threats to make me keep quiet or force me to continue but if my parents knew about it, I’m sure they would have put a stop to it.

Human sexuality is complicated. How do we protect young people from abuse but also allow them space to experiment and develop?

My experiences were in the early days of the internet. There was no facebook, no instagram, no smart phones and no cameras. Young people today are navigating much more complicated waters, and there are plenty of sharks waiting to take advantage of their inexperience and naivety. I don’t envy them one bit!