Not Contact, Not Communication - Just Grooming

“She’s dangerous. She abused my family for years. She cannot be trusted with children.”

This is what an adult female family member of my abuser said about me.

Yet, when I was contacted in the middle of the night by my abuser, one week after I filed my EPO, in a group message that included her minor female child, she did nothing. The message wasn’t retracted. I wasn’t removed from the group until months later. Neither was her child.

This message violated my EPO, and I called the police the moment I saw it - which was almost 24 hours later. They alerted my abuser. But, in a continuation of their ineptitude, they deemed it “not contact, not communication”, because he claimed it was an accident to include me.

Can you imagine accidentally including your purported abuser when messaging a child in the middle of the night?

I can’t.

And as a mother, I can’t imagine allowing an adult male family member to contact my minor female child, or to allow my minor female child to have social media.

You see, this means that the child who received this message has a social media account that is not being monitored by an adult for periods of at least 24 hours at a time,

OR

that the adult who should be monitoring the account does not have an issue with her adult male family member in his 40s contacting her child in the middle of the night.

This same adult male family member changed his profile picture to a photo of himself and this minor female child, and kept it up for two months.

This is what grooming looks like.

It looks like late night messages saying “I love you, miss {child name}” and mothers who look the other way.