A college student who was sexually harassed by three male classmates sent the evidence to their mothers — and is worried that she overreacted.
“I’ve been getting bullied [and] harassed by three guys in my class who have taken to messaging me online with rather gross/harassing messages and NSFW pictures that I’m sure you can all fill in the gaps without me going into detail,” the 18-year-old college student wrote on Reddit’s “Am I The A**hole” forum. Although she reported their behavior (presumably to school officials), the students got off with a warning, then escalated the harassment.
The OP (original poster) decided to screenshot the messages and send them to their moms, who she found on Facebook. “Their mothers were horrified and shocked by what I sent them explaining what was going on and all three are on my side,” wrote the teen. “Some of my friends think this is genius and exactly what they deserved but some of my other friends think I took it too far and it was out of line to put that on their mothers [because] I don’t know what their home life is like.”
“Am I the a**hole for doing this? Should I have gone about it another way?” she wondered in her post.
Not according to Reddit’s standards. “The people saying you took it too far are the same ones who would defend those guys behavior as ‘just guys being guys,’” a commenter wrote. “What they were doing is organized sexual harassment, and it needs to be forwarded to school administration as well…”
“…The fact is, even if they have family issues, it’s not your problem and not your obligation to just take it,” another said. “All it does is explain their behavior, not excuse it. People need to stop covering for perpetrators and harming the victim further by ‘what if’-ing their experiences.” Someone else concluded: “They had no expectation or right to privacy of the messages they sent you.” And several urged the OP to report the messages to the police.
What the OP describes is “cyberstalking” which has occurred to one out of six women and one in 17 men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which includes unwanted phone calls, emails, IMs, text messages as tactics. The U.S. Department of Justice also defines the term as “repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact, or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.”
The term can be interchangeable” with cyber harassment which “usually pertains to threatening or harassing email messages, instant messages, or to blog entries or Web sites dedicated solely to tormenting an individual,” says the department.
Per a 2017 poll by the Pew Research Center, 21 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 say they have been sexually harassed online and about 53 percent of women in the same age group “say that someone has sent them explicit images they did not ask for.”
One Redditor suggested that the OP re-report the students to college administrators. “….Complain every time they send you something and tell them it’s interfering with your education,” they wrote. “Also, if they keep going because you complain, [that] is retaliation so make sure to specify that. If they don’t do anything tell them you’ll complain to the Department of Education.” This type of sexual harassment could violate Title IX, which “protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”
Commenters wondered if sending the photos to parents created more victims (or skirted revenge porn laws). However, moms generally agreed with the OP: “….As a mother, I would be absolutely horrified if my son was doing this..but…parents aren’t 100% in control of how our kids turn out, and I bet the moms are glad they have the opportunity to put their boys on the right path.”
Another wrote, “As the mother of a lad that will be going to [university], I want women to know they can report him … if he does this because his father and I will take it seriously.”
“As a mother of two young men, I would welcome a young woman informing me of behavior like this and my son would ABSOLUTELY suffer consequences at home,” noted a mom. “I would be ashamed and appalled, and 100% on your side as well. I think you chose the best option.”
These celeb parents have gotten very real about their kids growing up.
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