Scarleteen

Hi,
I just need some help figuring out if I overreacted or if his wife is right and he didn't do it on purpose.
So back in August of 2024 I moved in with a couple from my church. I was escaping my abusive parents. It was great. Two months into me living with them the husband began to be affectionate with me. I felt really lucky because touch is my love language and I had told his wife how much I wanted a father-figure who would be affectionate with me. The wife told me her husband wasn't affectionate and I accepted that. Then he just started to hug me a lot. We got into a routine where he would give me a hug before he went to work each morning. He would also be cuddly with me when his wife wasn't around. He would still touch me if she was in the room, but there was more distance to it. It was often just an arm around the shoulders if she was there. If we were alone he would full on bear hug me. Once he even invited me to sit in his lap. During the months this was happening he had started touching me in places that were a bit sketchy. I told myself I was overreacting. He knew what my parents were like and I told myself he would never do anything like that. But then a morning came where he touched me in a place that was so obviously somewhere he shouldn't that I couldn't talk my way out of it.
With a lot of convincing from my sister, I told his wife. She didn't believe me. She called me troubled. She said if he did do all that it was probably unintentional.
A few days later I was asked to leave and in the following weeks I was homeless and living in a shelter. I got there on my 21st birthday. I tried to crash at my grandmothers, but she's on par with my biological parents and honestly the shelter was waaaay better.
While I was at the shelter the workers there encouraged me/helped me to make a police report and now the husband is being investigated.
Despite that, I can't shake the feeling I overreacted. I feel like I should have just stopped him touching me. I could have just avoided situations where that was likely. I feel like I overreacted. Do you think I did?
P.S. I live with my sisters now, so no worries there. Although the people at the shelter were great.

Hi there, Beth. I'm really glad you found your way to us, but I'm so sorry for what brings you here and for what you've had to go through. I'm so glad you're somewhere safe now and that you were able to be helped so well by the people at the shelter. Thank goodness for the people in the world like that.

I don't think you overreacted. I also don't think that -- in fact, I know that -- "just stopping" someone else's behaviour like this isn't usually easy, and often is simply outside the control of the person who isn't actually themselves engaging in the behaviour. I also know that none of this is your fault or doing, and that it's very hard to somehow keep ourselves out of reach from predatory people when we are living in their homes, especially when we've already grown up in abuse. All the more if and when we feel like the predatory person is doing us some kind of favor, or we have a blind spot because they seem safer than the abusive people we got away from.

I know that, sadly, it's fairly common for the wives of predatory men to blame everyone and anyone before they blame the person who is actually doing the harm, their husbands. I'm sorry she treated you the way she did. I'm also sorry she suggested he didn't mean to keep touching you: that is very, very unlikely to be true. This man undoubtedly meant to do everything he did to you.

I also know that we can trust ourselves when we feel like someone is doing something wrong to us, because when we feel that way, it's usually because they are. The fact that the folks at the shelter encouraged you to report is something that tells you that other people clearly thought these were serious abuses. Same goes with the fact that this is being investigated. I'm sorry it's so hard for you to feel like you were right in your assessment of this.

Looking at everything you have posted here I see an escalating pattern of grooming, boundary crossing, and then what clearly sounds like developing and increasing sexual abuse. This is a common kind of escalation, and if you had stayed, things almost certainly would have gotten a lot worse. I'm so glad you got out of there. I see why the people at the shelter encouraged you to report.

What can we do for you from here? Is your sister being supportive?