Aware of a possibly abusive situation. How can I help?

[SilentDragon]

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains discussion of sexual abuse and rape that may be triggering for survivors.

Okay, I think the first thing to say about this situation is that I haven't witnessed it first-hand, and that it was told to me by a friend (let's call her F) who claims to have witnessed it, and she was quite possibly told some of the details of the situation by her boyfriend (let's call him B) who is the younger brother of the abusive person (who I will call X). Now, I do this thing where I believe people when they tell me things, so I'm taking what my friend said as truth, even if it's possible she's making it up. And, given the nature of the situation, I think even the slightest possibility of it being true could be enough to merit action.

The situation: X, who is a male over 18 years old, has been preying upon and doing what could probably be defined as raping young (in some cases very young) women who are in vulnerable situations. He has taken to waiting outside a school for disabled children in order to obtain "girlfriends". These girls are, according to F, "never older than 14," and she has definitely seen at least one of them in person in the house where B and X live with their parents. F has implied that X does not obtain consent from the girls, nor allow for the time it requires for someone with a vagina to get "warmed-up" for intercourse, nor be at all gentle with any of them during the intercourse-that-I-should-probably-just-call-rape. These girls are probably not on any form of birth control, and X seems to be the type who wouldn't want to use a condom, so it's possible one of them could end up pregnant. In this situation, I am not sure who all should be notified to address it properly. Surely the school, but I am not sure of the name of the school, and I'm not sure where to look for it online (as I have once again failed to obtain something important and specific from a google search). I do not know any of the girls' names nor do I think F or B knows them. I also do not know how long ago when these incidents occurred, other than within the past 9 months. I am also not sure if the police should be notified, or at least notified by me, as I do not know all the specifics of the situation, and I am not a witness (same problem with the school, too). I'm also not sure how much help F or B would be to helping me stop this from continuing, as F is distrustful of the authorities and a survivor of abuse herself (and quite possibly finds all this triggering), and B's parents are verbally abusive towards him and are very enabling of X's behavior.

The other thing X does is go online to websites which are meant for supporting people contemplating suicide and try to convince women on them to date him. He has obtained at least one girlfriend that way, someone I went to high school with who is probably over 18 now. F did not give specifics as to X's treatment of her, but given the description of the other relationships, I doubt she was treated with more respect. In this instance, I think the people in charge of the websites should be notified of his presence, but again, I don't know the names of the websites, and I'm not sure they'd believe me, a nonmember of the sites.

I realize I could get some of the missing information by asking F, but I still harbor a lot of guilt about not helping her get out of her own abusive situation (I wanted to help, but I didn't know what to do or who to go to at the time), and I'm afraid I'd make her upset because I'm trying to help these other young women when I didn't help her. It doesn't help that F is pretty much my only real friend right now, and I am therefore very afraid of losing her friendship. These are probably unfounded fears, to be honest, so I also realize that this is a very stupid reason not to try to help.

[Karyn]

Unfortunately, since you haven't witnessed any of X's behaviour directly, and you're not aware of the name of the school or the websites he visits, I'm not sure there is much you can do. However: some of the other volunteers or Heather may have some ideas, so I'll leave a note for them, and see what they have to say. Sorry not to be of more help myself, hopefully someone else will pop in and have some good ideas.

[SilentDragon]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. If I do find out the necessary info, I'll let you know.

[Heather]

It really sounds to me like you are too many people removed from the situation to do much here.

It also sounds like at least F knows where to find the resources and help meant for people either in abuse or wanting help with it, so if that is something she wanted to take actions with, she would, no?

Ultimately, if either of them do want to take action, since they are reporting this to you first-hand, the best thing to do would be to file a report with the police.

But if they won't or do not want to, and you do not have any identifying information about this person -- or, for instance, the name of the school they are using to find victims -- there truly is nothing you can do.