Online grooming - a warning for parents of teens

This could potentially be triggering for victims of sexual assault 

I've noticed a few parents of teenagers are about and I thought I should share this.

Autistic teenagers are at high risk of being groomed on the internet. I want to say particularly girls but I have no evidence of that.

I know this because I was a victim of grooming as a teen. I didn't fit in with other girls and my parents didn't have a clue about the Internet, no ones parents have a clue what teens get up to online even if they think they do. I'd come in from school and chat to my school friends on Microsoft messenger (later MSN messenger). My mum thought I was just talking to people from school, applying to colleges and doing extra school work. I started adding friends of friends who I didn't know because they'd be included in group chats and seem nice.

I didn't realise my friends didn't always know these people. I ended up chatting to someone who I thought was my own age. We arranged to meet and he turned out to be a few years older (old enough to be creepy looking back, I was about 15, he was 20s). He made me think that I'd just misunderstood the conversation around his age. He was really nice to me though. He made me feel wanted and attractive which as the awkward, autistic teen who crept about on the edges of her peers social group he basically was telling me everything I wanted to hear. 

I couldn't meet him often because my parents were really strict but he would feed me lies that I could use to get out the house. How it worked I don't know because I'm a terrible liar.

At first we'd meet in town but then he planted the idea in my head that I'd be seen somewhere where I shouldn't be and he encouraged me to go to his house as no one was home. The encounters got increasingly sexual and he eventually tried to coerce me into having sex. At this point I tried to push back (religion, god, virginity all important to me at that point) and he assaulted me. I wasn't raped, he beat me up because he was so angry that I didn't comply. 

He used my social awkwardness and naivety as tools to get me to agree to what he wanted. What's important is that these are still tools being used on girls now. I'm a volunteer for a girls youth group and I have seen so many children saved from these grooming situations and some who haven't been. They were all lovely girls who were just a bit too shy, a bit awkward and in most cases coddled or had parents who their groomer could say wouldn't be supportive once he had them in his grasp. 

I am convinced that my autism was a direct factor in what happened, I lacked the social awareness, the "street smarts" and basically fell victim to the first person who gave me a bit of attention. It took a big event for me to realise that I was in a lot of trouble and even if my parents were going to kill me I'd have to talk to someone about it.

I'm fine but your teenager might not be. This isn't a post to tell you to monitor your teen more or anything like that because that's insane. It's a post to warn you that one day your teen might need to open up about a huge shameful secret and you need to understand that their brain chemistry and structure has made them vulnerable to this.