Not me but a child: went round to my good friends house, she has three Kids, youngest was 1.5yr old female. She had a new boarder, but someone our group of friends had known a fair while. Anyway, her daughter had been acting a bit strangely, but on this visit took my hand, tried to lead me to a bedroom. I said 'no sweetie let's go play in the lounge'. She climbed up onto the bed and got in and patted next to her. My stomach dropped. I was only 19 myself and not a mum yet but I knew that was not normal for that wee girl, and I had a gut feeling. Told the mum. Boarder did a runner. I lost touch with my friend but I hope so much that I was wrong, but I'm glad I said something because I knew it wasn't right. (Just like another woman I flatted with got a new nd, he looked at her kids wrong. Like, ogling. No-one believed me, my then bf got angry at me for being suspicious. But I made sure that from the day she started dating him, I hung around and was ALWAYS present when she ...

Teach your sons to respect women and girls before you lecture your daughters.

The worst part about these stories is that the adults who were supposed to step up and help these girls did nothing AT BEST, and outright sided with their tormentors or joined in with said tormentors far too often. How can we call ourselves civilized when we've normalized blatant child abuse and demonize those children who speak up about it?

When I was 18 a load of us from college did a 3 legged pub crawl in drag. I got very drunk, left the sponsorship form in pub 11 and ran back to get it. I then forgot where pub 12 was so decided to walk home along country roads (in my girlfriend's mini skirt and kitten heels), a car started slowly following me along the road which was frankly freaking me out. Eventually he pulled up beside me and said "excuse luv, can you tell me where {random place} is?". In my deepest Sarf London voice I said "sorry mate, I ain't got a clue". He wheelspun off. My point is, I get it, if I'd been a 5ft girl rather than a 6'2" guy I'd have been terrified and things may well have turned out differently. That's why if I'm walking home at night I'll cross to the other side of the road to try and alleviate your fear, if I think someone is following you I'll try to ask them for directions to distract them, if I hear a female scream at night I don't mind investigating even if it's just you messing around.

I was four. My sister was nine. Our one relative-by-marriage started teasing her about her nascent breasts. (She developed a bit early.) I wanted to hide and never go near him again. Wasn't even me, but his piggy eyes and leer... UGH.

Age 5. A neighbor boy tried to get me to show him my vagina. I didn't even know what body part he was talking about until he grabbed my skirt and tried to yank my underwear down. Males like that start young. This one harassed me in school for years until I had finally had ENOUGH and kicked him in the groin as hard as I could in 3d grade. NO ONE gets away with harassing me now. Men who don't understand boundaries understand public humiliation, so when I'm harassed in public as an adult, I make it the business of everyone within 100 meters.

I was 6. I had a toy clock that I was playing with my mum at a seaside town we were visiting for the day. My dad was somewhere else with my older sister. A man with a dog was watching us & kept moving closer. Me loving animals started looking over & talking to the dog. My mum notices him staring at me & starts to leave. We go to the train station where we meet my dad & sister. Man with dog has followed my mum thinking we were on our own. He gets on the same train carriage & sits near me still staring. He tries to talk to me then about the clock. My Dad is sitting separately & Mum tells Dad what’s going on & my Dad immediately threatens him. Guy starts apologising & immediately gets off next stop. That’s the day my childhood ended & I was told there were men out there that wanted me to do bad things to little kids like me.

It happens to boys too, I know a few examples. Myself I don't even know how old I was, a child, younger than 12. and it was my moms bf at the time.

When I was 11, I was at a youth group. They where playing murder mystery, and I got bored, so I started walking around the building, and sat in the lobby. Another kid followed me, and me and him talked for a bit. There where pens, so I was drawing on myself and he was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder at the drawing, he was nice. It's funny that I remember that so peacefully, not scared or anything, perfectly fine. Then he went way for about five minutes, then came back, saying he wanted to show me something. I, not thinking anything of it, other than a strange feeling in my gut, followed him, to the game-room, lights all off. all of the others where in a different room. He walked up to the closet and turned the light on, gesturing to the boxes 'there is something under there,' he said, luckly, I knew something was wrong, and later I learned that was attempted rape, but let's get on with the REST of the story.... I didn't go into the closet, thank god. and I went back to.

I'll never forget the moment it happened to me. I was ten. Started getting phone calls when my parents wern't home from a man who said all kinds of horrible sexual things to me, very violent threats. My older brother would answer the phone and threaten him back. Then one time my parents hired a young man to watch us, and when he spoke I recognised his voice....the voice from the phone calls. I hid behind the couch the whole night

My goodness this is painful!

Aged 5: stated by my uncles friend, 'that's a pretty name for a pretty girl.' Aged 12: told to me by a stranger 'No one will shag because your a fat f****ing s**g'. Aged 13/14: some guy in our group hugged me from behind and then put his hand on my private area. We were in public. Aged 15: walking home from school in a school uniform and being wolf whistled. Aged 21: meet my bio dad for the first time and he commented on the size of my breasts and then wanted to hold hands with me. Aged 24: walking down the street on a Friday night, my friend and I approached by 2 men asking if we wanted sex. When we said no and walked off they followed us down the street and shouted we were English slags. So many examples...

Probably 6 or 7 (so this was the early '70s). We lived on a dead end road with maybe 30 houses on it, so we knew all our neighbors. I was doing gymnastics in our front yard when a strange car drove by and turned around in the cul-de-sac. He stopped in front of our house, opened the passenger door, and motioned me to get in the car. I turned around and ran into the house while he swore loudly and with a great deal of frustration. Even then, I knew I escaped a fate worse than death.