Back in February and March, I went through the painful process of ending a seven-year friendship that had been extremely detrimental to my mental and emotional well-being. She had continuously abused me (not physically) and intimidated me for most of our "friendship" and I had been reluctant to end it for fear of her revenge. Finally, I realized that at this point in my life, there is little she could do to me. I'm in college far from my hometown, I spend most of my time off with my boyfriend, who lives near my school (none of my friends, including her, have any of his contact information), and I no longer use social networking sites or communicate with most people I knew in high school. I figured, if she wanted to try ruining my reputation, it wouldn't really affect me now.
However, she did manage to find a way to bother me. One morning in April, my phone had been bombarded with text messages from strangers saying they met me online and asking for nude pictures. I chose to ignore them all. I assumed it was the work of either my ex-friend, her best friend, or both of them, trying to get back at me, as there is no one else I can think of who would have a motive for creating a fake account on a hookup site pretending to be me. When I told my boyfriend about it, he wanted to take legal action, have a lawyer send a cease and desist letter. I didn't think it was serious enough to get the law involved, and so I convinced him to leave it alone. I did keep the messages in my phone as evidence in case we needed to bring it to court, but after a month or two of inaction, I deleted them. I had not heard from any more strangers since that night in April.
Until last night. When I checked my phone before going to bed, I had several missed calls and a voicemail from one number (I did not listen to the voicemail, but I am keeping it for the time being, again for evidence) and several text messages from another number asking for nude pictures. I can only assume that my ex-friend and/or her best friend were having more fun at my expense last night. I have not mentioned it to anyone yet, because I do not want to create a metaphorical firestorm. I am hoping that the same thing does not happen tonight.
I know that this qualifies for sexual harassment and is therefore punishable by law. However, I have no concrete evidence to support my theory that my ex friend and/or her best friend are behind this. She had always been careful to remain reasonably civil in her emails to me when we still were in contact, and I have long since deleted any voicemails or text messages from her. Yet I know that I have not created any accounts on hookup sites or posted my phone number anywhere online, which means that someone must have done it in my name. I can honestly think of no one else who would have a reason to do this to me.
What should I do now? I thought, perhaps, if a stranger contacts me again, I could ask him where he found me phone number and under what name, but the thought of talking to any of these people really creeps me out. I don't think I have any way of finding out for certain who did this. I want to ensure that this doesn't happen again, but I don't know how.
07 Sep 2012, 2:35 pm
