My high school teacher tricked me into dating him, here’s what parents need to know to keep their kids out of trouble
nypost.comRAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). Abusers use manipulative tactics, targeting vulnerable victims to emotionally or physically separate them from loved ones by gaining their trust through attention, gifts or sharing “secrets,” according to RAINN.
These tactics are most often used by someone in a victim’s closest circle — family, friends or authority figures like teachers, coaches or mentors and can be particularly difficult to recognize.
That was the case for Nichols. “He was just easy to be around and he enriched the parts of my life that needed in enriching.
I thought he hung the moon. I thought he was the greatest thing ever and I loved how much attention he would give me. I felt loved by him,” she says. “How could you not love a person that’s that invested in you?” But really, that was a tactic, she said, that helped him gain her loyalty as their bond grew stronger, and, ultimately, kept their relationship isolated well into her early college years.“[I thought,] ‘This person really loves me so he must not want to hurt me.’ It occurred to me that [the relationship] was wrong the entire time, but I didn’t have the adult processing skills at that point to think about the consequences of this,” she said. “As a teenager, you don’t always have the awareness that you are being targeted or these things are happening to you.
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