EDIT: Waste of time. I can’t go through with this. Everything else is unedited, and some comments I will address. But I can’t justify, rationalize, or compartmentalize this shit. I can’t stay in contact with him.

Now this is all really fresh and new, and I’m really involved so I feel like I’m going crazy. All of the involved parties are in our early 20’s (22-23) with some parts happening years ago and coming to light as of TODAY. Many of us are really close since this group is mostly people that we spent COVID times with, so if I ever say “our” assume it means mine/the victim’s/the SA’er/etc. Truthfully, I expect to be labeled as an asshole, and I hope that I get some amount of sympathy.

Recently, one of my good friends had told us that my best friend had sexually assaulted her. At first, she didn’t want our group to be awkward about it, and she didn’t process it until recently. However over the past few years he had repeatedly crossed clear physical boundaries with her while she was inebriated. He had essentially gaslit her and everyone else that what he was doing was normal. Without sharing too man y details, because I can’t in good conscience share everything even anonymously, it’s BAAAAAAD. She had felt like it was weird and possessive the way he acted around her, especially since he had a way of controlling the narrative about it. He would act like her trip sitter when she got high, and she would be at his place often, but he had repeatedly made physical contact that was suspicious and weird, but many of our mutual friends ignored (because he was our friend?? How could he be one of those creeps??).

Here is my full defense, because to me, mentally, he’s my best friend. He had helped me cope with my SA as a victim of a similar (albeit not repeated) situation. He was a great friend to me who has recently helped me cope with the loss of my adopted, younger brother earlier this year. To several of our mutual friends, we feel conflicted on what to do on this, with some supporting my decision (more than I’d like them to truthfully). The victim said that one of the reasons why I was not clued in earlier is that she didn’t want to ruin my relationship with him, and that she does not carry ill will against him. Finally, not to pull this card— but we genuinely suspect that he has autism and he’s clinically diagnosed with severe depression.

Now to the nitty gritty to what happened in the past day. Third-Party-Best-Friend (his closest friends are me and the two involved parties) and I were discussing what we should do about this. Originally, she planned on ghosting him; however her friends (I included) told her that we could not let him get away with this, and th at we need to cut him out of her life so that he can’t interact with her. TPBF and I are distraught because he is/was our best friend, but after hearing the details we were at a cross roads. We had talked and agreed that we don’t want to cut him off completely; we even had asked for the victim’s blessing(?) and tried to ask if we were even doing the right thing.

So TPBF and I reached a conclusion, and we confronted the SA’er. We said that if there is any chance of salvaging a friendship with the only two people willing to hear him out, he has to take what he did on the chin, he has to accept that he fucked up, and we reserve the right to drop him at any time. Not only that, but as for actual punishment we cut him out of most of his friend’s lives. We reached out to every single friend he had left and we let them know about what he had done, as level headed as we could. We told them that we were going to confront him, and that if he went to talk to them and spin a story that we would cut him off immediately. Basically, we hoped that he was genuinely remorseful about this situation.

After calling the SA’er, the TPBF and I agreed that what he said was the only way we could have even began to consider forgiving him. After telling his other friends, I told them that I think my relationship with him is recovering. With some of them saying that the only reason they can see themselves forgiving him is that I said that I could not imagine him doing this out of malice.

However I can’t help but feel like it wasn’t enough. Everyone says that if they could never forgive sexual assault no matter the circumstance. However I’m stuck here feeling like that’s what I’m doing. It’s tearing me up inside thinking that I would even defend him. He was my best friend 24 hours ago. I finished the call less than 12 hours ago. I genuinely need an outside opinion, if I’m an asshole for this.