In any other instance, I would have made time to visit this Baha'i Center (out of sheer curiosity, or honestly, this persistent desire to feel more "whole"). And while I know that impious and hypocritical people exist in every faith community, reading a lot of stories from former Baha'is (the mistreatment of the rape victim that recently appeared here has really upset me) reminds me of an odd situation I don't prefer remembering, as the experience was confusing and destructive.

(This isn't going to be short.)

In August of 2015, I was browsing imgur. I uploaded several memes that weren't anything I'm proud of. They mainly concerned my annoyance with "dick pics" and how I didn't find them attractive. I received a private message from someone who jokingly asked me if I truly never found a penis attractive. The conversation was mainly silly banter (and it was largely nonsexual. More like, "Nice to meet you, where are you from? What's life like where you live, Internet stranger?"). It escalated to the individual sending me multiple pictures of his penis, and persistently asking me if I thought it was attractive, or at least more attractive than other penises I've seen in the past. I dismissed this as silly banter so common in today's Internet encounters. The individual suddenly deleted his imgur account hours after we spoke. Note that I was unwise to give the individual a link to my blog.

A few days later, the individual messaged me under a new username. He was very preoccupied with wanting to continue conversations with me, and asked that I create a Kik account to message him by phone without an actual exchange of phone numbers. Being naive, I did not know that people primarily use Kik for sexting. At the same time, I really didn't want another app on my phone, so I didn't respond to him. He continued to send me messages on imgur, and he eventually commented on the guestbook of my blog.

He commented using his real full name and his Kik username. He also wrote that I could email him, and he listed his Gmail address, which features his full name.

(While he feels violated that I did this, I looked him up, went through his Facebook with public photo albums, and went through some profiles of people he appeared to be close with. Conversations on imgur usually don't go for more than several hours. You never hear from the person again. I wasn't creeped out at the time, but I was very bewildered by this person's persistence in contacting me.)

I created the Kik account, and we spoke for several days in a friendly, non-sexual manner. I am relatively inexperienced in relationships, and it is very difficult for me to read social cues from others. At the time, I was very, very conflicted about my self-worth and dabbled in things I now regret. One day, the conversation came to this:

*Dude: Can I tell you a secret? *Me: Sure. *Dude: I've never had sex. *Me: How old are you (I had already disclosed to him that I had sex with my one serious boyfriend of over 4 years)? *Dude: 25 *Me: You're lying. *Dude: I'm honestly not. My religion does not allow premarital sex, and I'm really close to my parents, so I've always just stuck with that. *Me: What's your religion? *Dude: Baha'i. But I'm not religious.

(During our webcam interactions, I once brought up that I read the basics on his religion and thought it was interesting. He didn't seem interested in discussing it at all, and actively avoided it. He did tell me that while he never engaged in vaginal intercourse, he was experienced in oral sex and rubbing his penis on girls' genitalia. He justified this saying that those other girls "were Baha'i" and felt "just as conflicted" about premarital sex as he did. Frankly, it reminded me of Mormon kids in college justifying "soaking," because while the penis is inside the vagina, it's "not really sex" since there's "no thrusting.")

So we both talked about being sexually inexperienced and how that felt like. As we're around the same age, we talked about how that affects "getting with" people we like or are interested in. Then we exchanged pictures.

While I'm just as culpable in the sexting as he was, and I really shouldn't have done it, I'm more baffled and haunted by how "close" we got digitally. He didn't want a girlfriend, I didn't want a boyfriend, we sexted on Skype twice with the understanding that it was just fooling around, and during our 3rd Skype conversation, we talked about developing feelings for each other. We communicated frequently, both sexually and non-sexually, for 4 months while staying thousands of miles away from each other.

While he told me towards the end that I was "overbearing," he initiated most of the exchanges. He claimed to be studying medicine at the time, and looking back, I remember that he was fully aware that I wasn't in graduate school, but I was working. But he seemed to disregard my schedule, contacting me between midnight and 3 in the morning while expecting me to accomodate his much more prestigious routine.

After 3 or 4 months of these confusing exchanges, I asked the individual if he thought it was odd that we were doing this for so long. Aside from the basic stuff I read, I didn't know much about his religion, and couldn't make sense of stuff he'd repeat about how "nothing can ever come out of this" while continuing to talk to me. He mentioned his family a few times, stated he had "family problems," and that his family wasn't strict, but "they have their opinions." He told me, "There aren't so many eyes on me here." I've never heard overprotection phrased that way.

We decided to end our exchanges. Then I noticed several days later that the individual was favoriting quotes uploaded to imgur regarding relationships, breakups, and loneliness. A lot of these quotes were something to the effect of "She took me as I was, demons and all, etc.", and "We were both broken people, but together, we became extraordinary, etc." It all seemed very strange to me. I also noticed that he was aggressively commenting on female users' posts, repeatedly contacting them even though they were not responding.

Throughout our interactions, he told me about certain fetishes he had, morbid curiosities (he regularly watched pornography featuring women committing sex acts with animals like horses), and how he wanted me to send him sexual videos that involved urinating and whatnot. There was one exchanged where he described a particularly disturbing fantasy about giving me violent oral sex that entailed suffocation and "turning purple." In some ways I could see how he could be telling the truth about his virginity. In other ways I do think he used the virginity and inexperience story to come off as harmlessly curious.

Sometimes I wonder whether I was just one of many girls he contacted, had interactions with, and received nudes from to later sell and cover whatever expenses he had. Looking back, the initial contact seemed very systematic, if that makes sense. I also look back and find the following things perplexing:

*1. The individual told me he was studying in his location because he was not accepted into any medical school in Canada. Justifications included Canada having qualified applicants, but so few schools, higher admission standards in Canada, and a preference for white applicants given the high proportion of Asian and Middle Eastern students enrolled in medical school. Even if these factors are true, I just found it odd that he would have been denied from all of them, even with a graduate degree and published research.

*2. The individual was attending a prestigious U.S. medical school, but mentioned in passing that his relative was a faculty member there.

After a few weeks of not communicating with this individual, I encountered someone at a work-related party who sexually harassed me as the night carried on (this was at a bar). When introducing himself, he told me two things: 1) That his family was from Iran, and that 2) He and they were Baha'is. After a coworker saw what was happening, she immediately took me out of the bar and drove me home while going on a rant, racial slurs included (I live in a part of the U.S. where such outbursts are embarrassingly acceptable).

My mental health was deteriorating at the time and I was very much in denial of this. My poor mental health may explain why I grew so attached to the individual on imgur. I still had the Kik account, angrily messaged him saying some of the same shameful things my coworker said about "Persian men," and got a ton of messages back where the individual was trying to calm me down. Again, it was somewhat systematic. Then he told me that I did not know how awful he felt about what happened between us. He repeated that he "fucked up" and was "so, so, so sorry." I told him I looked him up online because I thought it was weird that he would contact me repeatedly, and I wanted to know who he was. He knew that I saw that his family seemed devout. His mother has multiple social media accounts, and they all seem to be focused primarily on the Baha'i faith and Baha'i teachings.

We started to have strictly nonsexual conversations. I grew increasingly unstable and kept demanding an explanation for the behavior, asking him what he was doing with my pictures and if he was doing this to other people. I asked him some pointed questions about whether his mother was truly devout or putting on an image (the father seems absent or estranged from the family). He told me that his mother already knew that he "doesn't believe in God." He kept apologizing to me, but in a way that didn't convey that he was willing to take accountability for some of his behavior that I thought was manipulative and deceptive. He would say, "I hurt you and that saddens me," and follow it up with, "I did not victimize you in any way." The phrasing just bothers me. He would also repeatedly say, "I was horny and on the Internet." Over and over. Or, "I was lonely." He'd also mention that he regularly cried himself to sleep at night, but wouldn't go further than that.

Therapy didn't do much to help me heal. I would talk about what happened and how it had such a strange impact on me, only to be lectured about "cultural differences," and how I "should have known better" after sensing his ethnic background in photos he sent me. There was a lot of conflation of religion and ethnicity, and I've since learned to discard the ethnic component of this.

I don't know your reasons for leaving this religion, but I've spent just a few hours reading about it and how it has negatively impacted people. It seems very unhealthy, superficial, dishonest, and oppressive.

While I feel sad thinking about what happened between myself and that person, I now feel very much relieved that things did not go further. It's just a haunting experience.

https://bahai-scandals.blogspot.com