Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: So big trigger warning if you can’t hear about sexual assault or abuse of victims. 

But am I the asshole here? 

The short of the story is that I dated this dude for a year, we’ll call him Jake. And I started figuring out pretty quickly that Jake was problematic as fuck. And the longer we were together, the more I had to call him out on his shit. 
He groped me at a party after I said no repeatedly, he set me up on a blind date with this dude who thought I was hot without my consent (and told me we were just hanging out with him to play video games until the last minute when he told me the truth). He lied to me about a lot of things big and small, and he gave me an STI without any disclosure whatsoever that he had one. And the longer I dated him, the more I heard him tell stories about how he’d ‘get crazy drunk’ with female friends and then fuck them. And as he kept telling me these stories, I realized that at least two of them had made it super clear in front of me that they weren’t interested in him. 
Every time one of these offenses happened, it would be a fight. We’d go in circles for hours. I spent a lot of time doing my best to patiently explain why these things were wrong and that he needed to stop. But it was of course super frustrating because he wasn’t taking real accountability. As it went on, he started gaslighting me and telling me I was overreacting, and then we’d fight about what gaslighting was and why THAT wasn’t okay. It was a damn mess. 
Needless to say, we broke up. But st some point, I had committed myself to trying to hold him accountable rather than just bailing on the relationship. So what ended up happening was, he made up a manipulative situation where he tried to claim he was mad at me after he fucked up, and then when I tried to get a hold of him to be like ‘what on earth did I do? What do you mean you’re mad at ME?’ He refused to answer or take my calls, no explanation, and then started telling all our mutuals that I was crazy and stalking him. He basically tried to escape from the accountability, and also frame me as crazy so that nobody would believe me if I told them. 

THAT was the last straw for me. At this point I was finally convinced that this dude was dangerous and there was nothing I’d be able to do to get him to change. 

So I went to his roommate/bff. I went to this dude we’ll cal Albert, and I reached out first to say ‘hey, I’m super concerned about a bunch of things regarding Jake, can we sit down over a cup of coffee? Because it’s a lot.’ I regret now doing this all in person, but we’ll get to that. 

Albert agreed, so we sat down and I laid out everything that had happened to me, as well as everything Jake had told me about. In addition, Jake told me how he had a restraining order against him for raping someone in college. Someone we all still knew. So I felt like I had a lot of reasons to be both angry, but also concerned. And because Jake had created this whole stalker narrative, I was afraid to talk to anyone about this, and I was afraid to go public myself. I felt powerless. 

Albert agreed with me that I had reason to be concerned. He was very reassuring. And he basically told me ‘don’t worry. I’ll take point on this.’ So I trusted him. 

A few months later, I had moved on. I left our whole friend group because I didn’t feel safe there anymore, and I was trying to get on with my life. And Albert reached out to me on Facebook and says ‘hey I just want you to know, I’ve decided to try and rehabilitate Jake. I’m gonna try to hold him accountable.’ And I was like ‘are you kidding me? I already tried that. And I already TOLD you I tried that. He hasn’t even apologized to me or shown remorse for anything he’s done.’ 
And Albert was basically like ‘sorry you feel that way.’ So tough titties for me, I guess. 
I also asked Albert what exactly that meant. Did he go down the list of behaviors and tell Jake to stop them? And Albert was just like ‘nah I asked him if he understood he’d fucked to and he said yes, so I think he got the point’. Massive eye roll on my part. But what was I gonna do? 

Fast forward to a year later. A mutual friend of ours, Catherine, reaches out to me and asks me if I’ve heard anything about Jake having negative/predatory behavior. 
I was too afraid to tell anyone else what had happened because Jake was telling everyone I was a stalker. So I’d kept loosely in touch with Catherine, but once she asked for info, I unloaded everything I knew   Then Catherine told me that Jake had assaulted two more women at a con, and she was about to go public with everything. She did, and it caused a huge stir in our community, as those things do. 

But shortly after the truth came out, Albert starts posting on Facebook about how shocked he was, and how he had been ‘following his blind optimism and believing the best about his friend’. He went on and on about how much he was hurting, and it was a clear grab for sympathy. 

That was it for me. I lost my damn MIND and went off on him publicly. He was making all this about HIM, and how hurt he was that his bff was raping women, but dude, you weren’t a victim! You weren’t one of the (now many) femmes that this dude actually hurt! And when I tried to tell you, you blew me off! A year ago! 
So I went O F F. Told him that this ‘blind optimism’ bit was bullshit and that he was actively choosing one man in his life over many women. And further, it was a roommate, so he was protecting and enabling this dude because he didn’t want to lose the house they shared, or give up Jake doing all the work Jake was doing to keep things together for the household. He had a lot to gain by keeping it quiet, and a lot to lose by doing the right thing. Even after Catherine outed Jake as a serial rapist and abuser, it took like 4 more months for Albert to kick him out of the house. 

But here’s the thing. Albert is super popular. When I went off on him, he fought back and started attacking my character. 
He said that ‘the reason I didn’t believe you or keep you involved is that you’re a toxic, emotionally violent, vindictive bully.’ And he started trying to imply that I was lying, breaking down some of the timelines and details of what I was saying, questioning the truth of it all. And several other people chimed in and came to his defense, calling me similar names, or saying basically ‘how dare I kick Albert when he’s down’. 
So I backed down and unfriended him, and decided to remove myself from the conversation. Nobody had ever called me any of those things before. And I don’t honestly know if they’re true. I’ve been wondering ever since. But of course I also can’t help but feel like maybe he was just trying to deflect and discredit me to cover his own ass. 

But if they are true, does that impact things? Would me being a toxic person mean I should have stayed out of it? 
Was I wrong to call him out on what I perceived to be misogynistic behavior, disbelieving women, and enabling a rapist? 
Am I wrong to feel like he betrayed me personally and owed me an explanation? 

Thank y’all for reading, I know it’s a lot. 
I’m still really hurting over this, obviously. 

yelling at a rapist's enabler bff