yes, the title is correct and not bait 👍
i (22x) have a friend/acquaintance (25m) who is friends with a 13f irl, but people are calling him a weirdo.
he has no romantic relations with this girl and knows her through her dad (40s, m) but people are still calling him a creep and idk how to help besides saying he isn’t. it’s not like he went out of his way to go “hi im looking for 13 year old girls, wanna be friends?”
i feel really bad for the girl and i hope he doesn’t have any bad feelings or intentions, but i’ve heard from him he’s done nothing but mentor her and tutor her.
(i wasn’t there idk if i can truly believe it, but still)
It’s a risky situation for him - people will always assume the worst, because of appearance. He could have the best intentions, truly see her as a kid sister, but if anything negative gets said or implied it’ll be his neck in the noose.
It doesn’t matter whether he means well, and that it’s a sort-of avuncular relationship.
He needs to never be alone with her, simply because it can have the appearance of impropriety. People will assume the worst, and a girl in that circumstance may say/imply things to others without realizing the extent of those implications. And then any denial of impropriety by either of them will fall on deaf ears - people will assume she’s covering for him, blah, blah.
And heaven help him if social services ever gets involved because someone completely unrelated/uninvolved makes an accusation. They’ll assume he’s guilty of something, and it’ll become a Big Deal, regardless of the truth.
Source: I’ve seen this very thing happen (numerous times over the years) - social services over reaches and drags innocent people through the courts all the time over hearsay.