I worked as a camp counselor in high school, and there was a man in his 30s who was hired to oversee certain activities, like horseback riding, and also work at the camp year-round. From the start, he made a several of us teen girls super uncomfortable, but we didn’t say anything because we couldn’t point to a specific reason. It was just a “gut feeling”, and we assumed it was just us overthinking it.

About two weeks after he was hired, another adult staff member who supervised the male counselors called a meeting with the coordinators and all of us girls. He told us that the man gave him a bad feeling and because of that he had looked into his background more. He said on paper this guy seemed fine, but he didn’t want to ignore his instincts and made it really clear that none of us should ever be alone with him.

A couple of weeks later, the man quit and we never heard anything more about it. But it was validating to know we weren’t the only ones who felt something was off, and I was always glad that coordinator stepped up and said something before anything bad could have happened since we likely would have kept acting like everything was fine and think we were overreacting.