I don't know where to start with this, except to apologise to a lot of people I care about who have been badly hurt. I feel my reputation on this site has been irrepairably damaged and will probably close my account again when people have had chance to read what has happened while I have been ill.

When I first developed glandular fever on top of already having neutropenia, I asked my daughter Jane to offer draws in my existing games so I would not time out. She did this and enjoyed finding it easy (after a while) giving messages to team mates as well. All well and good. However she then told some older school friends about the fact that she had access to this site (I knew none of this was happening until late last week and have only just returned from another spell in hospital). I need to explain that Jane is a very able student at school and in her second year at high school has been separated from her twin sister and moved up a year, the first time they have not been together. She is also in a group for the most gifted and talented students, including mixing with 15 year olds in that group. What I have now found is that her 'friends' got her to set up an account in a fictitious name, using the photograph of one of their older sisters. She used my bank card to do this. She swears - and I believe her - that she thought the older boy and girl, who had drawn her into this web, just wanted to play chess on the site (the boy is extremely talented chess player). However the horrifying thing is that they then created what you might call a persona for this person, and the persona was not very nice in terms of the back story they created. In fact it was horrible. At this time Jane was so drawn in and with her mother ill not knowing where to turn that she could not get out of the situation. Sometimes this deception took place at their home, with Jane not present, sometimes at school, and usually with my laptop. My husband thought she was using it for a project. The one active part Jane played in this was to try and set up a database for vote chess, as this is something I have shown her how to do (apologies to chess mistresses but it was the boy who was making the moves and analysis in vote chess). However the worst thing, which still shocks me is that most of my closest friends were then told the story of this fictitious Rachel person in lurid detail and as they are lovely supportive people I believe they went along with it and tried to provide support. I would do anything for that not to have happened and I don't blame those people if they never speak to me again (two have already said they won't). In the end of course these things explode as they cannot be sustained and various things led to the end (about a week ago). I was receiving emails from two people who I had believed to be good friends telling me that I was this Rachel and that I was operating this other account. I kept denying this as I knew nothing about it. This led them to believe I was lying and the more I tried to say I knew nothing about it the more they thought I was lying. They believed I had had enough of my roles in Chess.com and wanted to start a fresh account but as I pointed out I was not well enough to do that (am still not) and would surely have continued with my own games if I was fit to play chess and not start a whole lot of others? In the end I closed my account because I was heartbroken that two of my closest friends (as were) did not believe me. I believe that this was followed by an unravelling of the whole other story as Jane told her friends at last that she could not go on with this any more (she had got to the point where she decided to face the music and felt extremely guilty and now has had to accept some harsh lessons). Anyway at that point they closed the account as well.

I am hazy about a lot of the detail of this but this is what I have managed to piece together - I was either in hospital or bed while all this was happening - and am going off what my daughter has told me. I feel a failure as a parent, as a friend of many people on here, as a team mate, and as an admin for various groups - I will of course step down from all those positions. My husband has spent a lot of time at school dealing with the fallout and the role of the other two pupils who apparently are quite good at creating complicated scenarios and drawing other people in - but I take responsibility and feel terribly guilty. In defence of my 12 year old daughter she had been going through some personal issues before I became ill and my illness exarcebated it, was separated from her twin sister in school and got drawn into a situation that she could see no way out of. I love her dearly and we are trying to both put this behind us.

That is what happened. I know there are people who will not believe me. I know there are people who will want to ask questions and there are some people in particular who I will be apologising to personally - I have the names from my daughter. I am so sorry - words cannot explain how bad I feel about this and I was sorely tempted not to come back and just leave everything as it was but I just felt honour bound to let people know what had happened while I was busy being ill. I will leave this open for a few days so everybody gets the chance to see.

And for those who believe I faked my illness, which will still take a long time to get over, this is a recent pic above and you can see how much weight I have lost

Kerrianne