Pushed out of my high school friend group, mid 20s and lost

To make a long story short, I had learned that my one friend had been cut off by someone he knew in college because of a claim of sexual assault. He had confided this to me on night and while it shocked me I chose to keep his secret as I felt that it didn’t impact me directly.

I was wrong. Turns out that this other friend of mine had started trying out a polyamorous relationship. The friend who was accused of sexual assault is also a polyamorist and this tainted my view of the lifestyle. On a big vacation our entire friend group was on, I was asked by this other friend what my thoughts were on Polyamory as he was new to the lifestyle. I’m not sure why he asked all of us for our opinions, maybe for validation, but either way I let him know my true feelings on more than one occasion and I guess I didn’t realize it but I was very harsh in my language. I regret this but I have to admit that this view point was colored by my knowledge of my friends sexual assault accusations.

Turns out these two friends started talking about me behind my back and saying how I was a toxic person because I didn’t support polyamory. I actually do support polyamory just I don’t support sexual assault.

This comes to a head with the friend with the accusations calling a meeting with me at a bagel store where he demands that I go to therapy and provide him regular updates on my progress in not saying offensive things (I am already in therapy and have been for many years).

After this I said enough was enough and I told all my friends in this group about the accusations that my friend had confessed to me what he had done and the exact situation that had occurred which was groping a girl while she slept.

I left the group chat they were in and I waited to hear how they would all respond. Well they decided to try to confirm these allegations and reached out to some people that were involved in the situation and then claimed that my allegations were not corroborated.

I pressed them on this and the exact situation as I described was corroborated, but they were saying it wasn’t sexual assault like I had said. Even tho the facts were not in dispute.

The girl who made the accusation was not contacted, only the friends of the accused whom lived in the country this took place (UK and I’m in the US).

After this I realized that these friends whom I’ve been with for over 10 years, we’re going to support this accused person. What’s worse is that there are many other instances of sexual assault that we discussed separate to this incident that had been brushed aside or ignored by us all.

I’m frankly upset with myself that I didn’t walk away sooner, but it was one of those things were it all clicked at once

Any how, I’ve been estranged from this group now and they’ve chosen to take this accused friends word that I’m crazy and lying.

My problem is that I can’t stop thinking back to what happened. How it was so wrong. How I trusted these people and they let me down- especially the two engaged in polyamory whom talked behind my back.

One last point, both the polyamorous friends had tried to sleep with and were rejected by a girl whom we all knew that I ended up hooking up with. This I know caused significant resentment in them and contributed to these events unfolding the way they did.

My question: how do I stop thinking about these old friends and create a new friend group at 25 years old starting from scratch? I think about this almost daily as it happened this summer. How do I stop thinking about it everyday?

TLDR: my friend was accused of sexual assault and i chose to tell my other friends, they took his side and now I’m left without any friends.