to feel uncomfortable with old friends quest to see his DD?

[Brittapieandchips]

I have a friend who I hardly see any more apart from quick chats in the street, but we were briefly close about a decade ago or so. He is my facebook friend and we also have a lot of mutual friends.

Anyway, he is constantly posting about his grand mission to contact his DD, who is a young teen. Apparently the last time he had any contact was when she was a toddler. When I knew him well I was very young, so his story about having not seen his dd for a couple of years because of his terrible ex was taken at face value, but now I don't think it rings true.

As far as I can tell, the DD lives somewhere in the uk with her mum and stepdad, and well as some new half siblings or something. He has got hold of some recent photos of her on what looks like a happy family day out and keeps posting them up with poems or messages that he wants people to pass on to her. Every now and again he finds her on youtube or other social media and gets all his friends to inundate the profile with messages 'from him' in the hope she will get in contact, then gets really annoyed when the profile is taken down. He keeps talking about all the diaries he has kept for her for when she turns 18 and they are reunited.

She's possibly not in the uk but I don't think he's even sure.

Everyone keeps posting messages of support on his wall about how much he obviously loves her and what a bitch the ex is, etc.


Doesn't ring true, does it? I don't want to go wading in because I don't really know any of them, but I've hidden his updates and it makes me uneasy whenever it is mentioned by mutual friends.

Or is that a thing that could happen?

[Topaz25]

I don't think he's going about this the right way. Writing his daughter diaries she can read when she's 18 is OK but getting his friends to spam her social media profiles with messages is wrong and could be very distressing for a young teen. I also don't see why he can't go for contact through the courts. I'm not saying it is never the case that an ex stops contact to be vindictive but his inappropriate behaviour would make me question whether there was another issue.

[Brittapieandchips]

Surely he would at least get contact centre contact if he tried in any effective manner, unless he is accused if something terrible?

[Whatisaweekend]

If he genuinely wanted contact then surely he should make the approach through the appropriate manner (solicitors, courts etc) not bombard this poor girl through social media. Calling his ex a bitch is hardly going to endear himself to her either! If he is not going down the legal route, I would suspect that either a) he is not really serious and just enjoys the attention and drama or b) something has happened that makes the legal route impossible. Either option hardly paints him in a great light.

[Brittapieandchips]

Yeah. I hardly know him now (or when he had access to the child) so I hold my hands up to not knowing much. But friends keep sharing things and asking others to share it around, and it gives me a bad feeling every time I see it.

He seems like a nice bloke, btw. A nice bloke desperate to see his little girl. But... thats not how it works, is it?

[WilsonFrickett]

Nope, that's not how it works.

What this actually looks like to me is a sustained case of online harassment of his daughter, probably aimed at causing pain to the mother.

Delete, hide and don't engage. Nasty stuff.

[MelonadeAgain]

If he was that bothered, he would have ensured contact through the courts long ago. I wonder what the reason is for him not having done so.

Has he been paying maintenance? Is his dd 18 now?

[squishysquirmy]

Even if you could take his tales of an evil ex at face value (and there is very likely to be another side to the story) harrassing his daughter via social media is not in her daughter's best interests. She obviously wants nothing to do with him at the moment and he wont change her mind by cyber-stalking her.

YANBU to feel deeply uncomfortable.

[Brittapieandchips]

I'm tempted to say something to mutual friends when I see them sharing things around, but they know him better and talk about what a good dad he was when the dd was a baby, and I hardly know him. But they could be contributing towards harming the child, couldn't they?

[Birdsgottafly]

"He seems like a nice bloke, btw. A nice bloke desperate to see his little girl. But... thats not how it works, is it?"

I and my now deceased DH were cut out of our GC (well my DH's biologically) lives, because we didn't ok the parents drug taking lifestyles.

Even failing parents gets to say who has residency if their children.

I stepped in when my GD's last foster placement broke down and she has lived with me and I am the only support she now has, only because the Chikdrens Act has changed to allow this.

My adult children are the greatest support and only contact with birth family that my two GS have.

The law and SS can get things very wrong and I speak as someone who works within SS.

I don't agree with the stalking etc, it should be about what the girl wants, but because there is/has been no contact doesn't mean there has been good reason for this.

[Brittapieandchips]

Shes a young teen, old enough to be starting to use social media, but apparently the 'bitch ex' won't let anyone put pictures of her anywhere publicly accessible.

I have no idea about maintenance.

It's being painted as 'everyone share this pictures and links and help this dad find his beloved long lost daughter' and well meaning people are joining in.

[DeWee]

It may be that he is a great and loving dad who would love to get back in contact with her...

But the risk against. What if the ex won't let her photos be put online because they're hiding from him? Because of DV or something else.

Why won't he go through the courts? Has he ever tried the courts? I would find it suspicious if he hasn't ever tried to get a contact order.

It could be someone I used to know's child. Lovely happy family, great hands on dad... then child porn including his own dc were found on his computer. I don't know where they are now.
You see they needed to move away, go into hiding because he didn't tell people what he'd done. It was all his evil ex... and she didn't want to publicise what he'd done. But that meant that friends and family heard a sob story and wanted to help this "wonderful father".
They had things like people offering to pick them up from school, and taking them round to see dad. Mum had a choice. Let people know why she'd thrown him out or disappear. She chose to disappear.
He never took it to court because he knew it wasn't worth it. All would be brought out in the open. He describes the prison sentence he had as "working abroad" to explain where he was. He's very plausible. If you didn't know what had actually happened, you would think he'd been very hard done by.

[MrsCakesPremonition]

At the very least he is stalking a young, probably vulnerable child. His idea of appropriate contact is way off.
Tracking down and initiating contact with a child is a private matter to be handled gently, slowly and with huge sensitivity. It is not a public game.
I am genuinely horrified that he would encourage a bunch of strangers (from his daughter's point of view) to hound and badger a child.

[IkeaFurnitureAssemblyChampions]

It's harassment. It doesn't matter what your relationship is to someone or why you're trying to contact them, flooding someone with messages like that is not ok.

If he's sincere, he needs to try a different angle; a legal one if need be. But as it is, he's an online stalker.

[PoundingTheStreets]

Has he shown such persistence in providing for his child all these years? I suspect not.

I think you might find it helpful to stop trying to classify him as either "nice man desperate to see his DD" or "fantasist/evil git who can't really be bothered to make more than a superficial effort or is playing an abusive game." He could be a little bit of all of those.

It's quite probably that he does indeed love his daughter and would indeed love to be reunited with her. He can probably be very sentimental on occasions and the emotions he displays will be genuine unless he's a complete sociopath. That doesn't mean, however, that he can't also be selfish and unreliable. There are lots of people out there who "care" but only in so far that it doesn't require them to go to a significant effort to prove it, or to make sacrifices for the greater good of the person they profess to care about.

It doesn't make them bad people, just a bit selfish and feckless. From an objective POV I can totally understand why he would want to see his DD and find little to object to about it (on face value). As a mother, however, the last person I would want in my child's life is an unreliable co-parent who blows hot and cold and as such will almost certainly let down my child in a spectacular fashion at some point causing an awful lot of emotional pain along the way.

[ThePriory]

This is a very persistent and public attempt to harass his previous family, most likely driven by jealousy from seeing pics of a new founded happy life, without him. Social media is not the place for this sort of thing in the slightest.

Don't get involved.

[Callani]

Maybe he is a fantastic father who loves his daughter, but he is encouraging people to do the cyber equivalent of knocking on her door, harrassing her, until she has to move house (cancel her profile and create another one)

Even if it's just a case of crossed wires / poor online etiquette, he is still essentially cyber stalking his daughter. She clearly could have responded at any point to these but has chosen not to. I would highlight this to anyone who mentions it in the future.

[feathermucker]

He is going about it in entirely the wrong way, even though his intentions are hopefully good. This course of action can only result in a non-positive outcome and is basically harassment.

If he wants to have contact, he'd ge better advised to go about it differently. Perhaps through a specialist intermediary, legal representation or by contacting Mum (though this is obviously dependent upon the circumstances surrounding the situation)

[WilsonFrickett]

but apparently the 'bitch ex' won't let anyone put pictures of her anywhere publicly accessible.

See that immediately makes me think she is being sensible and trying to protect her daughter from him. And even if she is a bitch, if its her wish to not put photos of her DD online, why would we he go against that?

[MinesAPintOfTea]

I'd even go so far as to say you have a duty to try and stop this hounding of a child. I don't know if you could report it to the police because you're not the victim, but it might be worth thinking about.

Maybe there wasn't a real reason, but in that case he could persist with the courts until he got supervised contact awarded. Doing it this way is just wrong.

[pluCaChange]

IF someone needs to go through intermediaries, because of a breakdown in a relationship with a guardian/ gatekeeper, then that person REALLY ought to choose those intermediaries properly. Strangers (spamming social media) are NOT suitable intermediaries: how could they be, with NO relationship with this girl?

These people are therefore not intermediaries, but are instead being used to surround her in all spaces (school?! Are people crazy, to even think of kidnapping a strange child like that?!). She can't go out into any sort of public without risking that any stranger she meets might be one of "his". Hiw enormously cruel, to destroy a child's capacity for trust.

If I were you, OP, I'd spproach the police and offer to bear witness agsinst this man, fir his harrassment, and fir recruiting others to harrass. The girl and her mother may well not trust you, but if they are able to bear it, they will gain helpful evidence against what sounds like either a deluded and extremely discomfiting relation, or a bitter schemer.