None of MIL’s partner’s children speak to him.. why?

[GL123]

Until recently I didn’t even realise MIL’s partner had any children. I have known him for quite a few years and not once has him having a child ever been mentioned. I assumed maybe he didn’t want kids or couldn’t have kids. I’ve always found him very creepy but can’t put my finger on what it is about him that’s off. I’ve found out this week, when I casually asked my husband if he thought he just didn’t want kids, that he actually has 4 kids and some grandkids too. My husband doesn’t know their names or anything but just knows none of them speak to him. I’m sure there are cases where there could be an innocent explanation for this but I just get such a bad vibe and think what would someone have to do for NONE of his 4 children or any of his grandchildren to want anything to do with him?! It’s only came up since we had a baby last year and my MIL insists on referring to her partner as her grandpa, which I’m really not comfortable with 🤦🏻‍♀️ Why would none of them want anything to do with him?

Can't your dh ask his mum more about him and the no contact?

OP was he married to their Mum ? You could find out her maiden name that way, by looking at marriage records. The children may have reverted to her name, or if they are women they may be married now and have different surnames.
I can look for a marriage on ancestry if you like, feel free to PM me if you would like me to do that. If you know where they went to school their school might have a Facebook page for ex pupils.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz that would be what I would obviously do if she was my mum and would probably have done that as soon as I realised he had kids. I’d also have instantly called out a lot of the other red flags to her in terms of him being controlling but he just doesn’t visit or speak to them much and has never asked her any of these awkward questions 🙄 he agrees we don’t leave her with them but it’s like banging my head off a brick wall to get him to do anything about it

@SirVixofVixHall aw thank you, I literally know nothing and my husband doesn’t even know if they’re all from the same mum or not. It could be lots of different random women so might be even harder to find names 🤦🏻‍♀️ I need to dig a bit deeper to have some info to go on

Tbh I'd stop visiting and stop the kids visiting. He can go all he likes. This might motivate him to dig further/ seek out the mans adult children for info. Agree with the suggestion upthread of doing a Sarah's Law. Doesn't matter that he stopped seeing his own kids 25 years ago- there could still be something on him.

As others have said. Trust you gut and definitely dig more into it.

Another voice here to implore you to hold strong, and put your child first (as you clearly are). Fuck other people's feelings, children need adults to look out for them, and no one has the right to override your instincts when it comes to your child's safety. It is not worth the risk!

I mean trust your instinct, but I have quite a few friends who don't speak to their dads. Nothing bad happened - they just don't have anything in common with him and they were brought up by their mum usually.
Another guy I know, it was his wife who had an affair and took the children with her when she left, but his kids don't speak to him which pains him every day. There can be lots of complex reasons

It's not about trusting your gut,ffs. It's about looking at some worrying actual facts!

I'd posit that it's actually about both trusting your gut, and also the worrying facts both. Especially if you felt weird about him before he'd mentioned his lack of contact with his children/grandchildren.

Trust your instinct.
There is a really good book the gift of fear and I highly recommend
You don't have to have a proof for your instincts to be right, in fact you may never get one. But you know.
I would do the Claire's law and do what I can to speak to one of his kids or previous partners.
That's all creepy

@bluepen12 The Gift of Fear. By Gavin "if a woman's abused once she's a victim-twice and she's a volunteer"de Becker?

Never ever ignore your feelings when it comes to creepy men. We get the creepy vibe when they are in fact creepy. It oozes out of them.

So fucking dangerous to tell women to ignore these instincts. This is how we are socialised to put our instincts aside and be nice. That creepy man on the bus who sits right next to you even though there are 20 other seats? Be nice, don't get up and move, don't be rude, don't hurt his feelings, sit there and be uncomfortable and wait and see if he's just enjoying the discomfort or is he actually going to touch....

FUCK THAT SHIT. Make noise. Ask questions. Move away. Keep your kids away from the creepy men and ask loudly why none of his kids want to know him.
FUCK THAT FUCKING SHIT.

My partner is NC with his adult children. He had cery bad mental health problems and ex threw him out. She turned the children against him.

did she though? Or is that what he told you?

Are very bad mental health problems good for children? Or is it likely that she needed to protect her children from his issues?

@MwahHaHa The point is- there are many dangerous men who do not give off any "creep vibes" at all. Any many innocent ones who do. That's why "trusting your instincts" is so dangerous. It makes you let your guard down. There are just as many, if not more "he seemed such a lovey man" as there are "I had a feeling...." And anyway-in this case there is no need for trusting feelings. There is hard evidence.

I don't agree. I don't think there are many innocent ones that give up creepy vibes at all.

Trusting your instincts is not dangerous at all, telling people to ignore them as you did is very dangerous. We're not talking vague woo feelings, we're talking behavioural cues and proprioception and subtle information that doesn't always fully register on a concious level, plus many other things.

Don';t ever tell women to ignore their instincts when it comes to men. It doesn't make you let your guard down if you always keep it up.

"I don't agree. I don't think there are many innocent ones that give up creepy vibes at all."

You cannot possibly know this. As you say-our guards should be up all the time, regardless of "vibes."

If he abused his DC, he may well have abused others more recently, so if you're entitled to get a police check done (- I don't know the rules around Sarah's law) I think you should definitely do that. A few posters have mentioned this, and I get the impression, OP, that you are looking for excuses not to ask for a police check. If the check comes back with a positive result, you have your answer. That obviously doesn't mean that you should assume a negative result means nothing sinister, as abuse may have gone unreported.

Trust your gut here. I have 2 men in the family who married in later in life with adult children, who have no relationship with them and have never met their grandchildren.

Like you, one of them i didn’t even know he had a daughter out there (and grandchildren) for about 10 years as they were never mentioned and never surfaced in all that time.

The other I knew his children existed but apparently it was an ‘acrimonious’ divorce when they were uni age and they cut him off because they wanted money and he wouldn’t give them as much as they wanted.

It’s come out since that both were convicted of child sexual offences, one against a niece (his daughter’s cousin) and the other against his own daughter. One served time in prison and the other got a community sentence and spent 3 years in a community sexual offenders programme.

Both are creepy with no friends but managed to latch on to insecure women who would have taken home anyone who showed them the teeniest bit of attention. These women have now also lost relationships with their children and grandchildren but are ‘standing by’ these losers.

I had a bad feeling for years and did a lot of checking up on one of these guys. Eventually I had to hire a PI as this person had contact with my child (offenses we’re not committed in the UK so Sarah’s Law was no help) and that’s the only way I ever would have found out. I’m eternally glad I trusted my instincts.

Also perhaps counter to others, I wouldn’t waste time on a Sarah’s Law request unless it’s for someone else’s benefit. Just choose not to have anything to do with him.

In my case, one of the offenders would have had a clean record as his family lived abroad and that’s where he abused his daughter.

In the other case, the offences happened in the UK but when the police officer rang me in response to the request, she told me that if I suspected anything, it was my job to protect my dc because the offender’s right to privacy trumped my right to know because I had a choice (he was a step grandparent so no right to have contact with my child anyway) and could avoid him if I wanted. It’s not how the disclosure scheme is meant to work but I suspect this happens more often than people realise. It’s ridiculous. Someone less stubborn than me would have probably just buried their head in the sand and carried on, probably at the risk of my children’s safety.

It could be a myriad of things. But for 4 children to not want any form of contact sends up red flags galore. The fact he never mentions them, even in passing or anecdotally too. At best he was a really crap and absent father that abandoned them, at worst an abuser. However it is probably useless to ask MIL as she will have been fed the usual script of a horrible ex that kept hom from his children and turned them against him.

Did you ever get answers @GL123 ?

@Whatishedoing no I haven’t found anything else out but have at least established that they don’t have any contact with our daughter unless we’re there and she now calls him by his name and not grandpa

Did you do the Sarahs law check?