AIBU: sex offender at my social gathering

[HoppyFish]

Hi folks. Not sure this is the best place to post this but I value your advice. I have been going to a nice life drawing session for years. Nothing sexual about it, it's more of a social gathering, with music, a cuppa, bit of food, and drawing/painting with fellow artists. However, there's a man, in his sixties, not a professional artist, who makes me uneasy. He is always quick to befriend any young female attendees or models, and invites them to his studio or home for photoshoots (for portrait work) and possibly painting. I suppose some people would describe him as a 'creep'. He never asks males, middle-aged or older women. He also sometimes stops drawing early, moves position, and sits staring at the model (when female) as if in a trance. Now, I suppose there is nothing wrong in any of this - an amateur artist wanting to paint portraits maybe wants to specialise in young females. And maybe when staring at the model without drawing he is simply studying anatomy or light and shadow. Anyway, my uneasiness led me to do a little online research on him, and I have discovered that he was jailed for downloading indecent images and mainly videos of children, levels 1 (most serious) to 5, involving men having sex with girls, aged between 2 and 9. He was jailed for a year and spent 10 years on the register. I expect he came off the register around four years ago. I think I am the only one who knows this, and it makes me feel even more uneasy about him. But is there anything to be concerned about? All the models and attendees at the life drawing session are over eighteen. I suppose I should just let him get on with his hobby, but I can't help continuing to feel uneasy, especially when I see him swapping numbers with every new young woman who he encounters. I expect they are impressed by the 'portrait artist' wanting to paint them, but I wonder if they would be keen to pose for him if they knew what I knew, and if they knew he never seems to produce any finished paintings? Am I being unreasonable? Thanks for your time.

If that was in reply to me he actually really doesn't even seem sorry. Mental.

"A paedophile is much more likely to sexually assault adult women or hurt adults not less."

That's interesting. Could you point me in the direction of the evidence for this?

Whilst I can't point to evidence (because I can't be bothered to look) this makes logical sense.

Sexual offending is about power more than attraction.

Sexual thrill from power abuse is all about pushing boundaries. There is a power imbalance - both physical and structural - between men and women.

It is not a huge reach to guess someone who gets off on abusing children might also get off on abusing women, the elderly or animals.

Whilst this is 100% not in any way evidence or a exact science, what I can tell you from my experience of working with these men is many had wives who wouldn't not visit most days, even when these men couldn't leave the home, due to fear. I wondered back then if there was a link in general to cruelty and sadism, to sexual deviants. Some wives would physically recoil from these often bed ridden men and still wait on them. It was very upsetting.

My own parents are less than average intelligence, my mum hid it more but my father struggled, he wasn't able to read or write and he was an extremely cruel and violent man. I assumed it was because of his lack of intelligence when i was growing up but when he died they discovered he was in possession of images of children, physical printed pictures and dvds, not on a laptop or anything. I'd heard rumors about him that he had paid young teenage girls for sex, but I was NC so I didn't wish to hear about it. So I would just for curiosity sake like to also know the facts and see this topic studied and evidenced.

But I can also say, I've worked with very kind and pleasant men who have struggled with their attraction to children and lived very sad, lonely lives without causing harm.

I also had 2 friends, completely separate groups of friends, but both these young men had very openly experienced attraction towards preen/teenage girls when they were much older. One exposed himself to us constantly when my pals and i were 13 about . Both men killed themselves in their early/mid 20s. Its sad to think of young people taking their own lives, I think we need to look at countries that have more services for people who are wanting to harm children for gratification and see what works to stop these people becoming predators.

I always like to think if someone shared with me they had thoughts about kiddos I'd be able to support them to seek help through correct channels and if they'd never accesed abuse images or hurt a child I'd try to be as much of a friend as I could, but if I'm being honest, whilst I'd hope something could help them, I wouldn't want to be the pal they'd come to with that baggage, it's a huge thing to discover about someone.

I can't find the original place I read it. So sorry! I do have this:
https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/exploration-crossover-sexual-offending. It gives the number of convicted sex offenders who had been convicted of offences against more than one victim 279 out of 879). And of those the number who had offended against adults and children (14%). Which is much lower than I had remembered reading but probably higher than the corresponding stats (the percentage of the general pop who have never sexually offended against children but have against adults, and vice versa). At least I hope it is. If I find the original source (or something which contradicts it) I'll post it.

But I can also say, I've worked with very kind and pleasant men who have struggled with their attraction to children and lived very sad, lonely lives without causing harm

I think for someone to actually act on those feelings, knowing they were wrong (rather than take the sad lonely life option) they would have to be deeply selfish and self centered. So you would expect a correlation with other types of abusive / entitled behaviour outside of sexual offending.

(the last point not based on any evidence. Just my own opinion). And your job sounds really tough.

Luckily that was a long time ago. I'm grateful I had that experience though, it taught me alot. Thank you 😊 x

Thank you, this is interesting, the power element. But I understand the attraction to children can be very strong, hence why some of these men are 'chemically castrated'. This is not as drastic as it sounds though. It involves taking tablets to dampen or remove the libido (whilst the tablets are being taken).

I believe for the safety of children chemical castration only works on men who don't want to act upon desires.
I had a very interesting chat with a nurse from America who worked in prisons about this many years ago. She was an online friend. She explained that the men who'd been unwillingly chemically castrated had gone on to hurt children sexually with objects, they didn't have the ability to rape them any longer but the desires to and the inability created frustration causing men to rape children with some objects that caused internal injuries so catastrophic that the children who survived would often be left disabled or infertile. So it would only work on willing participants who don't have sadistic desires.

I truly believe the only way we'll ever keep children, women, anyone vulnerable safe is to invest money, time, recourses and invest this into having things in place to help people with that predisposition of sexual sadism.
I dont believe prison is a deterrent, often child predators are kept amongst other paedophiles and make contacts which is counterproductive to keeping children safe. Large numbers of men with these desires communicating won't lead to some form of group wanting to keep each other on the straight and narrow, it really leads to a network of molesters joining forces. Not a safe outcome for anyone vulnerable.

If we consider that we're told at least one child in every classroom is abused sexually by someone they know then that is an overwhelming amount of children. I believe its probably more, how many threads do we have and posters are surviving sexual abuse from childhood? Sometimes there are more posters who have been abused than haven't.

It's a terribly sad part of being an adult for me, knowing there are child who aren't safe from harm and it could be your neighbours babies or dcs classmates and really there is so little out there to protect them.

I think you have done good to do your sleuthing. Those spidey senses tingling may help to keep someone safe x

I agree with all you have said, and would add that investment in the early years and early intervention in families is part of prevention, rather than treating offenders, where recidivism is high. Not all neglected or abused children become abusers but there is a relationship and the more family support there is to break cycles of intergenerational abuse and neglect, the better. The whole social care/family support system would need an overhaul for this to be meaningful.

One step that should definitely be taken is to protect children from being court ordered to have contact with a parent who has a history of domestic abuse.

An adult can escape from such people but their children are forced to be with them, unsupervised and overnight.

If the child discloses abusive behaviour to the protective parent it will be dismissed by the powers that be as a case of “parental alienation” … in other words the protective parent (previously the victim of the abuser) is deemed by the courts, social services etc to have poisoned the child’s mind against the abusive parent.

There is no consideration given to the possibility that the reason the child doesn’t want to go for contact and /or is making disclosures of abuse could be that they are actually being abused!

@Lwrenn and @biscuitandcake are right, many men who commit sex offences against children are not “pure” paedophiles only attracted to children but opportunistic offenders who will abuse whatever vulnerable person they can get hold of. So those models are vulnerable if placed in a situation where they are alone with this guy, especially if they are naked.

TBH In the course of my job I’ve been stunned over the past few years by the high volumes of very personable, “nice” young men (18-25ish) articulate, well qualified etc. with absolutely no previous criminal history who have been convicted of offences related to viewing serious child abuse images online. Their convictions (rightly) have far reaching consequences on their futures; can’t access internet, barred from lots of jobs, on SA register etc. I’ve no idea what the stats are on this kind of offence progressing to “real life” offending, and how likely these people would’ve been to seek out this kind of material if it were not available online - would they have trawled sex stores or wherever to buy it? I did sometimes wonder how their families coped with the revelation this is what their darling son had been doing in his room while they were downstairs doing the ironing.