What does MN think of how this turned out? (TW)

[PhantomSmoke]

We had an ordinary marriage. Then I found out my husband had been viewing images of child abuse

I’m a bit shocked, tbh…

I was quite shocked that this man's wife stayed with him. She can't trust him hence the CCTV. Just knowing he had viewed this material would end it for me. Seems that some people will overlook anything.

I am not judging the outcome of this case because none of us know the exact details and relying on a newspaper article can be misleading.
I expect I will get flamed, but consider people who have these urges and are disgusted and ashamed of themselves - who can they turn to for help? They'd be scared to go to their doctor - can you search for a private consultation with a psychiatrist or psychologist - would they have to report you to the police?Probably you'd be reported if you rang the Samaritans or similar, or even a priest.
Years ago I knew of a friend of a friend who was in this situation - desperate to not act on his feelings - desperate to be "cured" but not knowing who to turn to.
I also know someone who got sent to jail for grooming a boy. He said that, like other "gangs" or secret societies eg. Ku Klux Klan or even extreme religious groups, talking to other paedophiles (because they could not admit their desires to anyone else) reinforced their feelings of "entitlement". Therefore I think that by shunning these people when they are caught, not helping them to resist their urges, not talking openly to them about their crimes they will have nowhere to turn and will offend again.

Good grief, what self pitying rubbish. He'll do it again without a doubt. I thought that the rehabilitation courses for these people had a very low success rate?

She minimises what he did. The only people to come out of this with any sort of morals are his boss/company who sacked him when they found out.

It's bullshit that it stems from porn addiction, you have to go looking for this sort of thing on the dark Web you don't just stumble upon it. He knew exactly what he was doing.

I feel sorry for their son, who because the stupid woman doesn't want to give up her nice middle class lifestyle, image and unusual name is sticking with a paedophile. Imagine the shit he will get if it gets out.

I'm more interested in seriously deterring any man from beginning.

If Matthew was just an ordinary nice guy to begin with, who "stumbled" on child sexual abuse images, he was not frightened enough to stop. He said he was afraid of being found out, but frankly he was not afraid enough.

We need to make these men much, much more afraid of consequences. No name changes. No suspended sentences. No anonymity. Only abject terror will stop them.

"Support to stop" is a nonsense, and I think has proven to be, from the high rates of reoffending. We don't need to give these paedos more support. We need to give them much, much less

Edit for typo

Did anyone see a documentary, I believe it was Louis Theroux, where he spoke with paedophiles in America. They were at a halfway house after prison release and had abused children. One of them said he cannot be rehabilitated and wished for chemical castration, said his brain was wired up differently to always be attracted to children.

Makes me wonder if it’s true, and if you can’t actually rehabilitate these kind of offenders.

The other thing that is really gross is that it has that usual Guardian tone of being oh so self aware and middle class and university educated and buying organic Tuscan kale in their market town market..... your usual slightly pretentious Guardian couple in other words, but it's literally about someone justifying his accessing of child abuse images to himself, changing his name, and having his family feel sorry for him and continuing to live with his wife and child.

It's just a bit brain snapping.

There are some schools of thought that say addicts need to go completely teetotal forever.

For example, some former alcoholics never go back to drinking moderately, but stay teetotal forever, and this is not considered an extreme stance to take.

[Nb I'm not implying alcoholism is remotely as bad as paedophilia].

If a paedophile claims to be a type of addict, then by the same analogy he should be kept far away from any contact with children, any sex, any Internet access, for the rest of his life.

I know that sounds impractical, beyond a prison or monastery or something.

But a suspended sentence, living with your young son, with full access to the internet, and a "normal sexual relationship" with your unwilling wife, just ain't it.

The problem is, once they give in to these urges they have created a victim. So somebody suffers because of them. I believe there was a pilot project in Germany years ago which invited people with paedophillic urges to come and get therapy - not sure how successful it was.

You are right that it's difficult to have rational conversations about this, and if someone is born with these kinds of compulsions (which I believe at least some of them are) then they don't have anywhere to turn.
But they won't be prosecuted for having thoughts about this, you can't arrest someone for a thought crime - I'm sure it is shameful for them to admit, but maybe some psychologists could work with them - but not if they have already harmed a child, and viewing child abuse images means that a child has already been harmed.

The reality is, none of us are owed sex or sexual gratification by another. I have plenty of urges that I don't act on because I don't want to hurt others. I know that sounds like I'm simplifying it too much, but really it boils down to the fact that these men are committing a crime when they act on these desires.

Oh poor me, it was all the pesky porns fault it got me addicted blah blah blah.

Bullshit. You are a paedophile. You looked up these images purposely.

How any of his family could stick by him, and how his wife let's him look after their child astounds and disgusts me.

Honestly, I just think, what if they were my friends and I trusted them to allow my children to go around for playdates. He should be nowhere near a school or children of any age. I think paedophiles who view this kind of abuse should be on the register forever and shamed for life.

She's an adult her parents can't tell her to end her marriage I imagine they are probably horrified
I suppose they are trying to be support for her sake and their Grandchild,s.

That article has made me feel sick. Matthew doesn’t give a flying fuck about the abused children - and 100% he’s still engaging in that behaviour. He’s just practiced in hiding it now. Those images were SAVED. I just looked up what cat A images are.

The wife is disgusting too. CCTV in her child’s room in case daddy abuses him.

Poor little Matthew.

I had a friend who confided in me this happened with her brother. I’m not friends with her anymore but I see regular pics of him snuggling up with her kids on social media and it makes me feel sick. They’ve all just moved past it.

Her parents probably initially tried to, then realised it was no use and they'd better stick around to help safeguard their grandson.

I never expected my in-laws to be so supportive. Obviously they were shocked and there were angry discussions at first

I keep wondering at the similarities between Matthew and the man I knew. But it isn't him, the other man was viewing images of victims way younger than 6yo. And the wife married him afterwards.

Astonishing that the wife cares more about saving his anonymity than anything else

That really struck me- him saying they made him tell his wife and it was 'a twist of the knife'. It exposes a feeling of being 'deliberately hurt' in the process of being arrested - as if he deserved better. He sounded awful.

Just spotted where my queasy shifting sands feeling comes from.

I have worked with victims and also with perpetrators of child sexual abuse. I understand the rationale and can argue for understanding, empathy, moderation in hopes of effective intervention and prevention. That's the role of a professional.

However the article is written from the perspective of the couple. They are spouses and parents. It is NOT the role of a spouse to stand by their partner no matter what, whereas it IS the role of a parent to protect their child from harm no matter what.

Hearing the couple co-opt theoretical professional arguments as a way of dodging their core responsibilities as parent and spouse is just another example of the fucked up boundaries here.

Meanwhile, the child has no-one in the parenting role.

God help us if she's still working in safeguarding! What a disgusting, minimising article from the Guardian.
All the therapy is just helping him excuse his behaviour. I sometimes think some therapists are so caught up in the theoretical they actually lose sight that these are real people doing bloody awful things. The focus should always be on the victims not indulging the perpetrators.
He should be made to listen to accounts of real victims and to see he is just as bad as the people actually abusing the children. No demand, no supply.
The wife just seems bothered about their superficial idealic life being taken away from her and her son. Where on earth is her concern for the abused children! Shocking.

This is insane. That poor child. How's he going to feel when he grows up and realises he's been filmed his entire life? Zero privacy.

How is is supposed to prevent abuse anyway? Just means it'll be caught on camera is all.

I'm sure her husband will love it when he's got all these naked videos of the child getting changed or having a wank or whatever boys do in their rooms.

I was very surprised by this.

reading the article it appears they both lack accountability and see him as a victim, rather than a criminal who was treated as such.

I don't But it makes me wonder had he Been an unemployed layabout living on benefits on a rough estate
Rather than a university educated professional living with his equallyt educated career driven wife in a nice comfortable home would his sentence been as lenient and would he still be living with his son?

Agree with this.
An old friend (from school), her husband of 35 years was convicted recently of possessing CSA images. I was unable to find out his sentence.
She's a teacher and has divorced him and has, along with their 3 adult DCs, gone NC with him. He's mid 60s.

Well that cctv will be handy, he can sell videos of their child getting changed to other peadophiles.

No idea. I never have and there's no such thing as "the dark web"

Well, having just read up on Tor, and the dark web in general, (correct me where wrong) I see it’s basically like the internet as we’re used to, but these sites are hidden from regular searches unless you use a special browser to look for them (eg, Tor). You would then need to search very specifically for what kind of websites you want to access (illegal gun trafficking, drugs, fake credit cards/pins/passwords, or in this case CSA). He definitely did not just ‘stumble’ onto it. He very deliberately downloaded a browser to access the dark web and then very deliberately searched for CSA websites. He’s a paedophile, full stop, and I really feel the Guardian should be pulled up on this. It’s not acceptable. I was completely shocked that they would post such a sympathetic article.

There are some legitimate uses of using Tor, for example in countries with oppressive regimes, or whistleblowing and you want to remain 100% anonymous, but apparently using it is so slow and cumbersome compared to regular browsing that the average person simply wouldn’t bother.

Thank you for raising this, I'm genuinely shocked by the almost nonchalant tone of this.