Ever met someone you later learned had done something really bad? **Content warning: thread contains mentions of child abuse**

[user2848502016]

Just asking because a few months ago someone I worked with suddenly stopped coming to work... then we found out he had been found guilty of possessing child porn 😬
He hadn't been working with us for long so didn't know him that well but he just seemed like a nice, slightly boring middle aged man! I know you can't ever tell by looking at someone but it just made me think anyone I know could be doing anything behind closed doors.....

Thread titled edited by MNHQ to add a content warning

My friend’s flatmate, a lovely, big, jolly security guard who she lived with for years and treated as a family member. He was a type 1 diabetic who didn’t manage his diabetes very well, and had had a recent incident of not looking after a foot wound and developing sepsis.

He went missing suddenly, and when she rang his work to ask if he’d been in, they said he had told them he was going on holiday. She checked his room, suitcase still there, nothing gone that she could tell. She rang the police to report him as missing and they rang back within 15 minutes to say they had made contact and he wasn’t missing.

A few days later, it hit the media that he had been convicted of molesting his sister. We were all floored. He had never given us any weird or off vibes. The news articles detailed him doing so in Friend’s apartment when she wasn’t home.

He never made any arrangements to get his stuff after, or made any further contact, and obviously the family wanted nothing to do with him, so the landlord and Friend ended up bagging it all up.

It really is shocking. It's awful too that many here commit their crimes over years and even decades, so disturbing.

I agree.

This was my thought too.

I would have taken all of it with a huge pinch of salt knowing his condition.

😱

This. It’s images of abuse of children.

And yes OP. I have. Dated someone who turned out to be a fraudster and serial abuser of women. He was lovely. A gently spoken, caring nice guy, active in various good works in the community. He did those things as part of the fictional narrative he created about himself so that he could access and ensnare his next victim. He’s the only person I’ve met that I’d describe as evil.

It’s really unsettling to have met someone like that. Because you realise you absolutely can’t spot the bad guys and there’s no one of knowing who is lying to you, of knowing who has created a fictional character of themselves to dupe you.

I had a lovely neighbour called Teena. She'd had a tough life, her son had been killed by his wife after she pushed him during an argument and he fell and hit his head.

After she died, I found out she had been sitting on her sofa one day watching crime watch when an image (sketched) came up of her someone very much like her husband. He had murdered a woman called Julie Dart and had kidnapped an estate agent called Stephanie Slater. Thankfully she got away. Its often been thought he was suzy Lamplugh murderer due to her and Stephanie both being estate agents, but apparently there is enough evidence to show it wasn't him. I'm still not convinced.

His name is Michael Sams. Teena had absolutely no idea.

Another one with a child abuser.

He was normal if not slightly odd, but never in a way that raised red flags. He was a coach at a local sports club, manager of a bistro after leaving teaching (abroad, in schools for young boys who had been orphaned etc), was arrested for accessing CSAM of children the same age as he'd been teaching. Horrific.

Yes that’s the one.

I don’t know why people seem to be doubting what I’ve said. It’s 💯 true. He is a university lecturer now, teaching criminology at one of the top universities.

People seem to think that these people disappear after they’re released but they walk among us, doing all the same things we do. He uses his past as a way to argue for rehabilitation for most prisoners, he’s done a lot of stuff online about it too.

When will people learn that a child is unable to take part on pornography?

Pornography means both parties gave consent. A child cannot consent.

That child was raped or sexually assaulted by an adult. RAPED OR SEXUALLY ABUSED!

Yeah it is true and he has been doing a lot of good work. I just think the killing was so depraved and sadistic in the first place that I wonder if it is possible to fully rehabilitate someone who did that. It’s quite different from someone who punches someone in a pub and they die and they get sent down for murder. This was pre planned and in revenge because this man didn’t want his 13 yo child going out with and having sex with an adult man. But I guess he’s served his time 🤷‍♀️

@NewspaperTaxis

Yeah it was (May 2023). It was all over the news at the time.

I think we've all learnt that on this thread.

OMG NO PORN DOES NOT MEAN ALL PARTIES CONSENTED. Fgs there are trafficked and drugged women being forced into porn all the time. There’s loads of “rape porn” out there which shows women being raped. Comments like this just totally undermines that.
The actual law which I have posted above refers to “pornographic” images of children and defines this.
COULD WE STOP VIRTUE SIGNALLING FOR ONE HOT MINUTE PLEASE.

Oh I agree. When dd first told me I was 😳😳😳

That’s horrible! Poor woman.

"Friend" is not really accurate these days. We occasionally interact with eachothers posts on FB. I never see or speak to her.

I realise that this photos of child abuse thing is so common, it’s absolutely frightening. I went out with a guy when I was at university - we were both 18. He was lovely, intelligent, quite quiet, but also generous, sociable and above all normal! I visited his home, he visited mine, his mum was lovely, my mum liked him- he was that kind of boy next door. We kept in touch loosely over the years (it was 30 years ago). One day I looked on facebook, thought to myself- oh I wonder how he’s doing haven’t heard from him for a while. His account was no longer on facebook- but a pop up came up with his picture and a link to some kind of paedophile reporting network. He had been n court for joining a paedophile network (US based) and joining others to watch videos of child abuse. He was actually caught by some kind of US investigation. Obviously I haven’t been in touch since; he didn’t go to prison and did community service. But like everyone says - he was absolutely the last person you would ever suspect. Really shocked me.

Likely not even true given one of the side effects of dementia is memory loss which can manifest in lies.

I know someone who kept telling his carers that he had abused his wife for decades and they should let him die. It was definitely not true and his wife was in hysterics every time he said it and it broke her heart.

Pretty poor to assume someone with dementia has any sort of capacity to know what happens 60+ years ago when lots of people with it can't even remember their own partner or wives name or to turn the oven off after they cook.

I categorically disagree with calling it anything other than child sexual abuse but felt that enough people had called it out, what’s the point of 100 more people saying it? May as well just shut down the thread?

Was that in Scotland @Mirabai?

I think I saw a documentary about the trial.

@Fgfgfg · Yesterday 21:50

@reallifeboogie · Yesterday 21:45
Given that he killed prostitutes, its highly unlikely.
Show quote history
Women. He killed women.

Including a school girl.....

I agree that the term child pornography should not be used, but disagree that pornography should be assumed to be consensual and therefore ok.

Many women in pornography are not freely consenting. Some women are not ‘actresses’, they are not paid, you are watching ‘ordinairy’ abuse that has uploaded. Or it’s revenge ‘porn’. Even with porn actresses, so many are trafficked or coerced women. There have recently been convictions for rape in France of porn actors and makers as the police raided them before they could edit out the footage of the women crying and saying they were scared and did not want to do it. ( porn makers normally film the women at the end who are made to say they consented so they can’t take a case for assault)

Even in the cases of women consenting, those women actually have to go through the disgusting things that are happening to them, often violent and degrading. In recent years there has been recognition of the impact on regular film actresses acting out scenes of being assaulted in normal films, which are obviously much, much tamer than porn. Regulate studios have started to employ specialist coaches to help and support female actresses through these scenes. There is none of that in porn.

And even after all that, there is the well reported evidence that boys and men watching mainstream aggressive porn is leading to real girls and women being assaulted ( non consensual choking, slapping spitting) and boys and men expecting aggressive sex

So yes, we should use the term images of child sex abuse, but we should not assume that adult porn is all consensual and fine and dandy and not at all related to abuse or problematic. Because it is.