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

And yet again we have the common denominator: men, men, men......

Guilty of possessing images of child abuse.

This is the fascinating one to me because it's hard to take that leap from causing death and injury in a personal and local way to doing it in a professional capacity. And yet in our work lives we have responsibilities and ethics and duty of care. I would be horrified that my professional actions resulted in the outcomes of something like Grenfell but I can see with the pressure that people are expected to work under that it can happen. I think all we can hope for is considered justice.

Yes, I’ve met (in various scenarios) three men who turned out to be paedophiles.
One in my early 20s, I only found out in the last few years as his name was in local papers.
Two were teachers, one st DC’s school, the other a local man who I’d had dealings with (the latter was the worst offender to my knowledge and is in prison).

If I battered a baby so hard it died of a ruptured spleen/liver or damaged lungs would you be happy for everyone to call it consensual playfighting?

Correcting people will eventually make them realise; and I will keep doing that - I am not tediously virtue signalling.

But, nice to know you think that those ignoring what"child porn" is, rape and sexual abuse/torture are either OK to ignore it or don't know what the difference is between raping a child and consensual pornography that only Consenting adults can make.

Men who make videos and images of children being raped, sexually abused or tortured have almost certainly been the rapist/torture at some point prior to being involved on making this abhorrent material.

Do you understand the injuries a baby or child can sustain during rape? Maybe you should learn, or not comment on things you do not have the capacity to understand.

I worked with a man who talked about his girlfriend back home in Austria a lot. All normal stuff, flying home to see her, going on trips together, going to festivals etc. He left to go back home and we didn't hear from him. One day we got a German news report saying he had murdered her on her doorstep quite gruesomely. Turns out they had only dated for a month in college and he had stalked her for years before killing her. Everything he'd told us about their relationship had been complete lies. She had reported him for stalking, there were restraining orders, she'd changed her name, even moved countries to get away from him. He still found her, murdered her, then went on the run in the Alps before being caught. Our work involved week work long trips in isolated places and I'd spent weeks in the middle of nowhere with just him and I never would have suspected he'd be capable of what he was doing. It's true that they hide in plain sight.

I went to school with a brother and sister who one day didn’t come back in. They had murdered their older sister.

more recently a school dad that I used to chat to in the playground now and then, he killed someone by setting them on fire.

Some bloke that I vaguely knew as a teen was done for child-porn.

I also worked with someone who had been to prison for GBH. He was genuinely a lovely bloke. He was out one evening when a drunken man attacked him. He defended himself but as the man ended up with brain damage when he fell, it was decided it was not a proportionate response.

When women are not consenting then it is a not pornography! It, is rape, or sexual assault. Trafficking women for the sole purpose of using them for sex is not pornography - it is unconsensual therefore illegal. It is rape, sexual abuse and making images" for financial gain.

I think it will take more than one mumsnet post to educate people and i feel very sad that women do not understand the difference.

Why are you shouting ? We get it.

Precisely my point.

DD's scout leader. Seemed a lovely guy, had been a scout leader for donkeys years.
He suddenly went mia, very hush hush, then his mug appeared in the paper following his conviction for historical offences while leading camps.

My mother used to work with a social worker who was later imprisoned for abusing a huge number of young boys in children’s homes - it was a massive case locally. She never liked him particularly and used to tell me to stay away from him, but never imagined he was capable of that.

One of the engineers at work was very friendly and pleasant, til he disappeared. We found out very quickly that he had been imprisoned for either manslaughter or attempted murder (I can’t remember what happened to the victim) after a drunken fight. He had managed to keep the arrest and trial a secret from pretty much everyone. There was a big stink because the not very competent general manager hadn’t had a clue.

Finally, there was someone I classed as a good friend, we were all part of the same crowd. He was arrested for possession of child abuse images and a whole spiral of lies were uncovered. It devastated his family and it was incredibly hard to reconcile the person who had done this with the person I’d known. It was even harder when the report came out and detailed some of his search terms, which made me feel sick in the light of a couple of seemingly innocent conversations we had had.

Yes I've met many men, through work, that had sexually abused their children and a few kids who had sexually abused their siblings. Never had an off feeling about any of those.

Yes, I worked with a woman who had served a sentence for manslaughter. She was lovely, friendly, well-spoken and middle class - the last two are my own prejudices I admit but I wouldn't have expected it. However she binge drank a lot and would undergo something of a personality change when drinking, raucous, aggressive and quick to take offence.

Later in life I was in a support group with an elderly man who earlier in his life had done a sentence for manslaughter (a much longer one than the woman, but the circs were very different so I understand why). He was tall, quiet and had a lot of home done blue ink tattoos. Very polite, but quiet and with what I would describe as a sort of stifling presence.

it has left me thinking that in the wrong circumstances everyone is capable of doing something horrific.

Couldn't agree more with this. I'm with Jung - we all have a shadow side. You only need one or two things to go wrong - some brain neurons misfiring, addiction, abuse, horrible life situations - and that can be enough to turn anybody.

Someone I used to work with popped up a few years later on one of the videos of the 'paedophile vigilante groups' where they had tricked him into meeting then turned up with a camera and team of people. It was horrific to watch because not only did I not suspect him of anything like this but because of what he was accused of. Awful. Was very glad I didn't work with him any more.

Absolutely. Not all the women he killed or attacked were prostitutes either - that was the police' misogynistic assumptions.

But even if they had been, wouldn't make a difference. Prostitute isn't a separate category of woman - many desperate women will have sex in exchange for something - they are women in desperate circumstances. A label doesn't help.

The Ripper could have been caught in the mid 1970s if the police had taken seriously the brilliant artist's impression produced by victim Macella Claxton, whos eyewitness testimoney produced a photofit that is SPOT ON, and remembered his make of car too. But the police ignored her testimoney because she was 'Black, an alcoholic and a prostitute'.

That illustrates how dangerous these labels are: were it not for their misogyny and racism, a dozen lives could have been saved.

A good acquaintance / distant friend from university whom I stayed in loose contact with after uni was found guilty of rape, sexual assault, child sexual assault and a few other things.

He (late 20ies when he committed the crimes) violated several girls and at least one of them was no older than 14.

He had apparently been under criminal investigation whilst my friend hosted dinner parties at their shared apartment (the investigation and trial took several years).

I saw him during after work drinks about 2 months before he was sentenced.

He seemed normal, devoted to his girlfriend, never seemed to be under a lot of stress (which the investigation and trial presumably would have been) either…🤔

The problem is men sadly

Oh my god. I'm sorry I shouldn't laugh but...a CHEMISTRY teacher? Of course.

"And today children, I'm going to demonstrate a hydrogen-oxygen explosion....using nothing but ordinary household items. I can even show you how to do it in the dark!"

I must say, I love that you've given clues to protect other women and children.

Can't believe nobody believes you! You can't fix men like that. It'll only get worse.

There are 19 companies who might be charged with corporate offences and 58 individual people who are suspected of other crimes, serious wrongdoing, contributing to the fire and the loss of life. The CPS is yet to decide who will be charged with what.

You’ve made your initial point, which was good but continually saying the same thing when it has already landed, is disruptive at best, virtue signaling and self absorbed at worst. We get it, we agree, now please stop.

I am sorry, but this is an excessively legalistic defense, trying to use a weak argument on technicality to defend pornography. Women are trafficked and coerced and tricked and pressured into pornography to feed the demand for mainstream, commercial pornography. Those consuming that pornography can have no way of knowing which women are freely consenting and which are not. So trying to make a distinction, as you are, between ‘ethical’ pornography and ‘non ethical’ is entirely bogus.

I also find it naive in the extreme to think that an industry which makes its money by creating images of women being degraded and humiliated and abused sexually for men to wank to, will also be run by people ( mainly men) who are totally big on the human and employment rights of women. That’s just not a credible scenario.

I’n presuming you are taking this line because you enjoy masturbating to pornography so you want to pretend all is fine with that. It’s the old ‘denial of there being a victim’ defense that people use to justify themselves. But it’s fanciful to pretend that an industry built explicitly on making money from exploiting men’s enjoyment of abusing, humiliating and degrading women will not continue this attitude to women off camera.

And of course, there are the other harms of this pornography that I outlined, such as the way it shapes men’s attitudes to women. Which you have not addressed.