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

No, the concerning part is how many people are so busy virtue signalling about the language used, that they’re missing the amount of people who are posting here concerning actual child abuse experience.

I worked with someone who was later convicted of possessing and sharing images of child abuse. I did think there was something off about his interaction with teenagers, but would never have suspected that.

I've met many other people who have been convicted of various crimes, but usually I know about it up front because of the type of work I do. This man was the only one where his arrest came as a complete surprise.

My parents and I met and became really friendly with a nice guy on holiday who was there with his wife and daughter. He turned out to be one of the biggest Russian mafia bosses who later faked his own death 😂

A lady came to our martial arts club, she was almost completely blind. She had a stick and everything. Well she started to learn and was actually doing really well. She walked home after the session and it was dark and the depths of winter so I drove her home and took her number so I could pick her up. One week the phone didnt ring. We never saw her again. It was so strange

Three months later she was in the news. She had been jailed for 17 years for sexually abusing a child with two men.

Absolutely gobsmacked. I had no idea. I thought she was nice and softly spoken. Turns out she was the devil

It also triggered some alram bells because our clubs have kids in them

There have been other cases where someone committed their first offence after I got to know them, which is a different scenario. Two men I was at university with were charged with raping another student during our first year. We never heard whether they were convincted or not (the victim was an international student who I think ended up despairing of the UK justice system and flying home to have a fresh start) but the guys came back to university a year below. They were completely shunned by the other people on our course.

Tamer than some others, but still gross.

One of mine and my best friend's favourite teachers at school. Super friendly, cool, supportive teacher and overall seemingly good guy. Left all of a sudden and we later found out he'd been sacked (possibly arrested) for being a pervert and coming onto some of the girls in his GCSE maths class. He'd encourage them to undo their top buttons and wear short skirts. EW. To my knowledge no sexual assaults ever happened, but we were really surprised to hear he'd been that dodgy and wouldn't have suspected him.

Just thought of another one. My primary school best friend, had a much older brother who was in the papers in later years as a profliifc paedophile. He was so grotesque you wonder how he got near any children. All very young children. He pleaded mental health and that he was abused in childhood himself, and didn't get a long sentence at all.

Yes. Our old next door neighbour's young niece was murdered at family party by a teenage boy. We vaguely knew the boy's parents, and thought their son was definitely a bit odd and not NT, but never dangerous.

The boy was imprisoned and I don't think he will ever be released.

I bet that was a shock to learn about what they had done to those poor little girls 😢

That’s not what’s going on and to suggest so is disingenuous. Please stop deliberate derailing a thread to make it all about you and how wonderful you are in comparison to the general population. You’re not, you are being tiresomely self absorbed.

This is why I don't trust anyone.

Quote me where I’ve spoke about myself?

No-one has said the same things as you. A couple have questioned why you would think that, including myself because you don’t appear to know much about dementia. The poster wasn’t describing something that the patient said he was a witness to - he said it was his actual experience, a memory. And just because he has dementia doesn’t mean that’s not true.

As I pointed out myself, the long term memory of dementia patients is often intact, as it is with my own mum who is in the advanced stages of vascular dementia and has little short term memory left. She can remember things from years ago more clearly than I can many instances. And you said one of the effects of dementia is lying. It’s not. Dementia patients sometimes unconsciously make up stories as a coping mechanism because they don’t understand the world around them the way they used to. So in actual fact, without independent corroboration of whether this man’s story is correct, it’s just as likely to be true or not.

And the point of the thread was whether anyone knew someone who they later learned had done something really bad. In what world is this poster trying to ‘score points and feel good on social media’ when she was responding in the same way as everyone else ?

A seeming lovely, very good friend of my dad's - historical sex abuse involving children.

I feel a lot of shame that I liked him so much and really did think he was a great man.

I’ve explained myself several times. Clarified exactly what I meant, and why I consider you and others posting like you as virtue signalling. No intention of doing it again.

Please can people stop derailing with their petty squabbles? You really don't have to have the last word.
It's so tedious, and spoiling the thread for the rest of us.

Jeffrey Donaldson. Flabergasted everyone

We also had almost exactly the same happen at work. A very senior manager who'd been with us for maybe 6 months or a year at most. Arrested and charged with making indecent images of children. After he was arrested the police came and searched his work computer and desk. In his desk drawer they found stuff for concealing a camera inside grid system ceiling tiles - they suspected he had intended to set them up in the office to secretly video people at work.

In a previous job I meet with some a regular basis who had been convicted of manslaughter in his mid teen years in a notorious and well known crime. I really liked him! If I hadn't of known what he had done, I would never have suspected him of being involved in something as awful as what he did do. He really seemed to have turned his life around.

Porn usage, the legal adult stuff leads to all this - should ban it and go back to top shelf magazines if they must.

It still sounds like it’s normalising it or downgrading it. I hate the term child pornography.

Not myself but my father danced with Myra Hindley at the local palais before she met Brady. He said she was lovely 🤔

Which is what I’ve been saying since this morning.

Did you not think he was creepy? . I remember being in a restaurant on the same road as your apartment. He walked in, going from table to table like he was royalty. Dh and I turned our backs to him. That was years before.
I personally know victims and he's buried less than 50m from my parents (they were there first). I was devastated when I found out where they were burying him. I thought most people here felt the same way and that was all before he was outed publicly.