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

919 replies

user2848502016 · 03/10/2024 20:19

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

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CarterBeatsTheDevil · 04/10/2024 15:02

I knew someone for years, although only through work and not as a close friend, who raped someone on a date. He was convicted of it. The issue was consent and it was really obvious that the partner had not consented. I was very shaken by it. I don't know who I think the date-rape type is but I would never expected it to be this person.

Alltheyearround · 04/10/2024 15:05

Not me but my mum. Worked at a hairdressers in a northern city. A guy used to hang about opposite, ogling at the women coming and going. He was there often when mum and colleagues were locking up for the night.

Later turned out he was a serial killer, and had taunted police leaving notes on the police station doorstep.

Gives me the shivers thinking about it. Fancy being watched like that. And his poor victims.

Jeez. There for the grace of god went mum.

She also told me about having to climb out of a bedroom window at a party (1st floor) in late teens as there was a man following her and she was convinced he was going to try to rape her. Can't remember if she said he was in the room or she'd locked the door and made her escape! (1960's)

Hoppinggreen · 04/10/2024 15:05

deydododatdodontdeydo · 04/10/2024 15:02

Someone I knew, his mother was Dutch. As a child she was in some kind of Hitler youth group. This was known before she got dementia.
At the end of her life when she was in a home with dementia she started saluting and "seig heiling".
Awful for her children and the nurses.

We had a family member who was actually in the Hitler Youth, she described it as sort of "Youth Club" that everyone joined. She had Jewish friends and was no supporter of Hitler according to her.
However as she got older and dementia set in she claimed to have met Hitler several times and thought he was a great man and worse.
No idea which was the real person.

blueoverwhite · 04/10/2024 15:10

However as she got older and dementia set in she claimed to have met Hitler several times and thought he was a great man and worse

Disturbingly this is becoming a more mainstream view again, spread by the conspiracy theory world. I know a middle class, middle aged mother who is deep in the conspiracy theory world and has openly said Hitler was a great man and good leader who cared for his people.

IndigoIsMyFavouriteColour · 04/10/2024 15:25

My husband did a group sport and often got a lift with a guy who lived alone down the road. Fast forward 2 years and he went to prison for 14 years for rape and imprisonment of the worst kind. For a while he was welcome in our home, around our children etc... Really took us by surprise.

DrivingThePlot · 04/10/2024 15:25

I used to work a second job in a bar when I was in my 20s. There was a middle aged man who came to work there doing some shifts on nights I was there. One night he asked me if I could give him a lift home. I said OK and did that. The next time I was on shift my manager took me to one side and told me not to do that again, not to be alone in a car with him. He said he'd been accused of raping his children's baby sitter.

MrsPostmanPat · 04/10/2024 15:26

I know of 3 men I'd known for years (though not very well) who all ended up charged with obtaining/making child abuse images. 2 I know from school, one a couple of years older, one same age and was in some of my classes. Third fella I knew socially as teenagers. None of them I'd have thought capable of it.

Christwosheds · 04/10/2024 15:33

Hoppinggreen · 04/10/2024 13:36

Exactly
She lied thats all.
Of course it was wrong and may have meant Huntley wasn't arrested as quickly as he could have been but she wasn't there and couldn't have stopped him if she had wanted to.
Perhaps she was afraid of Huntley or perhaps she knew what he was like and deliberately covered for him but she is in no way responsible for the deaths of those 2 poor girls. Its pure misogyny, woman are responsible for mens actions

I agree with this. Huntley had a long history of controlling and violent behaviour, Maxine Carr lied when told to, but had no knowledge that he was guilty. He told her that the police would try to pin it on him due to a past run in with police.
I’ve seen so many posts likening her to someone like Myra Hindley, when she was a not very clever, vulnerable woman who told a stupid lie.

Fengipack · 04/10/2024 15:34

@Giggorata

I wasn't referring to child molesters especially just violent crimes in general .

Lifeomars · 04/10/2024 15:35

Dontlletmedownbruce · 03/10/2024 22:12

As far as I'm aware the crime is called possession of child pornography, so these words are used in order to describe a conviction correctly.

No this is not accurate, the CPS, the Sentencing Guidelines and the Ministry of Justice all refer to "indecent images of children" and "Images of child abuse". Language is always important and it is crucial here. Some elements of the media still refer to "child porn" when covering cases of this nature and they really need to stop and name this hideous crime for what it is. I once saw a women being interviewed on tv who had been a victim of this crime and she explained how it damages you forever, the fact that your image is out there, being sold to perverts all over the world. There is the horror of the actual crime which is then compounded into infinity by the fact that the crime is recorded and its image(s) are then sold online

Mooburger · 04/10/2024 15:36

I don't personally but my sister worked with Lucy Letby at the Countess.

Fengipack · 04/10/2024 15:38

Czinthenineties · 04/10/2024 14:29

One that was more a close brush.
Got a job as an art/ craft teacher in a day hospital. A mixture of people with LD, MH problems, physical disabilities and of course a crossover over of conditions for a lot of people. Technical staff were not allowed access to any records, fair enough.
I had to climb stairs to an attic to collect the days materials, often heavy, bulky boxes. The door at the bottom of the stairs was accessed via a games room and I was told to lock it at all times so no one could follow me into the attic. “Sarah” who’d worked there a few years saw me carrying heavy boxes and said take Bill with you, he’ll do the heavy carrying so for the next week Bill went with me into the locked attic. One day another worker saw us emerge into the games room, looked surprised and took me aside. Asked me what on earth I was doing. I replied Sarah said it was ok to take Bill to help. Turned out Bill had served about 9 years inside for rape and Sarah had thought it a great joke to tell me to lock myself in an attic with him. I didn’t stay long after that

You should have reported her to the police . That was evil what she did putting you in danger like that . Twisted evil cow .

Flugelb1nder · 04/10/2024 15:41

Yep I used to know a girl that stabbed someone in the neck with a spud peeler, and killed them

Alltheyearround · 04/10/2024 15:49

Pigeonqueen · 04/10/2024 07:35

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

Its the fact that he talks about it to his students and sounded like he was sort of proud of it? Maybe I have got the wrong idea.

Alltheyearround · 04/10/2024 15:50

Mooburger · 04/10/2024 15:36

I don't personally but my sister worked with Lucy Letby at the Countess.

What impression did she have of her?

Mooburger · 04/10/2024 15:56

Alltheyearround · 04/10/2024 15:50

What impression did she have of her?

She said she was always really nice and friendly in their interactions. My sister was very surprised when the allegations first surfaced.

itsgettingweird · 04/10/2024 15:57

Someone I was a lifeguard cadet with committed murder a few months later.

It was a brutal murder with kidnap and torture involved. I was only 15. It was a real head fuck.

Alltheyearround · 04/10/2024 15:57

QuizzlyBears · 04/10/2024 06:32

I imagine the rehabilitation of offenders act had something to do with it. Is the man supposed to not work forever? Convictions get spent, time
passes, risk assessments are a thing. There’s a multitude of reasons why he might be deemed safe to work in that environment - and if he is, then his conviction must not place him on the DBS barred list.

Yes, still wouldn't want him teaching though. I know you are right from a legal point of view. Been watching Parole on BBC it is a real eye opener on many levels. I do see how people who killed in their younger days can be quite different people later in life. I'm contradicting myself aren't I?

Maybe because I do feel conflicted about the lecturer case. I work in a Uni so its a bit close to home.

ThatCraftyGreenOtter · 04/10/2024 15:57

Newsenmum · 03/10/2024 20:30

Please don’t use the p word, it’s assault 🙈 sorry. Bugbear of mine.

And I don’t know but this kind of things always creeps me out.

Why? We all know it's bad and wrong

ThreeLocusts · 04/10/2024 16:01

'Met' is saying to much, but (since there's been so much here about the likelihood of an SS officer being involved in torture and murder) - my godmother, a brilliant woman, smart, generous, warm, best-ever bullshit detector but wouldn't put you on the spot - was the daughter a former high-ranking SS officer. He was involved in selecting people to be shot during the invasion of Ukraine and his guilt was so manifest that he was sentenced to prison in West Germany in the 1960s, when prosecution of Nazi war crimes was laggard. He maintained all his life that his actions had been legal.

I only met him once, at the funeral of one of his children - a grief-stricken 80-year-old man who kept himself to himself. In my family network, he was widely known simply as 'the Nazi', and he knew that, too.

He was a competent lawyer (like scarily many Nazi officials) and his personnel files (since consulted by historians) describe him as a pleasant man and good conversationalist. He also managed to extract a great deal of emotional labour from his children. He abandoned his wife and five children shortly after the war, but, once he had reestablished contact, felt completely entitled to demand loyalty from them. Decades after the war, he berated my godmother for voting social democrat (ffs), and their relationship, such as it was, finally died when she switched to voting green.

Whether the SS officer mentioned here really tortured people to death is impossible to know - I have a relative with incipient dementia and she's already started making stuff up - but unlikely it is not, and it is not incompatible with him having seemed completely 'normal' for decades.

AllHisCaterpillarFriends · 04/10/2024 16:05

greenday16B · 04/10/2024 13:27

I feel sort of interested in Huntley and Carr. The way they both had their DBS in place but were so evil. I'm sorry but she was all kinds of wrong.

Then I remember what they did, the families and I feel ashamed of myself for being "interested"

I don't think that is correct. CRB came in (as it was then) because of Huntley, he had previous convictions in another county but Cambridge wasn't aware of them.

Plus DBS just means you havent be caught.

Fernticket · 04/10/2024 16:13

ApricotLime · 04/10/2024 01:32

His previous girlfriends said he was abusive, controlling, threatening and preyed on vulnerable women too. Coercive control is more understood and taken into account now than it was back then.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/he-evil-one-murderer-ian-24381811.amp

Edited

Not trying to excuse Maxine Carr in any way,but she was probably terrified of him. If he was capable of murdering two little girls, he was more than capable of killing an adult ..........

Salrose123 · 04/10/2024 16:17

Worked with a lovely jolly middle aged man in social services, found out he had down downloading unlawful images of children, and I'd known him for years given him lifts thought he was genuinely kind.

MothralovesGojira · 04/10/2024 16:21

One of my ex colleagues worked with Dennis Nilson at the same job centre. They could never get over how nice he was at work and would have described him as an all round good bloke - a little bit oddball but then again a lot of civil servants are a bit odd. He would regularly help out others and make pies at home to bring in for lunch to share with everyone. The police were particularly interested in the pies when they interviewed his colleagues - luckily ex-colleague was vegetarian so hadn't partaken in eating the pies but plenty had 😱

Namechangetotalkaboutmysleepingpillsproblem · 04/10/2024 16:22

I forgot about this. I had a friend years ago. We used to drink together. He told me one night that he had an urge to murder a woman, but he wouldn't do it. It really scared me that I had misjudged someone like that. I do wonder about him. If I'll ever see him turn up in the news having done something awful

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