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

Many years ago I had a client who ran a car dealership. Went to see him about a business matter (appointment had been arranged a few weeks in advance) and found the Fraud Squad in possession of the premises and going through everything with a fine toothed comb.

Seems the whole business was one gigantic fraud. Got the cars on credit, never paid the manufacturer for them. Never paid any tax or VAT. Never paid any major bills and, when he'd run it for as long as possible, he legged it to Spain with all he'd got plus the last month's payroll cash.

The law never did get him so far as I understand.

Yes. A guy in our office. Worked with him for about 3 years and one morning he didn't turn up for work, and then the police came in and searched our office. He's been arrested for something that no one will tell us about and currently going through the court system, so whatever it is, it's bad. We suspect possession of child porn. I guess we'll find out for sure if it goes to the local press.

I doubt anyone will top that

A friend of mine went on a couple of dates with a guy she met on a dating site. All was going well he was a dog lover like her. He had rescue greyhounds. Then he started taking an interest and asking about her 4 grandchildren. Her daughter did a bit of snooping and found out he was a convicted paedophile.

^^ Very common behaviour. Grooming women to get to children.

Mine was in one of my first jobs, working as an trainee auxiliary nurse in a large Nursing Home. We also had a small Retirement Home Annexe.
We had one resident who required no nursing care but lived in the nursing home part in a room on the top floor. She had a neice that visited once every 3 months and took all of her meals in her room. She NEVER left her room and having not been told anything different I assumed that she had agoraphobia. She was pleasant to the staff and very undemanding. This was early 90s and she had her radio and TV and seemed very happy.
On one of her neices visits a colleague who was visably pregnant took up a tea tray. The neice immediately came down to the office and told us that on no account was the pregnant staff member, or any pregnant woman to be left alone with her Aunt as 30 years before she had attacked a pregnant woman and pushed her down a flight of stairs - she had very strange religious beliefs and found the idea of pregnancy repugnant. She was sentenced to a long stay in a secure hospital but had been released into the community 15 years later and had been passed around by social services and probation.services. She had lived in the home I worked at for 6 years and the managers had no idea as her medical records were incomplete.

it seems to be such a common offence, our local newsite carries details of such cases several times a month. When you consider that those are just the ones where I live who actually get caught and prosecuted it is chilling to consider how many of them are out there who never get found out

Of course she wasn't responsible directly. But the fact that she was a friendly TA in school may have convinced them all was well. They may have been slightly more wary of a man.

Dreadfully sad.

@the gander he did but only when his kids were adults and realised what he did to them I recon he did it to others too. Horrible sick man. No one would have guessed he was doing this.

Used to know someone who turned out to be a paedophile

I used to do this as part of a job I had, we had panel meetings to discuss context, the nature of the offence(s) how much time had elapsed and other relevant facts.

Possibly just someone who believes that a prison sentence and successful rehabilitation can, in some cases, result in that person being fit to take up a position of responsibility in society again. Isn’t that what the system is supposed to do ?

My best mate went to school with one of his victims.

I honestly think that they cannot be rehabilitated and will always be looking for a chance to find new victims

Somewhere I worked years ago a guy I worked with was found guilty of voyerism. He’d fake’d all of his qualifications. Owned student houses and had put hidden cameras in the showers.

Swimming instructor (of children). Turned out he was violent to partner coercive control and the woman and her child had a close shave getting out. I think he would have done something really bad - hurt or even killed them, had she not the presence of mind to flee the house with her child.

He went to prison.

Dementia doesn’t work like that. Long term memory is one of the last things to be affected by the disease. Sufferers are more likely to have accurate recall of things that happened long ago - sometimes more accurate than things that happened a few minutes ago. And it’s more likely to be accurate with significant events from the past.

Not me but my best friend - she had a handyman she used regularly. They had some good banter. Nothing at all romantic, just got on well and he was round often because she lives alone and needed help with jobs. He stopped answering the phone and some time later she read in the paper that he had been on trial and found guilty of murdering his wife by hitting her with a large vase!

Was at a dinner party in the 90’s - yes back when young people thought Friends was real life and we had no internet.
Sat next to a very attractive young man who informed me his fiancée was sat opposite us. She looked a bit downcast.
He was entertaining for a bit but after a while he got louder and louder. The lads there were howling with laughter as he had a prosthetic leg and took it off at one point I think. I went home.
A couple of years later my dad was reading our local paper and this guy was on the cover. For several years he’d been using his ‘leg’ to import pure heroin across Europe into the UK.
They did a whole expose of his lifestyle including his very tacky house.
I miss the 90’s.

Some arrogant p*k I worked with who was totally in love with himself moved onto a secondment/promotion in another team. A few months later he suddenly got suspended but why was all very hush-hush - well it was until the headlines in our local evening newspaper were all about a council worker in the LA I worked for who had been suspended for downloading porn (not child porn) on his work computer

I worked with a fella in a horse racing yard. Always thought he was weird and kept him at arms length. A few years later he was done for abusing a gf, then in 2020 he raped and murdered his gfs wee sister. Hung himself before he was sentenced.

Havingaswim, the four-year-old's family went through something unimaginable.
But that doesn't mean it's wrong to talk about its effect on you. It must have been truly horrible and trust-shaking to be a child of 12 and then find out your friend had done that. Adults would find it horrible, let alone a child. I hope now there is more information, so children in your position now might have the option of some support if they wanted it.

A lad who attended the primary school I used to work at is currently in prison for stabbing someone to death. He was a lovely, polite young man back then with a very supportive family.

Ditto. And younger than 6th form. Surrey school?
My friend's boyfriend who was a right scream got sent down to cat A prison Parkhurst for armed robbery. His cellmate was a cannibal who ate his landlord because he hated him.

Ross, the SS post reminded me of watching The World at War for history GCSE (my mum has the DVD). There's a chilling interview with an old SS officer, Kurt something, I think, who makes it sound like he joined by accident. Hmmm. The lady who interviewed him said he seemed like any nice elderly man.