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

This is terrifying how you found them so normal yet their behaviour is monstrous 😞

Teacher at my school was later convicted of 70+ counts of child sex abuse covering several decades including the time I was there. He once stopped to pick me up in the rain when I was walking to school so I guess I had a lucky escape.

Two come to mind.

A technician at a workplace was using IT facilities improperly. Bad stuff. How he thought he would not be discovered I don't know.

A good friend at a school I went to was, with hindsight, clearly from an organised crime family. Very friendly people, went round to their place in London a lot for a while, kind, welcoming, generous but not excessively so. They have business interests in a number of countries, some seem to be fronts for other activities. I was too young to make sense of things but later when one of the family was involved in a court case it all started to make sense. Back in their country of origin my friend witnessed a bungled violent attack outside a social function when she was visiting. As a family they were banal, welcoming and anything but flash.

He killed all sorts of women.

IMHO a lot of porn is non-consensual, not just images involving children. Women are trafficked or coerced all the time.

I know who you mean. Said girlfriend was 13 and he was over 18. He lay in wait for the dad after luring him to an isolated place. Really horrific and I genuinely don’t think he should be teaching students.

Some years ago I returned to work after some leave to find a company-wide email from the MD in my inbox announcing that the police had been in to arrest one of our staff for accessing indecent images on his work computer. Leaving aside the obviously abhorrent nature of what he'd done (not for the first time, it turned out if you Googled him), the stupid part was that he worked in software development and either should have known better or got complacent.

Even longer ago I bought my first car from a nice enough couple who were later jailed in a neglect case (although they were subsequently cleared).

Ffs for most of this thread people have been saying it's NOT child porn - it's sexual assault of children!!!

One of my old friends family had a luxury apartment in Scarborough next to Jimmy Saville's apartment.
I would often visit with my youngest daughter and we frequently got invited round to JS's apartment for afternoon tea.
We met his minder too..
Nothing untoward ever happened and he was very friendly.. buying my daughter gifts and even made her a sunhat out of one of his hankies with four knots in each corner.
When it all came to light of what he did l was physically sick and horrified.
Luckily my daughter was only two and can't remember.
I destroyed all the photos we had taken..
She's 40 now... so was 38 years ago.

I've remembered another one. Twenty years ago, my friend rented a flat above an Irish pub in Finsbury Park. There were a few flats with a shared stairs and hallway. Some new people moved into one of the flats. Thought nothing of it and would do a friendly nod as we passed them coming and going.

Until one day, my friend was walking home and saw a naked woman in the window of the flat signalling for help. He rang the police and it turned out she had been imprisoned in this flat and what we thought were housemates and friends were people coming to rape her.

And this was happening while we were happily gaming and watching movies and eating dinner and just generally being 20 somethings in the flat next door. It was just horrific.

Doubt it. Anyway he was a lorry driver so unlikely that he had many scared female colleagues. He also didn’t drive a van.

It is not, sadly, surprising so many people know someone convicted of child abuse, I just looked it up and there's 26,000 offences per year in the UK and that's the ones that the police find and log, there's probably 10 times that going on. There's only 500 odd murders a year by comparison. It's gutting, but child abusers (watching or creating) and domestic violence abusers are among us all the time.

That is untrue - I believe that 7 of the 13 women murdered were sex workers while the others were not and included University students and women walking home from work including a 16 year old.

Not someone I met but my parents had a friend who worked with Dennis Nilsen in a Job Centre.

No. He probably saw her as ‘respectable.’
I think it affected her badly though psychologically when he was eventually caught.

I had a colleague, a male midwife. I left the Trust he worked at and went to work elsewhere. A couple years later I saw a thread title on MN about a male midwife who had been convicted of possessing and making thousands of images of child abuse and immediately thought "Oh shit, that's going to be Scott." Opened the thread, clicked on the article, and it was him.

Also at uni almost 20 years ago I was good friends with a very nice guy from California. We had a few moments where I thought there was something between us but nothing ever came of it. He popped into my head a year or so ago and I googled him to find he was now in prison for murder.

what stands out for me is that truism that they generally do not look or behave like monsters. So many abusers are not socially awkward loners, they are to all intents and purposes "normal" and it is that veneer of normality that allows them to gain access to their victims. Odd that this thread has come up today as I was thinking about a man I knew when I was at college, he was a mature student, very popular and a bit older than the rest of us. He was married and he and his wife had begun the process of adoption as they could not have children. They adopted a boy and a girl and we all thought what a marvellous dad he would make. Years went by and one day I saw in our local newspaper that he was due to stand trial for abusing the children. He was found guilty and given a well deserved substantial prison term.

Yes we were very good friends with our neighbour, he was telling us he was in the midst of a court battle to see his daughter. Was a total lie he was jailed for 14 years for child sex offences spanning over 30 years. Terrifying.

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.

You do know that as part of training for working in prisons that not accepting ANYTHING that a prisoner tries tj give you is one of the biggest rules. Giving artwork is an especially common thing for prisoners to do. They are testing the water to see what they can get you to do and often start in very small ways. It’s all part of the anti-corruption training.

Which prison was he in? And what did you do with it after you found out?
I have a painting that was given to me by a convicted killer when I was in the job. He was pleasant enough, but then again...

My best friend at school was Beverley Allitt's sister. Went round to hers all the time never met such normal salt of the earth people

It happens to be true but believe what you like.

I was in Jemma Mitchell’s class at university. It was a small class.

You mean, he was raping a 12 year old. Not sleeping with.