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

Ex boyfriend. Wasn't a long relationship due to him shouting at everyone whenever the slightest thing went wrong.
A good few years later I found out he was in prison for attacking his heavily pregnant girlfriend in front of their other child.

Also, there was a lovely family friend who often came to visit when I was a child. Lots of fun, always made me giggle etc. Years later my Mum told me he went to prison for killing his brother - apparently they got into an argument outside a pub whilst drunk, and he punched his brother once, who fell and died on impact when his head hit the edge of the pavement. He didn't mean for him to die and apparently went through years of therapy for it.

Raping a 12 yr old, not "sleeping with"

Someone I know confessed to me he was in a terrorist organisation in his home country, he claimed he just trained people to use weapons and did it because he was desperate for money. He said he got out when his best friend died in front of him.

Worked with a very effaminate lad - he is in prison for stabbing someone to death noe

A previous neighbour's priest
I only met him personally if I happened to be next door when he called, but people were naturally sad when it was given out that he had terminal cancer and had returned home to Ireland to die

Only he didn't have cancer at all; he'd skipped there just ahead of an arrest for child abuse

I vaguely knew an MP who was sent to prison for sexual abuse. The men in our circle were all surprised. The women were not.

You mean raping a 12 year old

Knew a bloke in the pub, cheeky chappy type, very friendly and chatty. Turned out he had a dreadful past involving drugs, violence and prison and he later reverted to type and is now serving life for murdering his partners daughter.

That’s my town. I remember this

Harold Shipman was my GP.

I feel bad passing this on as it was told us in confidence, but a guy at work many many many years ago told us he was relocated after a 7 year prison sentence which he served for castrating his friend after finding him in bed with his wife. He said he thought he'd had the dream life, wife, kids and was very very happy. The shock on discovery sent him into a blind rage. He'd had to create an entirely new life to try and forget it all.

Similar to your story OP. Except was part of our close friendship group. It screwed me up a lot.

Absolutely shocking, but a few have actually called it out

Wow, I wonder why he told you! What reason did he give for turning up at your house? I’d be scared he’d come back if I tried to end the friendship!

Someone DH used to work with is in jail for possession of child sexual abuse images. He always seemed 'off' to me.

Once when I met up with friends there was a woman there who I hadn't met before but seemed normal, my friend told me afterwards that she was just out of prison for manslaughter (a hit and run).

I had a friend who was a bit weird but presumed harmless. He appeared in the paper one day because he’d been sentenced to prison for making and sharing CSA images of his five year old daughter.

How are all these murderers living normal lives in the community?

In 25 yeaars at my previous company, there were 2 occasions when men 'disppeared' from working life after they were found to have been watching porn in working hours on work computers.
The one that surprised me was one of the IT guys went through a bad patch when he split with his partner & was being denied acccess to his kids. He talked freely to many of us about it, we were shocked when he was later jailed for abusing the kids (the exact nature was not revealed).

Probably because the overwhelming majority of murderers are perfectly normal people.

A housemate who was a nearly famous academic (did TV appearances etc) told me when annoyed with me that she'd previously been arrested for attempting to stab her roommate in the US!!

She had a certain detached way when she spoke about it which really spooked me, and when the time came I did not renew our rental agreement!

A lecturer in criminology though? The irony. There's got to be some real bias there which would affect the way he'd deliver the course.

I went to primary school with a really smart girl from a poor background. They were one of those families who didn’t have much but always seemed kind and generous with what they had and they were a very close, loving family.

A few years ago her parents were all over the local papers after being jailed for defrauding an elderly neighbour. The mum had befriended him and he’d trusted her to help manage his finances and she’d stolen all his savings and used to pay for holidays etc.

They seemed like such kind hearted people, I was completely shocked! I felt so bad for their (now adult) children too as it must have been so humiliating. I still have the daughter on social media and she still posts photos with them now they’re out of prison so it doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship.

A couple of points here. As others have mentioned, the use of the term "child pornography" is not encouraged. So that people understand what is really happening you may wish to refer to "images of child sexual abuse".
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"He was found guilty of both making and possessing ..."

Making can mean two very different things. What he actually did, you will be able to tell from how long he was sentenced to.

If you recall the broadcaster Huw Edwards, he received a suspended sentence for "making" images.

Making an image by simple downloading is treated the same as possession for the purposes of sentencing.

To explain why this is, in the past an offender may have had a book or magazine etc of indecent images and he would be in "possession" of those images.

But with the increase of the internet then it became more common for people to download images and then, maybe, delete them and so no longer be in "possession" of them.

The offence of "making" overcomes this. If a person downloads an indecent image then they have made a new copy of the image.

Imagine you have a photocopier and you photocopy an image. By doing this you are "making" a new image. Even if you later destroy this photocopy you have still originally "made" it at some point.

It's the same thing with downloading images from the internet; you are "making" a new image every time you download an image to your phone or other device. Even if you later delete this image you have already "made" an image by downloading it.
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In contrast, production, actually making the original image at source, is sentenced much more harshly and typically will result in 6 years in prison as a starting point with a range of 4 to 9 years in prison.

One of my colleagues murdered his wife. He worked in Supported Learning. At the time I was much younger and couldn’t believe it. Now I realise the extent of violence against women and girls, nothing would surprise me. It could be any man.

Wow, I bet you had a lot of very strong emotions after that all came out!