Have you ever liked someone then discovered something shocking about their past?

[Dappy777]

I like to think I'm a good judge of character, but I've been proved wrong so many times that I no longer trust myself.

For example, there was an elderly guy who lived on our estate with his wife. He was a lovely old school Londoner, very gentlemanly and polite. I later learned that he'd been a violent criminal in his youth and had spent 12 years in prison for robbing banks and security vans! (Still couldn't help liking him.)

Can’t make out what your typo is meant to be @Tinatubby73he what his family?

Yes. I worked with this woman years ago. She wasn't a best mate or anything, but she was pretty unassuming. I happened to Google her out of interest just a couple of years ago. I never expected to see this. Guardian article

My dad’s best friend since childhood turned out to be a paedophile. They were the same age and so my dad was in his 50s when his mate was sent to jail for molesting his daughters and grand daughter who was my clsssmate in school. My dad never got over the shock. However he would’ve been more disgusted had he known that I have a hazy memory of me and the mate in his van when he used to bring me for a spin around the block at ages 4-6 and didn’t start to get flashbacks until after he was imprisoned.

I met a lovely lady and work and started giving her a lift home. She invited me in once or twice and I met her 30-year-old son, who was still living there. He seemed a pleasant young man, very polite and softly spoken. I later found out he’d been caught by a vigilante group grooming a 13-year-old girl. He even drove to meet her with a bottle of vodka in the car. The group filmed themselves confronting him and then put in on YouTube. To this day I only have to type his name into Google and that video pops up. He avoided prison, but that video will be out there forever. I felt very sorry for his mother, who was utterly broken by the shame of it all.

Is it just me, or do you distrust people who are too nice? Maybe I’m talking rubbish, but it often feels like they are hiding something. Someone once said “never trust a man who has no vices,” and I kind of agree. When someone is gushing and sickly sweet and eager to please it sets alarms bells ringing, particularly when they are older men.

I don’t think he felt any shame at all. He simply regarded it as his old job! For working class Londoners of his generation, crime was like a career choice and prison was one of the downsides of that choice, like backache is the downside to driving a lorry. He had been married for 40 years and was a loving and loyal husband. He also had two lovely sons (both really polite and friendly). He was a type that doesn’t really exist anymore. The sort of criminal who thinks nothing of walking into a bank with a shotgun (that’s just business), but would never swear in front of a woman or hurt an animal.

Shocking how many of these are men (big surprise) accused of being pedophiles.

My story is the same: a lad I went to school with, total nerd, lovely lad etc etc - now in Strangeways for 5 years, pedophile.

My boss, lovely man we thought, seemingly happily married. A friend of a friend knew him as he'd been her boss. She found pornographic images in a filing cabinet in his office. They were sufficiently sensitive enough for her to report him. Instead of him losing his job, the board of the institution liaised with the police to keep it quiet and he was given a big payoff, a good reference and ended up working where I worked at higher level than his old job. The whole matter left a very nasty taste.

I can’t figure that out either. Can you clarify @Tinatubby73 please.

Depends really upon whether it was adult or child porn
Adult porn: yeah a bit sleazy
Child porn: criminal offence

that thing when you cant swim and didnt go in the water by yourself.

I can't say exactly but it concerned other colleagues who were unaware. It wasn't child porn but it was illegal.

You never can tell - retired person with a niche hobby?

There's a lot of it about.🤑

Do you mean voyerism/covert filming of colleagues in the workplace??

That’s not what I would describe as ‘having porn in the filing cabinet’ but sexual assault!

Oh no. So very young children then? 😞

I remember a chap who came to do some work on our house. Mid-60s and very pleasant. Showed me photos of his grandchildren, etc. He was divorced and often went to Thailand on his own. In fact, he was planning to go that very summer and told us all about it. I thought it a little odd, tbh, that a 65-year-old was regularly going all that way on his own, but just shrugged my shoulders. I later found out what it was that drew him to Thailand - he was sleeping with underage girls.

I had an uncle like that, I learned about his womanizing in my late teens and cant stand him now, its tainted my memories of how jovial he was. He is still an occasional visitor to my parents despite him and my aunt separating. He's a bit of prick now as well, makes comments to me about my kids behaviour, but never in front of others, only me, odd that. My son most likely has ADHD, so that explains his high spirits, but no, I wont be smacking him any time soon thank you.

@IsThisLifeNow my Uncle died quite young from a massive heart attack so I only heard this from my DM years later. It's a shame because my Aunt had gone by then and I never had a chance to tell her I was sorry I'd musjudged her

My parents knew a bloke who was arrested (for something unrelated). His DNA came up as a match for a r*pe committed decades earlier in the city he was originally from.

The police body cam shows him laugh when they said he was being arrested for the assault. He wasn't laughing anymore when they said the year and place it happened.

He had a weapon and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. He'd moved away and was married with a family. I expect he was comfortable in the knowledge that he'd got away with it. The poor woman has suffered from the trauma ever since and had attempted to take her own life.

He's in jail now. Too little too late.

EDIT - Typo

There will be quite a few people quaking in their boots now that DNA is so accurate. Quite a few have finally been caught after decades of thinking they got away with it!!

If I remember correctly, DNA samples were being taken before the technology was available in anticipation of one day being able to use it.

It's so sad for his family. Imagine finding out you've been sleeping next to a rpist all this time. Or that your dad took a homemade weapon and went looking for a woman to rpe.

Awful.

Worse news for the men is they can spot offenders if someone else in the family gives DNA. Hopefully there's no hiding for them anymore

I once watched a documentary on DNA and cold cases. It featured three men who were all getting on in years but had been arrested and sentenced for historic rapes. One had raped a boy in a park back in the 1980s. Because semen remained on the clothes, they were able to catch him (now in his 70s). All furiously denied the charges, and all seemed plausible. One was living in a big house with photos of his grandchildren on the wall. Yet he’d been responsible for a series of rapes and attacks on schoolgirls 20 years before. Utterly shocking. None of them looked like you’d imagine - dirty and seedy and so on. Really made me wonder about the older men I work with or live near. How many of them did wicked things when they were younger? Maybe abused their little stepdaughter, or raped a woman in a park one night, or something like that, and we’re never caught.

At the end of the documentary, a police officer looked at the camera and said “if you committed a rape in the past and left DNA evidence, we’re coming for you.” I wonder how many elderly men were sitting on the sofa watching that, with their wife in their arms and photos of the grandchildren on the mantelpiece, sweating in fear.

A woman I worked with turned out to be a paedo sympathiser back in the 70s. She was high up in some left wing gay and lesbian group that affiliated themselves with PIE. She was quite vocal at the time in supporting lowering age of consent and other grim shit.

I did think it was weird she told me she had to use a fake name for work?!

I never said anything when I found out and left that workplace soon after.

I heard on a podcast over 60 million DNA profiles are now on file, and as cold cases are constantly being reviewed, more people will get their pasts coming back to haunt them