Feeling shocked after hearing disturbing news about someone from school

[FriendlyNPC]

I found out a few months ago that a boy I went to school with was caught with indecent images of children, it was in the paper and my sibling still lives locally so told me.

He's recently been sentenced, and it was so much worse than initially thought.
I don't really want to describe what, but basically since I read the update I feel sick. We weren't close or anything, but we were friendly, and I feel so disgusting to know.

Not really after anything other than just needing to get it out. I feel a bit pathetic for feeling so physically ill about it. It's not about me. I haven't even seen him in 20 years. But I feel filthy by association, you know. Shocked.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

I could have written this OP. A friend of mine from school, who I actually was pretty sweet on made the local papers. It was shared all over Facebook from other school friends and the article shocked me. He had downloaded 1600 images of cat A child images and bestiality. He had a suspended sentence and then went and attacked an elderly woman for money. Still not in prison which makes you wonder what on earth you have to do to get a custodial sentence.
He was a lovely kid. Bit quirky but not naughty or mean. Really did shock me.

Same, someone I knew from back in the day was arrested for child sexual abuse against his own daughter ! Shocked is not the word, he was a really nice guy, or so we thought ! Hope he rots in there!

I totally by accident stumbled on a news article last month, whereby a boy from my primary school - he was SO sweet with lovely parents - is on the run from the police, and is in hiding. Violent robbery charges. Apparently he escaped while on day release.

I saw the mugshot of him, and immediately recognised his face.

I often think about this.

Have you seen the Louis Theroux documentary on this? I think it's called A Place for Paedophiles. He visits American child sex offenders and they tell him why they think they're like that. That they don't want to be, but are "simply wired that way".

I still can't understand why they do it, but it's a fab documentary. It's very eye opening and so interesting.

This is the thing, we are almost suicidally sociable as a species.

The instinct is to smooth over social differences, to excuse and to ignore any instincts telling us something is wrong.

It's far more unusual to stick your head above the parapet and ostracise people based on 'bad vibes' than it is to say 'it was only a joke'.

My husband is awful for befriending people at parties who I get a bad vibe off, then coming off as all surprised when they turn out to be a cunt later in the evening. And for a long time he had a 'best friend' who clearly treated other people badly. I was the least surprised of all when lo and behold, he treated my husband badly.

Are men having these conversations with each other I wonder.

Don't get me wrong, I hear the loud condemnation when we're out in a group and anything gets mentioned (chop their dick off etc) but when a mate looks at a 15yo or makes some shitty comment about 'grass on the pitch' do they shut it down and tell them they're acting like a nonce? Or do they ignore it because Dave's a good laugh usually? Or worse, laugh along because they don't want to be a killjoy?

While I think a peado is probably born a paedo, I do think men have the social influence to discourage lower level shit behaviour and make it less normalised within their own circles.

I also think we need a bit more shame around consumption of violent and 'barely legal' porn would help too.
We're not allowed to shame anyone for anything now, but throughout history it's been a good social tool to control or curb harmful behaviours.

My pastoral/guidance teacher was a paedophile. (Found guilty and jailed etc).

They are everywhere.

OP, the event you've described and your feelings about it are very familiar. You have my sympathy and support. My childhood friend and neighbour, was arrested for similar. I only realised when he disappeared from social media, his account vanished and his messages were unavailable. We hadn't talked for a number of years as he would always complain to me about how terrible his life was, sought my advice so I would try to help him from afar (I moved away from my hometown 20 years ago). The last time I just decided to cease contact, I think maybe around 2021. Last year I had a little thought, I wonder how his life is going, perhaps he's pulled himself together. No, googled him and there he was in an article in the local paper, charge of making/distributing indecent images of children.

It was a shock, as I thought he was just a bit of an idiot but not a pedo. I felt guilty as I thought perhaps if I had been a better friend to him he might not have done it? That's just silly, I did everything I could as a friend and it was never enough and he always turned on me eventually.

He had a volatile childhood and his father was abusive, I urged him for years to seek help, to get counselling to work through his feelings. He turned to cannabis instead and didn't take care of himself.

Please PM if you want to chat further, it bothered me for months after. I talked it out with my other half and he just listened. Sometimes there is no answer to why people do things, perhaps they are just fundamentally broken inside?

When I was in my early twenties a girl was found murdered and SA in the front garden of a house me and my friend used to walk past when going home from clubbing in town. From there on we got a taxi as it really scared us. I was horrified to find out later that it was someone from my class at school who had done it.

There is no way to tell.

I worked with a highly talented musician on projects and he finished up being convicted of downloading indecent images of the worst kind. He lost his career completely.

His wife stood by him and he now works to help those who have been drawn into this sort of behaviour. He is trying to make good by making a positive contribution to prevention.

In spite of that I still never feel quite comfortable around him. He will carry this with him forever whatever he does to try and make amends. I think this is because we really do not understand the mechanism behind this - are paedophiles born or made by their life experiences? Can they change? I simply do not know.

But they are surely everywhere.

They live in your street they are people you know its not rare

I don’t understand why woman stand by these men, a local man where we live was caught in possession of hundreds of indecent images some children were as young as 3 years old, he only got a suspended sentence because his partner was now pregnant with his daughter, she got pregnant after his arrest which subsequently resulted in him not having a custodial sentence, now he lives at home with her and his little girl, how he is allowed to, I don’t know.

What made it worse was he was a support worker for vulnerable adults and he used his clients WiFi while in their homes to access this content to try and avoid being traced.

I feel sorry for the daughter because everyone knows what her dad did where it was on the news so who is going to let their daughters go round to play at her house.
Now he’s got a daughter he has the perfect reason to be standing at the school gates.

It's a shock isn't it. It's also far more common than most people realise.
My friend's husband was caught. The police dawn-raided her house - the worst category, stuff you don't even want to think about. He paid for a shit hot lawyer and got away with a suspended sentence.
I do still feel sick about this - he had access to my young DC and my DD was the same age as the er, children he was interested in. She told me he put her on his lap and fed her carrot sticks once. I swear to god, if I ever see this man again, I will not be responsible for my actions.
Shortly afterwards I read in the local paper that my next door but one neighbour was caught, and he went to prison for it.
There really is one on every corner.

In my 25 years of adult life someone in my work, someone in my hobby group and a teacher at my school have been found guilty of these types of offences. It make you sick but the best thing you can do is arm your DC with knowledge on how to be vigiliant for these types of people.

@PleaseDontTreadOnTheDaisies That’s awful. Did your friend leave her husband? I hope so, but I’ve heard of so many women who stay. They obviously just can’t bear to believe it, or are able to minimise it in some way.

Yes, she did. She had an incredibly tough time of it.
The police at the time told her that in their experience about 50% of the wives stay. Which I found shocking.

I worked with a man for around 12 years who I deemed to be a nice young man. He was convicted of a sexual crime against a minor. He was working as a magistrate at the time!

OP. I had something similar hearing that an acquaintance from school and hobby was convicted of pretyy awful things. Our dads are friends and his mum wanted us to get together when we were teenagers.

Similarly my friend's boyfriend from school found guilty and sentenced to several years. She hadn't seen him in about 8/9 years but was still approached by people asking if she 'knew' things. Awful.

These people are in plain sight and get away by not being nefarious or evil but very ordinary.

About 10 years ago my friend (well, colleague) and I would care for a profoundly handicapped young man. He lived with his parents. We loved his mum and dad, and admired their love and care for their son. The Dad would buy us presents which we were permitted to graciously accept if our office was notified. He would pay for impromptu pub meals for us, just a generally nice bloke.
One Christmas eve I called to their home early evening to carry out a care review (id been recently promoted) all was well. I wished them merry Christmas as left, huggerdthe DW, the husband came to hug me in the hallway and his hand deliberately stroked my bottom. He looked at me with the most twisted face, out of his DW eyesight.
I was shocked and felt foolish and dirty

Fast forward to mid January....
I happened across a video on Facebook of some local well known PaeDoPhILe catchers. They'd caught the clients dad sending utter filth to actual 12 years to 14 years old girls, asked them (and sent them) CSAM images.
He was also under investigation with his local City Council (who he worked for) for sexually harassing a colleagues 15 year old daughter.
The wife believes to this day he's innocent.
He was just being friendly.
He's too nice to people.
It went to court, but was found guilty.
After this our managers refused to send ANY staff to their home o the grounds of safety.
The poor disabled lad lost his carers.
I think of him often

Very senior manager at a previous organisation I worked for was jailed for this, got the most severe sentence possible.

He was seemingly an ordinary, slightly awkward, mild-mannered man.

Because he was wealthy and because the organisation was powerful they scrubbed all evidence of it from the web. I know it happened but if I relied on google I would think I had dreamt it.

I don't think he deserved privacy. It makes me feel sick that we are gaslit by these men and then we don't even get to know the whole truth of their crimes. Their victims deserve to know that men do get punished for what they did.

I think the stats are like 1 in every 1000 people is a paedophile o something like that, a friend of mine works in child protection for the police and she said it’s as bad as one in every road on average. It’s horrible but that’s why you have to be vigilant, they can’t catch them all and many don’t act on their fantasy’s but they are still there in plain site.

The 1 in 5 stat has got to be encompassing men who like teens though. Surely? I mean, that's obviously gross too but didn't used to be viewed as unusual.

So many reactions of 'they are everywhere'. I agree, but unfortunately and even worse, I think they are more often around children due to the nature of their chosen profession, volunteering or hobbies. So the percentage around children is actually higher than the percentage in society at large, I believe. But this has not been researched as far as I know. And it casts a suspicion on other men who work with children. The only solution would be castration and very long jail sentencing (as far as I'm concerned death in some cases). That should be a deterrent. Sorry, I feel very strongly about this.

I was sexually abused by a family member when I was a teenage girl. His wife knows and is still with him. He’s done it to others and she knows this too.

I had a long conversation with a police officer who catches these people via images on the internet.

His most emphatic point was that the focus needs to be on prevention and letting children know they can always tell you and they won't get in trouble. They will access children through social media, tell them they have images of them and if they don't produce more they will share them, which is why we need to educate our kids.

He also said there's no way he'd let men work in childcare even though he knew it was politically incorrect to say so.

This is now so huge because human sexuality is changing and it is acceptable to admit you are attracted to children in certain online communities. They gather, share stories and images, put together power point presentations on how to access and groom children.... it's truly disturbing because once they would have operated alone but now they work together.

It is also very hard on the police that have to see so many images in their work of the worst things people can do to each other.