To think there is somthing off about this, but just not quite sure what

[ElectronEagle]

Friend A is self employed - she does admin and some bookkeeping. She has been working part time for Friend Bs older brother on his reception for £15 per hour. She runs a limited company and invoices him though there. All fine.

She has now said that he has offered her the role of running his office / his accounts and liaising with his external accountant, and is going to be paying her £50k per year. This will be plus VAT as she will continue to invoice him through her company (as well as do work for other clients)

For background. We have been friends since we were 4. We are in our earlier 30s, brother is 23 years older, and when we were younger (13) the brother was involved with A. There was a massive kerfuffle about it at the time, and he moved away from the area. He moved back about 5 years ago.

Both B & I have said to A that it seems a little odd (B & her brother are NC), but she has accused us of being jealous (we are also accountants).

It just seems like a lot to pay an essentially unqualified person to turn up for about 20 hours per week (although she will be available the other days - just working from home) and I cant quite work out why it bugs me.

So I said id put it to the MN jury and see whether its just me and B BU because of what has gone on before, and whether we should "get over it and be happy that she is doing so well"

AIBU?

How bizarre. As you know £50k is pretty much the going rate for a fully qualified accountant with a few years post qualification experience. Not that he needs a FT accountant, but doesn't need to pay an office manager that either. And the VAT thing makes no sense. No idea what you can do apart from share your concerns with her thoufh

I think that you need to forgive yourself for what happened when you were growing up - you were children and did not have the knowledge to correctly define what you saw unfolding.

When I was in the sixth form a teacher encouraged me to see him at all break-times, chat to him after school and confide in him. He also gave me lifts home. Nothing happened and he was the one to call a halt to it when gossip started. I don't think he had any bad intentions, but the friendship was enough to give me a bit of a crush and, if he had made a sexual advance, i think that I would have been receptive.

However, if I were to look at that now, I would call it grooming. But I don't think that way of looking at things was at all prevalent. I had never heard the word grooming until a few years ago.

I too think that there is more to this than employing an office manager. If it was just your friend, then maybe friendly advice would be enough but the fact that she has a daughter impels you to take further action. :(

Does B know her brother's wife and does dw know of the history with A, or even her appointment as massively overpaid office manager?

You say he returned to work in the family business? Who else has a stake in that business and do they know he's overpaying the staff?

And yes, the little girl's father needs to be told

This is horrific.

OP you know for a fact that this man has -at least once - sexually abused a teenage girl. You need to tell A's daughter's dad.

Agree with this being an attempt to hush or control A.

Did someone say B was no contact with the pervert? Why?

And no, this was not "first love" or being "smitten". It was sexual abuse.

Your friend was sexually abused by this man as a very young girl.

She has a daughter. She seems unwilling or unable to protect her.

What the hell makes you think he won't sexually abuse this child??! You might not want to this k about it, OP, but you're an adult, you need to protect this child. If this paedophile abused her how would you feel then? Or would you still prefer not to think about it?

Tell the child's father. Tell social services. Tell the police you lied all those years ago (as another child who was being manipulated by this dangerous predator). End the cycle.

I am not commenting on the personal side of this but on the 'business' side. The comments about VAT are not correct in all senses - she has a limited company which sub-contracts book-keeping, admin, accounts etc to 3rd parties. There is no need to wait until you reach the VAT threshold
before registering for VAT and if you are always invoicing VAT registered
companies/persons then it is financially prudent to be registered for vat youself as you add the vat to the amount you were going to charge. You can then also claim back VAT on your own business expenses and pay the difference over to HMCE. This means that, at no extra cost to your own company you can claim back your VAT costs.
With regards to 50K for the office manager position, yes this is quite a large sum but I would not be swayed by whether she is 'qualified' as to whether she is good at the job, some of the better accountants I have come across ( I am a qualified accountant myself) have been 'qualified by experience' and were a bloody sight better at the job than some of the FCA's etc I have known.

Re tax: sounds like she'd be an employee to me. Perfectly possibly to be an employee and also run a business on the side where you are SE'ed. HMRC are taking a stronger view on this nowadays. Have you filled in the HMRC online questionnaire re are you an e'ee or SE'ed (pretending you're in her shoes, naturally)? I bet it'd come back with a vague result. I'm not sure if it's possible to dob someone in with HMRC but you could try and do that anonymously if this situation does unfold, just to make the whole thing less 'cozy'.

Why is B NC with her brother?

OP please tell the father of this child, and go back to the police and tell them you were forced to make a false statement.

You shouldn't judge yourself for what you did when you were 13 you didn't know any better. When I was a similar age one of my friends was having a sexual relationship with a man in his 30's. At the time she told us she was in love, and we believed her. Looking back now I wish I had told someone, and I do feel guilty for that, but at the time I genuinely didn't think they were doing anything wrong.

You can do something now though, you can protect this child. Yes he may not be after her, he may be after your friend, but I would rather fall out with a friend and protect a child.

Why is the sister NC?

OP another exhortation not to blame yourself for your complicity in what happened; paedophiles don't just groom their victims, they groom their families, their friends, their whole social circle. That's how they get access to children in the first place. In addition our whole culture groomed us to accept the idea of forbidden love: it's only very recently that grooming for sex has even been recognised as a thing.

FWIW I just remembered this morning after reading this thread, that I had a friend when I was about 17, who told us how she'd lost her virginity at the age of 11 to a 30 year old man. We were slightly shocked and disturbed, but she absolutely assured us that she wanted it, that it was lovely, that it was all good. At 17, we didn't know any better than to dubiously accept that if she said that, she must be some sort of exception I suppose. It was only later on as an adult, that I realised how successfully she'd been groomed and I wonder now years later, if she actually has realised that (I haven't seen her for at least 20 years or so). Although I felt uneasy about it, at 17 I couldn't recognise unambiguously just how awful it was; there's no way you could have been expected to recognise it at 13. Please stop carrying guilt that does not belong to you, it belongs to the man who groomed your friend.

I'd say that in a roundabout way you, too, were a victim of this abuse. Not the main victim, of course, but to be a witness to it is to be a victim of it. You also have to deal with the guilt of colluding with it (a common hurdle to cross for victims of abuse). You 3 girls were all a victim of it one way or another.

It sounds like B has probably woken up but A doesn't appear to have woken up and neither had you, possibly until this thread? ie you were still seeing it as 'star-crossed' lovers and not what it was: a paedophile who abused a young girl. Perhaps get some support around this yourself, OP; this stuff takes its toll on all involved

I'm not surprised that A has been suffering from depression - she would with this buried in her psyche.

Definitely tell her daughters father.

I would also be very concerned about A's daughter as if she doesn't understand that this man is a paedophile, she won't protect her from him. He may not intend to do anything at the moment but there is a chance that he will in future.

I think that you should talk to the police about it.

OP another exhortation not to blame yourself for your complicity in what happened; paedophiles don't just groom their victims, they groom their families, their friends, their whole social circle. That's how they get access to children in the first place. In addition our whole culture groomed us to accept the idea of forbidden love: it's only very recently that grooming for sex has even been recognised as a thing.

FWIW I just remembered this morning after reading this thread, that I had a friend when I was about 17, who told us how she'd lost her virginity at the age of 11 to a 30 year old man. shock We were slightly shocked and disturbed, but she absolutely assured us that she wanted it, that it was lovely, that it was all good. At 17, we didn't know any better than to dubiously accept that if she said that, she must be some sort of exception I suppose. It was only later on as an adult, that I realised how successfully she'd been groomed and I wonder now years later, if she actually has realised that (I haven't seen her for at least 20 years or so). Although I felt uneasy about it, at 17 I couldn't recognise unambiguously just how awful it was; there's no way you could have been expected to recognise it at 13. Please stop carrying guilt that does not belong to you, it belongs to the man who groomed your friend.

AskBasil, what a thoughtful and insightful post. Thank you.

Of course she is VAT-registered as a self-employed book-keeper, OP as an accountant surely you know about the flat-rate scheme?

Re the personal side of it, sounds to me like they are restarting a sexual relationship. She is newly separated, he has a very ill wife, there is this very dubious history between them.

If she, as an adult, wants the relationship I don't see that it is anyone's business to be honest. If he chooses to pay her over the odds she could be construed as prostituting herself or she could be doing it as a tax break for his business.

Although I have to admit I would want a word with A's exH, just to make him aware of how old A was when their previous contact happened. And I too am curious about why B went NC. Have there been other inappropriate relationships while he has been "away"?

I don't think it sounds strange that she's VAt registered for her services, I think the issue was that she appears to be becoming an employee. Not that that's really the strangest thing about the whole situation, to be fair

Hi all, sorry I haven't been back before.

Some of the responses have really made me think, about how I view it in my head, and why I haven't been more forceful with A. I still struggle with the words sexual abuse labelled to it. Which is was.

Mrs TerryPratchetts comments from right at the beginning of the thread keep playing on my mind.

Now, 20 years later, he is paying the person he sexually abused to work for him

That's it in a nutshell. That's the problem.

Other questions asked.

B has been NC with all of her family for a while - there were some issues when she was in her late teens / early twenties relating to a pregnancy and she went NC then.

Re the VAT. Yes Yambabe I am perfectly aware of the flat-rate scheme thanks . Currently A is not VAT registered at all - she turns over about 35k ish. She would be going VAT registered purely because this job would take her over the registration threshold. The VAT bit is irrelevant I suppose so probably daft of me to mention it.

I will be seeing Ss dad tomorrow so I might try and talk to him then, although no idea what I will say. You are all right, I might like to believe it was a lovey dovey one off, and hes a lovely bloke, but its unlikely isn't it?

I suppose the nutshell is that without the history between A and Bs brother, the job would be an overly generous salary and perhaps a bit eyebrow raising .. with the history its just plain weird.