Channel 4 documentary "Married to a paedophile" *MNHQ amended title*

[MissHavershamssis]

Channel 4 tonight aired a documentary whereby the words and experiences of women married to paedophiles were documented albeit actresses played the parts of the wives to preserve anonymity.

I absolutely cannot comprehend any woman who could remain married to a man who finds the abuse of children arousing. One wife rightly so chucked her husband out upon his arrest - yet is happy for their two daughters to have contact? The other woman was imo disgusting - welcomed her husband (who had viewed the most extreme categorises of child abuse over several months) back with excitement and 'wore her best dress' to meet him on his release from prison.

I absolutely am not of the vigilante stance where 'we should chop their bits off' etc, and believe in rehabilitation via the SOTP, but as a mother and daughter I cannot get my head around any woman who could remain with a partner who found children sexually attractive.

On a different forum a few years ago there as a woman who defended her partner to the death as he was attracted to pre-pubescent boys but didn't act on that attraction. Most people were horrified.

So I suppose my AIBU is - to not understand how anyone could stay with a partner who has a paedophile as a partner.

It is so much more common than people want to believe. I've worked with a lot of survivors, and I don't think I've ever had one where their mum believed them rather than the abuser. It's interesting that, when the stories I've worked on go public/get published, the mother gets blamed as much, if not more, than the perpetrator. I've lost count of the number of times someone has said, 'what she did was worse.'

I observe in the comments a big underestimation of how skilled the preferential sex offenders are at grooming not only wives but families, communities, work colleagues. They are masters of deception - Jekyll and Hyde. They are nice men who many around them can't believe would be capable of sexually victimising children. They start their offending in their teens and over time become very, very skilled - some kids are abused with their parents in the same room/house, thus reinforcing what they can away with and further threatening the children into silence by manipulating them into believing no-one will believe them. The grooming silences the victims and those around the offender. That's what it is designed to do. Whistleblowing on the offender can result in the victims being shunned and disowned by whole families and communities - so skilled has the offender been at his "Mr Nice Guy" act. These are the guys next door...

Mostly the women stay because their minds have been interfered with - they are, on the whole, not at fault but can become part of the problem mostly through no fault of their own. If so should be coaxed away/ forcibly removed as a last resort if possible (latter isn't legal) to give them a chance to get distance, get perspective and to escape away. They never signed up to be married to a paedophile I imagine. Like cult members, they have been subtly subjected to undue influence under the guise of love - they are not of their right minds and become puppets - but again most didn't consent to this I would think nor realise how compromised they have become unless they can get away for a few weeks. The lucky women who leave once the crims are revealed probably haven't had such skilled groomers as partners...

These guys want killing actually imo - they are not rehabilitable and are a constant danger in the community. They also can organise to trafficking kids to "pals". If anyone wants to keep them alive they should be put on an island somewhere out of the way. It's a gross failure of care for society to release them back into the community. Some, I understand, can be taught to curb their urges if caught young and have not had many victims. But do we really know as so many offences are never reported? In the USA 1 in 4 kids will be sexually victimised before the age of 18 I just read. Unsure what the figures are for the UK off-hand.

Inevereverwanttogohome & all other victims

This is outing - I don't really care though.

I allowed myself to be groomed and abused by my sister's husband when I was about 14 (the grooming had been going on for about 18mth/2yrs before). I kept it a secret until the night my mother died and me and my sister had been sitting with her for the past week (nursing team told us death was imminent, but actually took 7 days). The conversation came about because my sister's father (mum's first marriage, I was born during her second) abused my sister horribly from primary school age and I had a gnawing worry that my mother was one of these forgiving/stick fingers in ears and sing la-la type women. It turns out mum had no idea what was happening to my sister, as she was the one who left the family home and my sister kept her secret well (as is often the case I think). Mum was devastated about my sister.

Mum also knew what happened to me - I confessed to her about what I did a few years after it happened and my sister had since got divorced. Her response was "well that explains why you can't hide your hatred of him then".

But the most surreal part was during the part of my childhood where I was getting/allowing the abuse, and also the years running up to the grooming. The man was the type to engage in the casual misogyny favoured during the 70s-80s. He was known to be a bit of a 'dirty old man' - usually said with kind of a laugh. I remember when the grooming was in the early stages and considered to be just 'joking around' I was about 12 or 13 and there was a party which ran late and got pretty boozy all round (not me though). I remember he pinned me against the wall In the living room and tried to give me a love-bite on the neck. The comments from my mum/sister (can't remember which, possibly both) went: "oh ffs leave her alone, you know she's sensitive and doesn't like your sense of humour.... Oh great, she's bloody well crying now" and then said to me "if you didn't rise to the bait and react he'd get bored and leave you alone " and that was about it.

Anyway what I'm trying to say is that things go on in plain sight that are dismissed and minimised as jokes/unfortunate misunderstandings that get swept under the carpet, probably because the reality is too horrible.

Once I'd given my sister my confession she said she wasn't surprised, didn't blame me but 'felt very hurt' about it. She saw her ex husband a day or two later and confronted him (I wish she hadn't though, it wasn't her secret to tell). He said that I was instigator, he was poor fool suckered in etc etc. She also told her children (they are all adults in early 20s-30s) and I really wish she hadn't done that. Life has gone on for all of them, one of my nephews is in business with his dad. The man's face pops up on my Facebook occasionally because there's been a family celebration and my niece or nephews are posting about 'lovely meal for dad's birthday' or whatever.

I haven't called my sister for months, although I keep meaning to invite her and her kids over but then I just don't contact. She hasn't contacted me either. The last time she made contact was on my ds1's birthday this year, she responded to my happy birthday post (facebook again!) to say 'tell him I'll bring his present over later" but she never did. She's gone very quiet on us since my niece produced her first grandchild.

Anyway, that's a long and rambling post, but I'm trying to say that love for and loyalty to a person can often be kind of compartmentalised in the minds of people close to an abuser. Often people who love the abuser find it easier to freeze the victim out, because they don't see them as a victim but as a colluder.

The whole program was so so sad. I really felt for them all. Well all the women. And I did feel a bit sorry for that man 'Alex' who did seem to be trying to sort himself out.
I was glad when the woman left her husband who just wouldnt admit what he had done or explain really. I thought at first she was a bit nuts and pretending nothing had happened so I was relieved when at the end she said she had to choose the grandkids wellbeing over her love for her husband. She said as he could not explain or take responsibility for what he had done she had no choice but to leave him.

Hippo you didn't ALLOW anything. Your ex BIL was an abuser, he knew what he was doing. None of this is your fault. I am so sorry it has fractured your family.

I agree with chipping of penises and removing eyeballs. Plus hanging.

Chopping

It made extremely disturbing viewing. It certainly opened up my eyes to the types of material these evil dispicale individuals look at, and the role that women play in facilitating it. I am glad the older lady left him in the end, I was shocked that she was even supporting him.

I cannot believe Alex adult dds are supporting him, I would not want anything to do with my dad after that.

I think I would, actually.

Sorry wrong thread.

Op it's appalling but not everyone has the same moral compass.

Not everyone cares about the same values other people do.
It's naive to assume every grandparent is a sweet caring person. It's naive to assume every operates on same beliefs.

It's this very naivety or in some cases bloody mindedness that has led to the opportunities being created, for abuse to go on.

Women, men stay with partners who do and are all sorts of horrid things.
If anyone has read the recent serialisation of the west's daughter will know how convoluted, corrupted and morally bereft these situations are.

My older (by 5 years) step brother abused me and my other brother (when 11 and 9 respectively). We finally admitted this to our parents and siblings 28 years later.

He's also a secondary school teacher who has had several affairs with what I'd term vulnerable women - 16 yo ex-students and a young woman who'd been abused as a child.

His wife knows all of this and stays with him. My parents know all of this and still treat him as family. It disgusts me.

"I observe in the comments a big underestimation of how skilled the preferential sex offenders are at grooming not only wives but families, communities, work colleagues. They are masters of deception - Jekyll and Hyde. They are nice men who many around them can't believe would be capable of sexually victimising children. They start their offending in their teens and over time become very, very skilled - some kids are abused with their parents in the same room/house, thus reinforcing what they can away with and further threatening the children into silence by manipulating them into believing no-one will believe them."

I know of a case where a woman suspected her DD was being abused by her husband (not the DD's father). She reported him. It went very badly. SS initially believed the report, as did the police, but he was SO convincing, and had the DD SO under his control, that the woman was the one who ended up evicted from her home and the man kept custody of the girl! Some time later it came out that he had been abusing her the whole time but she believes (through the grooming) that they are "in a relationship" and she won't have anything to do with her mother. The girl is still underage. He is a VERY clever fucking bastard indeed and he is one I would dearly love to see locked up forever, to die in prison.

A family members child was groomed, as was her mother, by a 'family friend', for years. He was trusted, welcomed into the family.

Thank goodness the child has a fantastic relationship with her mother because the first time he touched her inappropriately, the child broke down in tears the next day and told their mum. I dread to think how much worse it could have gotten.

His wife stood by him, called the child a liar, a little bitch, all sorts. Despite his dna being present on the childs underwear.

I cannot fathom it personally. It makes my blood boil.

Some offenders are highly skilled and manipulative 'groomers' of children and adults around them.

Many are not however; who have neurodevelopmental disorders, mental illnesses and substance misuse problems who are not sophisticated offenders and are actually lacking in social skills/the ability to manipulate.

There is only one foolproof way of ensuring a paedophile is not a threat to anybody else, in my eyes. We euthanise dogs for attacking kids & 9 times out of 10 there is a genuine trigger - be that illness/injury & pain, constant harassment etc. Yet if a human - lets not forget there is a small number of women who do this too - abuses a child they either get a slap on the wrist or a bit of time in prison. There is no excuse imo for someone abusing a child; no MH issue or trauma response. And i do not believe they can be rehabilitated.

The older woman on the programme basically justified her husband's actions because he promised her he had never physically touched a child himself. There seems to be this idiotic view that watching somebody else do it makes you a lesser form of monster. If that were my hubby - especially if i had kids - i'd be doing time for the consequences of my reactions. IF they found the body first

I allowed myself to be groomed and abused by my sister's husband when I was about 14

Please don't EVER say this about yourself - you were a child; you didn't allow anything. This horrible man DID these things to you - you are NOT RESPONSIBLE for anything that happened. It is totally HIS FAULT - NOT yours.

Do not accept any of the blame in this terrible situation that he put you into.

krustykittens and SchadenfreudePersonified thanks. I know I've made a poor choice of words there, I know a groomed child doesn't a collude in their own abuse.... But that's how it gets stuck in your head and patterns of 'wrong-thinking' can happen. I'm middle aged now but it doesn't go away.

This gives me another thought, about victims who get blamed for being a 'little slut' or other awful names - sometimes teenagers (especially girls?) Who are approaching puberty are sometimes thought of as being much worldly than they really are. And some victim blamers come out with things like "well, she knew what she was doing" etc. Revolting attitude, but not uncommon I don't think.

Has anyone ever come across a person who has been abused but covered for their abuser?
A close family member confided in me that she had been abused as a child but the person who she claimed had done it, never seemed the right fit. I believe that she was abused but I also have this feeling that the actual person who did it was a lot closer to home. But I have no evidence for this and she maintains that it was the person who she originally named.
Has anyone ever come across a similar situation?

I watched the full programme and what I came away with was just sadness...so many lives in tatters ..so many questions ..fear of loved ones the innocent parties they wanted answers to their questions and they didnt get any...families torn apart and fragile relationships..and as for the older lady who was standing by her husband...she couldnt process it at all..she just couldnt understand..and i dont blame her at all ..she just couldnt process any of it so she tried desperatly just to carry on and ignore it as it appeared the only way she could cope...You could almost see the penny drop at the mediation session when the abuser still wouldnt admit or answer the questions she so badly needed to know the answers to...I genuinely believed she thought if it would all come out things could move on but she realised she didnt know her husband at all so she let go...you could be fooled into thinking she was weak but she wasnt ...she was hoping against all hope for an outcome she was never going to get...she found her strength in the end and i believe made the right decision...but how she struggled with it ...he was all she knew for 44 years rightly or wrongly she was a good loyal wife who really had no clue....all in all just heartbreakingly sad all ways round...

Those women who stay with their paedophile partners don't have respect for the victims either. It's one thing they didn't know about what they were doing but another thing to find out about it and staying with them, supporting. Staying together just confirms they are as vile and twisted in their head.

My stepfather abused my younger sisters daughter mother didn't believe that he had believed she may have been abused but it was not her husband it never went to the police myself and my younger sister didn't speak to her until he died which was just 2 weeks before her, older brother and sister still saw them quite often

I thought about this last night when I watched Alex interacting with his DD’s. And I think that when it comes to the children it’s just so difficult. As a wife there is no question that I would leave in a heartbeat without so much as a second thought. But then I got to thinking about how as a grownup it would feel to find out that your dad, your potential hero was capable of such things and I don’t think it’s as straightforward to just walk away.

To me my dad is my absolute hero. There is nothing he isn’t capable of and he has been my rock all my life. I know without hesitation that he would never indulge in such things, so to find out that someone who you have held in such regard for so long must be a hell of a thing to come to terms with. And I absolutely don’t blame the daughters for maintaining a relationship with him. You never know, things might change in time, when they have their own children etc but I think that the father daughter relationship is one which is hard to break in some instances.

Also, (and I am by no means excusing what he did,) Alex was openly remorseful about what he’d done and admitted his wrongdoing and wanted to take steps to never do it again - even watching (normal) porn. Contrasted with Robert who refused to talk about any of what he’d done or admit to any of it, and I can see why Alex’s daughters believed that he was sorry and wanted to change.

I also find some of the talk of what people say they would like t do to these people disturbing though. Two wrongs don’t make a right and someone’s wish to chop off penises and castrate individuals is equally sick and indicative of perverse fantacy IMO