To be horrified by this Metro article about standing by an offender (content warning, read with care)

[blackcatclub]

I opened this article thinking it would be about her leaving him: metro.co.uk/2021/11/28/i-was-8-months-pregnant-when-my-partner-was-arrested-for-child-sex-offences-15662442/

But no.

As a survivor of abuse I am absolutely appalled that they published this as if it was ok and the woman was not in fact deluded and minimising everything.

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

Devils advocate:

It wasn’t a 12 year old girl it was a police officer.

I think police and paedophile hunters should stop doing this and concentrate on people who are actually abusing real children rather than psychologically manipulating people into committing a crime.

Discuss:-

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It's an incredibly dangerous approach. I knew of someone who found sexual messages to a child on their partner's phone. They told the police and social services, and it then transpired that said partner had been sexually abusing children in real life.

You have to report that sort of thing and accept that whatever information you know of is probably only the tip of the iceberg

PicaK, so sexualising a child and ending their innocence prematurely isn't harming them?

@ButtonSister you misunderstood what @picaK was saying. The 'wft' makes it clear she was disagreeing with the statement in the article that this doesn't hurt children.

I heard an interview on the radio where the husband had twice intimately touched the daughter and the daughter had twice informed the mother.
The first time the mother thought the child had made a mistake, the second she asked her H who confessed. She told him to go to the police, he did, he went to jail. Then he came to live back home with them and the wife still has sex with him. He's not allowed to be alone with the daughter though, as if that makes it ok

I think part of the problem is that we expect people who do bad things to look, well, bad. Just like we expect our victims to be lovely, people, battered and trodden down. When people don't fit those moulds we think they can't really be bad or must be complicit in their abuse somehow.

I'm honestly not surprised if it was true, I've seen it happen many times in my former role we had a few who would be like this even lose there children to the "evil social services" who enjoy splitting families up (they get a bonus for every child they remove apparently) it's unpleasant to witness

@Fomofo @blusteredbirds the 'wft' comment is clearly @PicaK disagreeing with the comment in the article that what this man was doing was not harmful to children.

BTW, I think that as she had to tell others about the incident she HAD to do it there and then, not wait for time to process things as clearly other parents have to safeguard their own children.

@BoredZelda

I’m not saying they shouldn’t do this but am honestly ignorant of what crime they would be charged with if they haven’t actually been talking to a minor?

Wow, the denial going on in this article is quite something. A 12 year old girl is a baby. OP, I'm so sorry for what you went through.

[quote user1471457751]**@Fomofo* @blusteredbirds the 'wft' comment is clearly @PicaK* disagreeing with the comment in the article that what this man was doing was not harmful to children.[/quote]
I don't think you can say it is 'clearly' a joke if multiple people have had different interpretations.

I took the WTF to mean, ' WTF, why on earth is he being prosecuted when he never harmed a child'
You took it to mean, 'WTF, why does she think its ok as he never hurt a child.'

I've had 'debates' with nice, educated middle class women who argue that men watching child pornography is ok as the man watching it is not harming the child , which is probably why my mind leapt to the interpretation it did of PicaK's comment.

Hopefully you are right, though.

@Beefcurtains79

Fucking he’ll, she’s basically making herself complicit in this. That child shouldn’t be allowed contact with him. What a total dick pandering loser she is.

If she's shown that she's not willing to stop contact with him despite being told he is a risk to children then social services should see her as a danger to her child too. Also ridiculous that she told family with kids because she had to, but had not told friends with kids. I can imagine my reaction if I was one of her friends and she didn't tell me. Absolutely vile- the two of them

You have to ask what are they trying to accomplish with this? Trying to convince people that staying with a pervert is honourable?

I don’t even understand why this needed to be written. I’m not clicking on it because o don’t need to see or hear anymore pro pervert propaganda.

Why are people always trying to push this narrative in women to stay with a horrible man?

Very peculiar article.

[quote user1471457751]@Ritasueandbobtoo9 you're hardly playing devil's advocate, merely excusing a paedophile. He thought he was sending naked photos of himself to a pre-teen girl, the fact it was to an undercover police officer does not change his intent.[/quote]
This!

Devils advocate:

It wasn’t a 12 year old girl it was a police officer.

I think police and paedophile hunters should stop doing this and concentrate on people who are actually abusing real children rather than psychologically manipulating people into committing a crime.

Discuss:-“

No one can be “manipulated” into becoming a paedophile. They are or they aren’t.

No child or baby should have contact with anyone that sends those pictures knowingly to a child.
No excuses and I don’t care it was a police officer. He thought it was a child and that’s the reason he sent them.
Baby should no be in contact with him at all and if the mother doesn’t comply she should living with the baby either.

If the police decided to pretend to be a 12-year old girl to lure him in, they must have already suspected he was a paedophile. So this woman is deluding herself, unfortunately.

Its possible this story is made up but I did know someone who stayed with a man who was arrested for having images of CSA on their computer.

I'm suspicious of the motives for publishing it, I think it's trying to move the overton window on CSA; it was only a picture, one he sent himself, he didn't have pictures of children on his devices, his pregnant partner stood by him etc. The pregnancy detail is an important part of the story in terms of manipulating the readers perception, you would expect a pregnant woman to be highly protective of her unborn child but here we are presented with a woman who, once she knew the details, stood by her partner. We're being persuaded it's not that bad, why?

I don't think the police have manipulated someone into committing a crime, they don't create fake profiles on gardening forums expecting to catch paedophiles so clearly this man was visiting sites where he was likely to find young girls to make contact with. That is not normal or appropriate behaviour for a grown man. If he made a mistake you would expect him to navigate away as soon as he realised. The intention existed before he made contact with the police officer acting as a 12 year old.

If this story is true then I think the woman will be in for a shock when it reaches court, all of the messaging details will come out and it would be surprising if he hadn't requested photos in return, sending photos is usually just a way of building trust and normalising the exchange of explicit images.

I could not stay with anyone who had done something like this and I feel for her daughter, she will surely find out why she can't live with her dad at some point in the future.

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

Devils advocate:

It wasn’t a 12 year old girl it was a police officer.

I think police and paedophile hunters should stop doing this and concentrate on people who are actually abusing real children rather than psychologically manipulating people into committing a crime.

Discuss:-

Bearing in mind that the police who impersonate children online do so in a way that mirrors how a child might behave, there's no psychological manipulation. They are merely being believable, nothing more.

Or do you think that the paedophiles the police catch have only ever spoken to an undercover officer, and would never or have never spoken to a 'real' child?

Or is it that you think abusing children online isn't real abuse, and presumably doesn't do real damage?

@blusteredbirds

I think this is a case of missing punctuation completely changing the meaning.

I think it should be read as

“ He didn't actually hurt a child? Wtf!?”

I could be wrong though and that poster could genuinely think “no harm done”

I think the article is made up nonsense.

Absolutely sickening. She believes he should have the chance to prove he's not a monster, well didn't he already prove himself to be? Sending sexual images and discussing sex with what he believed to be a 12 year old?

There's a reason that paedophiles are often not found out for a very long time, mostly because they're "so nice" "So good with kids!" So deserving of being the loving dad/uncle/grandpa they are, and that is also how they happen to be trusted around their young relatives who oftentimes they go on to sexually abuse. I know this from experience. A known sex offender was allowed around his nieces and nephews kids, because he never had his own, he went on to sexually abuse atleast 3 of us. He was taken to court for the abuse I suffered, and he was still allowed around the family children, and he continued to abuse them.

They all believed their children were safe though.

I hope when her precious baby arrives she starts to think differently and keeps him as far away from them as possible.

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

Devils advocate:

It wasn’t a 12 year old girl it was a police officer.

I think police and paedophile hunters should stop doing this and concentrate on people who are actually abusing real children rather than psychologically manipulating people into committing a crime.

Discuss:-

Oh do fuck off.