Philip Schofield: As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother."

[DancingWithMashedPotato]

Philip Schofield's brother had now been convicted of sexual abuse with a young boy over a 3 yr period. Horrendous crime. Philip Schofield has now stated "As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother.""

Now, it's completely up to Philip how he responds to his brother in what must be a v v stressful time. I cast no judgement whatsoever, and his life in the public eye adds so many new dimensions for him that must be hard to handle.

However, his comments about no longer having a brother really cut deep and made me wonder how I'd react

I adore my siblings and I think (though obviously things might be different if it actually happened) that I couldn't bring myself to disown or abandon my brother's no matter what they did. I can imagine some very limited events which might lead to me not speaking to them for a bit, perhaps a v long time. But I think by and large, no matter what they did, however bad, while there are some things I couldn't forgive and maybe could never understand, I don't think I could disown them. AIBU?

What are your views? Are there some things you absolutely would disown your family for? Are there some generally agreed limits for what a person can tolerate from a family member before they are disowned. Is child abuse the line? Murder?

Even when a comment gets deleted, it's still obvious what it alleged.

I would never minimise serious offences. Ever. And I have never done so.

I am not immune to the dark reality. Perhaps just acutely aware that the dark reality, which society does not always want to face, is that some deeply traumatised and abused children, given the cards aligning in a certain way, will grow up to do horrendous things. When these children are young victims then society rightly feels sorry for them and has empathy, but also I'm sorry to say, doesn't do enough to help them. But when these children grow up and follow the trajectory laid out for them as children, society casts them as evil.

I just read that. I felt like the tone was a bit suspicious- reminding us of things in a faux sympathetic way

This is Phillip Scofield we're talking about. Without a doubt, it's a career move.

My father disowned my eldest brother, for sexually abusing me and one of my other brothers when we were children (eldest brother was an adult)

My mother, on the other hand, maintained contact with eldest brother until the day she died, even going so far as to try and defend him to me.

I will be forever grateful to my Dad for having the moral backbone to show his disgust at eldest brother's actions. It gave me and my other brother some peace, to know that at least one family member deemed us and our experiences more important than eldest brother.

My other brother and I have had no contact with eldest brother for many, many years. We will never have any contact with him. And yet- there are still people in our family who think we should 'forgive and forget'.

So yeah- that's my line in the sand. Not necessarily because of what he did to me, but because of what he did to my other brother.

@Shodan that must have been incredibly hard for you and your family. As a mother and never having (thankfully) being placed in that position I honestly don't know what I would do. Kudos to your DF and the support found therein

His evidence was disturbing to say the least. By his own words his brother told him in 2021 and described the sexual acts and described the victims body to PS. It's one thing coming clean to a close brother when under pressure, but it's a weird relationship that is of a nature where you have that detailed conversation. PS reaction was don't do it again, to his brother. Justifying it as he thought it was a one off. He wrote all this in a statement.
The victim said it started when he was 13.
The statement released today by PS is out of a PR handbook to the extent it is a cliche.
Someone has to be brave enough to bust this all out of the water. The sooner the better. You would struggle to find anyone who trusted what PS said anymore.

There has been a number of threads on PS over the last years and whilst the obviously liable or unsubstantiated allegations have been removed, as they should, there has definitely been no agenda to prevent his situations from being discussed. The media not as prepared to do this as MN, so some credit to them for that.

Theres more to this than being reported in my opinion. Why didn’t PS tell brothers wife? He kept it all quiet. All the time on MN there are AIBU like this. It’s at least a safeguarding issue, not to disclose at the time. But he has form, as doubt PS own wife knew about his closet gay life either, before his disclosure/outing.

His wife knew he was gay, but not his liking of young boys.

Has that been proven?

And to answer your question OP, yes I would disown my siblings if they were proven guilty of being abusive or violent in any way, shape or form. Anything less than that, would be to condone that behaviour. Now if hypothetically they were in a family gathering, I would be civil but I will not engage any chit chat and I would take my leave.

I'm not sure I could accept anyone who purposely and actively harmed someone. If they genuinely regretted it I may try to help them, but even then I'm not sure. I wouldn't see them in the same way, it's a betrayal.

@ExitChasedByAMemory yes he gave a statement saying he knew in graphic detail in 2021 as his brother confided all the details in him. Took 2 years to make the statement he just has. If it wasn't in Court you wonder if he would be releasing the same statement.

I don't believe what many MNers are saying. Unfortunately I've met many peadophiles in my career, the vast majority have families who back them up and have regular contact. The more wealthy ones hire the best legal teams and independent reports to get a lesser sentence.

Siblings find it a bit easier to go NC but parents almost never do it they back them. If you want to understand how some of them think go on the stopitnow forum. They minimise their relatives crimes a lot blame it on porn and sex addiction etc they apparently aren't peadophiles just misguided.

But Timothy the brother said he had told nobody he was gay? PS was the first. Who knew. I would definitely have told the wife, her husband was watching gay porn in their marital home with a young boy. It makes no sense, PS for all his protestations made the wrong call and kept it secret for years, allowing abuse to continue. The poor boy, it could have been stopped.

If my sibling told me in graphic detail how they abused a minor, I would feel sick to my stomach. I'd wonder about who else they may be a risk to and notify the police immediately. The disowning would be immediate. PS sat with the knowledge and didn't disclose it immediately and only (publicly) disowned him after the legal process and court. I don'tl doubt this is just to try to protect his reputation.

What I do wonder is what kind of mindset they have that his brother shared these graphic details and felt that was OK and normal to disclose to PS? What context was that in? PS not doing anything about it highlights that their normality is hugely skewed. Whether it be PS being worried about reputational damage from it when it was disclosed or whether he felt the crime was OK/minimalised it, there is a lot to be said for PS, his lack of action and delayed reaction.

Out of all the attitudes on this thread I find yours the most shocking op. You obviously hold to the adage that blood is thicker than water. Personally I find that a bit ludicrous. Not judge someone because of an accident of birth? I don't think so.

@DancingWithMashedPotato - I know you've been getting a hard time for some of the things you've said here, but I actually agree with you on a lot of points.

I think the difficulty is that it's extremely hard to be objective and consider the facts dispassionately when there are children who have been abused. It's much easier just to dismiss the offenders as "evil" rather than consider they are perhaps the product of serious abuse and trauma themselves. That is much more complicated and difficult to process. Acknowledging that an offender who has done some awful things is also a victim is a slippery concept that feels very uncomfortable.

If we knew what made one abused child turn into an offender themselves, and another one deal with it differently, we'd be well on the way to slashing the rates of abuse. But the human psyche is complex, and there are so many factors that influence the outcome. And as you said, many of those who were abused lacked support and protection even after the abuse was revealed.

I don't work with offenders, but I find the whole subject really interesting on a philosophical level, even though it's pretty awful to contemplate.

I also think there's a difference between offenders who are ashamed of their urges and actions, and those who are proud of being a paedophile/don't think they've done anything wrong. Being completely honest, if I had a close relative that fell into the former group I might be able to see a way to continue with them. It would be very, very hard but depending on the circumstances, potentially possible. If it were the latter and there were no regrets, then absolutely not.

Also, what I find really important is how we treat individuals who discover they have/are developing paedophile urges. No one would ever choose to be sexually attracted to a child. I've thought about this and can't even begin to imagine the horror and self-disgust most decent people would feel to discover that they were getting sexually aroused at the thought of a child. We need some kind of treatment route where individuals can seek help from medical professionals without shame. Only be offering this will we have any hope of stopping those who might go on to abuse.

The people that matter here are the children who are abused, or at risk of being abused. But byy tracking back and trying to solve the problem at its root, we ultimately protect the children. Of course there will be some offenders who aren't interested in getting help as they just want to enjoy obscene sexual kicks, but I think there is a significant proportion of individuals who could be prevented from escalation if they had access to proper support.

The rise of groups defending "minor attracted individuals" doesn't help any of this because they are trying to legitimise paedophilia. Pretending that it's just a sexual quirk is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. I think there needs to be a universal, strong message that if you're attracted to children, it's a mental illness and there's help available . Early intervention for potential offenders really is vital. Again, it's about protecting the children.

Of course there are others like Gary Glitter, who I see immediately on release went on to try and procure more child porn on the dark web, who are deeply disturbed individuals who seem to glory in their own depravity. I can't imagine anyone being able to tolerate this type of individual.

The trajectory is not laid out for them. There’s no trajectory that says ‘you must rape women and children because you suffered XYZ’.

What do you mean by ‘society’ doesn’t do enough for them?

We are not talking about children who commit crime. We are talking about people who have grown into adults and are fully aware of what they are doing is wrong (as PS brother did know as well), know the trauma they are inflicting and do it anyway.

Would you stand there and tell a woman whose partner has beat and raped her that she should have sympathy for her partner. He couldn’t help it. His trajectory was laid out for him as a child and it wasn’t a choice.

Would you tell the said abuser, they can’t help it. It’s not their fault. It’s inevitable. It’s the fault of their abuser? Whose fault is they were abused?

I agree with this.

My views are that if Schofield was disgusted by what his brother has done, he would have reported him when he found out. As he's waited until his brother has been convicted, his statement is less about the crime itself and more about his public image.

Let's hope this is the end of his career now. He's absolute scum

I completely agree with this.

Schofield did nothing when his brother told him. Did nothing when his brother was charged.

It's only now that it's all out in the public and his brother has been found guilty that Schofield is making these big public declarations. It's absolute bollocks, and is clearly only about protecting his image and career.

Bearing in mind Schofield's own fondness for very, very young men who have barely reached the age of consent, it does make you wonder how on earth both the Schofield brothers ended up so sexually deviant. They're both morally deplorable.

The most important part of a court case is that the victim gets justice. In fact nothing else matters.

So it's really shocking that so many people on here do not understand that if PS had made ANY kind of public statement about it prior to the conviction that could well have made the case collapse and the victim would have been through this all for nothing.

Again...YOU CANNOT JUDGE PS FOR NOT MAKING A STATEMENT BEFORE NOW BECAUSE THAT IS THE LAW.

I think you've misunderstood. PS knew what his brother was doing but didn't report it. He just told him not to do it again. So long before any legal proceedings.

I’m so sorry .
And shocking that the OP has said if this happened she isn’t sure .