to think you'd have to be insanely naive to believe paedophiles DON'T target single mothers?

[ZoeCM]

I've seen this several times - not just on MN, but on other parenting sites as well. Poster asks when she should mention to a man she's interested in that she has kids, as she doesn't want to attract paedophiles. The other posters act as though she's some sort of paranoid nutter.

Why the hell wouldn't child abusers seek out single mothers? It's got to be the single easiest way to get access to a child. He dates the mother, asks her to move in after a year or two, and then he's literally living with a child. How many women are going to refuse to leave their child alone in the house with their partner/husband now and then?

There's far less safeguarding involved in moving in with a family than there is working with children. And if a child tells their mother that their teacher/football coach/whoever has abused them, the mother will go straight to the police. If they tell her their stepdad abused them, a lot of women will be torn.

It's well-documented that there are so many people out there who were sexually abused by their stepfathers growing up, so why do people act as though this is an urban legend? Is it guilt/denial about the risks of bringing an unrelated man into your children's home?

O remember a while so on this board a mother posted that her boyfriend who didn't live with her was coming to her house. showering and then walking round upstairs with just a towel on whilst her children were around. A few posters thought this was a bit dodgy and unnecessary behaviour.The number of posters who thought there was no need for concern and the worried posters were over reacting was astonishing.

Throwing statistics around is pointless because for every SA known about there are many more not known about. Many, many children get abused and never go on to reveal it to anyone. My mum is another mother who would swear on her children's lives that she has never brought a man into our lives. That she wouldn't put her children at risk. Well, she is wrong. One was a family member. One was a trusted friend of hers. And another was a long-term boyfriend. None of these men knew each other. Every one of them charming. Every one of them has children of their own. One I know for a fact abused his own daughter too. Not one person knows what they did (other than their victims).

I stand by what I said as a society it is easily to victim blame, we do it all the time, this thread about single mothers has tones of it.

It is only by unconsciously victim blaming we make ourselves feel safe, we need to be aware of this and ensure we make a conscious effort not to.

Let's focus on why so many men become sex offenders, stop viewing them as other and monsters and start realising they are everywhere and can be pleasant to talk to, intelligent and appear loving parents. They however are sexual predators and their behaviour is abhorrent.

Tackling offending and reoffending is key, being aware of the dangers and also having a great dialogue with your kids is also key

I recommend a book "the whole story" by dr Patrick Tidmarsh who at the end of the book has a chapter on the signs and step parenting

Pointing out it’s a good idea to actively try and protect your children from predators-

and that one element of that is not to bring a succession of different men you are dating in to their lives- isn’t victim blaming.

It’s encouraging responsible parenting.

Yeah, it was 4% fathers and 1% mothers.

I know it was briefly mentioned by another poster but Clare’s Law and Sarah’s Law (also known as CSODS) are great tools. Yes, they only work if the person has been ‘caught’, but all relevant dealings with police are considered, not just the obvious ones and not just actual convictions.

For example, if you are worried about domestic violence and submit a Clare’s Law application and the police have only ever been called to verbal arguments but the person you are asking about has a couple of charges for getting into drunken brawls, or every time they come into contact with the police they are drunk or on drugs that could still be disclosed if relevant to the application.

With Clare’s Law, I would recommend it to anyone who has even an inkling that something is off with their partner/ex-partner/person they’ve been on a couple of dates with and are considering becoming serious with, etc. Even just little things like being overly concerned with who you’re texting or moaning ‘oh but you already saw your friends last week’ could be a little red flag for the beginning of control behaviour.

With Sarah’s Law I would say it should be a basic safeguarding action someone should take if they are giving a new partner any kind of access to their child. Or if anybody with access to your kid sets your parent spider senses off. At the very least fill in the form and if the police say they can’t disclose anything then at least you’ve done it.

Also, both applications can be done on someone else’s behalf. For example, if you’re a grandparent and your child’s partner is setting off alarm bells, you can submit a Sarah’s Law application on their behalf. Or if you no longer feel completely comfortable letting your kids stay over at your friend’s house since her new boyfriend moved in, you can submit a Sarah’s Law. It’s similar with Clare’s Law. However, if, for example, you submitted an application because you think your friend is being abused by their partner, the police could want to speak to your friend directly if there are significant risks or similar.

The context of my reply is from working in the legal area for many years. These safety-related threads always attract a diverse set of responses. Risk assessment and follow on actions are very personal, e.g., I'll never walk alone past 6PM in the evening ... through to I walk home from the pub drunk every Friday at 2AM through a bad area and nothing ever happened.

The key is the predatory aspect mentioned by previous posters. In cases I've worked on you'll often hear that the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course there are seemingly random impluse crimes, but typically that is not the case.

The predator will have selected a location, identified/followed a victim, know what they want to do, roughly follow a script for the assault.
The 92% vote is revealing!

Absolutely agree and also targeting SEN DC. My ds has a significant speech delay so I will not let him go to nursery or anywhere I or DH am not directly supervising. He cannot tell me if someone has harmed him in any way, so I just can't allow him to be out of our care at any time. It is difficult at times, but I sleep well at night.

Maybe this was a rare case, but a close friend of mine was molested by his mums best friend. It was an older woman that his mum trusted very much. The mum had left abusive dh and was having her friend watch her son while she worked. You can't trust anyone really☹️

I agree completely OP. I am astonished that so many people move an unrelated man into their children's home, when statistically it is the most dangerous thing that you can do to a child. Or that they think their case is the exception, that somehow they have some superior power to identify such a person when it is a well-established fact that such people are masters at hiding their true intent and going undetected, pretending to be "nice" normal people and sustaining this for years on end. Specialists in the area say you can never tell, so how do these women - with judgement obviously less objective because they are in a relationship with this person! - have such confidence in their ability to know? The fact is they do not.

I will never understand why people do this, knowingly putting their children at risk, when it's perfectly possible to have a relationship but live separately until your children grow up.

I also don't understand why social services accept this as ok when it is a much higher risk to a child than many things which they would consider to be significant enough risk factors to intervene, but are in fact far lower risks.

You think social services should be involved if a mum moves in with a new partner 😂 you are basically saying no single mums can have other kids again or get married again as no one wants to do that but live separately so if your relationship ends you should never be able to have another child again or get married or ss should get involved 😂

You'd be surprised, sadly.

Social services is meant to protect children. If they were behaving objectively then clearly it is irrational and irresonsible for them to ignore a parent willingly subjecting a child to a risk that has been proved to be much higher in terms of likelihood and impact than the relatively insignificant risks that they do deem to be sufficiently concerning to intervene. It's completely illogical, given that the child's welfare should be paramount and the parent's desires are not a valid reason for exposing a child to well-known risks of serious harm.

It's strange you find it amusing. Your response demonstrates what I was talking about: the irrational and selfish belief so many hold that it's fine for adults to put their own wants above their children's safety, to the extent that you find somebody stating the contrary funny. Yet notably providing no counter-evidence to justify your position in terms of why subjecting a child to such significant and unnecessary risks is acceptable.

I'm so sorry you had to go through that and hope you are healing now ❤️

You are the only one that sounds irrational, ss are not going to get involved because a mum moves a new partner in, people are allowed to move on even single mums. Fair enough if we are talking a matter of weeks for moving someone in different story but ss aren't there to police peoples relationships and yes I do find it funny that you think they are!

They will often target them through Churches too.

A paedophile will wait years for their end goal.

You appear to have failed to read my posts. I didn't say that social services do this. I said that their approach should be based on the risks to the child and therefore - given that it is a statistically proven fact that moving an unrelated man into their home puts them at high risk of serious harm - if they were doing their job properly they would act upon this risk and protect children, as they do with other, lower, risks.

I am a single mother, by the way.

Yes social services should get involved every time a parent moves in with a new partner 😴

you just have to look at the relationship board to see plenty of women are living with abusive men who are the fathers to their children, I think social services have bigger problems to deal with and don't have the time to get involved with a parent simply because they are moving a new partner in.

With Sarah’s Law I would say it should be a basic safeguarding action someone should take if they are giving a new partner any kind of access to their child.

I imagine only a tiny minority of women do this, though. You're in love with a man, he's kind to you - are you really going to think, "Right, before i introduce him to my kids, I'd better apply to see if he's a sex offender"?

Fair enough if we are talking a matter of weeks for moving someone in different story

Oh, yes, provided you've known them for a month, everything should be fine.

Yes that's what I meant

I'd be wary of someone seemingly trying to get to be alone with the kids. I'd say most people of either sex would never volunteer alone time with someone else's children if they were in a new relationship. Some women with kids do seem to move in with people they've met mere weeks ago. These men must know that eventually they will get to be alone with the kid once the woman trusts them. And if they met her on Facebook last week and he's living with her already, then that's an indication to him she will let down her guard easily. You do often hear of both physical and sexual abuse by the mums new-ish partner. Disgusting but true.

This is interesting, because police know that gangs target vulnerable single mothers in county lines with cuckooing and we hear all about this when we have safegaurding training, but i've never really heard the idea that single parents are targeted by paedophiles, just that step parents are a risk factor but it makes it sound like an accident rather than orchestrated.

I saw a man on a well known male dominated fitness forum say that if he dated a single mother, it would only be a single mother of girls; because then he could shag them too when they grew up.

He clearly thought it was a perfectly ok thing to post on that forum, he was comfortable saying it. I think he even thought he'd be lauded as clever/strategic.

His post was not challenged or taken down.