Is a Sarah's law request appropriate in this situation?

[Crump3tCrav1ngs]

DD goes to a martial arts club a few evenings a week. My MIL came along to her graduation ceremony today and said she recognised one of the parents in the room and that he is a convicted paedophile and seemed to know quite a bit of detail. If this is true surely he shouldn't be allowed to be around the children? He is regularly there with his son. I don't want to kick up a fuss about it without being certain as I know it's a huge accusation to make if MIL is wrong. Would this be an appropriate use of a Sarah's law request? Or would I be wasting time?

I don’t know a lot about it, I know more about Clare’s law, but I don’t think they would disclose anything to you in this situation. Your child is not at risk.

Do it!!

Do what? They don’t just disclose people’s criminal records to members of the public because they ask.

I think with Sarahs law is it if they are living in a certain radius of yourself you can request it?

Unfortunately there are loads of people convicted of CSA related crime, be it in person or sharing images. They often will be out and about in the community and have children of their own.

Unless they've actually done something that you've witnessed or been the victim of, there's nothing to report. Physically being present at a location isn't enough.

No you really can’t

Similarly to Claire’s law, which I do know about, they will only disclose information to you if you are in direct contact with the person or are at risk. So if this man was working at the group, or was a close family member, you could. But they can’t just disclose people’s personal information to any old neighbour or school mum.

Whatever you can to keep a convicted pedophile away from children?

Do you honestly think any parent worth their salt is going to sit meekly on the sidelines every week at a club knowing another parent there is a convicted pedophile?

Would you?

Look him up online, OP. You’ll know his sons name, so Google the surname and whatever info your MIL knows, and you’ll have your answer.

If he is a SO, he deserves to be outed.

It’s not appropriate, no. Speaking from my experience of having an actual paedophile in the family (two actually 😩) and submitting a Sarah’s Law request.

It only really applies when the person has contact with your child and if you don’t know they are a paedophile. As your mum told you, now you know and the expectation is on you to safeguard your child based on what you know. They won’t release information just because you want to know.

Also, there is nothing that says someone convicted of child sexual offences can’t be around children (unfortunately). Some of them will be placed under a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which will place certain restrictions on them. One of my family members is not allowed to be overnight anywhere around children. So children’s birthday parties, church picnics, Christmas dinner with the grandchildren, all fine. Sleepovers, not fine. Unless parents of the children meet with his probation officer and explicitly consent. 😳

The other family member though is not under an SHPO and has no restrictions on any contact with children. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Btw, we are NC with both of them, obviously (but we’re the only ones in the family who are, except the children they abused).

In my experience, it’s very hard to get a Sarah’s Law request through. Even with 2 family members who had contact with my children (unsupervised before I knew), they wouldn’t disclose to me because someone else warned me first and the police said that was good enough and now I knew. Which is bloody stupid frankly. But the scheme is set up to only disclose when there is no other way to prevent close (unsupervised) contact. It doesn’t sound like that’s the case here.

That said, in my personal experience, there are so many of them out there. They are the people you will not expect. You know about this one, so that’s great. Keep your child safe. But it really is the ones without convictions who you don’t know about that you need to worry about. So you need to learn to trust your gut and teach your dc to trust theirs around people and speak up if they feel uncomfortable.

"He is regularly there with his son". What does this mean? Do you mean like picking up or dropping off his son? Someone who is convicted of a child sex offence will be given an appropriate sentence and tracked in a way that the justice system deems appropriate. Depending on exactly what he was accused of, will depend on his punishment and lasting restrictions. However those restrictions including being banned from ever being in a public space with other children present, is very unlikely unless the person is felt to be likely to abduct a child. If he was helping at the club, yes absolutely he should not be allowed there. If he is picking up and dropping of his son when other children are present, but along with other parents and the leaders/helpers, there is not really a risk he will corner a child and do anything. It would only be in very specific circumstances that someone, who has presumably already served a sentence, would be banned from entering any public area with children present.