AIBU to feel betrayed after protecting my son’s secret for years?

[Lovinggran]

Hi everyone. I’ve just created this account because I am drowning in anger and carrying a secret that is starting to break me.

In December 2021, my son (who was 18 at the time, now 23) viewed and shared an indecent image of a minor. My husband and I knew absolutely nothing about it until the police turned up at our door at dawn with a search warrant. They knew exactly what they were looking for—they seemed keen to see Apple devices, which only my son had, and they ignored our Android devices. They took him into a room alone, and because he was an adult, they legally couldn't tell us what he said.

After they left, my son claimed it was "just an app," "just one picture," and that he "didn't know she was underage." The police ultimately took No Further Action (NFA). To protect him and keep the peace, we agreed to sweep it under the rug, pretend it never happened, and never speak of it again.

Fast forward to recently: my son and his partner had a baby. My husband and I stepped up as kinship carers and raised our grandson for his entire first year. Since then, the relationship has broken down, and they are now slowly and cruelly cutting us out of our grandson’s life.

The pain of being discarded after giving a year of our lives to that baby has made me incredibly angry. I started looking into how the police and search warrants actually work, and it seems it's unlikely it was "one-off accident" story he gave us was a lie to protect his own skin. The police apparently don't get warrants for single accidental click; they trace specific digital footprints and active sharing. The police knew it was his iPhone before they even knocked on our door.

I feel so betrayed. I compromised my own morals and peace of mind for five years to protect him based on a watered-down lie, and now he is weaponising our grandson against us.

I am just so full of rage. I don't want to carry his toxic secret anymore, but worry about the fallout it would cause.

He wasn’t accused of being a predator pedo

I haven't RTFT, only the OP's posts.
If your grandson's mum concealed her pregnancy from healthcare professionals they will have opened a safeguarding case against her and your son, part of which will have likely been a request for the police to share any notable information from their files. So your son's history will have almost certainly been known to the courts when they were making their decision about what happened to your grandson.
That said, the bar for paedophile men to be denied access to their children is shockingly high. In my work as a midwife I've encountered several women who are knowingly in relationships with men that have been arrested and/or jailed for possessing / sharing CSA images, and the men still either live with or have visitation rights to their children because they've jumped through the correct hoops and social services believe they have been "rehabilitated". As if that sort if proclivity ever goes away.

Edit: typo

I wonder why they concealed the pregnancy...perhaps due to ss involvement due to his past history?

Also wondering if you were considered a protective factor in the decision to return grandson to parents care...if so, its worrying that they are cutting you out.

This. 💯

you and your husband are complicit in covering up your sons nonce behaviour. Because it suited you.

that poor baby.

hed be better far far away from all of you - and I don’t say that easily. I cannot believe you covered that up.

Hell would fucking freeze over before I’d become a xx party yo covering up child abuse.

@Lovinggran

I stepped forward for the first 3 years of my grandsons life

I had never had children ( step mum) but I stepped up to the plate because the child needed stability etc

According to his mother, Im the worse who has ever lived

GS is going 20 now

He and his mother dont see eye to eye, I have to swallow a lot and put up with a lot

Now her husband is looking at me for help

I "could" talk out of school , but where will that all end?

Who do you want to tell? what outcome are you looking for?

How has she covered it up? What could she have done? The police didn’t take it further, there’s no evidence of child abuse. I really don’t think people realise how common it is for young girls to put pics online and men to share them either knowing or not knowing their age

They wanted to make an adoption plan and you intervened.

I’m adopted and thank heavens my grandma didn’t keep me. She deliberately didn’t because she knew if she kept me and my siblings, we’d never have a chance.

OP, I assume when you say you kept his secret, you mean from friends etc not from professionals involved? As if police were aware, ss would have been too?

Imagine defending a man ‘sharing’ photos of any woman- regardless of age.

she knew he was a wrongun. They wanted to keep it on the down low… shudders

Who is defending him? Who should she tell? I wouldn’t be sharing that if it was anyone in my family tbh

I’d be making sure my nonce of a son wasn’t left near teenagers for a fucking start. That would. I think, be a very hard thing for our relationship to come back from.

Eh? There was nothing to ‘cover up’. The son was arrested, not charged, he provided an explanation that would seem reasonable to someone given the police were no longer interested.

If you want to be angry, you should be angry at the police for deciding not to prosecute ‘child abuse’.

Irrelevant. She is asking for advice!

If he said re the pictures the police checked that he ‘didn’t know they were underage’ we are talking an 18yo with pictures of a /multiple teen girl/s. That is quite different from an adult man with pictures of prepubescent young children.

I don't understand this at all. You are upset that you sheltered your sons despicable behaviour but only because you are losing access to your grandchild? Otherwise, you would have no regrets? So, you're feeling vengeful and want to expose his behaviour all of these years later? To whom? To what end? The whole family seems dysfunctional!

Edited to add: or am I missing something???

This ☝️. I’d be worried for the child and seeking advice. Why is he isolating the child!

Does DGS have social services support given the relationship with the parents has been tenuous?
Can you accept you’re stirring up a hornets nest which will impact any future possible relationship with your son but I couldn’t stay quiet if I felt a baby might be at risk.

I would want professionals involved overseeing the child’s wellbeing.

Are the parents of the GS drug addicts? The reason I ask is didn't want the child then want the child.
Drug addicts can be very fickle and do things that suits there own ends.

Adivice that would differ significantly depending on the answer to those questions

You haven’t explained why or how he is ‘slowly and surely cutting you out of grandson’s life’ ?
Do you mean he and his partner have got their head around the fact they gave a baby and are now raising him themselves ? With help from the other GPs? Surely that’s positive ?
have they actually cut you out or are you just upset you’re no longer sole carers ?

U need to remind swd about ur sons peadophile tendencies. Seems they have forgotten. No one just manages to ‘find’ child abuse pictures online. It’s a deliberate search. And I doubt it’s just the one. This wee bit needs help. Fight more for him. Don’t give up.

Do not tell about the incident for which your son was not charged.

Allow your son and his partner to adopt out the child if it's what they thought best.
They know best about their parenting capacity.

Go to court to ask for visiting rights. As the child's carer for one year, it would be kind to the child.

OP, I fully understand your anger. But I beg of you, do not do ANYTHING while you feel so angry. Nothing good can come of acting in anger. You have to calm down before you do anything.

All you can do is try to repair your relationship.

If you let your son's secret out the bag, you'll never see him or your grandchild again. Also, you really don't know how bad it was. For your own peace of mind, I'd try to forget about that incident.

Give them some space, give yourself space to calm down, and then try to repair the relationship gradually.

Maybe you could foster? Or volunteer in a school helping kids with reading?

Did social services not tell you that, in most cases where there are kinship carers and the baby goes back to its parents, the relationship breaks down? It’s a reminder of what went wrong, and a bond that is difficult to “downgrade”. We were warned of this and it was printed throughout our documentation too.

There’s a chance it’ll change, but that might also depend on if anything else has prompted the relationship to break down.

Social Services will be aware of the charge. While it would be unusual for him to be questioned based on one image, it’s also unusual for it to be NFA’d. Regardless, it’s not something I could have supported, but you did, and any action around this now will look like revenge for cutting you out. I think you need to consider what you know, what you think, and what your motivations are. If you have genuine concerns about your grandchild, those should has been flagged before, but the next best time is now. There will have been chance to flag the relevant criminal proceedings during the court process, if you thought they somehow weren’t aware. If you chose to stay quiet then but mention it now, there will be valid questions about why you hid it then.

You could attempt to apply for contact but it may not be deemed in the best interests of the child, despite your previous care, if your relationship with his parents has collapsed. Kinship care is usually excluded from the contact required under the contact laws.

Yabu @Lovinggran because you are totally focused on yourself here. The issue with your son and the indecent images is mostly irrelevant. It's clear that the evidence is such that he is no danger to his baby and that's the only important thing from that. If there was any danger of that it would have been part of the court case that eventually gave the child back to his parents.

In neither of your two posts have you given a moment's thought to the baby's mother. Is she just irrelevant to you?

You did a good thing in stepping up to be kinship carers when these young people felt incapable of being parents. But young people grow up and learn from the consequences of their actions.

A very very long time ago I gave up a child for adoption at birth because I felt too young to be a mum. Both my and DPs parents offered to be kinship carers but I rejected that as I didn't feel able to deal with the child still being in my life as part of my extended family. I was immature and in denial and had no idea what I was doing to myself or the child. The human brain doesn't reach maturity until at least age 25 and I think it was even later for me. It wasn't until some years later that the enormity of what I had done really registered for me. I think if I had reached that realisation sooner, and if the child was still within my wider family rather than out of reach to me, I might have decided to try to rebuild what I broke.

Obviously we have no idea what's happening for this young woman and her baby as you are only posting from your own perspective and prioritising your own feelings. But what is important now is to prioritise the wellbeing of the mum and the child who are now re-establishing the bond that was unfortunately disrupted and which the mum is now trying to heal. There's no clear pathway for how to do this because it's too rare a situation for there to be established best practice. Appropriately supportive actions would include offering to pay for play therapy or whatever other kind of therapy or support will help, and asking the mum to just let you know what she needs and if the answer is "to be left alone" then you respect that. It's entirely possible that it's the right decision to limit contact with you while trying to create/establish a healthy maternal bond - I don't know I'm not an expert in this but if that's what the mum and baby need then yabvu to expect them to suppress that need for your own emotional benefit.

Absolutely the mum should be made aware of the issue with indecent images and supported to help decide if it's safe to have your son in her life and her baby's life. If there's any chance that your son is controlling her in an abusive way then absolutely she will need help to get disentangled from that but you probably aren't the best person to intervene in that and should limit yourself to giving information and support to whoever is best placed to give that help. Was she underage when she got pregnant? It might be that your son is not a safe person around young people. If that is the case then it's even less likely to be appropriate for you to have ongoing contact.

The6 parents didbt WANT to keep the child It's not as though it was taken from them