Child abuser jailed - Are there photos of my children?

[Homebird8]

A person we trusted to regularly babysit our DCs when they were small has been recently jailed for a long period of time for serious sexual abuse of a child. The perpetrator also had illegal images of children found on his computer.

We have talked with our now teenage DCs and they only have good memories of the person in question, thank heavens. Having said that the babysitting was at bedtime and although I think I got them ready for bed before I went out I can’t be sure I never left getting into pyjamas to be done later. Story time with this person was much looked forward to so they wouldn’t have been in bed already as they would have been with any other babysitter.

Is there any way of finding out whether any of the images found on the computer featured our DCs? If so, would there be any beneficial purpose to finding out and how would I go about this? I’m wondering whether there is any attempt by the police to trace potential victims from recovered photographs in a case like this.

It’s not a situation I ever expected to find myself in and I don’t know the processes or whether there is anything I could or should do.

I can understand you feeling uncomfortable and thinking what-if.

You have asked your dc, they have no memories of anything untoward so are not 'victims' (which is a great place for them to be), what do you hope to achieve by knowing?

We had a similar experience sadly although the perpetrator had much more direct access to the DC. The police kept us updated through the process however would never answer the question "are my children in any of the photos?". They said that they would only look into things like that where there is evidence of a child being directly harmed. So covert shots or shots of apparently innocent situations that do not indicate a child has actually been harmed would not lead to parents being informed.

I understand the thinking behind this I guess, I don't necessarily agree with it however this was quite some time ago and things may have changed. I would suggest contacting the police force who.dealt with the case in writing and explain the contact your DC had, when and your concerns. See what they come back with as a starting point.

I don’t think I can see a direct benefit to our little family of finding out, even if that were possible. I would only really be keen to know if it may reduce workload in tracing children at risk or in some way might add to the evidence available to take further legal action against the perpetrator to avoid the risk of other children ever being harmed. If this is not likely then I am more inclined to thank our personal lucky stars and move on. No child should have to go through what his known victim did and you can probably understand how I would like to avoid that if I can play a part.

@BrokenWing thanks for understanding my relief that my DCs were not victims.

@Bufferingkisses I’m so sorry that you have been in a similar situation. I’m glad though that the police do try to trace children where they have evidence of them being harmed. Even if the police had such images of my DCs they wouldn’t be likely to be able to tell us though because we no longer live anywhere near where we used to be. That’s what makes me wonder about getting in touch with them.

The advice to contact the police is good though and DH and I will talk through, given your other experience, whether this is something we feel we need to do.

I would advise caution here. I was abused as a teen and there are images of me circulating on the internet. I gave evidence against him and was told that there were images of me found on the computers of other members of the ring prosecuted at the same time. I would advise thinking carefully about whether it benefits or harms your children to know. If it turns out that there are images of them there is nothing that can be done to get them back if they have been shared. I have to live with the very uncomfortable knowledge that the images of me are out there and probably still being shared, it’s an awful feeling. At the moment your children aren’t victims and that is the best place for them to be psychologically in my opinion. If they get some memories or flashbacks in the future then that is a different situation. I know my experience colours my opinion but what I experienced was awful and the images actually make it all a million times worse.

Good luck with your decision, it's certainly not an easy one to make. Hope it all works out regardless of what you decide

I was told that they keep the images on file so that if another force find them on someone else's PC, they can let them know they've already been identified and it's already been dealt with as they do try to trace all children on these kinds of images.

With the internet, photos are never really gone, so I guess they need a database in order to help them direct their limited resources where they're needed more.

Thanks for your note of caution @Milbo. We haven’t mentioned the photos to our DCs and if we went further down that line I think we can still exercise our parental choice not to tell them.

@Baileys4two somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that too but cannot for the life of me remember where I heard it. Probably some kind of documentary. It’s the idea of them trying to trace my DCs when there is no need that makes me wonder whether to get in touch. Resources are so limited and there are some badly hurt children out there who really need to be found.

@Milbo please accept my heartfelt sadness that you were ever hurt in this way. I should never have happened and I hope you have found the help and support you deserve. 🌸

Thanks @Homebird8 I have had lots of support. It’s not easy to live with but I am relatively at peace with it now. If they were confirmed to be in the photos you probably wouldn’t have parental choice as they would likely be interviewed by the police. I don’t know for sure that would be the case but I would suspect so as I was identified by my school (from a photo of my face) as the police saw a uniform logo in one photo and I was then contacted by the police.

The police were thorough then @Milbo, and you were very courageous to give evidence against him. Although I have never met you I am in awe of your strength.

It would be harder for the police to interview our DCs as we now live in another country far away. I will bear in mind your experience though as DC1 has some mental health issues which would not be helped by such an experience and DC2 is remarkably robust which I’d hesitate to risk changing. For us it would probably be better not to know and that is the direction I’m leaning in.

In this case the perpetrator is already in prison so the need to add weight to a court case is lessened. The court considered him a long term risk and sentenced him to a long prison term. Given the opportunity for offending against our DC’s was more than 9 years ago they can perhaps make a decision for themselves should there be a chance of release on parole once they are adults.

I just need to know that my acting now won’t protect other children. The police need all the help they can get to find at risk children. Perhaps I can’t know. Perhaps I just have to do the right thing just for my DCs.