*Trigger warning about CSAM
Ok so here goes. This is a crazy and delicate situation. My friend -maybe more of an acquaintance- is an amazing woman who had a very difficult life. Her oldest son was sadly killed in combat some years ago. She confided in me that when her younger son was 18, he was in a depression following his brothers passing and he spent a lot of time isolated. He ended up venturing on some dark places on the internet for the thrill and curiosity of it. He ended up browsing through some illegal sites but she explains it that he wasn’t looking for that but he did click through them and read what the very sick people were writing. I am unsure if this was over the course of days or like weeks. But he did go on sites repeatedly. She said he saw very disturbing things. Anyway, he reported every site anonymously and stopped being reckless -to say the least- online. He saw how reckless it was and it was making him more depressed so he acted like it didn’t happen. About 2 years later, he broke down to his mom and said what he did. He showed his mom the receipts that he did in fact reported them at the time. She did a good job -I think- in how she handled it. She took away his electronics for a few months. Went through everything he had and consulted with a police friend (who is actually my uncle). He told her that the best course of action is to get him into therapy asap -make him donate to Uniceff- and the police are not even remotely interested in such a case as he was not actively possessing anything, it was some years ago, and he was just a kid being stupid and seemed to have overcome this on his own. She said he has a lot of self esteem issues from this now that he matured.
My question is, is it weird that he sort of gets to walk away from this? Isn’t this something that should not be recovered from? I am conflicted because he does a lot of charity work, is joining the army and he was going through the loss of his only brother. But this just doesn’t seem like something you can ever come back from. I have been avoiding having her over as a family for a while because of this. Should his life be over?