Should I let my children see my paedophile FIL?

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I hope you can help me with this awful situation. Over 3 years ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, my husband and I discovered that my FIL had been arrested for downloading thousands of the most serious levels of child pornography, systematically for over a year. He plead guilty and was convicted. My DH was shocked and devastated as you can imagine, and I didn't ever want to see him again, and certainly not let our children (we have now had 2 kids) ever have any contact. At the time my husband said that our children would never have to have any contact with him.

Our children have never met my FIL, and my husband has limited contact with his family. 3 years on and my husband now wants our children to attend gatherings of his extended family where his father will be present. He no longer wants his father airbrushed out of our lives.

I am freaking out. I don't see what good it will do to introduce our children this man. It goes against every single one of my instincts to protect them - physically and emotionally. As they get older (they are 3 and 2) they will start to ask more and more questions. I don't know how I will be able to answer why they don't see their grandfather often, why he doesn't touch them (over my dead body) when they see him. What if they go to embrace him? etc etc... It's just going to get more and more complicated and horrible.

A paedophile is someone with a sexual interest in children, not just someone who assaults children. He has demonstrated a seriously dishonest nature (he managed to keep his obsession a secret, even from his wife, for over a year). I do not want our children to have contact with someone like this. It will just get more and more emotionally complicated for everyone.

Me and my husband have been at loggerheads over this for some time. I have finally agreed that we'll attend a family gathering next week and the kids will be introduced to the FIL, but with strict ground rules. Just an introduction: "this is Daddy's daddy", no physical contact, and that this is not the start of some sort of reconcillation. I feel sick about it, and am very worried I am doing the wrong thing in an attempt to make my husband happy (he has acknowledged he is only doing this for himself, not for the kids).

What would you do? Could you imagine yourself ever agreeing to this?

I won't be able to check this forum until tomorrow night, but hope I can get some sense from other people (due to the shameful nature of this I have been unable to talk to friends about it) and will be able to reply then. Thanks in advance

This is very harsh on OP's DH.

I expected a little more balance to this question actually, and am surprised by the resounding no/troll allegations etc. I am saying this as the DD of a convicted sex offender (who really did touch children) - and I have a DD of my own, who has been in the same room as him at family gatherings on occasion - not desirable as situations go, but unavoidable on my part a lot of the time.

If the family have accepted your FIL as part of the family regardless then unfortunately for your DH you either need to cut off the whole family or accept that people will talk to your children abour FIL, talk to FIL about your children, display pictures of your children in their homes that FIL will visit, allow your FIL to know which school they attend and your routines and personal details and so on.

Of course the alternative is for you and DH to cut off all contact and deprive the children and family of one another - however many aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and so on that requires you to cut out of their lives. And cut them out of yours too - it is not easy to give up your whole family for the actions of one, and of course you should not have to, but if all the worries on this thread stand up, then if the family accepts the perpetrator back into the fold however tenuously then the only way to avoid them.

In my situation I cannot cut off the entire family for many reasons, so I must accept, be aware and avoid as much as possible.

What a horrible position to be in. It must be very lonely and difficult when the wider family ignore FIL's responsible for the situation.

I would be supportive of your dh having a relationship with his father but not your children. There is no benefit to them in having a relationship with their convicted paedophile grandfather and that is the only consideration I would have; what's best for the children.

Introducing him as "daddy's daddy" is a terrible idea because it makes a direct association with their father with whom they have a loving relationship and a man with whom there is no chance of such a relationship being able to develop. If you do decide to allow supervised contact (and I would not tbh) then I would introduce him as his first name only.

These are the rules I would have:

? No contact between FIL and dc. At all. If, when they are teenagers and old enough to understand and want a relationship with FIL then that is their choice and I would support their choice.

? If the wider family wish to see the children then your FIL must not be in attendance too. If he does make an appearance I would leave immediately.

? If FIL or the wider family refuse to exclude him from family events dh is welcome to go on his own.

? No referring to him as grandad to the children ever. He has forfeited that right.

If anyone protests, including dh, I would just very calmly repeat "Our/My children will not be having any contact with a convicted paedophile." Possibly adding for the hard of thinking "If you cannot see why that is inappropriate I am sorry for you but as the children's mother my job is to protect them from harm and that comes above your feelings every time". And repeat ad infinitum.

Excellent post by Pagwatch. Please do try to understand your DH's confusion (as he must accept and understand your position).

My Uncle has been convicted of certain child sex offences with youngish girls. I am in the fortunate position of never having to see him again in my life and am thankful for that. My cousin, his daughter, however is similarly confused as your DH, perhaps more so indeed very disbelieving of what her father has been convicted of and certainly of the view that he is no risk to immediate family (certainly as a child/youngster with frequest contact I have no recollections of any inappropriateness either). She is also in the position of having no other immediate family so her relationship with her father is very important to her.

She has been visited by social services and required to sign a contract stating that her children will never be left unsupervised with her father. He husband is clearly less biased and has taken steps to find out as much as he can about the offences (my cousin by contrast has had something of a fingers-in-ears approach) but is in my view being amazingly strong and supportive of her in her current inability to accept the position whilst also doing his best to protect his children. I am not sure if his/her/their attitude will change as their children, especially their DD, get older or if my cousin argues for relaxing the "supervised contact only" position after a year or two but at the moment, with resrvations and lots of watchfulness on the part of her husband in particular, they do still have supervised contact with my uncle.

I think you are right OP to deny contact but am just saying that I have sympathy for the shock and disbelief that your DH is feeling and the probably desire to see his father and see if he has "changed" from what he remembers.

The OP's children are babies. They only have her to look out for them, they cannot fight for themselves yet. If keeping them safe means cutting out the family then that's the family's choice, not hers.

If my family gave me an all or nothing choice between putting my children in the path of a convicted paedophile, and one that could easily become a 'trusted' family member in the children's eyes and cutting them off then the answer is simple. Not easy, of course, but simple. The OP has a duty to her children, no one else.

Sarah (etc) he was convicted 3 years ago. That's a lot of time for her H to have come to terms with it.

How can any man willingly stand his 2 & 3 year old children in front of a known paedophile? Just how? 'This is Daddy's Daddy'... it just makes my skin crawl thinking about what could be going through his mind.

Just no.

I agree with sgb but also with soupDragon.

It's awfully easy to sit in a what-if senario and say that "if it were me I'd have nothing to do with him." But imagine growing up in a normal family relationship. Imagine having a loving father who you looked up to, a hero perhaps. Imagine growing up through the years wit your father as your role model. Imagine there being no inclination that anything was ever wrong, nothing. Imagine growing up like that for 20, 30, 35 years (we don't know how old the dh is here). Then imagine finding out that that loving father wasn't what you thought. More to the point, imagine finding out that all this only happened over the space of a year (op stated that the images were downloaded over the space of a year), but having no idea whether or not anything went before that, but knowing that you personally weren't abused and that everything you know about this man goes against what you have been told about him. And he assures you that he has changed - that rehabilitation has helped - and because of everything you know about him from the past, you can't see why you shouldn't believe that he has changed... It's really not as simple as find out parent is evil paedophile bastard, cut him out of life, not when you're that close to the situation.

I also agree with soupDragon in terms of that just because this man has a sexual attraction towards children, doesn't necessarily mean that he is going to be sexually attracted towards the op's children. And the analagy is spot on - just because you're sexually attracted to men, for instance, doesn't mean you're sexually attracted to all men does it? This is essentially no different, except that attraction is far more abhorrent.

Personally I wouldn't want any contact with this man purely on the basis of what he has done.

But I can actually see why A your dh feels he still wants a relationship with his father, and B, even why he feels he wants his children to have a relationship with him. Excluding his children from his father's life still goes some way to re-writing his own childhood experiences, and he is clearly struggling with that, hence wanting the children to be a part of his family too iyswim.

I think your dh could possibly benefit from some counselling to help him come to terms with what has happened and to reconcile it all in his own head before being able to move on with this.

In the meantime I would perhaps find a reason to not go to the family gathering, but not make it about your fil at this point, because your dh is clearly struggling with that. So get your dh some counselling and then work from there.

chipping but who are we to put a timeframe on coming to terms with anything?

This man's whole identity has been rocked by the fact he has found out his loving, committed father is guilty of the most horrendous crime imagineable. How exactly do you come to terms with that? especially if you had no inclination that there was ever anything amiss before?

I don't think it's for anyone to say that "well he's had three years he should be over it by now," would you say that about a bereavement for instance? because this is not dissimilar - this man is grieving the loss of the man he thought was his father, and with that the loss of all his childhood memories, all the positive things he had in his life. Perhaps he is even wondering whether his father thought about him in that way, but he'll never know... no - I don't think it's for anyone to put a timeframe on that, and tbh I imagine that coming to terms with that might even take years of therapy.

MsScarlett, if cutting out the FIL means also avoiding the wider family/aunts/cousins etc, that's no bad thing. Op has already said the family are very dysfunctional. The children stand a better chance of being less confused with no contact atall.

The others who really hold the children dear can still come to visit the op/dh/dc in their own territory.

What's depressing is the tendancy to normalise this because that's what the wider family are doing. I do feel for the dh, but he has to get help to deal with it, not drag his wife and dc in to this mire with him.

It is because we see pedophiles as 'other'.
Having a pedophile in your family is something that happens to other people, we would know, we would just cast them aside.

But how many on here would be over it if after three years if they found out that their loving, adored, attentive father was a pedophile.
Think about your own father. Think about everything you know of him. All those hugs, birthdays, Christmases etc etc.
Now be over it in a few years.

(I should stress again as I do from time to time on here, my dad was nit my abuser. My dad was a wonderful, loving brilliant dad. It was a close family connection. But not my much missed dad)

Children usually implicitly trust adults their parents bring them into contact with. They will naturally trust your husbands dad, and look upon him as their grandfather, as soon as they are told, and they will trust him to act in their best interest, just like their mum and dad.

Which is why you cannot let them meet him and be introduced. Conditioning your children to have a relationship with a paedophile, is actually co-grooming, in my view.

There is NO way you can manage to let your children be part of the entire family, grandad included, and at the same time keep them away from him. Your children will be put infront of him, to prove he is ok really. Social experiment.

You might as well put a bowl of cream in front of a cat, and will the cat not to lap it up.

Poor op.
Absoloutely cannot let your dc near this man but you will have to navigate your dhs grief and shock.

who fucking cares if the FiL doesnt fancy the OPs kids? If they are not his type?

The man likes looking at pictures of children being raped

I really don't see how you can compromise OP. You either stand in the room with your children and a peodophile or you don't. There's no middle cround.

I would insist that whilst I understood how your DH felt there would be no contact.

ground

I think the question is not so much about the children but about you.

The children will be ok they are really young, they could meet him once or twice with loads of people there, and so long as you don't talk about him at home and reinforce some sort of bond, they basically won't remember him for long. He won't have any resonance for them.

You, on the other hand, have to be in a room with a man you know has done something totally repellent, beyond contempt, etc. And with your children there. I don't think I could do that, personally.

No sweetie don't do it. You know it is not the right thing to do. You wouldn't let any other person like this near them, no exceptions. And I'm sorry but what the hell is your husband thinking??

There is nothing bizarre about the analogy at all, Makescakeswhenstressed. Do you think of every male family member you meet in a sexual way? Why assume that the FIL would do the same kind of thing towards a family member.

As I said, if there had been any hint of physical abuse no way would my children be going there and, as it stands, no way would they be left alone in his company. He is a know quantity and thus any danger is limited.

I am not being blasé about the risk but neither am I being hysterical.

No Soup's attraction is not spot on, the attracton for poedophiles is control and not normal chemical attraction. Some peodophiles may only like boys or girls, but their abuse is not normal rules of attraction. If the father was downloading images of children being raped then it's highly likely it would lead to actually wanting to do it.

Worra - I didn't say he should be over it, what I was refering to was that that some people were saying that the H was dealing with the 'shock & disbelief' - I think after 3 years you should have worked through that stage - not that he should be 'over' the whole thing. I feel he should be over the stage of the 'shock & disbelief' stage that might would allow you to think 'he coudn't possibly hurt my children - he's not like that really'.

I also think the analogy of paedophiles not being sexually attracted to all children, being the same as hetrosexual women not being attracted to all men is a bit of a red herring too. OK, they might not be sexually attracted to all children, but given that they generally have 1000's of photos they aren't too discerning.

analogy.

I think what bejeezus said is really the crux of it.

Paedophile. spelling is great today.

You've only worked thought that stage if you have worked through it thourh Chipping. If what you have done is swept it under the carpet and ignored it and not seen anything of the person then I think you could well still be at shock and disbelief stage. And in terms of my post it was not about thinking " he could not hurt my children" just about needing to reconcile your own relationship/understanding of your parent with what you now know about him.

Dear OP, I could not read this post and not reply.

I am so very sorry that you are finding yourself in this situation. I have been eactly where you are except in 'my' situation the person who has commited the crimes was not even punished and the victim did not feel able to press charges.

I became aware of the situation whilst pregnant with my Older DC, and whilst i was absoluetly sure 100% that our child would never be allowed unsupervised access to the foul man it actually did take about six months more before DP and I came to the conclusion that we would have no further contact with him.

The reason it took this long waas simply because in cutteing off contact with HIM we knew we would not get to see DP's Mum or his siblings who are in complete denial about the whole thing. So Our DC now have no contact with that whole side of the family which is very very sad for them but mostly DP.

I think the people who find it hard to understand why the OP is 'asking the question' they should try to put them selves in those shoes. Although yes the children must be protected at all costs it is a matter of working out the least destructive way of going about this.....it is not so black and white....

As far as your DH OP I think this is an isue which he will just have to conceded to you I am afraid. Put it to him that you will not takw the risk of your children being viewed as sexual objects and ask him if he is really truly comfortable to take that chance.

For myself and DP we simply felt that to allow supervised access was just unworkable as I would not be able (or willing obviously!!!) for them to have a 'normal' Gp/ GC relatioship, ie playing, sitting on knee, picking up etc and children are so very quick at picking up when things don't feel 'normal'.

I didnt want my DC picking up that vibe and then maybe also when older they would have to be told wouldn't they, how awful for them to find out. Now that person doesn't exist for them (they are thankfully very happy well adjusted childeren despite the no contact with DP family!) and they don't have to 'deal with it.

All the best