My BF has been in prison...

[Stubborn9ts]

(sorry if this is long)
My BF of 4 Months has recently told me that when he was a teenager he went to prison for several years for rape against a 19 year old! this happened whilst he was in the Army. He is now 30. He was given a life sentence not so much for the crime itself(even though very serious) but due to a inaccurate pre-sentence report by a psychiatrist, this has since been ruled inadmissible by the courts. He had a number of trials that were dismissed or stopped for various legal reasons.

He says he never did it and was pressured into pleading guilty by his legal team to avoid a life sentence, which he still got!!, He says he pleaded guilty out of fear as he was scared and wasn't able to get his solicitor to do his job so had to cut his losses and go in to damage limitation mode. He had to continue pretending to admit and show remorse for this throughout his prison sentence to get his release. It seems that his legal aid solicitor didn't do much work on the case or go through with the forensic testing he should have done. He has tried recently to get advice - unsuccessfully with a barrister to withdraw his guilty plea.
My BF has a DNA report that shows he is not the person responsible but due to the court of appeal rules this was deemed as available at the trial and can not now be used in appeals. His solicitor never told him about this report! He cannot afford any more legal challenges, financially or emotionally.

He is now on licence in the community and has to carry on as if he did it, as he fears that if he tells probation/police the truth and launches any sort of appeal they might recall him back to prison on a life sentence. His family and small circle of friends are all open and honest about this and very supportive of him. He has moved on and now runs his own successful metal business. It has taken its toll on him, he is cautious in trusting people now and it has left him slightly suspicious of people.

As a result he is automatically on Sex Offenders Register and he has to tell partners about his past, something to do with public protection it seems and something called MAPPA????
I have met his police liason officer who confirmed that i knew why he had been in prison, the police bloke tbh just asked if i knew and didnt go into much depth. Again they just accept he did it as he pleaded guilty without asking themselves if there is more to this or not. He sees probation once a month for all of ten minutes at most, they leave him alone as hes not considered a high risk.

The issue though is on the one hand this very intelligent, thoughtful, nice, quite guy has been to prison for a very serious crime, yet i actually really love him, Some of my friends think i am mad for staying with him. But at the same time he has never hurt me, treated me badly or done anything to cause me to worry. Long term i think we have a future.

What do others make of this? Has anybody else experience of a situation when they find out that a BF has a serious criminal record or been to prison for a sex offence?

Sex offenders can be very clever. When I worked on a sex offenders wing in a prison one thing stuck in my mind for months.

A husband has abused his partners children, she was told if she visited him in prison her kids would taken from her.

I saw her walk through the visits room to him, all smiles and she did this knowing she'd lose her kids.

She'd been brainwashed by him that he was 'innocent' and her kids were lying!

I still don't get it and you clearly don't want to listen.

It's too much. You need to get out now.

He's clearly lying. His story wouldn't even make a decent airport paperback.

Only those who pose a serious risk are managed through MAPPA (multi agency public protection).

If you have children with him in the future, you will have involvement with social care. They continue to monitor him for a reason.

Find out what the licence conditions are.

He has to tell you about his past, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. If he hadn't he might have been in breach.

I'm sorry you're going through this, it must be very difficult.

Did the solicitor who forgot to present the DNA evidence which showed his client wasn't guilty actually keep his/her job?

What was said about the DNA evidence in court? That the results had been lost? Have the test done again, then!

It doesn't make any sense, OP, but I doubt you'll listen to any of us.

Let's imagine for a moment he didn't do it

What would life be like with someone who had the conviction against him and was never going to clear his name?

That said, I think you are being lied to. Why take the chance? Walk away now. Or offer to help him get this overturned.....

Does anyone remember a few years ago there was a thread on Netmums linked to on here? A woman started a thread saying she was seeing a man convicted of rape and he was trying to establish contact with his child. Loads of rape apologists on the thread victim blaming because the victim was apparently drunk. Netmums took ages to take the thread down, too, even though it was basically just people advising on how a convicted rapist could gain access to a child. Some mumsnetters thought the thread was written by a man, and an attempt to provoke a reaction in rape victims. I wonder if anybody remembers that thread.

ludovica makes a very good point. Probably best to treat all triggering threads like this with extreme caution.

I've had two cases where a sex offender was given a life sentence. One was the Dad in a family where the rape and abuse of the 6 and 4 year old sons and 18 month old daughter was a daily occurrence. The other was an uncle who abused all his female family members, including living with his 14 year old niece and impregnating her.

Your boyfriend's story does not add up. Run for the hills

And the only one of my case where a rapist pleaded guilty was because there was overwhelming photographic evidence of his disgusting abuse of his daughter.

No innocent man pleads guilty to rape. Quite frankly no innocent person pleads guilty to anything ime

Innocent people do confess to crimes they didn't commit, but they are usually very vulnerable people and it doesn't usually get as far as a conviction. I don't think it sounds like that's the case here however. In fact I'm not sure what this is all about. Someone is lying that's for sure.

The victim of this awful crime would want the right man to be in prison. She would not be staying quiet if she felt the man who came and helped her was jailed.

My very middle class and privileged friend married a man who had been in jail - she loved him and it would be all be different. They had a child and soon divorced as he was not able to keep up the front. She spent years keeping him away from their child to keep her safe as he didn't have the same values as 'normal' society.

This isn't a love story with a happy ending. The best case scenario is that your life will be more difficult - the worst is that you will not be safe.

He is, of course, treating you well at this stage, 2 years down the line it will be very different.

OP I really feel for you here. What a difficult situation to be in. I can see that you love this man but for me the red flag, above and beyond his shady explanation of the legal proceedings, is the fact that a psychiatrist identified him as a psychopath. Is that right? It was a bit hard to tell from what you wrote.

What have your family and friends' first impressions of him been?

It is not a difficult situation to be in though is it Apples?

He is a rapist, and the story doesn't add up.

Who would want to be with someone with this much baggage? Lets say he is innocent, why would anyone want to get involved in this? OP, you haven't been with him long so no, your love for him is not that deep and you either have serious self esteem issues or... well, I can't think of another reason why anyone would want to involve themselves in this.

I fell fast for my dh. I would have left him should he have told me he was a convicted rapist, I wouldn't have even given him the time to try to give me a crap story.

I think you are a fool and I actually hope this is some kind of troll thread, because the thought that there are people out there willing to date convicted rapists and believe their stories of innocence scares the fuck out of me.

Why are you posting here OP? Do you want validation? You know you won't get that here so maybe deep down you know he is lying to you and this is a very dangerous man.

I don't know as to the veracity of the original post or the poster. I do know strange things happen such as this. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3127667/Killer-Sally-Anne-Bowman-admits-rape-Spain-led-innocent-man-spend-11-years-prison.html

What I would say OP is that you are an articulate young woman judging from your posts, and hardly need to subject yourself or your children to a man with many problems such as this one.

Your children will one day look back on how you protected them. Don't let them down.

MAPPA think baby P

If you are convicted of rape, you did it

paxcetum Miscarriages of justice certainly occur, but Stefan Kiszko didn't plead guilty.

I can't imagine being in a situation of being wrongly accused of a crime so terrible - and it must have been fucking horrific to attract a life sentence - and saying "Yeah okay I'll plead guilty, after all we've got no evidence to exonerate me apart from the DNA test, fingerprint evidence, and the victim's own statement that I didn't do it. Wow, they've got me bang to rights!"

The facts of this case as related by the OP simply don't make sense, in either an emotional or a logistical sense.

"If you are convicted of rape, you did it"

Yes dear.

If you look at his whole story saying he plead guilty even though he was innocent saying that the DNA showed he didn't do it saying it was inadmissible in the appeal blah blah it doesn't seem plausible. You could probably find out about the case yourself. If he was given a life sentence there must have been aggravating factors such as violence, age of victim etc. Also you could probably try and find out if he has other convictions he may have not told you. You are kind of only believing what you want to believe in my view.

A few years ago I was seeing a guy for a few months and he treated me perfectly, was a gentleman and never showed any sign of violence towards me, was attentive and very loving.
A few red flags popped up and I finished with him, a couple of months down the line he violently beat his new girlfriend and is now serving time in prison.
You just can't know someone after a few months.

best of luck whatever you decide to do

It doesn't matter what the friends/family/community say. They weren't at the rape scene so can't confirm what did/did't happen. Yes they can act as character witnesses to you but do bear in mind he may have manipulated them

Also it's incredibly hard to get any conviction for rape! It really is. Only a tiny percent are ever convicted and so they must have had some solid evidence

This would be an instant dealbreaker for me. Not just because of the crime itself (of course he was innocent. They always are!) but because of the future ramifications.

If you would like to have children in the future, or you have children now, you need to end it. Firstly for their safety, and secondly because you could have heavy SS involvement in your lives.

I know a sex offender because he married an acquaintance of mine. All of his children are in care, because the mothers chose him over their babies, and when locals find out his history they get harassed and have to move.

Anyway you look at it, for a brand new relationship it's really not worth the grief!

Run for the hills.

For all the reasons above, your new boyfriend is lying.

Too many things just don't add up. He is a violent rapist and you would be so much better off out of his sordid little life.