Boyfriends Father is a Sex Offender.

[graceelli]

Looking for advice on boyfriend’s convicted father.

My bf and I are still quite young (21) and probably won’t be getting married for another several years. After a recent discussion on how the wedding will go and who will come, I realized that it could be a deal breaker.

My boyfriend’s dad is a registered sex offender. The discussion involved whether he could attend the wedding or not. My boyfriend’s dad served 7 years in jail, with at least 8 counts of exploitation of a minor. This happened a decade ago and he hasn’t reoffended but he is fundamentally off as a person. I don’t think he would reoffend at the wedding but I do feel obligated to inform any guests attending the wedding that will bring kids.

Additionally, my parents have no and will not have a relationship with my boyfriends parents. When my boyfriend and I first starting dating in highschool (I was 16 at the time) not any of his family members ever informed me or my parents of my boyfriend’s dad’s convictions which for obvious reasons left my parents pretty weirded out to find out they had been unknowingly allowing their 16 year old daughter to go off with a sex offender. Once I was told the “truth” on why boyfriend’s dad is a sex offender, it was just a fabricated story to make him not look as bad. Like it was some sort of mistake. I knew I was being lied to and my boyfriend himself didn’t even know the whole truth. I did some detective work of my own and uncovered that he had a minimum of at least 8 counts.

I told my boyfriend that I couldn’t morally have kids at my wedding without telling their parents about my boyfriends dads conviction and that the information could keep certain guests from attending our wedding. There’s also the fact that my parents despise the type of people my boyfriend’s parents are and I know my side of the family would be paying for most if not all of the wedding so I could see this also being an issue as well. My boyfriend basically said that he couldn’t see why his dad wouldn’t be invited to the wedding and that he wants his dad there.

I told my boyfriend that we may just be incompatible

He really made it seem like I was way off for even suggesting that his dad shouldn’t come to the wedding.

yes, this may be surprising to you but i understand how my childhood abuse could affect me in my adult years. i’m in therapy for it. i speak to a professional. i dated my last boyfriend because he had none of the things my first boyfriend had that caused so many issues (rightfully so) and ended up worse off in that relationship when i thought they were normal. and by normal i mean: good jobs, family still together, everyone healthy, etc etc. but as i got to know them they revealed their true selves and they turned out to be creeps too. i just don’t trust anybody and my current boyfriend is the only man that i can genuinely trust because he has proved it time and time again. is that a result of my childhood abuse? i don’t know

OP I’m not trying to pile on but honestly - you say you suffered abuse from your own parents yet in one of your last posts you said your dad was one of the few men you would trust with your child.

Please, please ditch the boyfriend, don’t date for a while and sort your own self out with a lot of therapy, before thoughts of marriage and kids even cross your mind. Your young, have clearly been through a lot, but you have a future ahead of you and it doesn’t have to be a choice between which abusive man you eventually decide is not as bad as the others 🙁

You can also try not having a boyfriend for a while, until you are further along in your therapy and able to identify red flags from the outside. Your current boyfriend's family is huge one that you don't even need to be in a relationship to see. Once you're in a relationship things become harder to see and harder to get away from.

OP, you’ve had a hard time on this thread, but that’s partly because you’re responses are quite naive and when you’ve added some context it does come across like you’re making excuses and trying to make the narrative fit the (your) situation.

You’re very young, but you’ve had a lot of life/family experience of abuse and no doubt due to therapy and self-care this has given you somewhat of a head start in understanding what abuse is. However, what you lack is the longevity of life experience that helps to see how likely doomed your current relationship is.

Secondly, approaching all relationships as potential ‘marriage material’ at 21 doesn’t sound healthy at all - especially for someone with a very clear history of familial and relationship abuse. Your brain isn’t even fully grown yet - you aren’t yet the person you will become and frankly it shouldn’t be this hard, already. If you want a healthy mind and future, you need to learn to be happy alone, to be your own fixer, be your own knight in shining armour and most importantly, know when to walk away from decisions that could very well hugely negatively impact your future.

If you stay with this man, the only morally acceptable and safe decision is to never have children with him as you cannot control the future and why would you knowingly put your children at risk?

It doesn’t matter how many excuses you can come up with to be honest and that is where your naivety and past abuse is clouding your judgement here.

I was that child.
I would find it incredibly triggering to find out I attended an event and that there had been a paedophile there with the full knowledge of the hosts, even if I attended without my child.

The reason is that for many of us who were abused, there was further trauma caused by the very people who should have protected us, when they minimised the abuse, when they hushed it up.

I'm 47 and my mother has actually forgotten that I was sexually abused. That's how much she's minimised it. Do you have any idea how much that hurts, even now? She talks about my abuser from time to time, totally forgetting. Her only saving grace, the only reason I even talk to her still is that she acted to remove the man immediately the moment I disclosed by demanding he move away. She got that bit right at least but the rest, she and dad fucked up and caused more damage to me and our relationship is tenuous at best. I can never get away from the fact that my mother and father sent me in to this man's home on errands and if they had not done that, he never would have had the oppertunity to do what he did.

Kids are pretty trusting. And even when you teach them to be more wary, that doesn't apply with a situation like this because it's 'grandad' and he's going to be there at every family occasion there is. And because they are far too young to spot the signs - they often don't have the vocabulary to explain what happened to them, adult have to do it for them. You can't teach a kid that Granddad, a trusted family member that's a frequent visitor in their safe space is also some sort of unspecified danger. How do they police 'tickles'? Or understand that Grandad accidentally coming in when they are on the loo is something to report to you?
Just as an exercise, have a think about how you could explain to a three year old that? How can you teach a toddler to spot and avoid predatory behaviour when her parents aren't even capable of doing it?

If it did happen to your child, and they grew up to realise that you knew, your husband knew and still left you as prey to this man, you should be prepared for them blaming you both just as much as the abuser for what tore their life apart.

It's not even the wedding. There is no way that you can keep 100% supervision. What if you get rushed to hospital with appendicitis, or have a long labour or bed rest on your second /subsequent child? Do you plan on having a job, ever? That 40 hours, plus commute time is all the time you cannot supervise. Even if you did stay together, if you are not 100% in agreement that he's a danger that should be nowhere near you, your family or your kids then there is no way that you can say that you can keep a child safe. I'm hypervigilant due to my own experience and I can't even claim that.

OP this is a good discussion to have with your therapist. This thread has started to turn very nasty towards you and that’s not helpful or necessary. Don’t feel you have to reply to pps when they are attacking you or your bf. When someone starts to tell you any decent person would vomit upon sight of a paedophile and refuse to be in a room with anyone who has ever been in a room with a paedophile then rational thought has left the building. Seriously, we’re probably all been in a room with a paedophile, most often unknowingly. Unfortunately child sex offences are depressingly common. 6.7 million adults in France reported being sexually abused by a family member in a recent survey, (that’s about 1 out of every 10 adults in France). Imagining all the perpetrators being permanently ostracized from society (or lynched or stoned to death) might make us feel better but it’s just never going to happen. I’m not trying to minimize these crimes in any way, and do remember that the offender in your situation will have been given a particularly lengthy sentence for a reason, but it’s very hard to have a reasonable conversation about this stuff on a place like mumsnet.

Your therapist should be a better source of information about things like what social services would expect you and your bf to do in terms of safeguarding a potential child (they really wouldn’t consider removing your child unless they knew you were leaving them unsupervised with the child sex offender grandfather). A therapist can help you sift through your feelings for your bf as well as the massive issue that is how you and any future children of yours and any children in the wider family management interactions or expectations of interaction with your bf’s father. You may well decide that this relationship is not worth the pain of ongoing negotiations with you bf about how to deal with the situation. I also think that contacting the police/corrections department in charge of your monitoring your bf’s father is a good idea too.

There's a trend here OP.

Please, please, stop dating. Stop.

I'm sorry, but she's right.

thank you so much for your response. i appreciate that you can see it somewhat from my perspective. my last relationship taught me that you never know who is really a pedo. some just haven’t been caught. you never really know anybody so the best thing to do is to just keep a close eye on people and your children. i will bring it up with my therapist, because he is the professional here, not all these comments being made on my post. thank you for your advice

thank you for your insanely unhelpful response.

i always think about marriage when dating someone. if i don’t think marriage is achievable, why stay in the relationship

This is actually quite alarming to me. You're 21 years old, it really isn't normal to think about marriage when dating someone.
Why stay in a relationship otherwise? For fun, to experience life? Most people don't stay with their high school boyfriends and it's completely normal to date without looking for a future husband. And honestly sounds like what you should be doing. Or at least stop dating for a while full stop.

There are absolutely men out there who are not weird, or creeps or have families with baggage. And the fact that the only 2 relationships you've had are with these men/boys should ring alarm bells.

But she is. Her response was well written and well thought out, and reflects most of the thoughts on this thread.

The fact you've been in therapy, on medication etc doesn't change the fact your FIL is a paedo and you are enabling abuse and need to get out of this relationship (the fact your previous relationship was similar tells me a lot). No one is picking on you OP, but you cannot just ignore what you don't like. WHy ask for help in the first place when you claearly just want people to tell you you're right?

he is NOT my FIL. we are not even married. if we were to even get married it would be years down the line. i have no association with this man.

i have always thought this way. i’d rather be single.

This is actually quite alarming to me. You're 21 years old, it really isn't normal to think about marriage when dating someone.

Totally disagree with this. Most people do want to get married and have kids. What's the benefit in getting into relationships with people if there's no future in them? Sure if you want to just date around and have fun with no commitment, that's fine too. But it's not abnormal or alarming to want to settle down young. A lot of people do it and it's fine. Historically speaking, it's much more weird to put off marriage and kids til you're in your thirties and then realise all the good men are already taken and your fertility's about to drop off a cliff.

Honestly, I've really tried with you, I really have. I've tried to ask you questions I've tried to advise you. I've shared with you my own experiences as have countless other posters.

You've gone from your OP to "no association with this man' because the responses didn't suit you.

You won't need advice on having this man in your family's life, around your children, at your wedding, near your friends children (thats not to mention the fact social services will be all over you because of your clear lack of judgement) and thef act your boyfriend may well be an abuser if not abused.

In other words, you won't need to further waste all of our time, will you? Or to furhter hurt and trigger the many people on this thread who have tried with you in good faith despite their own experiences.

This is absolutely the case.

I cant believe how the OP is being attacked here, she is not a monster, hasnt abused anyone and made it clear what her position is regarding safeguarding her own future children and others, she set that out in her OP and yet she is being spoken about and to abominably, almost as if people are transferring their own experiences of their attackers onto her.

Have you read the full thread?

How on earth can she be safeguarding when she is back to once again claiming she is in no way related to this man and appears to have zero understanding of the ramifications?

Your whole OP was predicated on 'The Wedding', that now, apparently, if it were to happen, is years away.

But you were asking advice on how to manage this man at this supposed wedding.

But now the answers have been that you don't 'manage' him, you either don't have him there, or ideally, you don't marry his son, for numerous well thought through and explained reasons you're backtracking. Because you don't like the answers and we don't know all the background

Well, no, we only know what you've told us. And from that you really REALLY should walk away. Work on yourself with the help of your therapist and come back to relationships in a few years.

Get friends, get a job you enjoy. Or travel. Do something. But don't marry this boyfriend

Bingo.

This post is very strange to me. Honestly what do you think these people are going to say to the OP?

I brought my children to visit psychologist services associated with social services where I live after the extensive abuse in my family finally came out and my extended family completely broke down. My brother is a paedophile and raped my sister into adulthood and sexually abused me. My parents have some very weird ideas about what he has done. The psychologist assured me that if I was still allowing my parents (who have never offended but are completely and utterly in denial about my brother and his behaviour and have come out with some seriously deluded shit along the way to explain what was done to their daughters) access to my children they would be taking a very dim view of it and would be referring us on to safeguarding. So yes safeguarding does extend beyond perpetrators onto people who enable abusers. Pretending the OP isn’t opening her life up to a complete and utter nightmare in the future is not doing her any favours.

People have written paragraphs and paragraphs. SHe's had more support and advice on a controversial issue than I've seen for a long time on MN. And she's thrown it back in their faces.

You're being ridiculous. Maybe you need to step away from the thread. All you're doing now is haranguing and bullying a young woman.

But in this case, you do know who the paedophile is. Your boyfriend's father.

And you know that, whatever else happens, the family members including your boyfriend are going to make excuses and pretend that this isn't a case of not just leaving the henhouse door open, it's inviting the fox into the nesting boxes for dinner.

They've been groomed to facilitate his access to children and so have you - your boundaries have been blurred since you were a 16 year old child yourself, thanks to them; it's probably why you then found yourself dating one and now think 'the best' is to keep a close eye, rather than 'keep the hell away and make sure that known abuser of children doesn't get a nice thrill from seeing (if not taking a quick opportunity to touch or photograph) other people's children in the context of a celebration.

Which part of that is not true?

Read the thread and read my input and then say that again with a straight face.