Please help - just found out FIL is a paedophile

[anon4]

I am in a desperate situation. Have just found that FIL is a convicted paedophile and I am 5 months pregnant. The whole of DH's family is deeply dysfunctional. I am already (within days of this shock) being put under outrageous pressure from DH's entire extended family to forgive and help FIL's attempts at rehabilitation. However my absolute gut instinct is to have absolutely nothing further to do with them and not to let our future daughter anywhere near them. I couldn't forgive myself if anything would happen, and I put mis-placed 'family loyalty' above the safety of our daughter. My protective maternal instincts are in overdrive. DH is split, and wants to see if we can work on compromises such as allowing them to see her with us present. I cannot even stomach that, and don't want her to be near these people. We are both in deep distress. I don't know what to do: follow my instincts but will bust up my DH's family, or bow to pressure to allow them some sort of access to our daughter?

Am also interested in 1 in 4 figure. Is that true, did someone say yet?

Mamazon hinted at a much lower figure, round about 0.3% or so?

Sorry if stats totally off, did very, very, very rough calculating on mamazons post!

By MAMAZON on Sun 10-Feb-08 22:00:57
there are no figures hunker. sadly it is estimated only 30% of abuse is ever reported.

i think the figuers back when i was working in thsi area were something along the lines of 20 thousand reports a year.

so if you add the remaining 70% to that......

slur what number of under 16's are you using?

some supposed research on figures, though the author does say that even studies he ahs read have varied, it does indicate a very high number of people abused.

km my mother didn't tell us about rape or sexual abuce either. she never told us that we weren't allowed to be alone with men, but situations arose when we could have been and she put a stop to it. simple things like not being allowed piano lessons at school because it was a male teacher, going to my grandparents farm and not being allowed to go on a tractor ride with my uncle, asking if I could walk to the shops with my grandfather and being told no. All things that seemed unfair as a small child but as we grew up it became apparent that "no" seemed only to be used when it was in relation to men.

We too knew about inappropriate things, and to tell our mother if anything ever happened and that she would be there to look out for us.

But because we were never allowed to form one on one relationships with men as children, we all struggled with this as we grew up. And unfortunately we didn't have a father as he left when I was a baby, I learned later than the marriage broke down when my mum found it hard to let him bond with us children but she never said that, and never said anything bad against him.

My mother was abused and as an adult I understand why she did what she did, but I was the one that had to pay the price.

horrible reading

again one in four the group are even named after the stats.
some more figures

the NAPAC article i mean

overprotected...your mother was protecting you

I think the NSPCC, takes the number of sexually abused down to about 20%, but that's still one in five.

Sorry yes should clarify. I was/am interested in what figures of paedophiles are abusing in a year, roughly.

Realise the 1 in 4 relates to children abused. Still very interested in where that comes from too.

CAVEAT* It is late and I not fab at stats late at night or maths or numbers but this is what I thought...

20000 reported cases = 30%
70000 = 100% roughly (! i know I did say roughly)

so I guessed adult male population of 21m so
70000 / 21000000 * 100 =

0.3

soprry crap maths did in a hurry but dp started saying things like so there could be x amount of paedophiles in this area etc...

but I thought (and do correct me) that makes 99.7% of adult men didn't abuse thias year...

By MAMAZON on Sun 10-Feb-08 22:00:57
there are no figures hunker. sadly it is estimated only 30% of abuse is ever reported.

i think the figuers back when i was working in thsi area were something along the lines of 20 thousand reports a year.

so if you add the remaining 70% to that......

When I was growing up there was a man from the local market who was convicted of paedophilia, he had gotten his young (12 I think) step-daughter pregnant and sentenced to many years in prison. This man had previously trained as a magician and spent most of his days surrounded by children in the market place putting on shows.

Years passed and I grew up. I joined a spiritual group and was surprised to find him at the meetings. He had a different name but I was sure it was him. It made me uncomfortable to be in his presence. I went to the library and scanned through papers to find the story with a picture, I was hoping I was wrong. It was him. Ever the showman he liked to perform, they held a festival and he was there, part of the organisation, entertaining children, performing magic tricks. I must admit it made me feel sick, was he deliberately holding them to show them how to juggle etc. I notified the people in charge and they conducted their own investigations and suspended him from their events, they also now make anyone involved undergo police checks.

I spent many sleepless nights over the issue. The man had served his time in prison and because of me was no longer able to trade his products at the shows etc. Was it fair of me to out him and ruin his business? How could I watch him playing with the kids and know if something happened to one of them it would have been my fault for not protecting them.

Oh yes, slur, the number of men abusing is much much lower than the number of peopel being abused.
It's more likely that one person will abuse numerous children that many people will abuse one, I know of three my stepdad abused, if that is only 30% of his crimes then he would have abused what 10? So ten people for one paedophile is where the numbers come into play, and many paedophiles will be much more active than ten in their lifetime.

Thanks VS

Kerry, I thought that we were going on the 30% of crimes are reported, 70% aren't.

sorry posted without finishing. Anon4 obviously you have to make up your own mind but at least you now know the sort of man he is and can make that informed decision about whether to allow him into your daughter's life or not.

Until this post I didn't consider myself to be overly cautious about my DCs but having thought about it my DCs have very little opportunity to be left alone with either sex.

ok people got your stats?

VS - that report is very much opinon lead and i wouldn't take those figures too seriously.
is states 400 children are abused per day. this is probably sourced from SW stats detailing refferals each day.

most are dismissed and the large majority are not sexual abuse.

there are no concrete figures of % abused.

there are only estimations based on the number of reports recieved each year.
i don't think its quite 1 in 4 but possibly nearer 1 in 6/7

still way too bloody high.

I dont think any of us should leave our children alone with anyone willy nilly, and we should all make sure they know what is appropriate behaviour for an adult and child interaction, and make sure they know that they can tell us anything, even if that means making them believe that we are invincible (many abuisers will threaten the child so not to speak, so they need to be able to ignore the worry of you being hurt or not believing them.) but I still think that being overly protective around all men is counter-productive.

mamazon, after that report, I did link the official nspcc stats, the other report was the first I came across, but I see your point.

well done to you pixi.

the statistics are horrendous. But even if it's true that 20% of children are abused - and I would need to see some more research, that still means that the vast majority of men are not abusers and it is hugely unfair and damaging to children, men and society at large to treat them as guilty until proved innocent. Children are not stupid. They will realize very quickly that their carer thinks that men are untrustworthy - and what will that do to boys' image of themselves? I think we need to remember that we are raising the next generation of men.