How would you feel about this response to a Clare’s Law application?

[NoSmokeWithoutFire0]

I won’t go into why I made it but the guy I’ve been seeing for around 10 months found out that I’d made a Clare’s Law application on him and these are some of his responses in a conversation we had by text about it.

“I'm sorry about the Claire's Law thing. It's up to you how you proceed, but I do think it's an invasion of privacy to some extent. Whether I thought it'd have content or not. I think regardless of how we move forward, l'd always feel that way. I should be entitled to move on from horrible situations from my past. I see the systems inability to protect individuals from false allegations as a continued form of abuse by those that make allegations and they can do so without ever having to be questioned or punished.”

“Actually, the thought of you being able to sit next to me and think "I know something you that you don't know" makes me wretch.
You can't build trust on that, and our conversation revolved around trust.
Whether you go through with it or not, I'll never trust you in that regards. I'll always assume you did it and know more about me than I know. That's like me having full access to your gp records.
That's a deal breaker for me and would make everything else we worked on together pointless.”

“I now feel like l'll never be allowed to move forward and enjoy any relationship through fear of secretly being spied on.
Enjoy having a nosey into my past life anyway.”

Is it just me or is this screaming guilty?

@NoSmokeWithoutFire0 unlikely to be the same guy but I can tell you now his responses are to try to put you off having a conversation with the police, including his pathetic attempt to scare you by threatening to report you, because what they will tell you is going to be shocking.

My advice is to follow it up and report his responses to you.

The specimen I was involved with had a history of abusing women so long and violent I still struggle to understand it and he claimed it was all vindictive bitches, which I am now one of.

The normal response is to blame yourself for not seeing it sooner but these people are so skilled at hiding and manipulating that unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t actually comprehend how they lie like breathing.

Like most cowards, once he knows you aren’t afraid of him and have found out the truth, he will likely leave you alone as you can’t be manipulated. That’s what scum like this thrive on.

Banking app require log ins of their own.

I think everyone's largely making a fuss over nothing with this passcode stuff. She has enough to worry about.

If he had her phone NOW it would be worrying. As is, unlikely an issue. Just maybe scan for tracking apps and then change things like email account passwords just incase.

If it's unwarranted, then it would absolutely be a deal-breaker to me

But why? Presumably if it's unwarranted there'd be nothing to disclose so nothing for you to be concerned about?

Yes- if I were a man I would absolutely understand why a woman might want a Claire’s Law check on me if we started dating. Just as teaching jobs, caring jobs etc all need a DBS check. The stats on DV are horrific, why take a risk (especially if you have children)?

Yup. 'False allegations' are vanishingly rare. I'd never believe that and I've been told it multiple times.

I'm also one of the crazy bitches who make false allegations too allegedly.

Funny that.

Are you OK op?

I really think women should wise up; the crazy bitch, false allegations and vindictive ex are all signs the guy is a dud and possibly dangerous. You don't need Claire's Law in most cases, but to respect your instincts and note these phrases.

Some women are ego driven about abusive men. They imagine it never happens to them because they are better or he loves her more. It's time we told our daughters about men like these and how they operate and not to romanticise them.

It's like someone snooping through your messages. To me that's completely wild, and I'd be extremely unhappy.

Anyway, my thoughts on the matter are irrelevant as in this instance the OP is totally correct in applying for info via Clare's Law.

This is the sort of man that thinks any woman who says she's been raped is a liar when one only needs to look at the pitiful conviction rates to see that isn't the case.

A lot of women never report it anyway so the stats are only a percentage of actual attacks. Gut instinct and Claire's Law is all we women have to be safe.

One of the reasons I started to feel uneasy was because of comments I’d see him leaving on social media where women were sharing their DV stories and he’d say ‘it’s not all men, women are just as bad as men when it comes to DV they just get away with it’ and things like that.

Women don't hospitalise men, nor murder them, anything like as often as men do to women. No one is "getting away with" anything when there's a corpse or a battered hospital patient proving the violence.

Every woman should treat "women are just as bad" as a red flag.

It really isn't anything like snooping through messages.

For a start, the person making the application doesn't get to go through the files and see everything themselves.

And secondly the files are criminal ones. Not personal, private info relating to all aspects of your life like your phone messages.

For the vast majority of people the result of the check would be a message from the police saying 'Nothing relevant'.

But if you'd done nothing wrong, there'd be nothing to disclose and therefore nothing to 'snoop' on?

Do you not believe that women should have the right to find out if their partners could potentially be dangerous to them? Or do you think that a man's right to privacy trumps that of a woman's right to safety?

And how on earth is a woman supposed to know if a CL request is 'warranted' or not until she does one and finds out if there are any disclosures anyway?

I'm failing to follow your logic at all. Seems like DARVO to me.

@NoSmokeWithoutFire0 I hope you're ok

How does OP know that there's anything to uncover via a CL request before doing a CL request? She might suspect, but she can't know until after she gets the results of the request.

Your idea that it's unreasonable to ask if there's nothing on record to ask about makes no sense because of this.

Massive red flag. He knows exactly what he's done before.

I think we should treat NAMALT as a res flag too.

I was thinking this too. To me it all depends on what has made you want to check in the first place.

Yep: get rid, ASAP.

@PennyApril54

But he has told OP of being falsely accused before.

If it was your daughter whose bf disclosed a previous "false" conviction and she had discovered some slightly off views about women, wouldn't you want her to check the record?

Record of a previous accusation doesn't tell you anything, as the bf has already disclosed that, but records of multiple accusations, either from the same woman who withdrew her testimony and failed to cooperate each time (classic DV pattern) or more than one accuser, for example, would definitely give you pause for thought.

@NoSmokeWithoutFire0 - I hope you're doing OK and the police have taken your latest report - this idiot'srecent unpleasant behaviour - seriously. Try to keep posting on here if you can - there are so many women with experience of how to deal with exes like yours. Take care x

I hope that you are safe op?

Hi, just popping back to say I’m safe. He has continued to contact me every day since Monday by email, nothing threatening just absolute paragraphs of word salad about how terribly I treated him for the whole relationship and everything that’s wrong with me. Can’t tell if he really believes it or he’s just trying to ‘prove’ he’s a victim yet again. I’m sending everything to the police just in case it does escalate but I think he’ll burn himself out soon.

I’ll definitely come back and update re the Clare’s Law application (I know I can’t mention what’s actually on it). Thank you for all the advice, I’ve come back to this thread a few times as it’s really helped me stay sane and logical over the last week.

Glad to hear you're doing OK @NoSmokeWithoutFire0 💐
Your handling this so well!

This is nuts…

hope he gives up soon and really pleased you have extracted yourself from the relationship

I'm pretty sure there will be something to disclose, after his behaviour! You definitely made the right decision, and for the PP who said it shouldn't be 'an aid to people's dating life' - it's there to keep women safe, so YES, it's definitely a good idea to do one on any new man.

glad To hear you are ok, his reaction is enough to make you think the disclosure will show something.

any decent guy would be understanding of you doing a Claire’s law disclosure.