Family Drama vs serious activity

[Staceysmum2025]

I will delete this account shortly just looking for thoughts.

My sibling married someone had two children and has tried to reinvent himself to a degree.
But there are skeletons in the cupboard like ever family all bit these are serious.

Does someone marrying into a family with 2 small children have the right to know she is sharing space with a convicted/ imprisoned child sex offender for example?

The person pleaded guilty. Served the sentence. Its now being rewritten as they just thought theyd plea bargain.
This was after paying £15,000 to the victim in 2002 - alot of money at the time to pay them off.
Doesn’t sound like a lack of guilt to me.

The information has been kept from the parents by the grandparents.

Honestly, think it’s a safeguarding issue to be honest if it’s child sex and he’s living with children now. Is he on the sex offenders register?

Having said that, I’m not clear from your post about who you think should be told. Are you saying your sister already knows? Who is it that you think it would be helpful to know about this and how would it be helpful? Really the children need to be at the centre of this so considering risk to the children what’s the important factor? Have you spoken to your sister about it?

Are you saying that the mother of the children do not know that he is a sex offender?

Do you know, but your sister does not and she is married to a sex offender?

No partner has a ‘right’ to know about sex offences or other offences.
depending on where they live, you can contact police for various checks to get info about partner. (Claire’s law/sarahs law?)

the children do have rights.

the sex offender might have restrictions on being around children/ being alone with them and social services, police or probation can give further advice if required.

Sorry thats as clear as mud isnt it ?

My mothers sister is married to the convicted sex offender.
Long enough ago for him to not be on the register any more I believe.
My brother has been told a sanitised /hes not guilty version.
Brother has not shared this with new wife. Two small children now unwittingly around convicted sex offender.

Brother will not entertain the conversation.

For goodness sake just tell her yourself and be done with it. All this angst. Just tell her, what she does with that information is up to her.

Tell her of course. It would be horribly irresponsible not to.

The fact that your brother doesn’t want to reflects very, very badly on the sort of man he is.

So yes, do the right thing.

Actually thats exactly what I did.
i am now the “bad guy”
As apposed to the actual sex offender or the grandparent that withheld the information.
couldn’t make it up could?

Tied himself up in knots trying to justify the not guilty etc nonsense

100% tell them. My MIL married a man convicted of sexually abusing a young family member of his (served a 3 year prison sentence, this was before MIL was with him). The family went to great lengths to keep it from Dh and I (we are the only ones who have children). Even as far as holding family meetings to discuss how to keep us from finding out, which included MIL (who works in a safeguarding role in the NHS) and SIL (BIL’s partner) who is a clinical psychologist also with safeguarding responsibilities.

We only found out by accident. Thankfully, our eldest was still only 3, so not yet the age she would have had any unsupervised contact with either of them. But had we not found out, she absolutely would have been at risk as she got older and closer to the age of the child he abused. We are NC. It also significantly damaged our relationships with others in the family, knowing they went so far out of their way to make sure we couldn’t make up our own minds about the best way to keep our dc safe. I think they are all terrible selfish people.

I would have been so incredibly grateful if someone had had the balls to speak up and look out for my kids. Sit down and write them a letter or an email, advise them to do a Sarah’s Law disclosure, offer to meet up if they want to talk about it, and take their side in the family fall out. We became the black sheep and I would have so appreciated someone supporting us.

It's kind of suspicious that your brother doesn't want people to know eh?

Hes in very responsible position directly responsible for vulnerable children.
I feel like i could combust tbh.

I know im right. I’m getting thumbs up responses from the wider family (ie shut the fuck up i presume)

Well, you did the right thing, but it was always going to cause fallout from the dynamics you describe, if your brother has actively chosen to withhold information from the mother of his children about a convicted paedophile in his immediate family.

You did the right thing OP.
Your brother is so dishonest for not telling the truth.
Tell him to F off if he gives you grief.
I wouldn't want your brother around my family knowing what he supports, denys and is prepared to put at risk.
His poor new wife.

if I’m being generous to him, he was lied to as well. What I cannot get my head around at all is the fact that our joint mother has withheld this information from not only her grandchildren‘s mother. But her own son.
And yeah, apparently he trusts her judgement and would have no qualms in leaving his children unsupervised with her.
It blows my mind. It really does and I would genuinely have expected better of somebody who is in a safeguarding role.
I think it’s just shocked me how many fucking morons there are in the world and I apparently am related to some of them.
I just wanted to sanity check really,
thanks everyone

So your brother doesn’t accept this man was guilty? How is it you seem to know the full story of his conviction etc if your mother (presumably) withheld the information from you both?

Basically my children were young at the time he would have been in prison and on the register

Well you've done the right thing by telling the children's mother. You are not responsible for others reactions within the family and I would be distancing myself from them. I had a family member disclose that she had been abused by 2 people in her family as a child. This resulted in her siblings shunning her and she has been effectively frozen out of the family, unlike her abusers. She's still glad that she spoke out, it's been like a weight lifted off her.

Families are complex and often there are unhealthy family dynamics that protect abusers and penalise those who speak out against it. You have done what you can to protect the children, hopefully their mother will do the right thing

@Staceysmum2025 you don't need to delete your account just name change. Mumsnet is really useful for allsorts of advice.

I can understand your anger. I shake my head sometimes at the weirdness of people. Why the hell they'd have anything to do with him? He wouldn't get within an inch of my dcs ir dgcs. They should be locked away forever or at least tagged.

@Endofyear your poor family member. What evil people doing that to her. I hope she took abusers to court. A friend of mine did years after the abuse. He got locked up.

I asked My mother at the time what do you think? Do you believe he’s guilty or not? Guilty and her response was that were that she didn’t know?
And I pointed out to her that my husband would hang before he would admit to being a paedophile no matter what the plea-bargaining all the black mail. He would go to be brave before you admit to something like that.
And my mum admitted that yes she had that reaction from a lot of people.
It turns out with my little cousin also made allegations. He absolutely would’ve had the opportunity to have done.
And my little cousin just went completely off the rails. They nearly killed her the absolute shit out of her. If you stop pacing all these bits of the puzzle together it would make perfect sense that she was just a 13-year-old trying to escape a shitty life.
The whole thing just makes me so angry

I would do a Clare's Law request on her behalf. The police will contact her and call her in to the station to notify her.

Yes, the fallout will probably come back to you, but the alternative way of her finding out is abominable.

You're protecting the kids and she needs to know the full picture to be able to protect her own children.

If she knows and continues on regardless, that's on her, but to not know and find out when it's too late... well - it's not worth thinking about is it?

Claire’s law only applies to being in a relationship with the person who’s done the offences so that’s not relevant
And you can’t do a Sara‘s law without providing birth certificate or health book some sort of proof of your relationship with the child which obviously she’s only my niece so I can’t.
It seems they walk amongst us and there’s fuck all normal people can do about it

In defence but offering no defence, I know when I was told something of a similar nature about someone I knew, I actually found it very very hard to grasp and comprehend.

I didn't particularly care for the person who made the allegation which initially complicated things, because I knew them to be a liar myself.

But after the shock had worn off and I was able to really sit with it, I believed them because I didn't see why they would lob such a grenade into the family.
I am not close to either of them and fully withdrew from the offender.
She has never gone to the police as the family would be high profile and she doesn't want to draw such awful attention to herself and go through what would undoubtedly be an awful experience for her and her family.

I think in my case, hearing it 30 years ago, I actually had difficulty comprehending it.
It really is devastating for those around to understand and believe is in their midst.....yet we now know its everywhere.

I have several friends who never told their parents that it happened to them from neighbours/family friends as they couldn't inflict such upset on loving parents.

Its why so many parents today are very careful about who is around their young children and right through primary.

It didn't stop me socialising my children but it made me get to know people well before they were ever doing playdates.