My world is crashing down... please help.

[Imfallingapart]

I've just had a message on FB from an aqquantance. She's saying that my DP has a conviction for sexually assaulting a child in 95/96. This would have been when DP was 17/18. I don't know what to think.. what to do.

I have a DS and a DD - not my DP's, and am heavily pregnant by DP.

We went to a wedding a few weeks ago, and i bumped into this woman, and introduced DP to her, little knowing that they already knew each other - she lived with his mother for a few years when younger until his mother discovered her in bed with her (the mothers) boyfriend. Since then, they have had no contact.

I don't know why this woman is saying this, i trust my DP implicitly, or i thought i did. We don't live together, but i have never ever had any doubts about him being around my children. We went to school together, and i've known him for years, and i don't remember anything like this coming to light, that said, i did move away for a year or so around the time it alledgedly happened.

So i know i need to ask him about it. I'm going to be seeing him later today. I need to know the truth. But what do i do if it is true? What if i am having a baby with a peadophile??

I'm sat here in tears and i just don't know what to do. Please help.

yes, Ive only just realised that to believe that he was "just being silly and 17" is to effectively believe that the 12 year old child was lying. Sorry, I am not a logical person at all and Ive only just "got" this!
Of course we canT give the guy the benefit of the doubt under the assumption that the 12 year old is lying. In addition Ive just ran it by my husband and he looked at me as though I was soft when I said a man was caught in the act in a housefull of kids. He said that there is no doubt that your horniness would just dissappear upon entering a houseful of kids. Besides that: What about a lock on the bathroom door? WHat about being embarrassed about being caught in the act? etc etc.

Abe, the girl who moved in with the family is not the 12 yo child referred to

This was a different person who has now popped up (who obviously has her own issues as she was slung out of the house for sleeping with the 17 yo's mothers partner)

confused ?

me too, lol

wasthatchild, I am so sorry for what happened to you, and the way that it has turned out

you have been treated appallingly by many people

Have been thinking about this all weekend. This is probably a little off topic but, my DP and I were discussing it and he mentioned someone at his rugby club who'd been banned due to a girl (not from the club) accusing him of sexual abuse. This had happened 28 years before. He was found guilty in a court and sentenced.

The reason I bring it up is that my DP said that he thought it was a case of 'show me yours, i'll show you mine etc' and that he'd been told the girl was about 15 at the time and this 'nice man' (everyone at the club loved him) was about 18. Apparently the consensus of opinion at the club where this man was well known was that it was all a storm in a teacup and consensual etc etc.

Anyway, I put the names into the internet and the story from the local paper was quite different, the girl was NINE and he was 21!! It went on for 4 years and was certainly not a storm in a teacup.

What I'm trying to say, badly I agree, is that I hate the fact that on here people are suggesting he was 'just 17' and its a 'silly error'. Why is everyone so disbelieving of a child and wanting to discredit them? Makes me feel sick.

And anyway -

1. He was babysitting - who the hell has a wank when babysitting?????

1. She was 12. 12. Regardless of what Ski thinks, I was playing with dolls at 12. And even if she was 'forward' (god what a horrid Daily Mail old man judge thing to say) so what??? That makes a nearly 18 year old suddenly fancy a 12 year old??

1. What girl/woman would ask a man out if they walked in on them on the toilet/wanking??

1. He had NO right to let you may decisions about your life (eg pregnancy) and your children's life while witholding such an important part of his past from you.

And will everyone read the bloody post - the 12 year old is NOT the girl who told OP through FB or who lived with the mum!!!!

Good luck OP. x

Thanks to those who've posted kind comments. I'm fine now (most of the time) and choose to ignore the ones who didn't/don't support me.

Imfallingapart - I've been thinking more about this and two questions keep bugging about his explaination:

1. He says he phoned the mother and asked her to come home from the bingo hall - in 1995 did she really have a mobile phone or did he phone the bingo hall and have her called away from the game?

1. He was put on the sex offenders register? The register was not set up until the autumn of 1997 and registration is not retrospective.

Those two questions have been niggling me - please go to the police and see if you can get transcripts of what really went on.

the sex register dating has been mentioned further up-thread, wsc

there are actually so many holes to pick in this story, it must be completely see-through

OP, are you still around, how are you ?

The idea that a 12 year old girl would ask him to go out with her after seeing him in all his glory is what tips me off that he is lying. This is what someone might say if he is very fond of his equipment, quite proud of the heights it can reach; in fact it is actually a way of boasting about himself.

I can understand his mother reitterated his story, as that surely would be the story HE told her? So she would be able to back that up, I would have thought!

I hope the OP is away from the thread getting proper help and advice so she can make a informed decision.

The above holes re phone and dating of sex offenders register would be niggling me. I would be looking through newspaper archives and court transcripts if there were any.

Dittany, you may well be right about the lies and so on, but I don't think many of us (if any) are trying to 'smear' the 12yo. I think that's hideous.

There has been doubt raised over the veracity of the man's story, and in order to quantify the validity of his statements we have naturally to consider every angle.

Nobody wants to 'smear' anybody although of course OP would rather be in a situation where she can believe the account given by her partner - who would't want their partner and the father of their unborn child to be a good'un? I think it's inappropriate to consider any questioning of the child's story as 'smearing' although I agree it's distasteful that it has to be questioned at all. This is the difficulty surrounding so many similar trials and so forth, where a child has to suffer interrogation and judgment and all that.

The truth isn't known.

Imfallingapart - i really hope you find a way through this, it sounds such a difficult situation to be in.

Reading through the thread I was reminded of a time in my life. I would have been around 12/13. At this time I had a close friend at school whose house I would regularly stay over at. She lived in a small-ish village where a lot of the kids who lived there either went to our school or to the boys school around the corner.

I used to love going to stay, her parents were Dutch and very, very laid back. We used to run riot really and more or less do whatever we wanted. We used to camp out in the garden and then sneak off to meet other kids in the village at night. THis was the early 80's and the word peadophile just wasn't in our lexicon.

We used to meet the same group of kids, ranging in age from 11 to 17. A mix of boys and girls. We would hook up about midnight and go back to somebody's house. Us younger ones were just along for the ride really the older boys and girls would smoke pot, listen to music, snog and I clearly remember on a couple of occasions the older boys playing sticky biscuit or wanking over porn mags. They weren't doing it for our benefit, they were just in the room doing it.

I never felt uncomfortable or preyed upon. The boys weren't trying to groom us. I just think we were all being silly and naive. There was nothing sinister in it.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that some young people do some stupid things without thinking. Some 17 year olds are just dumb and don't do things like this because they have sinister or perverted motives.

I don't expect this will help make your job any easier Iamfallingapart. You are faced with a very difficult decision and I hope you find the strength to make it.

For me it's not the wanking that presents the issue. After all I'm sure that (whether we thing it appropriate or not) men (and boys) do wank in inappropriate places. As parents we have sex in our own homes and there is always a chance that a child could walk in. In fact I even remember reading a thread on mn from someone saying that they regularly put their kids in front of the tv on a Sunday morning so they can go upstairs and have sex, and it being followed by several other posts from people who do the same.

So if he had been in the bathroom masturbating and the twelve yo had walked in I could see that. I could also potentially see the parents calling the police if they'd come home and the twelve yo had said she'd walked in on him - some parents might just have a word but I can see some calling the police...

But where the story loses credibility for me is when he says the twelve yo asked him out, but the twelve yo said he'd asked her to touch it.

And at the end of the day, he was found guilty. At the point at which he is found guilty, there should be no questioning of the motives of a twelve year old.

Only the op can decide whether she wants to continue this relationship though. It is possible that he is of no danger to children after all, but given he has withheld such an important thing in his life from his partner, mother of his child, I would question what else he might have lied about.

He is not a victim here - the twelve year old is.

AccioPinotGrigio - sorry if I sound like a stalker, but I could have written your post (about the dutch family!) At the risk of sounding like a stalker, did you go to RNS?

IFA, I think you are doing the right thing seeing a police officer. What an awful situation. I really hope are able to sort this all out, one way or another. I am full of admiration and respect for how you seem to be handling this pragmatically, rather than doing the knee jerk panic thing that would lead to hysterics on all sides.

hi ggglimpopo - i didn't go to RNS

I would agree with you on that, but I don't think anyone HAS decided she is a liar. People are looking at every possibility.

I'm sorry i haven't updated this thread over the weekend. As you might imagine, things have been quite fraught here, and i'm still trying to get my head around things.

A few things have happened over the weekend. Firstly, a couple of policemen came to see me on Saturday evening. I was able to ask them lots of questions and they were able to give me lots of information, which was useful. The case came to court at the end of August 1997, and by the time he was convicted, the judge was able to put him on the register. He was one of the first people in this area to have his name on it. I asked why it had taken so long to get to court and they said it was to do with psychiatric evaluations, ect.

Oviously, the police weren't able to tell me if he had asked the girl to touch him - all through questioning, and in court, he maintained that he had not. She of course, said otherwise. Apparently, it had not been his intention to babysit that night. He was with his girlfriend, and had nipped out to the shop, and on the way back he was cornered by his mothers friend who asked him to babysit as he owed her a favour. I asked why he hadn't locked the bathroom door if he was going to masturbate, and the officer said that although the bathroom had a lock on it, it had been broken in an incident a few weeks previously.

He (the police officer) said that he's had a good look at his file and in his experience he was not a danger to children. He seems to think he made a very stupid mistake, and the fact that he was neither sent to prison or has committed any other offence whatsoever was a positive sign.

On Sunday, DP came with all the paperwork he had. He left it with me and i read it through yesterday. It had copies of all the solicitors letters, and a psychiatric report.

To be honest, my head is still quite muddled. I'm still not sure what to think. I do think though, that only two people will ever know what happened in the bathroom that night, and one of them is lying.

I just don;t know what to do. I feel physically sick all the time, can't eat and am bearly sleping. I know i need to look after myself, but my head is so full of stuff at the moment i don't know what to think.

I haven't got anyone to turn to in RL... how can i tell people of his conviction and expect them to look at me in the same light again? How would you feel if your best friend confided that her DP had a conviction for this?

He looked drawn, haggered, shattered... like he'd not had much sleep. I'm supposed to be seeing him later but i'm not sure i can face it.

Have been thinking about this all weekend, am so sorry for you. Of course it's impossible for you to talk to anyone in RL, which must be making it worse.

We can never be certain about anyone. I think some of the confusing bits of his story (the SO register and the lock) have been cleared up now. But you will, as you say, never know what really happened in that room all those years ago.

Reading all of this again, there was, IMO, an excellent post by BLU on 4 Sept which asks some very very good questions for you to consider. I am not sure what else you can do now. Only you can decide what to do next. Good luck.

Ref:

By Blu on Fri 04-Sep-09 14:10:49 IFA, I don't think any of us would want to be you right now, you ar in a terrible situation.

I do think you need to take a few days apart from him and coolly consider everything you know as a fact, find out everything you done' yet know, and see how it adds with your instincts.

You may want to answer these q's in your own head, rather than here (because we're already conjecturing so much). But, how 'on target' are your instincts, in general? I see that your youngest child is only 16m, and you are heavily pg - so you got together with him quite quickly after having a baby with someone else (for which I am pleased for you) - did he sweep you off your feet? Did you fall into his arms after a break-up or when you were feeling lost and lonely? (though you do say you have known him before you got together). Has he ever given you any hint or impression that his expectations around relationships, or children, or sex are a bit differnt from other people's, or has anything about those things taken you by surprise? Is there anything in what you know of relationships that he had before you that make you ask any questions? Has he evern expressed any opinion on any cases in the press that surprised you? Is he sensitive and understanding about women and issues of vulnerability?

As I say, I'm not asking you these q's so that you can tell ME or other MN-ers the answers - I don't think we can give you an opinion about how sound he is. But to suggest some things you might want to add to the list of things already churning round your head about him!

Would it be worth calling an expert helpline? Anonymously to begin with, of course?

Does anyone have any links or advice on where IFA can get expert independent RL advice?

___

I think this would be a great place to start. But maybe also you need to establish some RL support - by that I mean find SOME person you can actually rely on, discuss this with, and transfer some of the attachment you have built artound HIM onto, just temporarily, because it sounds from your posts as though he is the main person in your life an you're probably feel;ing so upset and physically unsettled because that security has been threatened.
I get those physical symptoms whenever I have trusted a person and that's called into question...a boyfriend, whoever.
If you have someone else strong and trustworthy to focus on for a while - maybe a counsellor - that might ease things a bit. You need to signal to your bodya nd your mind that even if you DO lose this attachment, you'll still be Ok and have someone to cling to, metaphorically.

I hope that makes sense. It does sound from that the police said that his behaviour wpouldn't necessarily indicate a real time threat to anyone, including your children - but that may not be the point. He has also deceived you, he's behaved in a way you may not understand or respect, and these things can remove the foundations of a relationship in their own right.
It is in your control.

I had a word with a friend of mine who is a policeman. He has been dealing with a lot of sexual offences and paedophile convictions in his career. He said that many young boys came into situations like this through either stupidity or from no fault of their own.

He also said, any man would have trouble bringing this up. Just how DO you tell your new partner "by the way, I was convicted of a sexual offence in my youth". Even though logic says that this is exactly the kind of thing you SHOULD tell a new partner, I can sort of see why he wouldnt....

I think you have to consider the man himself, and like I said earlier, his sexual boundaries, to make head or tail of this.

Maybe there is somebody who knows you, somebody you havent spoken to in a while who could lend you an ear?