Unintended D pic

[AspirationaJess]

I’m in desperate need of advice and guidance.

I have a 14yo daughter. I am in a 5 year relationship with my fiancé who also has a daughter.

We are in the thick of selling his home and buying a home together.

I have an incredibly acrimonious relationship with my ex. He has a criminal conviction for domestic abuse and has caused no end of misery for us from the emotional, to financial to psychological. I have my children 11/14 days.

To the issue at hand.

My daughter and I had words as she overheard a conversation that we were reluctant to share fully with her re the house sale and she was mardy about it.

Fast forward a few hours and she sent me a code to access her Snapchat account which I manage from my email. According to her, she was logged out or something.
So I sent her the code and somehow she accessed my Snapchat account. On reflection, I suspect she knew she could obtain information re the earlier conversation behind my back and tried her luck.

I don’t particularly use Snapchat but last week while I was away with work, my fiancé and I were sexting (utilising the hotel WiFi) and one picture was saved in the chat. Unfortunately, this was a picture of his erect penis.

I’d like to be clear that the intended audience was me. No one else. The fact that she has had sight of this is horrifying and embarrassing and the emotions we (partner and I) are feeling are incredibly wide ranging.

There’s a full digital footprint of what happened- her asking for the code, me giving her it, her telling me she accidentally accessed my account then her saying she saw something she didn’t expect.

My daughter is more concerned with the fact that people of our age ‘shouldn’t’ be doing this. How this somehow makes HIM a weirdo and she feels weird about him.

Obviously we would never have intended her to see this and we are very frightened that this has the potential to be misconstrued. Especially as her dad is proactive with devastating results at times.

I’ve spoken to her about privacy. About how we haven’t done anything wrong by doing those things in an adult consensual relationship. About how we never intended her to see it. About how she was not the intended recipient and how she can’t communicate him being weird in relation to this because it has a certain connotation.

We are honestly incredibly careful and aware of our dynamic and our intimacy and I’m devastated we have potentially exposed ourselves to something which will be taken massively out of context and be life altering.

I’ve woken up to her playing music and being cheery. Saying she’s fine and no visible signs of upset.

She does have a habit of saying things to provoke a reaction and i have massive worries she will drop this in conversation to her dad or someone else with unknown results.

We honestly don’t know what to do. If anything.

We’ve flip flopped around attacking this head on and speaking to authorities or a solicitor. We’ve thought about ignoring it and continuing on as though nothing happened. We’ve thought about calling off our entire relationship incase IT’s misconstrued.

I think the issue is massively more risky because of my malicious ex being incredibly vocal about not liking my partner or me and being very bitter about the punishments he’s been given because of his behaviour. He’s said on numerous occasions he will ruin my life and he’s also intimidated he’s not comfortable with our children living with another man. For all of these reasons, we have major fear.

Any input would be appreciated.

Id take screenshots of everything and email it to yourself, maybe back up with a family member, everything except the pic of course.

If you think it will help you and can afford it talk to a solicitor, get advice. That aside Id record everything and then try and let it go. There's nothing to get ahead of and honestly reporting something like this might be problematic as most parents I think would see this as unfortunate but not something social services need to know about so you might get an is there more given your reporting something that doesn't need reporting.

Its unfortunate, but sometimes that's what happens when you snoop. I understand why you feel this with your ex like that, but there's not really anything you can do. Id be focused on talking to my teen about how it's not ok to access people's accounts like that, that she needs to speak to me and make it clear when it's really important for her to know things and trust that I will tell her what's appropriate for her to know and beyond that I'M the parent and it is absolutely not ok for her to be looking through my phone.

What would you hope an investigation would turn up?

Do you think OP and her partner wanted her DD to see his dick?

And for those bleating on about being a role model, unacceptable behaviour etc..... Fuck me, us parents are human too.... If I want to send explicit messages on what I thought was a secure platform, it's nothing to do with anyone else!!

Lesson learnt for daughter.... Don't snoop..... I think it's worse for a teen to see that than hear their parents shagging. But on mn your sex drive stops the minute you have kids. 🤔🙄🤔🙄

The fault here is with the daughter. I would actually be fuming with her. She deliberately and manipulatively accessed someone else's private messages. That's pretty despicable/disgusting behaviour. The fact that she's now seen something that she shouldn't have seen, and could cause further relationship issues with the ex (who, like you, sounds completely unreasonable) would make me even more angry.

Personally I would be removing internet access and phone use for some time until she could prove that she was mature enough not to engage in such behaviour.

Worst case scenario, DD blabs to your abusive Ex.

But I think, at age 14, she would know the potential fallout from doing so.

Still, if it happens, it happens. As such, do keep a careful hard-copy record of events leading up to her seeing the photo.

And deal with the fallout using that evidence. No crime has been committed.

BUT.

Chances are your DD won't blab.

Well I think I understand now how child protection hasn't a hope if the adults in their lives victim blame a child.

Can you actually hear what you are saying about a child, "fault", "blabs", "lesson learned" by a 14 year old, "no crime" really?

It is absolutely nothing to do with a sex life. It is the storing and not protecting the child from the image.

And then to say an adult who would seek to protect that child is unreasonable on par with an abusive partner?

Wow, and this explains so much, scream from the heights about the big tech not protecting children from porn, but sure it's the 14 year olds fault if it's a parents partner's image.

This is like her breaking the bathroom door down while your partner is having a shower and then screaming that he has exposed himself to her.

I would be absolutely livid with her.

The teenager was protected from the image. The teenager chose to break into her mother's account where her mother and partner had an expectation of privacy.

Adults are allowed to take naked pictures and expect their kids not to hack their accounts.

If the teenager barged in on the partner peeing and saw his penis, whose fault would it be?

Does your fiancé live with you?

Was she in the house alone with him while he was taking the photos and sexting or was she with her dad?

That would make me uncomfortable to be honest.

That is a disgusting leap to make. Presumably then you don't think parents should be allowed to have sex in a house when their children are home either?

Hearing your parents have sex is bad enough.

Hearing your mum and another man is horrific.

@Josette77 it wasn't a child walking in on a man urinating . It was an image of an erect penis please stop minimising what actually happened.

An image that she only saw because she accessed her mums private messaging account...

I didn't saw anything about "hearing" sex. I said by your measures adults wouldn't be allowed to have sex in a house where there are children, if by the same token they're not allowed to engage in any sort of private sexting. You implied there was something untoward about OP's partner having sent the image if he was in the house alone with OPs daughter. Which is sensationalist and gross of you.

This.

@BodyKeepingScore with that attitude then I despair. It was on the phone. The mother allegedly didn't know it was there., that is the key to the issue. But hey blame a 14 year old child

@BodyKeepingScore it is gross

No. What's gross is insinuating that an adult male might be a paedophile for sexting an image to his adult partner of a child happens to be in the house

That's not what I said

So you have no expectation of privacy on your own phone then? You've never had a conversation that would be inappropriate for a child to see because they should have unfettered access to your phone and ergo you should never have anything adult on there?

@AspirationaJess I can't offer any advice other than to say you won't be the first person caught out navigating the digital world. There are tons of pitfalls that we only find as we hit them.

What I came in to say is that you shouldn't use public WiFi such as hotel WiFi unless you use a vpn. Look up 'man in the middle explanation' on YouTube. It will shock you how easy it is for someone to intercept your Internet traffic. I know WhatsApp is encrypted, not sure about snap chat. Even then, once a hacker has intercepted your data, it could be decrypted. Best not to let them have it in the first place.

You are being wholly unreasonable here.

Have you missed the fact that the teenager deliberately lied to her mother to obtain a code which would enable her to access her mother’s Snapchat messages. And had she not done so, there are no circumstances in which she could ever have seen the photograph.

Do you have children of this age? My youngest is 14 and would absolutely categorically know that accessing my personal devices without permission and looking at pictures or reading my messages was morally wrong. They are also well aware that adults have a sex life and whilst they would be grossed out to be confronted with evidence of that would not be emotionally traumatised by it. Based on how OP has described her own DD’s reaction - which frankly sounds smug and malicious - the DD here is also not emotionally harmed.

Given everything the OP has said about how she administers her DD’s social media accounts it’s very clear she does all she can to ensure she isn’t exposed to harmful material so it’s unfair to pile on her in the way you are doing.

This is about the DD being a voyeur not the parent and her partner being a sexual risk to her. You are the one minimising what has happened here and by doing so distorting the truth.

So what did you mean when you asked if the daughter was alone in the house with OPs partner when he sent it and said that would make you uncomfortable? What was the implication behind that then?

That it's not appropriate