Family and Friends Forum

Hello all, new here *waves*.

I have a habit of waffling, but it's late and I'm tired so I'm going to try bullet points for the highlights. I'll be purposely vague about some parts for anonymity.

- 2 kids with ex partner, separated for quite a long time. At the time kids were at his every Saturday, 'amicable' split but bear minimum of communication

- 'the knock' came, he was questioned, denied the lot. I was to supervise visits. Pretty much had to tell myself must be a mistake. Was told it'd be about 8 months which seemed like a long time.

- 2.5 years later (during which time I tried repeatedly to find out wtf was going on) police call to say he's been charged and will be going to court on some undisclosed date. He never contacted me himself about this.

- social services ring. Tell me the court date. Tell me they can help with supporting the kids when I tell them everything. Great.

- court day. Checking, checking, checking the local rag page. Ring court in afternoon, tells me a couple of details of sentence.

- I decide I'm going to sit down with the kids after tea and just get it over with. Just as the last plate was cleared, it hit the news page on Facebook. Only then did I know the exact charges, the scale of what he'd done. Thousands upon thousands of images and videos, cat A B and C. Suspended sentence, shpo, community whatsit.

- kids devastated. I told them we would get some support and figure it all out together. I informed social services about the sentence as they told me to. Someone will be in touch within a week, they said.

- 8 weeks, many emails, many phone calls, I finally spoke to someone. 'well what support do you need'. I don't know. I was told support was available. Surely they deal with this kind of thing with reasonable regularity?

- went round in circles. Tried suggesting everything I'd already contacted myself. It turns out there is no support for us. Social said if he'd gone to prison, we could access something. If we'd been victims, we could access something. But causing huge mental and emotional issues, nothing. I was signposted here. For the kids, they recommended the childline website.



So yeah hey kids I know I said we'd get some help and work through this together but it turns out there's nothing so here's this website. They are early teens, startlingly bright, mature, and aware of exactly what he did. We talk a lot. I tell them whatever they are feeling is normal and valid. One doesn't want to see him again. Other 'doesn't know' and that's fine.

At least now they're back at school, and I've been really open with school and their pastoral heads of year, the school counsellor sort of thing will be arranging to see them, and they've both seen them before anyway so it's not unusual or weird.

I really feel like we've been brushed aside. I can deal. I'm angry and I don't understand why. But I don't want can deal. Why should the kids have to deal with this stuff. Why did he think the best course of action was to deny it. Surely he knew it'd come out in the end.

Bump

Thanks for the replies folks xx



The kids are early teens. In terms of talking to the GP, all they can do is refer to CAMHS, and we're already dealing with CAMHS for another reason. I'd actually confided in the counsellor working with one of the kids when I found out sentencing was coming up. I asked if she could find out if there was any support available, she went off and spoke to her colleagues and in the end all they could suggest was Relate.



I contacted Relate who said it wasn't really their area, but they could speak with me on my own. That's absolutely not what we need.

I am glad they're back at school as they can access the listening service, their pastoral leads know what's gone on too.

Someone mentioned a closed case? Well I was informed that we never actually had an open case! We were just down for 'advice and guidance' from whoever happened to be on duty if and when I called.

Another thing that I think is disgusting - at no point have I been told the conditions of him having contact. So if they did actually want to see him, and if I wasn't particularly bright, I could easily think it was OK for them to go spend the weekend with him.