Family and Friends Forum

I have been lurking on these forums for a while, ever since we had the knock in November 2020. Reading them has been an emormas help to me in what is a nightmare situation.

My husband was arrested for recieiving 4 cat A images. I was totally stunned. He had a previous conviction from before we got together in 2003, but I had always believed him when he told me he had downloaded the original pictures by accident. After much soul searching I decided to stay with him and support him. He is a gentle, kind man. He is a good man who has down a bad thing.

After the knock (dear god, 6:50 in the morning) and being released under investigation he embarked on the Stopitnow courses and other help to assist him in overcoming this need. He has done very well, but always there was that sword hanging over us. In addtion it has split my family, (my boy and girl are grown up and not at home). Neither will speak to him and if they come home he has to move into a hotel for the duration. I have 2 brothers, one won't have anything to do with him, the other will.

Move on a year, and he is charged with 4 cat As, 20 cat Bs and 100 odd cat Cs. He pleads guilty and now we await sentencing at crown court. His probation report was very good and he got a suspended sentence, SOR and SHPO (10 years). We breathed a big sigh of relief. Phew - over at last....

Yeah right. Local paper was there and the atricle (nasty and making him easily identifiable) came out the next day. The brown stuff really hit the fan and I certainly discovered who my real friends were. Is was almost funny watching my friend count go down on Facebook. One so called friend even shared the link to the article on her Facebook feed just in case anyone had missed it. I was so hurt as this was now aimed at me. And I have done nothing wrong. Yet I felt my life was wrecked.

We are now a month on from that and things have quietened down, and he has been enrolling on courses to carve out extra work. I have bought him a new laptop (arrived Monday) which he duly reports and has the monitoring software loaded onto it on Tuesday. I am optomistic again that we can at last move forward. He has been worling with the police contact and his probation worker and all seems calm.

On no you don't, the universe seems to scream. This morning another knock and 6 policemen arrived. Apparently he had run an app on his phone to clean it and this is against his SHPO. (Not allowed to delete things from his devices). So off they take him and go through the house again and this time they take away the brand new laptop. They have charged him with breach of his SHPO and are keeping him overnight. He's up before the magistrates tomorrow. I have managed to talk to him on the phone.

Thus why I am sitting here typing this at 2:15 in the morning. I cannot sleep. I don't know how much more of this I can take. It just feels like everytime I try to get up off the floor someone just pushes me back down. I have no idea what will happen tomorrow (well today). I guess he could go to jail. I'm so sad and lonely (just to add an extra twist I tested positive for covid yesterday). The house is deathly quiet and I just wanted to reach out to you all.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Thanks for your replies. It's great to know you are all out there.

Sadly things didn't go well. He has been remanded in custody until a crown court hearing in a month. So he's been taken to the nearest remand centre which is over 100 miles away. He didn't enter a plea (as advised by his solicitor) but there is a risk that if he is found guilty of breaching his order he will have to serve his suspended sentence. I can't visit for at least 10 days as they quarantine everyone entering the prison because of covid. I am struggling to come to terms with it. It's like a waking nightmare. He should be able to ring me tonight when he gets there. So I guess this is new normal for now. I wonder if we'll ever get a good break.

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Thank you all. I am waiting for the call, feeling very sad and alone. Evenings will be the worst. An empty sofa... just got to get used to that I guess. At least I've got dogs who need me. I can't even begin to imagine how he's feeling. All for such a stupid mistake. Still, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get on with it. Again.

Hi guys, just a quick update. Hubby arrived at prison Friday night and I have still not heard from him. Today is Tuesday. I am beside myself with worry. I can't find out is this is because he's not set up yet properly on the system or that he just doesn't want to talk to me. I would never have thought he would do that (totally out of character) but I have no idea how this totally unexpected turn has hit him. So every scenerio is running through my head which is killing me. I think the trouble with being a woman is that you are too empathetic, so of course I am imagining the worst. I just want to talk to him, establish some contact. I am really struggling to cope with this, I've phoned the prison many times, sent him emails, put money in his prison account, sent books. I am devastated, has he really cut me off? Sorry, just wanted to rant. I feel so helpless, and I am the one who always drives things, organises etc. So far out of my comfort zone, I'm on another planet. Any advice or thoughts would be gratefully recieved.

I think that is my frustration. I can't actually get as far as to talking directly to someone on the wing. I've only got his prisoner number because a very kind person on the telephone gave it to me on the Friday night (which I don't think he was supposed to). I have been told that that people on the wing have checked on him and he's ok, but I can't seem to ascertain whether he can or can't make phone calls. I wasn't sure if he could remember my number, but I've given it to loads of different people and included it on the emails I sent. I feel like I am banging my head on a brick wall.

Thank you so much. Yes it is a massive learning curve. And I think you are right about concentrating on myself. This is so hard. It's like you are blocked at every turn. All the web sites go on about prisons having the well being of the prisoner in mind, but it must be such a shock to hubby as we had no time to prepare. I am trying to prepare myself for him having to serve the full term (9 months) so I will need to adjust to it soon. I think once communication is established it will be easier. I jsut want to know that he still wants to talk to me and not in such a dark place he feels he can't do that.

Ah Tabs, that is so helpful, thank you so much. You have gone a long way to putting my mind at rest, and stopping it spinning round in circles. Porr hubby is going to get a lot of slightly panicked emails from me!

I am overwhelmed by the wonderful reponses. What inspirational and supporting people you are. You have helped me so much. I draw strength from you all. I send hugs back to you.

Hi, finally today I got a reply to one of the many emails I have sent. What joy a single email brought. He is ok, bit miserable obviously, but coping. Has been trying to phone me but my number is not set up on the security system yet. So relieved though, even though our communications are 3 days out of date. It's something. And hopefully he'll be able to phone me soon. But I think that when he goes to court in mid April they will probably enforce the full sentance as he has technically breached his order. I am trying to prepare myself for that. But it's not forever and I have a good support system and you lovely ladies to reach out to when I'm down. Xx

Just thought I would add an update. I have managed to make contact by phone (took a week). We now speak twice a day. I even managed a visit last week, which was wonderful and heart breaking all at the same time. This has been a learning curve like no other. It is almost impossible to achieve anything from the outside, all has to come from him. And he is not the most proactive of people. He is surviving and I am trying to achieve a damage limitation on the outside. He is up in court on the 19th April, but I think it will be adjourned. And he'll go back on remand I guess. It all seems so unnecessary. He was incredibly stupid, but obviously he's not the only one suffering. And keeping him in jail achieves nothing. Just to add an extra twist our landlord has decided she wants to sell the house, so I'll probably have move on my own. Still, each day is a day closer to his release, whenever that may be. Sending love and hugs to all you lovely ladies. Together we are stronger. Xx

Hi everyone,

I thought I would give you an update on this crazy journey. As you know my OH was in jail for running a cleaning app. I subsequently discovered that because his usual solicitor had covid at the time of the Magistrates hearing, the head of the legal team represented him and said, and I quote, "if you think you are going to get bail you can whistle" and didn't even apply for it. I was furious and wrote an outraged email to OHs own solicitor. She apologised profusily and they have been working much harder since.

The hearing was put back to 29th April and as soon as it started the judge immediately granted bail without being asked. So I got him home! Hurrah. 6 weeks he was in and was pretty traumatised by the experience (as was I).

Fast forward and the police seem to have almost completely lost interest, and our solicitors will be pushing for a dismissal. There is no evidence that the browsing history was deleted, which is what is against the SHPO, only that the cleaning app was run, which in itself is not a breach.

It feels almost like they were trying to pull a fast one, and given the result was 6 weeks in jail and the high cost of the our solicitors is infuriating. But onwards and upwards, and we are not out of the woods yet.

We have moved house and are enjoying a new start where nobody knows us. And I think we will come out of this stronger and my OH will be a better and happier person than the one whose mental health pulled him down that rabbit hole in the first place. The other good news is that my daughter has reached a place where she will talk to him and will come and stay with us without him having to leave, which is HUGE! So this is a positive post, and given some of the dark times we have been through, a message that it can and does get better. Yes we have the SOR restrictions etc., but generally life is good. There is light at the end of the tunnel, however far away it seems.

Hi. It's been exactly a year this week since I posted after OH had been arrested for supposedly breaching his SHPO. You will see up thread the whole story.
This week I have been having some flash backs to that terrible time, but I wanted to post to let you know where we ended up.

After he was relesased, various dates were set and then adjourned to hear the case. At this point he had not entered a plea as our solicitors were still waiting for evidence from the police. This was all pretty stressful as you can imagine, but eventually they didn't submit anything other than the fact he ran a cleaning app. We then heard that the prosecution were not going to offer anything else and were dropping the case. So OH had to go to court, plead not guilty and the case was dismissed.



We got all our kit back, but decided that he would continue to use the dumb phone he had (as the monitoring software on the smartphone was very flaky and the police had tried to make out he had been messing with it) and we sold his smart phone. He only has his laptop which has the software on it.

No solicitors fees (presumably had to be paid by police) and we were paid back the contribution we had made to legal aid (£7500).

Obviously a great result although we had to go through the whole prison thing. And my heart goes out to all of you who have been and are going through this too. The prison service seems broken. And it's so hard for those of us on the outside. But ultimately we have got through it and are living a good life. Both my children have now accepted him (indeed my son is living with us temporarily). We are very careful to comply with the conditions of both the SHPO and SOR. This time last year I was in such a dark place, and I guess this post is to say there is life after this. Different for sure, but still good.

Sending love and support to all you out there. You helped me so much in my time of need, and if I can help others with believing it gets better, and giving hope then that's great. Take care. X