Family and Friends Forum

DevastatedWife

Member since
December 2022

40 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 9:23amReport post

The police said that in the forensics search of my husbands devices, they found images and videos of toddlers. My husband told me after the arrest that it was only teenagers, so obviously this came as an even worse shock to find out the ages of the children. My husband is saying those images/videos of toddlers were on the web pages he was scrolling through but he didn't click into those images or watch the videos. So he thinks the police are wrong to say he viewed them. Could that be true? We have a 8 month old baby, so obviously it's incredibly upsetting and worrying if my husband did view images/videos of toddlers being abused. It's all worrying, but that particularly worries me.

rainyday52

Member since
April 2023

447 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 11:05amReport post

This is my biggest fear. In our case it's our son and his children are now top junior age so not quite the same relevance as in your case. Our son has admitted he has no idea what exactly might be discovered by forensics for similar reasons as your OH, and I swing between accepting he really doesn't know because so much stuff was unsolicited and he ignored it rather than reported/deleted and then my mind goes to the unthinkable opposite. It's dreadful as his mum so I'm sure it's much worse in your circumstances. I do try to remind myself that even if he did look at that kind of image it doesn't prove that his sexual attraction lies there and his devices would show if he received the images using specific search terms.

Did the police tell you because of your child's age? Or did your OH give permission for you to know all the details? Hopefully someone with some better info and maybe personal experience will come along to offer some wise thoughts but I can totally understand how horrific this must be for you. But it's not a crime to trust what someone tells us is true (especially if they have no track record of being anything but honest in the time we've known them) and how we hold that within the tension of keeping a bit of space for them to have been lying all along is some challenge for us in this journey. If you discover how to do it then I'm sure many of us on here would love to know the details!!!! Solidarity and empathy coming your way xx

Cherry

Member since
January 2023

107 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 11:17amReport post

Post deleted by user


Edited Tue March 12, 2024 9:18pm

rainyday52

Member since
April 2023

447 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 11:28amReport post

So that's 3 of us in a few minutes with similar scenarios of how our person claims that some of the images came to be on their device. It doesn't prove anything of course and absolutely doesn't excuse them from doing whatever they did do, and perhaps people will say I'm naive, but it does suggest that it's not an uncommon situation. It might not help legally but is a tiny bit of comfort in the personal and emotional stakes perhaps as we try to work out our feelings for our person.

Edited Sun July 2, 2023 11:28am

GZ

Member since
December 2021

164 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 12:31pmReport post

Hi,

Sorry if you already know some of this, in charges 'making' means that they made a copy of the image. As soon as you click on an image it makes a copy in your phone cache, so the images don't even have to be saved to your phone. Downloading them saves it to your phone cache- unfortunately 'making' a copy of the image, it is hard to tell if they have actually viewed the image. The police forensics just look for the presence of them- you would have to pay for an in-depth forensic search to see if they actually viewed the image, but as the image is downloaded it seems as though they viewed it.

sometimes on these websites, you can get sent a photo, or click on a photo to view it and it will download and save to your phone cache. Often this doesn't just download one photo, it can download a few/hundreds at the same time.



So the presence of images doesn't mean they have necessarily viewed them, they could have been downloaded when they viewed other images. So they could be telling the truth, or they could not remember it all, or not be telling the truth. However the presence of these images is what the police care about and it's very hard to disprove they didn't view them

Bitterbean

Member since
December 2021

635 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 3:56pmReport post

Post deleted by user


Edited Tue November 7, 2023 9:13pm

rainyday52

Member since
April 2023

447 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 5:35pmReport post

Thank you GZ and Bitterbean,

This is actually bad news which has an element of good news I think as far as knowing and forgiving our people. Bad because it means the punishment could be quite severe due to how the law works, but for myself (as it's a son and not a partner perhaps) I can support him more readily in the circumstances you describe, although of course not condoning what he did do.

I am however concerned about how the type of images which he possibly/probably had no interest in viewing but were there on the device might impact how children's services view his risk to his children which will result in real damage to their growing up years if they are prevented from having an open and loving relationship with their father. I can see why it's vital for our people to work on themselves and for the supervising people, whether partners or other family members like us, to really think about safeguarding strategies in advance.

Edited Sun July 2, 2023 5:37pm

Bitterbean

Member since
December 2021

635 posts

Posted Sun July 2, 2023 7:00pmReport post

Post deleted by user


Edited Sun November 19, 2023 8:41pm

Parkerpoo1

Member since
July 2022

252 posts

Posted Mon July 3, 2023 6:24pmReport post

Post deleted


Edited Thu December 21, 2023 10:08am