Family and Friends Forum

James McAuley from ABR solicitors is fantastic and really cares about his clients. I would highly recommend him. He travels all over the country.

Same situation SallyAnn, though my son was not an adult at the time of the offence, but is now. 3 years since the knock for us. Absolutely devastated and no idea what this will mean.

I am so sorry you are feeling this way.

It's so hard isnt it. I am also on here because of my son.

Sometimes I think I will wake up from this nightmare and then its hits you like a ton of bricks again and this is now our reality.

I love my son and we are trying to support him to get help and do everything he can to get support but like you sometimes I look at him and think who is this stranger that I would never think could do what he has done.

The mixed emotions are like a rollercoaster.

I hope you find away through this, this forum has been an amazing help to me in the last few weeks and im sure you will find some good support here.

I'm so sorry you find yourself on this forum.

Another mum of an adult son here. He now lives here with us and over time we have discovered that he is still the same old person we knew from pre this nightmare. But we are also aware that we will wobble once we know exactly what he was looking at. We also know that we will then get back our equilibrium about holding that information alongside the good stuff.

As for the fear that something even more terrible might be disclosed (although our son has promised that there won't be anything) we are just learning to put that on a high mental shelf and will deal with it if we have to in the future as we've realised that living with that fear is just intolerable.

That might sound strong but today is a good day and other days I might not sound as confident! That's why I love this forum as I can be myself whatever and however I'm feeling xx

Another Mum adjusting to what you quite rightly call a s***t show. You are constantly mired in shit. The problem with s***t is it sticks to you!
That is being negative today,another day I can cope with it.

Please give time for yourself as well as others. Try & focus on the practicalities & not the 'What ifs'. That is the way to stay sane. Try to write down your feelings. You are grieving for the son you thought you knew. He is still in there!



Male relatives take a different path. Give them time & space to process this. If they are anything like my husband, they can't cope with not 'fixing it'. I do worry for them. I am not ashamed of my son(although appalled) so I speak to friends who are supportive.

Keep checking into the forum & helpline. Best wishes

Hi,

Sorry that this has happened to you.



Just wanted to say the same, I am here because of my son and I feel the same. He doesn't seem to comprehend what it is like for the rest of the family. He really does not understand the problems he has caused and the problems that may come our way in the future. It drives me mad. I really don't even think he wants to listen to the consequences that he is going to face. We have court in May.

I didn't go into magistrates court because I didn't want to hear it and I thought it may make me look at my son differently if I know exactly what he has done. I didn't want to hear that from the judge.



So I completely understand where you are at. I don't really have the answers but you are not alone. I think it's probably a normal reaction.

On the other hand, I also see how sad he is and the pain he's going through, which is hard to watch.

I can not turn the love off for my son and never will.

Hope things get easier for you.

Take care

Hi,

Sorry that this has happened to you.



Just wanted to say the same, I am here because of my son and I feel the same. He doesn't seem to comprehend what it is like for the rest of the family. He really does not understand the problems he has caused and the problems that may come our way in the future. It drives me mad. I really don't even think he wants to listen to the consequences that he is going to face. We have court in May.

I didn't go into magistrates court because I didn't want to hear it and I thought it may make me look at my son differently if I know exactly what he has done. I didn't want to hear that from the judge.



So I completely understand where you are at. I don't really have the answers but you are not alone. I think it's probably a normal reaction.

On the other hand, I also see how sad he is and the pain he's going through, which is hard to watch.

I can not turn the love off for my son and never will.

Hope things get easier for you.

Take care

My son also put me though all you have spoken about. He was sentenced in May 23. It took a few years for anything to happen as it was before covid when his house was raided by the police, so with covid it took quite a while for the tech to be checked. He was done for looking at indecent pictures of children. He swears to this day he did not know they were on his tech, but did say he had been on the dark web looking for hacks for his games and also he watched henti which for anyone who does not know that is Japanese animated porn. My son tried to deal with everything himself so i did not even know he had been to court in January 23. If i had i'd have been able to support him as he suffers with his mental health and at present is on the waiting list to be assessed for autisum. He has never been able to talk to people about anything and shows no emotions or has any empathy towards people. He wanted to pled not guilty in court, but was told to pled guilty as his "I didn't know they were on there" would not hold up against a jury and it would be far worse for him if he did that. So my son pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months suspeneded for 24 months also 180hrs community service and put on the register for 10 years. Unfortunately that was not the end of the matter for him as he was told he could get a phone so we got him a cheap standard phone not a smart one but what we didn't notice was it was internet enabled and he never reported having it so go put on remand. They then checked where he was staying at the time and took his ps3 even tho he had that years back and never really used it also they tried to do him for not reporting he had a smart tv. He was put into prison until sentencing for those offences and spent 2 months in there. When it came to sentencing i pointed out to his barrister that there is no way he could have registered his tv with them at the time of getting it as he had that before the case even went to court the first time round same for the ps3. As the wording on the sohp says you must register the device on acquistion of device so unless he could go back in time there was no way he could do that, the judge even got them to check the wording on it to make sure. So they dropped the charges for the ps3 and tv.

So moving forward to now I am still supporting my son as I believe him when he says he did not know they were there and for anyone that also knows my son have all said they can't believe what has happened as that is not him. Unfortunately tho this has had a knock on affect for me due to work, because altho my son does not live with me, my line of work requires an enhanced dbs check and it has come up on that so i am in the process of working out what this means for me.

No one can tell you it will definitely be reported in the media and on line. It's literally down to luck. A lot of cases don't get reported at all so try not to worry, easier said than done though I know xx