Family and Friends Forum

Hi,

Remember it might not become public!!!

It's a horrible feeling. I work in a school and had to endure a whole morning of a teacher training day about sexual abuse, online sexual images of children, the impact it has for the rest of the children's lives. I spent 3 hours trying not to cry! Felt exhausted by the end of the day.

My teenage daughter has also experienced this. She was getting a lift to school and the mum that was driving her started speaking about pedos and how to keep safe. She called me when she got to school so sad and stressed.

Before my persons case was finished in the courts every time the subject was mentioned around me I felt sick and panicked, thinking about how those people would react when they learnt I hadn't ran for the hills disgusted. Thankfully my persons case wasn't in the paper and now although it's not nice it doesn't bother me much now.

I also remind myself that a few years ago my opinion was as black and white as those that haven't experienced what we have. I too thought they were vile, should be locked up, named and shamed to keep the community safe ect.

It is horrible, having a secret is horrible and then that secret being potentially a harmful one if people found out, it keeps you on edge. It's an exhausting time.

I hope you don't have to experience a conversation again. x

Hi, I'm here because of my son who I love dearly and who I've walked with since the start of his journey. We are 10 months post sentencing and 10 months since the media reported his case. As the length of time increases I find myself mixing with colleagues that I have not previously worked and so they don't know my story unless I choose to tell them.
Yes there will be comments made (a comment was made only today in the office I work in) that sends that feeling of anxiety and sadness running through me but I now find I can either tell them my views on the situation or choose not to engage in the comment. It leaves me sad but I can now step back and remind myself that people judge because they know no better. As time passes I am able to pick myself up from those moments more quickly and remember that the person I love is the same person he's always been and that it's his behaviour I dislike and not the person.

Just as a side note are you an ODP?

I try to remind myself in these situations that black and white thinking takes a lot less emotional energy / critical thinking skills than looking at the whole picture and forming an intelligent debate from multiple perspectives xx

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Sad and worried, same! Coupled with the fact that based in my experience with my son, it wasn't totally accurate and downplayed the severe consequences. Raised at Trust level re the errors and the fact that the training advised deleting the images! No no no no no!



Harrowing to sit through initially, and then more harrowing thinking this is the training we are being given and they don't fully understand! How could anyone who has never been through this understand the complexities. The training was on the consequences and safeguarding side of things, but we know the police, SS and potentially YJS is not focussed on this, they're focussed on risk and threat. Training needs to catch up with the actuality of what happens and how this will be dealt with in the eyes of the law

None of my friends know about my person. He has been on the register since 2019.

I don't state an opinion and stay neutral. No one has asked me outright my opinion and I hope they dont. For majority it is black and white. I feel I can't offer education on stats and the multitude of reasons and circumstances that can to people involved in iioc, Because I worry people will ask more on why I know this info. And then the conflict of people seeing me as condoning it all.

I do say from time to time I generally believe in rehabilitation however. And I have always had a general interest in human behavior.

I remember years ago, way before I met my person, I read an article from a self identified 'P'. He said he never acted on it and he was getting therapy. It made me realize that unfortunately it cannot be denied that such people exist and that not all want to act on it and work hard to prevent it.

Also I was told by a family member they knew someone who described their taboo sexual interest (not iioc related however) as 'never thought about it or knew it to be within them until they were exposed'. I wonder if this is the case for a proportion of those involved in iioc.

I am concerned that someone's SOR status was known at your work....also there are many other offenses that land people with SORs not related to children. So unless that person who discussed it found out more in the matter, it sounds like they jumped to conclusions which can be very dangerous. I would hate for my person to have lesser quality treatment because of his history.

It is tough to hear the opinions of others. This is why I haven't told my friends because I'm convinced they would still to their black and white view point. The more 'distant' a person is to an offender the less likely they will try to see more than black and white.

You also cannot tell if people have first hand of abuse to themselves or loved ones....I have a friend impacted by iioc offending and so I can empathies and I don't want to bring it up around them.

What annoys me the most however is that some of my person's own friends who know of his offense will make comments (and even jokes!) in relation to iioc offending. Like calling people the 'n' or 'p' word. That is very jarring, and I think they don't take my person's offending seriously, or that what he did was deemed 'serious'.

Hi, I've had quite a few conversations with my carers along those lines. I think that people spout the "disgusting human being" and "should be locked up and the key thrown away" because they are trying to convince themselves that it could never happen to them. What they fail to understand is that they don't know what their other half is doing online 24/7 and it can absolutely happen to anyone and they wouldn't see it coming either. X

So very true LittleRobin3.... well said.....

Following on from what LittleRobin3 said, I completely agree, but I think the main reason that men in particular would react (or pretend to react) in absolute disgust is that many of them probably look at adult legal porn, and their partners don't know, so of course they wouldn't let on, so to act appalled is the natural reaction so they don't get found out

I think we were all naiive before all of this came into our lives. Personally it's given me a very cynical view of men and that's going to be very difficult to change

Ellbee. I was mainly referring to comments made by my female carers. I also had a decades long friendship with a male and when he told his wife what my ex had done, she said, "she must've known what he was doing". I absolutely did not. However, I know she said that because she's worried about what her husband gets up to behind her back. After all he used to see me on the odd occasion but had to do so in secret ????????. In the end I couldn't take the comments from her so the friendship with her husband had to go. I had another friend of 22 years who dropped me like a stone not when i told her about the knock but when I visited my then husband in prison. She said if it were her husband she would never see him again. I visited my husband because I wanted him to stay alive for my poor children's sakes who were 12 and 14 at the time of the knock. They weren't allowed any contact at all with him, no visits, calls or letters which was devastating and every bit as damaging as what he did in the first place, but that's a whole other thing! X

As little Robin has said it's mostly ignorance. People don't realise or believe that this could happen to them. I certainly didn't. And many don't see it coming as men hide it and keep it a dirty little secret. I'd love to meet someone who can spot an offender or potential offender because I could have done with those skills. Many of us in this forum work in safeguarding roles or jobs that involve teaching people how to be safe online and how to spot it and still the men in our lives do it. It's quite frightening that most people doing this are never found out and doing it secretly. I bet the numbers are much higher than we realise because you just don't know until they get caught. Also the fact that apps like Kik and other dark web sites exist and continue, along with the horrible algorithms that lead people to more dodgy content. Yes people need to keep away from it but the app providers and those moderating really need to do better also!

My generation (I'm a millennial) were just given the internet and never warned about the dangers of it whereas at least my child has already had a lot more education and support about the dangers than we ever had. If one good thing comes out of my situation it will be doing my all to prevent the next generation from being victims or offenders. I also think a lot of it is toxic masculinity, men have had the locker room talk, page 3 girls (and for the younger ones only fans), and wolf whistling and other massively inappropriate behaviour that they don't see issues with....the horrific trolling online of women by men, violence against women by men, the me too movement the whole man Vs bear argument. They just don't get it.

Also until this happened I must admit I didn't know the intricacies of the law. I bet a lot of teens don't know that sending a "privates" pic could land them in jail or on the SOR if the recipient or person in the photo is 17 (even if it's their own).

I hope to be more vocal about it going forward; it has to be talked about if we're ever going to prevent it, and it has to be less acceptable/accessible to the offenders.

I'll say to people making jokes or inappropriate sexual comments in the same way I explain to some of the older generation about their racist phrases/words by saying "no, we don't say that anymore".

I'm so sorry to hear that mystic. We're all here trying our best, we're all secondary victims of what our people have done. It affects us so much in all areas of our lives. It's so sad that it's us that seem to be the ones that have to fight this on top of everything else.

Like you said until there are different levels or better awareness of offences, people are all "tarred with the same brush". The knowledge just isnt there. People assume the worst.

I remember watching a courtroom drama movie where a witness was destroyed because they were a "convicted rapist". It didn't matter that it was 50yr ago, the man in question was 16 and it was his 15 yr old childhood sweetheart who consented, and he went on to marry and have a family with.

it's a horrible stigma to live with. People hear sexual offences or SOR etc and they immediately assume physical abuse of a child they've had contact with. Not teens that stupidly share their own photos, idiot husbands who don't know (or care) about consequences of what they do online.

Like many of the posters on this thread I have a strong instinctive urge to use this nightmare as a teaching moment, to somehow get through to 14-15 year old boys that this is where their behaviour will lead them. That's when my person's addiction started, at the dawn of the internet, and porn is now even more accessible. I want teenage boys and young men to see that the habit does harm real human girls: their future partners as well as those being abused online. Smoking carries warnings, gambling comes with 'when the fun stops, stop'. But because porn is by its very nature secretive and taboo, there's no movement to inform users as to its dangers.
something like an advert showing a couple in their pyjamas opening the door to the police at 6am, signs of children in the house, wedding photos on the wall, kids coming downstairs to see mummy crying in the sitting room and being told daddy's got to speak to the police. Something that brings this reality home. Who would fund it and allow it to be shown on their app? As a pop-up on legal porn-sites?

LisaMargeMaggie

StopitNow already do fund and produce adverts of the sort you describe and they can be found online.