Is there any hope?
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Hi everyone, first time poster and thank goodness you are all here (although frankly, none of us should have to be).
The knock came just over 3 weeks ago, metaphorically really for me as it was my ex husband who was arrested and we already live separately. But that was the day my life was turned upside down with the phone call that came. The police called me to tell me as we have a young son together (who they acknowledged they don't believe is at risk).
Ex is being investigated for downloading and saving a Cat C image, one at the moment but his devices are going through the usual triage stage which might take another couple of months apparently. Depending on what they find, they might get sent off for full forensic investigation afterwards which could take another year or so.
The police have been very open with me so far, and have said that if they find no further images of concern on his devices, their investigation will effectively be over with no further action as it wouldn't be in the public interest to try and prosecute one image that my ex denies having obtained on purpose (and he has no idea which image it's meant to be as somewhat understandably they don't show the suspect at interview). Ex has a history of looking at porn but swears he has never sought out anything to do with children, nor seen it, and although I know they often lie at the beginning until further evidence comes to light, I do believe that he has not gone looking for this.
If it is a huge error as he claims and a misjudgement of how old someone is (as he says he has only ever used porn sites after checking the age declarations on them), I'm still worried that he might have made that same misjudgement more than once. Or who knows, I could be living in cloud cuckoo land and he knows full well, doesn't this all mess with your head and make you doubt everything you thought you knew. Anyway, if the best case scenario is that there are no further IIOC on his devices, how likely is it that there would be no charges? From what I've been reading on this forum, others have still been charged with possession and I just have a sneaky feeling I can't rely on what the police are telling me. I'm sure it will differ between different police forces but still, am I crazy to even hope this could all go away? As bad as it would be for me (I have quite public facing job, and we still share the same surname), I'm devastated for my son who one day will be able to google his dad and find out what he's done. I'm trying not to fall down the rabbit hole of worrying about changing jobs, moving home, losing friends and my new partner too but I'm failing miserably at that.
is there ever such a thing as this just going away?
The knock came just over 3 weeks ago, metaphorically really for me as it was my ex husband who was arrested and we already live separately. But that was the day my life was turned upside down with the phone call that came. The police called me to tell me as we have a young son together (who they acknowledged they don't believe is at risk).
Ex is being investigated for downloading and saving a Cat C image, one at the moment but his devices are going through the usual triage stage which might take another couple of months apparently. Depending on what they find, they might get sent off for full forensic investigation afterwards which could take another year or so.
The police have been very open with me so far, and have said that if they find no further images of concern on his devices, their investigation will effectively be over with no further action as it wouldn't be in the public interest to try and prosecute one image that my ex denies having obtained on purpose (and he has no idea which image it's meant to be as somewhat understandably they don't show the suspect at interview). Ex has a history of looking at porn but swears he has never sought out anything to do with children, nor seen it, and although I know they often lie at the beginning until further evidence comes to light, I do believe that he has not gone looking for this.
If it is a huge error as he claims and a misjudgement of how old someone is (as he says he has only ever used porn sites after checking the age declarations on them), I'm still worried that he might have made that same misjudgement more than once. Or who knows, I could be living in cloud cuckoo land and he knows full well, doesn't this all mess with your head and make you doubt everything you thought you knew. Anyway, if the best case scenario is that there are no further IIOC on his devices, how likely is it that there would be no charges? From what I've been reading on this forum, others have still been charged with possession and I just have a sneaky feeling I can't rely on what the police are telling me. I'm sure it will differ between different police forces but still, am I crazy to even hope this could all go away? As bad as it would be for me (I have quite public facing job, and we still share the same surname), I'm devastated for my son who one day will be able to google his dad and find out what he's done. I'm trying not to fall down the rabbit hole of worrying about changing jobs, moving home, losing friends and my new partner too but I'm failing miserably at that.
is there ever such a thing as this just going away?
Cat C images are the least serious and if there is only 1, then a caution is a more likely outcome. If they dont find any images it will probably be an NFA.
What if it was only one image but a Cat A and just in the cache?
With a single Cat A image, it might come down to the context. The younger the child, the more likely a prosecution, for example.
Even if a person never saw it and it is only in the cache because they've clicked somewhere wrong by accident
what ended up happening?
Hello,
So I believe that it is really important to remember that every case is different here, so there isn't any way of predicting what is going to happen unfortunately.
However, my person gag thumbnails found on his device, all of the pictures found were in his cache. There were no searches, no accessible pictures, no intent. From a forensic report, it was determined that the pictures were downloaded were from a streaming app used to watch football matches. There was no evidence they were never clicked on, just because they were on one part of the website, which he never even interacted with, they were saved in the background onto his cache without his knowledge.
We had a two year journey, with media exposure and social services nvolvement. My person always swore blind that he had never seen any images, however, many times SS implied they 'knew' that he had looked at the images and be should just plead guilty. Just proves that they 'knew' nothing, as the above information came out in court, after waitung a year for trial, and the judge threw it out in court. He now has no restrictions, is allowed unsupervised contact and his life gag been allowed to go back to normal pretty much, albeit recovering from trauma caused and a mountain load of debt from legal fees.
Sorry for the long posts I just wanted to show you that in some cases the person can be telling the truth, sometimes things are stored into cache without the person knowing, so a forensic examination is key.
Keep strong and take care x
So I believe that it is really important to remember that every case is different here, so there isn't any way of predicting what is going to happen unfortunately.
However, my person gag thumbnails found on his device, all of the pictures found were in his cache. There were no searches, no accessible pictures, no intent. From a forensic report, it was determined that the pictures were downloaded were from a streaming app used to watch football matches. There was no evidence they were never clicked on, just because they were on one part of the website, which he never even interacted with, they were saved in the background onto his cache without his knowledge.
We had a two year journey, with media exposure and social services nvolvement. My person always swore blind that he had never seen any images, however, many times SS implied they 'knew' that he had looked at the images and be should just plead guilty. Just proves that they 'knew' nothing, as the above information came out in court, after waitung a year for trial, and the judge threw it out in court. He now has no restrictions, is allowed unsupervised contact and his life gag been allowed to go back to normal pretty much, albeit recovering from trauma caused and a mountain load of debt from legal fees.
Sorry for the long posts I just wanted to show you that in some cases the person can be telling the truth, sometimes things are stored into cache without the person knowing, so a forensic examination is key.
Keep strong and take care x
I forgot to mention above that my person had a range of categories found. This didn't make a difference in court as they were all inaccessible to him. Also, our solicitor did say that if a person was charged with one cat c image and nothing else, with a not guilty plea, there is a chance that it might not even make it to court as the costs of taking it to trial outweigh the public interest.
Brilliant update thank you