Family and Friends Forum

Hello all …. unfortunately I joined “ The Knock” club with the rest of you since the beginning of February this year. I know how every one of you feels currently as the only description I can give is that someone has dropped a bomb within the home which has well and truly exploded. I am a mum to x2 children ages 12 and 10. My husband who has brought them up from babies but is step father not biological dad was arrested. I have been together with him for the last 8 years and married for 5 years. We own a house together and usually live together with the children. My husband was arrested for online sexual communication with a child ( 13 years old) who was in fact a police decoy. He has been unable to live in the family home and only been aloud supervised contact with the children in the family home and community supervised by myself. Social services were quickly involved and we was placed under section 47 enquires. Social services have spent time with myself as mum and both children and are happy that the children didn’t come to any harm. They quickly assessed myself as the protective factor. The children constantly asked to see my husband and a safety plan was quickly created working with the police and social services. This has been absolutely followed and we managed to have some family time with my husband as hard and as strict as the restrictions were. I am in no place what so ever to currently navigate our futures as a family or separate. Police searched our home address and took x2 phones one work phone and one personal they did my husbands work phone as an emergency and gave this back as was clear. This is a first offence for my husband and had never been in trouble with the police prior to this. We have had some deep lengthly chats and my husband has confessed to being on a chat room for around the last 10 years and has confessed to having a problem/addiction to this speaking sexually to women. My husband has had the chance and opportunity to tell myself and family who are supporting and haven’t turned their backs on him the whole truth. He has also seeked professional help which is ongoing. My husband stated he had a x3 week conversation to who he thought was a women and half way through she told him she was 13 my husband stupidly carried on and had a sexual communication conversation with the decoy. There was no talks of meeting each other but my husband sent x3 inappropriate photographs. May this year/ My husband’s devices came back all clear and no search history or anything illegal was found. Fast forward to June this year and we got the news last week that my husband’s case had been given a NFA. Something that I didn’t expect to happen in a million years seen as he had admitted this to me and been completely honest. It was NFA due to lack of evidence and the conversation took place away from the home address so it came up different locations also when checking history and husbands devices his account also shown that it was hacked last year so someone else has had access to his account so evidence wise they couldn’t say it was him for sure. For reference the IP address matched our home address. Because he has only been interviewed once and gave no comment he wasn’t cautioned as you have to admit it to receive a caution.This week social services reopened with the update from the police and came out and spoke with the children and asked how it’s been going they explained safety plan has been stuck to but want to spend more time with dad and dad to be able to take to football ect whilst mum is working both could explain they understood police found not enough evidence ect. Both stated they feel safe with dad and if ever any concerns would escalate to myself and wider family. Both children have been told and understand the offence in an age appropriate way. Social worker then came to speak to me and asked what I wanted I said to feel in control of my own life and make decisions for myself and children I explained I won’t just be moving him back in ect and explained trust has been broken but that’s something for my self and husband to work on not the local authority. I explained that my children will always come before my own needs and are my purpose and my priority ect. She explained that she see’s my husband as low risk from speaking with the police regarding what they had on him. She said she is happy for me to manage the risk as their protective factor and is happy if I wanted to do a phased return home with unsupervised acecess. We will have a safety plan that consist of my husband not being able to do personal care and knocking on doors before entry but this is it. Before this can happen she has x2 sessions booked in with my husband next week to talk about the help he’s had regarding online chat rooms and what he’s done to brake this habbit ect which I think is fair. Who knows what the future now holds but I am back fully in control of mine and my children’s life’s. I know this isn’t the usual end result on here but wanted to share my story and tell you ladies never give up hope xxx

Thank you all x

They interviewed him once to which he said "no comment" they didn't do a second interview. If they called for a second interview he was ready to fully admit to this. Very rare for this to happen. Evidence wise there just wasn't enough to charge him x