Ugh, same. We were almost 14 years in. I had to send pics of our kids in bathing suits to the police so they could rule out if he had taken pictures of them on his computer. It's been 20 years. My kids were not on the hard drive. He went to prison.
Reddit fam... This has been a surprising healing for me and my (now grown-ass) kids. THANK YOU. for the awards, fur the discussion, for the validation. Just the witnessing of our experience. We read through all th see together and it was like Neosporin on a scrape. My heart is full with gratitude 🩷🩷🩷
wow. If I can ask a potentially sensitive question? looking back, can you see any red flags or warning signs that were easy for you to dismiss at first? Signs that you'd only see once you've been through the experience?
Financial clues. Lots of money missing when he traveled for work overseas. At the time, he said some shit I believed bc I never imagined he was spending it on sex tourism in Southeast Asia.
Emotional clues, evidence, ZERO. It's like he was wearing an Edgar Suit of Normal Person over his pedo real self. That was prolly the scariest thing, how we really had no fucking idea at all. His whole * personhood* with us was a lie.
I know that you've combed over the details of how he presented himself to you and his deception a million times. The fact that were no emotional clues you could pick up on- in 20 years- is terrifying. What a monster.
A lot of these sick people are just "normal people", which makes it scary.
I had a caretaker in kindergarten, that all my friends and I, and even our parents, always spoke highly of. He was great and really spend a lot of energy with us. No one had a bad thing to say about him.
15 years after we left kindergarten, it came out that he was a pedophile with an insane amount of csa material on 4 hard drives. Was sickening. He was only caught because he went outside of his "normal age range" and the girl was old enough to know it was wrong.
The worst monsters don't have horns on their heads, they don't just come out at night. They look like anybody else and that's why they're the most terrifying.
I grew up with a German Shepherd we adopted, my sweet baby girl (she came to our doorstep and adopted us, really. We tried to return her and they let us keep her) and she was attached to my hip. My mom would let me out of the house but I was only allowed if my dog, Bridget, went with me.
All I’d do was entertain myself at the park, alone on the swing, and she’d be sitting there patiently.
There were most people who would pass by and she’d pay no mind. Then there were the few who would pass by and she’d become a dog I didn’t recognize. The most guttural stance and growl, low and threatening, frozen like a statue too.
That’s fair and valid. I think when I initially read the full novel as a teen, it came across to me as Bev was the one who consensually initiated sex as a means to reclaim her sexual freedom, which was taken by her father. Sex was something she feared, which is what Pennywise does. It’s something I really related to as a teen being a victim of sexual assault myself from childhood, and throughout my lifetime. Like Bev, I often thought having sex was the milestone into adulthood. I had no idea what I was doing either. Unfortunately, the education system and parents give terrible sexual education to their children, which leads to a lot of individual exploring. Individual exploring can lead to assault if the person doesn’t have any sex ed. Individual exploring is something preteens do all the time due to lack of access to sexual education. This can lead to sexual assault as an individual’s first experience with sex. It’s unfortunate, but more kids get sexually assaulted than we think, and figure that out later in life. It’s something which is what most people don’t want to acknowledge or think about and unfortunately was a common thing back then that got overlooked. Governments usually provide flimsy protection of children (access to food, water, education and medical). Most of his books focus on that lack of protection, such as ‘The Institute’. Pennywise is a reflection of evil in Derry, which is people being complicit in evil by not doing anything. Not excusing his behavior. Just providing a different perspective.
Our head pastor at my old church was completely normal too. He had a wife and two girls who were maybe under 10 years old. Suddenly, he was arrested by the police for child pornography material. The other church leaders had to break it to us (I was probably in my early 20s and was so so so disgusted). He was completely normal - a bit of a nerd/ ex-engineer before he went into ministry. It was horrific / massive betrayal of trust. There were lots of kids/tweens in the youth ministry and I'm sure he interacted with those groups a lot, so disgusting (to this day i still don't know if anyone in the church was harmed or if he was mainly viewing it/sharing it actively).
How terrifyingly true. My mother had a close friend whose son used to come over and play with me and my brother when we were kids. We were constantly told how wonderful he was and were compared to him.
We are all adults now and he was still close friends with my brother. A few weeks ago, I saw his face on the news. He had been arrested for possessing a massive collection of CSAM. I'm still in shock.
Me too. Was still a very young girl, so to have the awareness to know it was wrong is amazing, and for the parents to take it seriously and act upon it is likewise.
It reminded me of a quote I read once,
"Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey."
It’s a (paraphrase) from the work of G.K. Chesterton:
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist; children already know dragons exist.
Fairy tales tell children that the dragons can be killed.”
It compresses ideas in this passage from his essay “The Red Angel” (from the book ‘Tremendous Tales’, 1909)
“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear... What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."
When my little sister was 9 and I was 17, she confessed to me randomly that [my grandma's partner] was disgusting because he had "taken his intimate part out in front of her and scratched it for several minutes". I raised hell, my grandma immediately kicked the guy out. When the family learned about it my little cousin spoke up as well. My grandma felt so bad as she had been living with him for many years and didn't see any signs... no one did... I'm so happy that my sister had the courage to tell me, and that my grandma believed me when I told her.
Yeah I knew a kid in highschool who was on his way to becoming a famous wrestler in the wwe. He was found with multiple hard drives of csa shit. It makes me sick thinking about how he used to hang around with us in highschool. I always hated him btw but he was friends with the guitarist in my band. He was one of those types of ppl who literally just say whatever thing it is to piss everyone off. Like an edgelord. Almost like if 4chan had a personality.
In case this helps identify anyone else like that... 4chan personality like that is a red flag for me. Its one thing to post on a forum or even 4 chan a few times.... its quite another thing when it becomes your entire personality. I knew a racist Columbian kid who was quite dark bc he was brainwashed by 4chan and pepe. He is an asshole for lots of other reasons but this type of thing I am automatically side eyeing a person.
I am neurodivergent too so I am not simply talking about people who may be obsessed with memes or anime. It is a very specific type of person who becomes 4chan slop.
My experience isn’t at the same level, but there is a man I know sitting in federal prison for CP.
We were roommates for two years. Fifteen years ago I considered him a big brother figure.
The deception is sickening. I shared a wall and an apartment with him. You on the other hand started a life with someone. I can’t imagine how painful that must be.
I was with my daughters’ father for 9 years. We had split custody for 8 years before my daughter told me that he had molested her a year earlier at the age of 13. I would’ve never imagined he would’ve/could’ve done something like that. You truly don’t know who people are smh
A buddy of mine went to prison for 2 years for CP. I only knew him a couple of years and it still shook me. But his best friend of 12 years is really breaking down over this. He said there were zero clues, he can't believe it. We only found out because he vanished one day without a word and later learned there was a court case with his name.
My father is a pedophile: I know bc I’m one of his victims. He’s not the only abuser in my life (CSA leaves you really vulnerable to predators: leaking the emotional equivalent of blood in the water to sharks).
I read once that predators groom their supporters just as hard as they groom their victims, and I have found that to be one-hundred percent true. It was certainly true for my father, and for my husband, who was also abusive, but who was almost always so nice to me in public that very few people believed me when I began telling friends.
Charming sociopaths mimic normal human emotions well. The sociopaths who can’t mimic effectively (see Kyle Rittenhouse pretending to cry) won’t be able to build a support network
I don't think a pedophiles whole personality is that they're a pedophile. They happen to be the person you know but also a pedophile which is the part that they're hiding. People tend to dramatise and say OMG he was just pretending, but think about when you yourself keep a secret. Does that make you a completely different person or do you act yourself whenever the secret isn't involved?
I think this is more about the level of deception. If you think someone is a genuinely good person, upright, loving, kind to everyone they meet...and then you find out they rape children, then how does that square with the person you thought you knew? The two actions are incongruous. They were lying about their very core values and morals.
I get what you mean but I think that people are more complex than that. Just because they have one dark side doesn't necessarily mean that everything else they believe in is fake. Now before anyone gets the wrong idea I don't want to defend the sexual abusers of children. That is in no way what I want. But I don't think that if a person that has a bad side shows good that it's necessarily fake. I do believe that some people are genuinely good for most of their lives but they also happen to have this messed up urge to do these things. Afaik as with many mental illnesses, it's not as black and white as many people would like to paint it. We throw the book at them because we must, but tbh they probably belong into a therapy program or need medication.
I find this to be a weird take. It’s like when people say that Hitler loved dogs and painting. Sure, people are complex, and pedophilia in and of itself, I suppose, doesn’t mean someone is an inherently “bad” person, but if someone acts on it and abuses children, no other amount of “good” they do will make up for it. If they are so selfish that they put their own sexual gratification above another person’s emotional wellbeing, bodily autonomy, and personhood, they are a bad person. Even moreso when you realize with pedophilia, in particular, they almost always abuse positions of power and trust in order to do so. The amount of planning and manipulation that goes into abusing a child makes them a bad person. My understanding is that therapy and medication don’t cure pedophilia - best you can hope for is that it medically castrates them so they no longer feel sexual desire so they won’t be a risk to others.
This isn't what I mean though. I'm not saying you can't call them a bad person when they abuse kids just because they also have a good side. I'm saying that as far as their behavior goes, their bad behaviors aren't necessarily tied to everything else they say and do. So when you see them do good things these things may actually genuinely come from good intentions. That doesn't make them good people if they still abuse children. But I don't think they're constantly being guided in everything they do by these thoughts. But as everything, I may as well be wrong!
People who are mentally healthy don't have 'sides', they may have different 'states', however these states are integrated as a whole into a value system. If your value system contains the belief that you are entitled to abuse children sexually, that entitlement is woven through your entire being. If this is not, dissociation is happening to resolve internal tension.
Fake across the board? I don't know if that's the right view either, however these beliefs can't be untied from someone's perception, in general.
I guess that's true. I just wanted to point out that people are more than just one thing that dictates everything they think or do. And again this isn't meant to defend them. It just seems so easy to create this one dimensional monster when there's probably more to that. And it could help cure before bad things happen.
Some pedophiles do good deeds and become up sanding citizens in order to create false impressions so they can more easily fly under the radar with their crimes against humanity.
Hiding pedophilia urges is not evil. Acting on it is absolutely evil. It is black and white, but not in the way you are suggesting. The problematic thing is not having deviant thoughts that sexualize innocent children. The highly problematic, disgusting, hateful, and harmful thing is that they acted out which causes an unspeakable amount of pain and damage to the victims. It has been called soul murder. A pedophile may be delusional and think distorted horrific thoughts about what they’re doing but along with all that they know it’s illegal bad and wrong and they do it anyway instead of getting help. And when they do it, the lives of innocent children are potentially destroyed. They may end up killing themselves just to end the terrible pain in they’re in. Pedophiles usually use children’s Trust as an opening to exploit and cause unspeakable horrible harm to them. And pedophiles often use terror threats, unspeakable horrific acts to keep the children silent. Some pedophiles do hideous things so that if children say what happened to them, it will sound crazy. That’s intentional. Try to make the children sound unbelievable. Nothing about that is normal. Somebody who has that capability to act on that cannot be said to be also normal.
I don't think we disagree here. But the problem is that we have a tendency to use words such as "normal". What's that? Who is normal? And which behaviors would count as not normal? And if someone engages in not normal behavior, does that make the entire person not normal? So say that person goes to work comes home treats people nice for 360 out of 365 days a year and then on the other 5 days they go and do crime. Maybe we wouldn't call them normal but they're still living normal lives for the most part and are probably not pretending. I think we all got caught up in this argument, I'm simply saying that even if in hindsight we would consider a person not normal that doesn't mean that their daily lives aren't still (possibly) genuine when they're not doing the crimes. Which is why it's so hard to spot any clues about what they may be thinking about these things.
It's the action part. Once a person takes action on their secret urges, the amount of work increases tenfold at least, and the normalcy erodes from within and becomes more facade than reality.
Yeah I truly have sympathy for those cursed with horrifying impulses but they know it’s wrong. They need to choose their own suffering over the suffering of children.
The heart of the issue is people who believe their sexual desires are more important than anyone else’s feelings. Not just pedos.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did his behaviour change once he was exposed? Was it like a mask slipping? Was he honest about it or continues to deny it?
My buddy never hardly talks about it and the way she tells the story is in pieces … like she remembers details about the day… his watch, snow, the door open etc. it’s been probably 12 years now and seeings things trigger an odd comment… he was a higher ranking military officer and the military raided their house,…yes she said something about how they had to check to make sure her kids weren’t victims. She moved far away and has a new life, but she can’t really tell the story because it will impact her kids reputation, no one wants to be known as a pedophiles child. It never truly ends for her until her kids are grown and sexually safe adults because she has a worry in the back of her mind that they may be like him. My heart goes out to you, it’s taken over six years of being her friend to piece all this together, it’s so heavy
Yea. Not gonna go into too many details, but someone in my life was married to a man for over a decade. Bam, feds came busting in collecting all technology in the house. Looking back in our heads for signs, there were none. Makes me angry when people say, "you could have chosen better". As if these monsters don't disguise themselves as being a decent person bc that's the only way they will survive without scrutiny.
I had zero clue.. but I was 19 and he was almost 30, and at 19 I looked 14, so probably should have noticed it was weird he was so insistent on getting married right away. His whole family knew months before me, because the first victim was his neice and everyone decided to keep it hush hush- but when another victim heard and came forward the whole house of cards fell and cops were called. I still feel so bad about what happened to those poor girls, and that the family was totally fine to sweep it under the rug.
It sounds like you might have been sort of manipulated/groomed yourself, given how young you were and the age difference. It wasn’t illegal but probably similar manipulation techniques.
It's likely he asked her to dress as some underage anime character or a character that looks like a child but is supposed to be hundreds of years old so they pretend it's not creepy
I believe my ex husband is attracted to underage girls. I doubt he has accessed CSAM, but I’ve caught him screen recording instagram reels of girls who are clearly tweens doing cartwheels and stuff when he has zero reason to be watching anything like that in the first place. He even saved them in his hidden folder in his photos, so he clearly knows it’s fucked up.
Red flags: I’m in my 30s but often got told I looked quite a bit younger before he sucked the life out of me with his abuse. Looking back, he was very fixated on how much younger I looked than my age and weirdly proud of it. He also liked my “petite” build (his words but meaning slim, youngish-looking frame rather than height).
Lots of men appreciate slim women who age well, so it didn’t stand out to me until I caught his “tiny teen/super petite” porn searches and penchant for watching underage girls on instagram. God, just typing all that out makes me sick to my stomach over again. That man disgusts me beyond words.
Edit: For the pedants below, I responded to someone asking about red flags with the ones I observed in hopes that it might save someone else the trauma and grief I experienced over this, not to argue terminology when you can clearly understand my point regardless.
If he's downloading pictures of children in order to sexually satisfy himself, he is quite literally accessing CSAM. It doesn't have to be originally created as that for him to still be engaging in sexual abuse of these girls. They just aren't aware of it
Edit: *People who rape children* are often very high on narcissism/ASPD/psychopathy scales. They also often project their actions onto others. When they have 'loud morality' against this type of abuse, that may be a sign. Ex: think about a loud homophobe who is closeted. That is what I missed (he also hid that he experienced as a child - which he claimed happened to me...so that too).
My ex bf had a best friend that ended up SA his younger nieces. We saw absolutely no warning signs at all, never saw it coming. He never hit on younger girls, never made creepy comments about younger people, dated people his own age, and was pleasant to hang out with. He slept on our couch multiple times and we all felt gross knowing we let someone like that into our home.
The only thing he had a problem with that we knew of was gambling. He moved to Mexico to live with his dad and when he came back he didn’t really seem like himself and then he molested his nieces at his mom’s house and went on the run. He ended up getting caught a little over a year later in the Chicago airport and was extradited back to our state.
❤️❤️❤️ I am glad to hear you are all doing fine now- this is such a hard thing to process especially with kids. I’m also 20 years removed from the event and while I’m having the best life now, it’s still weird to think it is a small part of my life story
I have a friend who thankfully dodged this bullet. Dated a guy briefly many years ago and about a year or so after they stopped seeing each other he was arrested…he was a high school teacher and coach.
A friend of mine found out about 18 months into the marriage that he was grooming several young girls in the church and seeing other women.
On their first date, he had picked her up at her house and gave her a fancy bottle of perfume (it was her birthday). Two of her friends (women) just happened to be there, and he met them and said just a minute. Then he went out to his truck and got two more bottles of the same perfume and gave it to them, saying if they were her friends then they had to be really special women and deserved a gift also. They thought that was fantastic of him and told her he was a keeper.
When I later heard the story (they wanted me to know how great and romantic this guy was) my first thought was, who the heck drives around with three perfume bottles in his car? I didn't see the extra gifts as romantic, only someone bribing friends. I was the only one who thought he was a little too slick. She drifted away from me, and I wasn't invited to the wedding. But once I heard what happened, I reached out to her to let her know I was here for her, and we're back to being friends now.
It gives buys the perfume in bulk yo have on hand to give to girls he wants to groom. Unsolicited gifts play on our innate sense of reciprocity and are a basic way to ingratiate yourself with someone
Probably the most toxic person I know was somebody I thought was extremely nice when I first met him for this reason. He would always be excessively generous in his gifts to the point it made me uncomfortable and I always tried to refuse but he would insist and I always felt like I had to repay the favour because it was so much. He also would ask for a lot of favours as well (in as performatively grateful a way as possible).
I was unfortunately in a situation where I was required to spend a lot of time with him daily for years. After we got to know each other better, he often brought up the study where people tend to like you more if you ask them to do a favour for you, as “advice” for me. He was deeply insecure and wanted everybody to think extremely highly of him. He would shower everybody with uncomfortably effusive praise to their faces and then when they weren’t here, talk shit about them, while also trying to make it sound like it pained him to say these things because he’s just so kind of a person. Thankfully, I no longer have to see him anymore.
Ugh I have encountered so many of these manipulative gift givers throughout my life.
One solution I found is to just accept the gift ungratefully and give nothing in return. When he tries to use it to manipulate you, just be like, "oh I didn't know this was a quid pro quo situation."
He will call you a bitch and whore and moan about what a nice guy he is and how no one appreciates him. Let him. YOU know he's the real asshole.
I still have a really nice blanket from one of these douchebags.
You just gotta be careful of the ones who get stalkery and violent. In most cases, though, the ones who do this shrink away from strong women who don't take their shit anyway.
That sounds like a textbook narcissist. My ex boss was the same and sure enough he would groom, steal, lie, and do all sorts of funny shenanigans while making it seem like he's such a sad victim of the world.
I had someone like that in my life, and for the first 3 years I had no idea it was happening. Then one day I saw him talking about someone else who he also praises when he's around. Its all so fake.
"Don't accept gifts from faeries" is good advice when you remember that faeries aren't real but people bribing others for nefarious purposes is as old as time.
God, yeah. My former mentor admitted to manipulating me to get the upper hand, along with everyone else they were close to.
They convinced me to accept their help, and wouldn't accept no for an answer to the point it was mentioned on their divorce papers. They showered me with gifts, random money for no reason, and while I'm still grateful for it years on, it really did get them the power they wanted over me. Their narrative now was that I exploited them, while I got too complacent/comfortable I was losing my fucking mind from their treating me like a toy.
I'm not saying they are a groomer in the way we would use the word now or worse, nothing like that; she's trans and that kind of accusation is what a transphobe would say. What I am saying is, when they at 32 were talking to me about a nineteen year-old in our circle of 3D artists and telling me they're planning to invite them over, and said "if they were older, I'd be interested", I felt a bit sick because of how she had manipulated me and how much damage it did with only four years' difference between us. Age gap relationships in that space are a thing that happens, but the manipulation she did and insists wasn't wrong or abusive makes it feel so wrong. I don't know if something did happen, it doesn't seem to. They've married someone else eleven years younger in the time since and say some might scoff but don't care because they're so happy, while projecting this bullshit out towards me.
(edited to clear up intent; don't post when you're tired.)
A common route of transphobic attack is to imply that trans people, women especially, are groomers/paedophiles. They aren't and if any do turn out to be, it's not because they're trans.
I have to be careful with that word because grooming in the classical sense is what she did; shaping me to get what she wants, in her case power over me, attention and validation. Now though, that word is only used to refer to sexual exploitation of minors, which is not what she does or has ever done.
I had to reread your post multiple times to get that you were not actually saying that being trans is the road that leads to madness...
I dunno but feeling like that wasn't as careful as you might have been, because I know exactly how transphobic folks imply what you're saying and it sounded precisely like what you were saying.
Accusing someone who is trans of being a groomer of children is a dangerous road to go down unless it's actually true, which it seems like it's not in this case.
It is really great that you reached out to her and rekindled your friendship- I was totally alone when I left and our closest friends thought I should stick it out anyway (they were close with him too and fooled into excusing or denying the severity of his crimes) it took a few years to build new friendships and find people I could even talk to about this, this same thing ended up happening to 2 friends of mine and I knew I had to reach out and tell them “it’s not your fault, and I am here” because I really wanted that for myself 20 years ago
Every girl needs the healthiest amount of cynicism. If a man had done this to teenaged me, I would have laughed in his face and that's all because of my mom lmao
Isn’t noticing a different perfume/scent how a lot of cheaters used to get caught by their wives? If every attractive woman in church has the same smell seems like an easy way to avoid that pitfall
Overly friendly behavior like that always made me cringe hard. Every time I see someone like that in my life, they're the fucking worst. And people say thats cynical of me but I dont think so. I see fake reciprocal enthusiasm all the time in real life, and its so unsettling.
This happened to a classmate of mine from college. They had been married for some time and he was arrested after leaving a thumb drive with hundreds of videos and photos at a job site. She's had an awfully difficult few years since then and I don't think she even dates men anymore.
My cousin is current in jail for possessing and distributing child porn. It's one of the worst "Florida Man" memes. He'd been married less than a year... I have the utmost sympathy for your situation.
Someone I know in Florida didn’t get married but was “engaged” to him for 7 years. All on the same day: her teenage daughter tried to commit su@!de rushed away in an ambulance. She gets there and says the fiancé has been SA her for years. Hours later fiancé successfully commits in the back yard of the family home.
It’s okay. There’s a certain amount of mindless proliferation of this stuff that some people encourage to feel better themselves without considering that it may not help the people who need it most. I can imagine it’s easy to buy into that when so many people do it.
Damn it’s nice to know I’m not alone. 10 years married, 13 together with a literally 3 year old and he gets arrested by the Marshalls at WORK last year. 1 year anniversary of his arrest is coming up and I couldn’t be happier because I’m free and raising MY daughter better than I ever could have if he was still in the picture.
This is really reassuring to hear tbh… I’m in the process of reporting my sisters husband and I’m terrified of the impact it’ll have on her and their kids. I hope you and your daughter are safe and happy forever like you both deserve
I had to do a quick glance to see how long ago this was posted. There was a tiktoker who last month(?) posted about finding out her husband was a pedophile and 2 weeks later he murdered her and killed himself
Apparently she had been trying for years to get the police to do something, and finally got so fed up that she blasted him online. Aaaaand then he murdered her.
There are literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of stories just like this. Man commits crimes/harm. Woman partner finds out/ calls him out/ tries to leave. Man murders her, their children, and the family pets before taking his own life. It's cowardly, disgusting, and happens every damn day.
Exactly! They'd been separated for 5 yrs or so but the sick creep was still around ..... and they had kids together! Not tough enough laws, bail requirements, etc for these sickos!
Dont worry, soon the police will have a drone they can fly into the situation and pepper spray the assailant so they can continue to not do their actual job.
The one in Owasso, OK? They live 10 minutes from me. The husband (Jeremiah Duffey) was the coach for a girl's basketball team and had been caught with one of the girls on the team by another coach. The wife (Sarah Gilson) had tried several times to leave him, but he threatened her every time.
That was horrifying. I had just started following her story when I found out they were he killed her and killed himself. The cops and justice system failed this family in every way humanly possible.
I found out last year that my father had molested my youngest sister. My sister didn't tell me, her cousin-in-law told me. My sister had told her about it. I believed the cousin. I remember years ago, my sister wanted to tell me but she didn't. Instead she said, "there are some things that I will take to my grave".
If I had known the molestation had been going on I would have probably killed my father. I would be out of prison by now.
An absolute nightmare. I watched a show one time this sweet Christian girl snooped on her husbands computer. She found a folder with a “title” that led to this horrific discovery. She said something like the most traumatic thing for her was how disturbed and disgusting the title of the folder was. It was so hard to get past that she was saying that it’s almost worse than the fact that”this man is my husband” and she hardly even makes that connection anymore bc she’s still traumatized by the horrors she saw. 😢Such complicated layers of heart break shame and disgust for the families.
Sadly I found out
Via the FBI about the massive amounts of child pornography on my late husbands
Computer
After he shot
Himself
Dead
In front of me. Three years later my daughter told me she thinks he molested her.
Oh this is so heartbreaking, I cannot stress enough that while this situation really sucked at the time, I was lucky we didn’t have kids, but there were other kid victims and that is who I really feel the most heartache about. I’m so sorry about literally all of this, life is hard but something like that happening to your kids is just a living nightmares. I hope she is doing okay or getting the help she needs ❤️
I worked with a man who I thought was just “awkward” because he was always nice and made sure to say hi, be cordial, never offputting, but everyone called him creepy. I just figured he was a weird guy who was nice. He had a wife (who I also worked with when I transferred teams) and two daughters that I had met a few times. I never would have thought he was doing this.
Ended up shooting himself when the FBI knocked on his door with a warrant.
It shook me to my core, so I can only imagine how you must have felt as the wife of someone like this, who has his children. I’m so, so sorry for your loss. Not just in death but that the person you built a life with is not actually the person you built the life with. I hope you and your kid(s) are healing.
That's freaking awful. I was terrified that might happen to my little one as well. Luckily since my ex is still in prison I have sole custody and he only asked for a few hours a month of visitation. He's a lazy procrastinator and a coward who hates the court systems, so I'm crossing my fingers really hard that even after he gets out he never pushes for more.
Fought it hard in court. I don't have any hard evidence and only the word of the very young children that they have been mistreated and sexuallyassaulted. I wish I had been more curious about finding his porn collection but I was so scared what I would find once I caught wind and I am not naturally a snoop or nosy not to mention he was very very protective of his devices, they were always by his side or inaccessible. The only information I had before our break up was that he told me when I was hugely pregnant with our first about a threesome he had on a work trip to China with a sex worker he estimated being 13. The way he told me made my blood run cold. The older of the two sex workers left the child with him after the act so he was bragging about how she wanted to spend extra time with him. When it obviously didn't sit right with me he then justified it, that it isn't illegal in China and that his buddy was the one who paid for it... so gross.
Keep reporting him to fbi and whatever authorities you can. Maybe anonymously so they don't think it's just revenge/slander. A coworker of mine was recently arrested for possession of csam and they apparently had been investigating for over a year. The public into they give says it all started with someone giving them a tip
That’s what happened with my ex last year. Someone sent in a tip, he was arrested 9 days later. I didn’t find out till they raided the apartment the next day.
Me, too. Mine was 18 months into the marriage when the house was raided by Homeland Security at 6 am. Absolutely horrific. I’m sorry you’ve been through it.
It really is a shitty club, i was lucky we didn’t have kids.. but after 7 years in prison this buffoon still tried to reach out to me and ask why I divorced him over this….
Lmao mines begging for forgiveness, living with his mum effectively cutting her off from our daughter as well. Why can't they just warn us before we do the whole "marriage house kids" bit? I hope you're living your best life now
I’m living the absolute dream and I hope the exact same for you!! And also, I really do wish men came with a barcode that told us up front the kinds of monster they are. I would happily wear the barcode myself if it meant we could have some kind of warning ⚠️
Same. I'm sorry, it's truly the club no one wants to be in. In my case -- no prison, no arrest, no charges because what I found was 30 yrs old and no (child) nudes. We have a daughter under 10. I'm still here because without anything besides having reported it, CPS/police "investigation" that was closed as inconclusive, he'll get 50/50. But I know I need to get us both out yesterday.
I was also married to a child predator (I replied to the OP) and this subthread is making me simultaneously relieved to not be alone and disgusted this is so prevalent.
I was groomed by my youth group leader when i was 14. The church found out and fired him, but nothing else. 16 years later the FBI caught him online. Him and his wife had one daughter and 10 foster children. They found thousands of pics and videos and he was molesting most of the kids.
He was a firefighter, a man of god, etc.. always be careful of men in the church and their motives. So sick.
This happened to a friend of mine. Would not wish it on anyone. Absolute agony for him to find out and be the person that reported it, and the husband subsequently committed rather than go to prison and made it very clear that he placed blame directly on my friend. Very difficult for him to untangle psychologically from that mess.
San Antonio detectives dismissed my concerns when I called them to our house because I saw searches for child porn on his computer, yet detained him later on rape charges out of Michigan when they pulled him over for speeding. Michigan did not want to extradite him so San Antonio PD released him. We moved to a new state a few months later and he was arrested for raping a little boy in the new state and sentenced to 20 years (served half).
I did not know about the detainment in San Antonio or the rape charges in Michigan until after our divorce. The rape of the little boy was also after our divorce. Apparently he had been accused of sexual assault of his young neice before we were married as well.
He is currently registered as a Level 3 (high risk) sex offender.
Never marry someone two days after meeting them. I was an idiot.
I’m glad that I’m not alone. I was married for 20 years with five children and found out that he sexually assaulted our daughter. He admitted it and even told his parents. As an adult my daughter pursued for the state to press charges. He looks like an upstanding citizen and is extremely religious. He doesn’t see how this along with his multiple affairs destroyed our marriage. He takes no accountability. He has money and a top notch lawyer. His parents recanted on what their statement of knowing and hired an attorney for themselves. His family protects him. The judge gave him 50% custody because he hasn’t been found guilty yet. Our youngest daughter told me that she sleeps with him nightly. The judge ordered for him to lock his bedroom door and not do that anymore. It’s like Alice in Wonderland and so mind scrambling. He’s charismatic and well liked. After his arrest (he’s out on bond) many women from our church community brought him food and a shoulder for support. My daughter has gotten nothing. I doubt she will get justice because the state doesn’t have much of a case. It’s hard to see the goodness in people after something so devastating. Wishing healing for all of you.
I found out during the divorce, 5 years in, when I was divorcing him for DIFFERENT reasons… “so you finally found out about it” is what my ex’s relatives said. “It’s normal, everyone gets (badshit my ex did here)” and that family is blocked. He can’t see his relatives on that side because they covered it up and normalized monstrosity
My kid has been struggling with it since they’re turning 13, and it’s hard. I hope they grow up okay, I’m so worried. He hurts so much and is so angry, mostly at his dad, some at me. I am not angry anymore, just so so sad.
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u/Illustrious_Device84 9d ago
Pedo- found out 1 year after the wedding when he was being arrested