Help for parent of man accused of downloading child pornography

onlyroz

poppy444 wrote: »

One of her other children has confirmed that the man will be pleading guilty to all charges and that with all the evidence that was found on his pc there would have been no way he could have denied it

You need to be prepared that this man will have to serve a short prison sentence. One of my old school teachers was charged with possession of child pornography and he was sentenced to 6 months. He is also now on the sex offenders register and so will never be able to work with children again. I don't know how much of the sentence he actually served though.

determined_new_ms

Gosh I feel your friend's pain. In Feb this year my son was sent to prison and in sept he was sentenced to 12 years. Its so painful as a parent to watch your child go through this and there are so many emotions - pain, anger, fear, resentment, grief for their loss, shame for the victims, guilt that you didn't do a good enough job. I have found it does get easier, but its painful. In the end you can't live their lives can you? I did feel that it was a secret shame I was deeply affected by his crimes but its not like I could go to victim support. Luckily with time and a few loving friends it has got easier. I miss him. I hope your friend is ok x

ognum

determined_new_ms wrote: »

Gosh I feel your friend's pain. In Feb this year my son was sent to prison and in sept he was sentenced to 12 years. Its so painful as a parent to watch your child go through this and there are so many emotions - pain, anger, fear, resentment, grief for their loss, shame for the victims, guilt that you didn't do a good enough job. I have found it does get easier, but its painful. In the end you can't live their lives can you? I did feel that it was a secret shame I was deeply affected by his crimes but its not like I could go to victim support. Luckily with time and a few loving friends it has got easier. I miss him. I hope your friend is ok x

thank you, you are very brave to say this

poppy444

meritaten wrote: »

and poppy - you may need to offload yourself after talking to this lady. Don't be hesitant to ring the Sams yourself if you need to 'talk'! Everything you say to them is confidential and it may help you cope with your own feelings on this.
This is important for your own mental health poppy. By being a friend and listening to Your friend offload - you can often take on yourself 'their' problems. You are obviously deeply caring because you have posted looking for help............you could easily be 'sucked in' to the situation and not be able to maintain the objectivity a trained counsellor or Samaritans volunteer can.
I am not trying to put you off or put you down hun - I am concerned about YOU! OK?

Thank you Meritaten, I suffer from mental health problems and I've often received support and advice with it from this board, I've spoken to my care coordinator this morning because I really need to talk to someone. I love my friend to bits and will do anything I can to help but I can't afford to 'fall back' to how I was.

determined_new_ms wrote: »

Gosh I feel your friend's pain. In Feb this year my son was sent to prison and in sept he was sentenced to 12 years. Its so painful as a parent to watch your child go through this and there are so many emotions - pain, anger, fear, resentment, grief for their loss, shame for the victims, guilt that you didn't do a good enough job. I have found it does get easier, but its painful. In the end you can't live their lives can you? I did feel that it was a secret shame I was deeply affected by his crimes but its not like I could go to victim support. Luckily with time and a few loving friends it has got easier. I miss him. I hope your friend is ok x

Thank you so much for sharing that determined, I know it can't have been easy, you've highlighted one of the things that is confusing my friend, she very much feels like she is grieving but at the same time she feels like she has no right to because it's the poor children who have suffered here. xx

meritaten

she IS grieving poppy. She has 'lost' her perception of her son as a 'nice' man. She is grieving now for what she thought she had and has been shown to be just a facade. She has a right to that grief and it doesnt take anything away from his victims!
Poor woman - I would hate to be in her position.

Racheldevon

I hope she is able to get the support she needs. Professional counselling is a good option - any many places have low cost counselling services available - the wait on the NHS will be significant, and time limited therapy wise. You need to safeguard your own wellbeing too, and be mindful of what you can contain and support.

Janepig

onlyroz wrote: »

You need to be prepared that this man will have to serve a short prison sentence. One of my old school teachers was charged with possession of child pornography and he was sentenced to 6 months. He is also now on the sex offenders register and so will never be able to work with children again. I don't know how much of the sentence he actually served though.

You can't really compare like with like, particularly with offences like this. There's obviously the amount of images to take into account which will vary from defendant to defendant, and also the level of the images, level 1 being less serious, level 5 being very serious. Someone with level 1 images will obviously get a lesser sentence than someone with level 5 images, although in my experience most defendants seem to have a mix off all levels.

It's easy to get carried away with what you hear from others and also from what you read in the newspaper. OP, I'm not saying your friend will want to attend the Court hearing, but imo there's no substitute for hearing the case first hand yourself rather than other people's slant on it. There's been a recent case locally of a teacher who was on trial for just this sort of offence and was found not guilty, but not before everything was emblazoned all over the local paper and as we know, mud sticks, despite the not guilty verdict.

Jx

Mupette

a few have touched on this already,

poor woman is going to need a lot of support, and protection, imagine the backlash of this, she is innocent, but you know how cruel people can be.

grey_lady

Most abusers have been abused themselves as children, something to think about.

rpc

grey_lady wrote: »

Most abusers have been abused themselves as children, something to think about.

Which means that plenty have not. There is also no suggestion that the accused has abused anyone directly.

Issues surrounding child !!!!!! are very different to those surrounding abuse and although making child !!!!!! is abuse, those that watch child !!!!!! don't necessarily have tendencies towards committing abuse themselves. Some distance themselves (and their use of !!!!!! to satisfy their desires) from the making of the material and don't use it any differently to the way other people use adult !!!!!!.

Stop trying to cloud the issue with innuendo.