I am a sex offender father please help me

KL123
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by KL123 » Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:12 pm

I'm sorry not a clue how to make my own post but my dad is in prison for historic sex offence. He's mainting his innocent. He's not allowed any contact with his grandchildren level 1. He's out next year my question is can he have contact with his grandkids when he's out ?. He is allowed contact as long supervised but I don't know if social services well rufse him

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Tue Sep 11, 2018 4:59 pm

Dear seadog,

I don’t think that you can do anything more than you are doing for your husband. You have given him lots of details about support and information that could be helpful to him but he is not doing anything. You cannot do it for him. Only he can.
I cannot think of any other organisation to recommend him. Your list of support is very useful to other parents who use the forum. Thank you for sharing it.
The social worker, like your husband, is waiting on the police to finish their investigation. She will want to know whether your husband is going to be charged and what with. Does your husband have any idea how long he has to wait? What are the police saying?

If the police do successfully prosecute him, children services will want to know whether he will get a prison sentence and what support he might get when he leaves prison to tackle his behaviours. So ask the police about timescales if he is found guilty.

I think you should just focus on the child protection plan and cooperating with it, as you have been doing. Children services will want to see that you will continue to cooperate over time and protect your daughter. That you will not take any risks, that you always put your daughter’s safety before your wish to be together as a family. At the moment this is not possible while not enough is known about your husband’s risk.

Best wishes,
Suzie

Seadog01274
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:18 pm

Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by Seadog01274 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:37 am

Last night I had to be cruel to be kind with him and come down very hard on him. He’s not in denial about what he’s done but he’s very lost as to what to do next and isn’t getting the support he needs from professionals.

In order to keep his job he’s having to continue living a lie. Financially we need him to work to pay the mortgage.

Suzy can you recommend a free counselling service he would be able to use as insight, mind, and relate won’t deal with him whilst he is under investigation. He could be waiting another 3-6 months and he needs the help now, not that far down the line. Financially we can’t afford private counselling at £40-£60 an hour. We are struggling to make ends meet as it is.

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:41 am

Dear Seadog01274

Thank you for your post.

I see that you are still very concerned about how your husband is dealing with the situation in which he finds himself. It is really important that he should be proactive in seeking help. You state that he is not getting the support he needs from professionals. However, you do not say which professionals he has approached for this support.

Looking back at your posts it seems you have been trying for a long time to get your husband motivated and, it appears, that you have not been successful which has led you to as you say be ‘cruel to be kind with him and come down very hard on him’. Unfortunately, you can only help him if he is helping himself.

You referred in your first post to free counselling to which you had been referred have you considered your husband making contact with them himself.

Unfortunately, I am unable to give you details of any free counselling services but your husband may find it useful to speak with his GP who might be able to advise on counselling and/or therapy services in your local area.

Best wishes

Suzie

Seadog01274
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by Seadog01274 » Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:58 am

Hi Suzy
Yes it has been going on for a long time. My husband is extremely depressed and being 2 hours away from his previous life isn’t helpful for him but financially he has no choice but to live with his Mum.

He’s finding it very hard to know where to get help or who to contact.
I received 6 sessions of free counselling through insight which was nowhere near enough and I now have to wait 3 months to get another 6 sessions. This is the service my husband contacted and they said as he is under investigation they can’t help. This was the same with relate, and mind.
He has been in contact with stop it now who do run a course but the course is almost £900. This is the same with the Lucy faithful foundation. This amount is just not possible for us to afford.

The social worker is very reluctant for him to get any help but I am struggling to support him and get the right help for myself.

Everything he tries seems to fail. He has finally managed to get registered at the doctors over where he lives but when he works, making an appointment seems almost impossible! He sees earning money as more important than seeing a doctor. He did go see a doctor over here around a week after all this happened who wouldn’t give him any medication due to the fact he attempted suicide, but didn’t offer any other help.

He has contacted the samaritans, nhs111 to see if anyone can point him in the right direction but with no avail. He has found private counsellors but their prices start from £50 an hour plus. This just isn’t possible at the moment for him, even if it was just one appointment per week.

He’s feeling extremely lonely and isolated and he says this is why he can’t get motivated to keep trying, everything he tries no one wants to know. I think it’s awful how little support there is out there for these men and women. He has also lost his whole life, along with the guilt of knowing he’s caused this along with 15 years of anxiety, depression, secrecy. His mental state is a mess. This seems to be an ever growing problem but there still isn’t the support available out there.

PerfectlySafeDad
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by PerfectlySafeDad » Fri Sep 14, 2018 2:59 pm

Seadog, you and your husband both have my utmost sympathy for what it's worth. It's worth nothing, because the sympathy you both need needs to come from social services, but there won't be any, because all they will care about is separating your husband from your children for as long as they can no matter what the level of his offences. Even if found not guilty they'll look for reasons to declare him a risk, 'no smoke without fire' and all that.
However, I do concur with Suzie, he needs to find whatever counselling he can as soon as possible, because 1) it will stand better with him when it goes to court 2) needs to demonstrate continuously to SS that his offending behaviour is being addressed rather than merely punished. However, this is no use unless he confesses to what the police are going to find asap, or nobody knows what he's getting counselling and being remorseful FOR.
The idea of paying for a private counsellor was excellent, just a pity the cost is unviable (I managed to find one for £30 a week, which was a generous reduction because she saw what a desperate state I was in). Lucy Faithful is always mentioned, but when I tried phoning them it seemed it would take months to get anywhere and I could not afford to wait. I'd probably have gone to prison if I had, and be serving 10 years on the register instead of 5 and half way through a community sentence.
"Get help" is the phrase fired at many an offender (although usually it really means 'get lost you sicko'), yet actual constructive 'help' is very difficult to come by. This is because demonization and fear prevails, in 99% of circumstances misplaced, together with it being a nation of dire cutbacks 'Help' is low on the menu in any witch hunt, at least until conviction and stigmatization has taken place, by which time bare survival is about all the offender feels capable of.
However, all is not lost, but you and he need to pull together everything you can.
I will post my story in my own thread as a guide for people how to limit the damage and work for the future with this stuff. I got the lightest possible sentence because I did all the right things (and meant it), which led to therapy and support being layed on (instead if just, um, prison) and a chance to slowly earn my fatherhood back and in the eyes of social services.
Very important: no more suicide attempts please! They'll just shut him out even more harshly. It's good that he works, that ought to demonstrate to these zealots that he has something caring and responsible about him.
If I win the lottery, I'll set up a fund to simply pay for the counselling for people in your husband's position. I wish I could be more constructive than that.
Last edited by PerfectlySafeDad on Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Seadog01274
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by Seadog01274 » Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:10 pm

Thankyou prrfectlysafedad, yet another meaningful and relatable post from yourself! “Help” is great but social services do not want to know. I am pulling teeth trying to get help for myself and
My child, never mind my husband. They say their responsibility falls on my child and that’s it, that they don’t have resources to help us. How can we be the best parents we can for her when we don’t get the support? It constantly feels like doors are being shut in our faces and we’re running out of places to turn. When we physically cannot afford a private counsellor I don’t understand what we can do! Look forward to hearing your thread. My husband is not a part of this website, perhaps I should see if he will join.
I have made an incredible friend through this website, we communicate through texts every single week and pick each other up when we need it. We can share the good times and bad and I find it extremely helpful to have someone to talk to that has gone through the same situation as myself. Perhaps this would also help my husband. His big problem is communication and not understanding how to communicate emotions, feelings and thoughts!

PerfectlySafeDad
Posts: 171
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 2:57 am

Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by PerfectlySafeDad » Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:11 pm

The communication and emotion thing is probably a big part of what caused the offending (if indeed he did). It leads to retreat into the internet, which is deadly and seductive for any guy with a sex drive or issues from the past. These are exactly the things a counsellor would work through with him and write up a report for. It's all about proving he understands what led to the offences, that he's sorry for it and knows how to avoid it in future, and show why it would never lead to any other types of offence either.
Maybe take out a loan for £500 or something, and get 10 or more sessions with receipts and a report to prove it? I know it's a lot of money, but worth its weight in gold if done right. You'd have to choose the professional carefully, sympathetic to the topic (I searched the BACS website for my area, they list areas of expertise under each counsellor).
This would have to be done on the back of him openly confessing to the police (and counsellor of course) what he's done, or it's a waste of time.
If he's hoping stuff will not get discovered, planning to plead not guilty for as long as possible, he's playing a dangerous game. They'll find every single image he's ever had on whatever equipment they confiscated, and the sentence will be worse and therefore even longer to fight back from it.
It's very scary for you both, but don't lose heart. He might need antidepressants (if not on them already) to be able to stay calm and make the right decisions. Even just mild ones are a big help. I was on fluoxetine. He's got to show his mood is under control too, no more depressive incidents to fuel their risk assessments with. You both just need to be very careful to do the right things from now on.

DD2SS
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Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by DD2SS » Sat Sep 15, 2018 9:39 pm

City, I'm really sorry to see that you didn't get the outcome you hoped for. There are lots of positives in what you say though, more perhaps than you can see at the moment with your disappointment.

Reading between the lines, a lot of the decision has been to do with the age of the children, who are still very young and wholly dependent on their mum. Their mum's state of mind is therefore of considerable importance. I think you need to put what happened with Barnardos to one side, your ex may well have come to the same conclusion regardless, and you should respect her decisions seeing as she is a victim in all of this. The focus here is on the kids and what is best for them, and the court seems to think that having you in their lives is what is best. The kids also haven't been able to say what they want in all of this due to their age.

However, you are on the road to unsupervised contact, and the court seems to be broadly supportive. The question is what you can do to make sure that you get the relationship that the children deserve. As the children grow older, their voice will become more important, and they will want you in their lives but they will also be balancing this against what is going on around them and how other people, not least their mum, feel about it.

My suggestion, having been there, is to focus on the children. Make every second count. Plan all your time and activities, focus on them, make your time with them rich and rewarding. Be a great dad. They'll want to be with you for it. Being in this situation makes you quite creative! Learn how to face paint ;) As they get older, they will be able to say that they want more than they currently get. Remember that 12 days may be tough for you but it's probably doesn't mean much to them, living in the moment as children do.

It's great that you are going on courses. One thing you might want to consider planning for how you get from here to unsupervised contact is whether, instead of your parents and family, you use contact centres to transition from supervised to unsupervised. Sorry, I don't know whether you have the financial resources for this. I know many parents see them as a negative and you might see this as a backward step, but if you view them as a resource to support this transition and provide evidence back to the court on your relationship with the children and their enjoyment of your time with them, this might help.

It's difficult to know what to make of the LFF evidence not being given the weight you would have hoped for. I find the argument that low risk is not no risk a difficult one to agree with. Everyone has potential risk, otherwise you wouldn't have new offenders in the first place. When that decision is made on expert witnesses, maybe the lesson is that it needs to be someone who cannot easily be overridden by Cafcass or Children's Services, so their qualifications and experience are important. Little comfort now, but perhaps when the question becomes what do the children want rather than what does mum want, child psychology might be the way to go.

Best of luck, enjoy what you do have with them, I know it's really difficult.

DD2SS
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2017 4:56 pm

Re: I am a sex offender father please help me

Post by DD2SS » Sat Sep 15, 2018 10:12 pm

Seadog,

As someone who has been there, I get where your husband is at the moment. Every day is like walking through treacle. I get that he feels that working and making money and contributing is the one last thing he can do before the axe falls.

While I disagree with much of what PSD says, I do agree that he needs to face the problem head on and admit that he has a problem that needs addressing, whatever that may be. The social worker saying that he shouldn't seek help is nonsense. He should seek whatever help he can get as quickly as possible. I don't know of any risk assessment that would deem delaying responsibility as a positive and addressing underlying problems as a negative. Criminal justice won't see it that way. That's simply ridiculous and calls her expertise on adult sexual offending into question.

There isn't much support out there, and the experts that are there are expensive. Free things to do are to at least call the Lucy Faithfull Foundation to show willingness to engage, and do whatever online courses he can find. He can at least tell criminal justice he is trying. This website might be helpful, and I'm glad that you've found support, but I would caution against directly contacting any ex-offenders.

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