should I contact my old boss, who’s in prison for a terrible crime?

by Alison Green on April 8, 2026

Content warning for upsetting discussion of sexual abuse of children.

A reader writes:

I spent most of my 20s managing a business, eventually becoming more or less second-in-command. The owner was an older guy in his 60s. He was a bit of a grumpy guy and more conservative than me in many ways, but we overall got along very well. I found that he was generally a fair guy, and we bonded over a few shared interests. I wouldn’t call him a “friend,” but we had a good relationship.

He sold his business in 2020 (he was planning to retire that year anyway and the pandemic moved up the timeline a few months). He and I stayed in loose texting contact until I stopped hearing from him.

A few months ago, an old employee of mine reached out to me with some horrifying news: In 2023, our boss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for receipt of child pornography.

According to court filings, he had over 84,000 images of child sexual abuse material in his possession, which he amassed after trading images on Russian sites. Many of these images were violent and gruesome in ways that are too horrifying to recount, though he denies looking at the more horrific ones. He started amassing this collection not too long after he retired and moved in 2021. He was arrested later that year and eventually made a plea deal. He’ll be in prison until he’s in his 90s.

His defense team admitted that he has a “criminal interest” in boys between the ages of 11-14ish. This part horrified me, because many of our employees started out as high schoolers. Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger and he wasn’t even consciously aware of his attractions until he fell down this awful rabbit hole in his retirement. But I’ll never know, and I don’t know if he will either.

Even though he’s not accused of child abuse himself, the court did acknowledge that his interest in these images keeps the child sex abuse going, something even he agreed with during sentencing.

In the process of this, he got divorced, spent all his capital on a legal defense, lost all of his friends, and will very likely die in federal custody.

Despite the fact that he took part in a horrific trade, and that he had that criminal interest at all, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. It’s easy to see a story like this on the news, think “lock him up and throw away the key,” and move on. It’s harder when it’s someone you know. It’s all his own fault, but it’s sad knowing how he was saving up for retirement and built a business worth selling, only to lose everything. It’s sad knowing that his friends and most of his family have largely abandoned him. It’s sad knowing that if he’s lucky enough to survive prison, he’ll be in his 90s and flat broke.

With that, I come to my ask: should I reach out to him? I’m conflicted on this.

Part of me thinks he’d be embarrassed if I reached out, because only one of our coworkers was reached out to about this so I don’t think he knows I’d know. But part of me thinks about how a guy who did something horrible could probably use a little connection to the outside world, because he’s almost certainly lonely beyond belief. There’s also the fact that sexual interest in children is sometimes the result of abuse, which – and I don’t want to speculate more than this – means he might have been a victim himself.

I’m not asking for judgment on whether he’s a good or a bad person, because he undeniably did a bad thing. But people who do bad things, even horrific things, don’t necessarily deserve to lose all contact with humanity. I have no tolerance for people who produce those images, but I think that a lot of the people who trade and watch them are more sick than dangerous, if that makes any sense.

Should I let him live in ignorance of me knowing that I know, or should I reach out and try to form a human connection and alleviate some of that loneliness – without, obviously, excusing what he did?

This is not really a work question; this is a question about being a human around other humans, some of whom hurt others, and how we deal with people who have committed some of the worst harms against others.

I can’t tell you what you should do.

I am going to point out that there’s a lot of minimizing language in your letter about a man who found sexual gratification by watching children being abused, thousands of them, perhaps violently, and who actively helped to create a market for that abuse.

Is he still a human who could use a connection to the outside world? Yes. Might he have been a victim himself? Maybe. Did he repeatedly choose to do something that causes severe and lasting harm to kids? Yes.

There are people who feel called to work with people who have committed some of the worst crimes possible, to find their humanity and connect with it. Maybe you’re one of them.

But I would get really clear in your head about what’s motivating you and whether you could explain it to someone who’s been a victim of this type of abuse and still come away feeling confident in your stance. If you can, there’s your answer. And if you can’t, I think that’s an answer too.

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{ 547 comments }

{ 547 comments… read them below }

  1. Moon, in my own shoes*  

    Might I ask to add a CW to the beginning of this post? If not, I won’t push the issue, it’s not my site, but I figure it might be worth asking.

    2. CeeDoo*  

      I second your request. However, I’ve read stuff like this so often lately with the files-who-shall-not-be-named, and it’s made it less… sharp. I don’t like for things like this to feel normalized.

    3. Not on board*  

      I might add that referring to it as “child pornography” is something advocates and survivors are trying to eradicate. They prefer the term child sex abuse materials.

      1. BrunetteBubbly*  

        Going to add the caveat that US federal law and some state laws still use “child pornography” as the legal term for these types of criminal offenses. While “child sexual abuse materials” is the more accurate term in a general societal sense, there are contexts where referring to the specific criminal charge may be necessary for legal reasons or for precision.

          1. BrunetteBubbly*  

            Of course. Just wanted to note the caveat as we shouldn’t assume bad faith by someone using that legal term rather than CSAM, absent some other context that suggests bad faith.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*  

        Especially since files have been released naming victims *and including the pictures*, while hiding the names of the perpetrators (unless they’re Democrats).

  2. Throwaway Account*  

    Alison, your answer reflects your grace and intelligence and I am in awe of you every day.

    4. NoNameComesToMind*  

      Yes. I came to the comments just to say that I really appreciate how Allison answered this.

    6. Southern Violet*  

      Yea. My answer is two words and the first is a four letter one.

      It’s why I admire Alison!

  3. Nobody you know*  

    I don’t understand why people minimise the worst crimes of other people they’ve found to be likeable, and I hope I never do

      1. Pineapple Colada*  

        I also agree! OP, your former boss is (likely) not in a hole somewhere. He does have people to have relationships with—other folks who are incarcerated. Those are the appropriate people for him to relate to. Those are his peers. There are also resources and groups in most prisons for him to heal, reflect, become a better person if he so desires.

        I would strongly encourage you to examine this urge to reach out to him, because I don’t feel it comes from a healthy place. Anytime you feel the desire to reach out, you are better served by simply sending prayers,/well wishes, and redirecting your energy and efforts to victims of abuse through volunteering or donating money.

        1. Done*  

          The relationships with his fellow inmates is probably not positive. Pedophiles are not treated well in prison.

          1. Chickenonaraft*  

            I’m sick of this fantasy about prison violence being directed at “deserving” targets, source: trust me bro. The ones targeted for sexual and physical violence are gay and trans inmates, not some kind of vigilante justice.

              1. Amateur Linguist*  

                Yeah, one recent one was an infamous child killer from twenty years back, and Jeffrey Dahmer is another one from back in the day. I think Done is just making a statement of fact rather than incitement to violence.

                1. Princess Sparklepony*  

                  I’m not so sure if it’s their initial crime that gets them ended or if it’s behavior in prison that other inmates take a hard dislike to. You’ve got people there with a lot of time on their hands and bad impulse control…

                  I’m sure those that commit heinous crimes don’t get the best behavior from others, but I’m not sure how vigilante the other criminals are. If that was a real thing – wouldn’t there be many more prison deaths of certain classes of criminals?

            2. Worldwalker*  

              There’s no reason it has to be only one category. There’s plenty of violence to g oaround. Yes, gay and trans inmates are targets for prison violence. So are high-profile inmates, like Whitey Bulger or Jeffrey Dahmer. And so are “short eyes” like this guy.

              1. Goldfeesh*  

                Innocent people convicted also get beat up and killed in prison. It’s not only “the bad ones.” Listen to season 2 of Proof: A True Crime podcast.

                1. Southern Violet*  

                  No one is arguing otherwise. They are just saying that in addition to innocent victims some prison violence targets are targeted because of their crimes. Two things can be true.

            3. attorney*  

              There is unfortunately a lot of violence in federal prison directed at a lot of different people. That includes inmates who are gay as well as trans. And it also includes people convicted of sex offenses. He is likely in a maximum or medium security prison given the length of time he is facing. And he will have been asked for his “papers” to show that he did not cooperate with law enforcement. Everyone will know he was charged with a CSAM offense.

              Source: I’m a criminal defense attorney in federal cases.

          2. JurokuCha*  

            I’ve read up on this, and in genuinely seems to not be true. Often other people don’t even know why you’re in prison. Trans prisoners and gay prisoners definitely get abused more than others. But pedos? Not so much.

            1. Iliketoknit*  

              People convicted of CSAM offenses absolutely get targeted in prison. I can’t compare it to how often LGBTQ prisoners get abused (obviously also a thing), and I am NOT equating those two statuses in any way, but finding out the offense of conviction and targeting “chomos” is very much a thing that happens.

        3. Mimi*  

          I’d caution against placing too much value on the social environment of prison, or the resources available there. Most formerly incarcerated people do not describe it as a place where a lot of healing happened.

          But to focus on the OP’s dilemma, I second the person who asked them to ask themselves what benefit they hope to incur from reaching out. Really examine that, because there’s a chance this impulse is misplaced and won’t bring any good to OP, to the incarcerated person, for the victims, or for the community, and maybe that energy needs to be directed elsewhere.

    2. Some IT Guy*  

      For one thing, abusers are expert at manipulating both their victims and also other people in their orbits so that they would never be suspected of doing anything wrong, and if the victim does say something, they won’t be believeable.

      Also, people don’t want to think that they are wrong about things. You’d never be friends with a terrible person, so that person you’re friends with can’t really be terrible, right?

      LW, I think your intentions are good, but you really need to delve into why you feel this way about an admitted predator and what you hope to accomplish by continuing to involve yourself in his life.

      2. UKDancer*  

        Yes one of my former bosses was nicked for this type of thing. I didnt know him very well but he was pleasant, polite and inoffensive. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I read about it in the paper.

        We dont expect people we know to commit serious crimes. We think that because someone is a nice bloke they wouldn’t do things like that. I could not fathom how none of us clocked the ex boss and seriously questioned my judgment in not spotting it.

        1. BekaRosselinMetadi*  

          My mom’s podiatrist went to prison-not for something this horrific (everyone was at least an adult) but for something really bad and exploitative. And I liked him. He treated mom well and seemed to genuinely care about her and it really made me question my judgment. But terrible people can be master manipulators and experts at hiding their true nature.

          1. Scrimp*  

            It is not your fault for not having “seen” it, there was nothing for you you see. The only things he did that were visible to you were good things.

            He did awful things only out of your sight.

            He was not an awful person. He was a person, who did awful things.

            There is no such thing as an awful person (or a good person), there are only actions. Actions which can be any variety of good or bad or neutral or anything else.

            So, he was a person who did good things in your vicinity and those good things presumably had no effect on the awful things he did later on, and vice versa. They were just things that he did. There was no way for you to know that some of the things he did were awful.

            1. k*  

              Thank you. I feel sketched out by the extreme stances people quickly take in discussions like these. It seems to stem from true crime and police procedural media, where we are told at the very beginning, in no uncertain terms, who the villain is and exactly what they did. Literary devices like foreshadowing and dramatic irony heighten the written drama. This is a crucial element of copaganda because it allows the audience to devalue the villain’s personhood to “criminal” and primes them to believe any punishment is justified because there is no ambiguity about what they have done.

              This is a story structure used in fiction, but there’s a large body of media studies research showing how it affects people’s real life views on crime and punishment. News media absolutely uses the same structure in its coverage of real life crime and its ideas about which individuals’ and groups’ lives do and do not matter, as it were.

              Before anyone flames me for this, my intent here is to bring a media studies angle to the popular discussion of crime and morality. I in no way intend to litigate, defend or minimize the harm any person’s actions cause. I did not mention or even allude to any real life or fictional examples. Nor am I calling out any commenter in this thread as thinking “wrong.” We all live in this media system, and it can feel like a betrayal when a person’s actions clash so strongly with our previous view of them. That’s something to sit with rather than quickly brushing off or pivoting to “should have known” or “always knew.”

              1. FionasHuman*  

                Everything you’ve said here. Thank you for raising the topic of “copaganda,” which is a very real and very damaging media genre.

        2. Nebula*  

          One of my tutors at uni, who I had a very close academic relationship with, was convicted of possessing and distributing this kind of material. He’d been a wonderful mentor to me, and I had very good memories of our time together. When I told someone else what had happened, they said “So do you think he was just pretending to be nice all that time?” and no, I don’t think that. I think he was genuinely a good teacher, he was interested in my academic progress, he was kind to me, and he committed these horrific crimes. I didn’t feel compelled to reach out to him. I threw away a book of his poetry that I had, the only time I’ve ever thrown a book in the bin.

          There was also a poem in that book which I, and other people I knew who’d read it, had never really been able to understand, and in hindsight, it was about his interest in child abuse. Really hiding in plain sight there because, as you say, it’s not something you’d think about in relation to people you know. I don’t think it’s an error of judgement to not spot something like that, the fact is, you can’t tell. And it’s better to keep that in mind when these things do come to light rather than think you should have known, since the idea that you can know for sure by the way someone generally interacts with others often prevents people from believing victims.

          1. Irish Teacher.*  

            There is a very well-known Irish patriot/freedom fighter/national hero who wrote a poem that could be interpreted in a similar way. The guy was also an educational theorist and started his own school. Was he a paedophile? Was he abusing some of his students? Who knows? I have never heard of any allegations, but this guy is such a national hero that it would have been hard to come forward. It would be like accusing George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. (Though it is also possible we are reading the poem rather differently than it would have been read when it was written.)

            He was a truly odd man in a lot of ways. He almost seemed to see himself as a type of Christ-figure, dying for his country. But he was also a pioneer of bilingual education (in Ireland; it was already well-established in placed like Belgium) and one of the early proponents of child-centred education.

            I’m not even sure exactly what point I’m making here, except maybe that people are complicated. And your comment about the poem just made me think of the question that remains over that poem.

        3. clever nickname TBD*  

          I only recently learned that I’d missed the reporting about someone I knew who’d been accused (he is now convicted). Stunned is an understatement. Horrified. Shaking my head.

      3. Jennifer Strange*  

        Also, people don’t want to think that they are wrong about things. You’d never be friends with a terrible person, so that person you’re friends with can’t really be terrible, right?

        This exactly. I think it also has to do with the perpetuated stereotype that people who commit sex-based crimes are creeps lurking in the shadows who everyone can tell is No Good. The fact is most crimes like this are committed by people you might know and trust, but that bursts the safety bubble people like to feel.

        2. tina turner*  

          Yes. Boy Scout Leaders and teachers often are the ones arrested and it’s not just cause that’s where the kids ARE, it’s also cause it’s where there’s ACCESS for a “mild” guy to operate.
          The guy may seem so un-threatening but you don’t really know.

          1. an alleged professional*  

            I am extremely active in Scouting and _the_ thing that made Scouting safer was that scouting leaders collectively got to grips with the fact that the bad guys were always going to be attracted to the entire concept of being responsible for groups of young kids. Not “but I would never therefore that guy over there would never,” not “surely that kind of abuse is an exception,” but “groups of young people will always attract abusers.” Period.

            Once we accepted that as a fact and stopped with all the wishful thinking, the org could sit down and implement things that would actually stop the abuse. Every single scout, every single year, goes through an age appropriate discussion of what is not acceptable from an adult. Every family has to sign a paper with the contact information for those with oversight. Every family is told that if they have even a hint of concern, that they should call those numbers and the police at the same time. And most importantly, our biggest rule is called “two deep.” We do not, ever, no exceptions, allow situations where an unrelated adult and child are alone together. There are no 1:1 situations. We do no activities without enough adult leaders present so that even in an emergency, one adult can leave to seek help and leave two adults with the kids. For situations where the kids want to speak to one of us privately, the conversation must still be in the line of sight of other people who have been asked to watch us. You can drive an unrelated child to an event, but your own child must be in the car as well and both kids must be in the back seat. Bathroom visits use the buddy system — neither kids nor adults go to the bathroom without a buddy.

            It sounds onerous and paranoid, but it’s really not. “Okay, we need at least three parents to go or we can’t go at all” is easy! “Hey, I need to hit the head, anyone else” is simple! The hard part is accepting that monsters don’t have visible fangs.

            1. PayRaven*  

              This is such a great rundown of what actually works.

              There’s a lot in here about…hard to put a pin in it, but in American culture especially, there’s this taboo against “overreacting.” You can’t take precautions or you’re overreacting. What, are you saying all men are predators? You’re overreacting. I would never do something like that and you’re trying to apply those precautions to me?! Overreacting.

              And for a certain type of person it’s very, very difficult to separate that personal offense from the reality that if SOME people are EVER predators, this is the correct amount of reaction.

              1. Ally McBeal*  

                And the taboo against overreacting makes no sense considering how litigious we are as a country!

                1. Kara*  

                  I think it makes more sense if you consider the *stereotype* that we’re litigious as a country. The general assumption is that lawsuits are usually unfounded money grabs, and that courts hand out massive amounts of money because people are stupid and don’t understand that hot coffee is hot. (*) So since lawsuits are rarely legitimate and people rarely file lawsuits in good faith, logically you’d want to prevent yet another bad faith lawsuit from happening by shaming the person considering a cash grab.

                  (*) Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the above attitude originated from the (successful) PR campaign McDonald’s waged after losing the hot coffee lawsuit. They did such as effective job at casting themselves as the victim, that to this day most people don’t realize that she needed skin grafts because of how excessively hot their coffee was.

            2. iglwif*  

              This is all really smart and well-designed, and would definitely reassure me as a parent.

              Field trips at my kiddo’s elementary school operated basically the same way: If we don’t get X number of parent volunteers, we can’t go; if one kid needs the washroom at the zoo, the whole small group is going in together; absolutely no 1:1 between kids and adults during the outing.

              And it’s really not that difficult to implement, if you want to do it! (Which we all should.)

            3. Annie2*  

              Yes, I was a camp counsellor as a teenager and we had all these same rules. It’s good for everyone.

            4. Ellie*  

              This is so important. In Australia, we’re going through a bit of a crisis right now in our childcare industry. It feels stupid to have to say it, but of course paedophiles are going to be attracted to working in childcare centres. Of course they are. That’s their target demographic. So we have laws like always 2 pairs of eyes on each child, etc. but its making sure that they’re actually being followed and not seen as paranoia that’s the hardest part.

            5. Lilia Calderu*  

              “The hard part is accepting that monsters don’t have visible fangs.”

              I’m very keeping this.

            6. Konjac Jelly Addict*  

              I work with teens in church settings, and we use a very similar system called Safe Sanctuary! If we have any overnight trips or church lock-ins, no unrelated kids/adults can stay in the same room. All of our volunteers are also required to undergo background checks if they want to work with youth.

        3. No Longer Gig-Less Data Analyst*  

          Coincidentally, last night I was watching the Netflix documentary on Jimmy Saville – as an American, I only vaguely have heard of him and boy was it an eye-opener. He was not only incredibly well-known and liked as an entertainer, he objectively raised millions of dollars for charities that resulted in a better life for some people.

          I haven’t finished it yet, but I think it really does an amazing job showing how difficult it can be for people who know a predator to reconcile that with the person they thought they knew. I mean, see also: Neil Gaiman – Tori Amos was famously friends with him, and as the founder of RAINN I can’t imagine the cognitive dissonance she must have experienced when everything came out.

          I think Alison is absolutely correct to point out the minimizing language, but I appreciate her acknowledgement that this is a difficult position for anyone to be put in, and some struggle with that is not entirely out of line.

          1. UKDancer*  

            Jimmy Saville was very creepy and weird even while he was alive and yes he did a lot for charity but he gave people the creeps even then and I think a lot more people knew about him than let on that they knew. Johnny Rotten tried to raise it years ago and got silenced so I am sure people knew.

            The one that surprised me was Rolf Harris. He always came across as sweet and avuncular and did programmes about animals and teaching people how to draw. I was completely stunned when it came out what a complete scumbag he was.

            1. Ellie*  

              I thought they were both creepy! But you are right about Jimmy Saville, people did know. There was a documentary I saw where a high school girl said he was booked to do a show at her school. The police came in the week before and gave them a lecture about looking out for each other, and they said things like, ‘Just because someone is famous doesn’t make them a good person, and doesn’t mean that you have to do what they say’. So yeah, if some random high school and some cops knew enough about it to do that, then the information was well and truly out there.

            2. goddessoftransitory*  

              Apparently one of his shows was called “Jim’ll Fix It,” and the crew members regularly referred to it as “Jim’ll **** It.”

              Tons of people knew. TONS.

            3. Media Monkey*  

              so many of the men exposed by operation Yewtree were people you would have thought were trustworthy (and of course there is a familiarity people feel about people they have seen n TV for years – maybe you feel like they aren’t a stranger?). jimmy Saville basically became untouchable due to his charity work but he was always super creepy. Rolf Harris just… wasn’t. he didn’t even have an audience of kids on his programmes.

        4. Worldwalker*  

          That’s true of so many crimes, really, from petty criminals to national leaders. Monsters don’t have fangs and horns. They look just like us … because they are us. I remember reading criticism of a movie about a certain Axis leader because it “humanized him.” But said NSDAP leader was human. He was nice to his secretary. He loved his dog. Oh, and 9 million innocent people were killed on his orders. It wasn’t an obvious monster with horns and fangs who did that — it was someone just like us. Believing that we can identify monsters when we see them, where they’re murderous dictators or the guy we’re talking about, leads us to a false sense of security. And that, right there, is the biggest danger of all.

        5. goddessoftransitory*  

          And when they’re very powerful, like Weinstein or Epstein, the mere fact that they *are* powerful seems to blunt the awareness of their monstrosity, simply because people think that pimps and traffickers are slimy underworld types with no foothold in the “real” world. These guys were rich, famous, and had everything a man could want, plus they were very generous donators to good causes. How could men like that be evil?

          The real world, being, unfortunately, where both the victims and the customers originate.

        6. Charlene*  

          There’s also the unfortunate truth that people who do awful things often compensate for that awfulness by being extra friendly, open, approachable, etc. Part of it is intentional, calculated image burnishing, but part of it is that no one is evil 24/7.

      4. aebhel*  

        Yeah, like, you can recognize someone’s humanity and even care about them without insisting that they’re not actually the sort of person who’d do these things. They are, as evidenced by the fact that they did them.

        1. tina turner*  

          People doing a crime often like THAT behavior and repeat it. Assume this isn’t his only “offense” as cops call them.
          It can be obsessive.
          And, of course, they may have been abused as kids too.
          Ask yourself why you’re so intrigued and be careful.

          1. FishOutofWater*  

            I’m deeply skeptical about the idea that this particular perpetrator was an abuse victim. It sounds like LW went pretty deep into reading court documents, including from sentencing, and that would absolutely have been brought up in a sentencing hearing if it were the case.

      5. MsM*  

        And if you are friends with a terrible person, then you have to confront the question of whether that makes you a terrible person, or if you should have noticed they were terrible and been able to do something about it.

      6. Irish Teacher.*  

        As well as that, I think a lot of people have an image in their heads of child abusers as…sort of storybook cackling villains who are obviously creepy and have no other interests in life other than harming children, so it’s often hard for people to get their heads around the fact that somebody who was nice to them and always seemed like a decent person could be one of those villains.

        Which of course, abusers play on and links back to your first point.

        1. RVA Cat*  

          This is why pedophiles in the clergy are a whole other level of vile. They wrap themselves in moral authority to prey on children.

        2. goddessoftransitory*  

          Yes. Both sides of the abuse equation–seller and buyer–are most often regular people with jobs, lives, spouses, and their own kids. They just section off one corner of their lives to generate/consume masses of income and despair.

      7. Not Tom, Just Petty*  

        “LW, I think your intentions are good, but you really need to delve into why you feel this way about an admitted predator and what you hope to accomplish…”
        because once you bring this person into your life, it’s going to part of your life forever, as people say, a bell you cannot unring.
        You have a generous and sanitized view of a poor man who made horrific choices, (but not the most horrific! he said so). Be sure you can handle having that in your life.

        1. TinkerTailorSolderDye*  

          “A bell you cannot unring.”

          This, right here, LW, is what you must seriously keep in the forefront as you’re thinking this through.

          Please, take a good, long think and sus out exactly why you feel this way, and listen to the sage advice from Alison and all the others here. I’ll admit, my very first reaction was rage, but that is, in part, being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and seeing many, many of the same exact scenarios play out across my little city for years. The most recent one was just a few days ago; a middle-school teacher.

          It’s hard. It’s so, so hard to reconcile the monster with the good man, and accept the unpleasant, horrifying truth that they can be one and the same.

      8. Elephant*  

        I think this is what is driving LW, that they had a regular relationship with someone they liked, enjoyed, maybe even admired and respected, and that has been shattered. That messes with your self trust (how can I have been fooled by him?!). LW, you did not commit these crimes and you are not a bad person because you once knew a bad person. But reaching out is not going to resolve this for you. Steer clear for your own sake.

      9. Grumpy Elder Millennial*  

        This is an excellent comment.

        LW, I’d also ask you what kind of dynamic you think you might have in a friendship with him. Alison is right to note that there is a lot of minimizing language in your letter. You also seem to accept as fact the things he said in his testimony (e.g., this is all relatively new, he never physically abused anyone himself). But people lie. People especially lie when they have something to gain from doing so, like a more lenient sentence or avoiding people thinking badly of them. I think there is a risk that a friendship may lead you both to minimize the harm of these offenses.

        In general, I think we should all lean into compassion. We also all only have so much time and energy to give. Consider what other compassionate things you could do for the world with your time and energy.

      10. misselphaba*  

        My favorite teacher in high school got walked out of class in handcuffs one day while we were all sitting there watching. He had been “in a relationship” with our TA since she was about 15. She told her friend about it when she turned 18 and her friend, bless her, immediately went to authorities. Ruined their friendship forever, as far as I understand.

        We all had to be 17 year olds processing that a beloved teacher was a horrible person. But we did so. If an entire class of teens can figure this out, so can OP.

        1. RVA Cat*  

          Oof. Something similar happened with a former high school teacher after I’d graduated. I thought he was an a-hole but was completely gobsmacked that he was SA’ing students.

        2. goddessoftransitory*  

          A local group of reporters have just started a podcast re-examining their participation, as student journalists, in investigating and exposing a predator teacher at their school. It’s a long, complicated, and sad, sad story but well worth listening to/reading about. It’s called Adults in the Room on NPR.

          (Warning: lots of trigger warnings, including abuse, suicide and grooming.)

          1. Lucia*  

            I was just going to post about this. I initially heard about the podcast from someone I know whose sibling was in Post 84 in the late 90s.

            1. goddessoftransitory*  

              What really haunted me was a former student who pointed out that they were ALL groomed to look the other way, not only by the popular, fun teacher but just about every school employee.

              The perniciousness of making sure that no one says a word…

      11. Susannah61*  

        I think that’s a little harsh on LW, who is not saying, oh, he can’t be all that bad! I should visit him and bring some sunshine into his dark life! This is seeing the realities of the criminal justice system affects someone you know – and even if the sentence is warranted, and the criminal justice system worked in a fair way, it’s still tragic.
        I was on a jury once, and the day we were to start deliberations, I said I wanted to talk about something – that the night before, it hit me that I had a man’s freedom (and much of his life) in my hands. I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all – and that once I was off the jury, it would be out of my life but not his. We all talked about that, and it helped.
        We convicted him. As we should have; the evidence was overwhelming. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of the fact that he’s in prison partly because of me (mostly because of HIM, of course, and what he did).
        So it’s not about smoothing over what LW’s former boss did. it’s understanding why LW feels so many emotions about it.

        1. Not Tom, Just Petty*  

          I too was on a murder trial. And we found him guilty. And I also dates a corrections officer. He told me some funny stories and some sad stories about work. There are things that he would never tell anyone. That is his burden. He chose that career. He’d come from combat military, so he was not unaware of man’s inhumanity as that saying goes. They were different. But they were both terrible in their own way.
          I just want OP to think about what letting that terrible into his life will do for and to him.

      13. Corn on the cob*  

        While reading this I couldn’t help but wonder if LW would feel this much sympathy for the boss if he had been imprisoned for something not related to sexual abuse.

        1. Lokifan*  

          I think that’s unfair, to be honest. The overwhelming sense in this comments section that LW couldn’t genuinely feel sorry for a terrible criminal who has likely lost everyone, or almost everyone, in his life – and that therefore there must be something else going on with them psychologically – is very weird to me!

    3. SnackAttack*  

      I totally understand how it can be difficult to suddenly have to reconcile a person you viewed positively with crimes or bad deeds you suddenly found out they committed. There can be a lot of conflict and grief involved with learning that someone you loved did something unconscionable; I think it’s natural to try to minimize it at first. Just see all the people who had to reckon with whether or not to turn in family members who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

      That being said, a boss you had several years ago accused of what’s arguably the most heinous crime there is shouldn’t fall into the same category. I can understand needing time to grieve the person you thought you knew, but morally, you shouldn’t actively be trying to minimize it and discount the crime’s victims.

      1. Productivity Pigeon*  

        I get the feeling that maybe LW was a lot closer to their ex-boss than they were comfortable admitting in this letter. They ”got along very well” but ”weren’t friends”.

        I’ve gotten along very well with many bosses, but even so I don’t even send them birthday cards.

        Why would someone feel the need to provide an anchor and path to redemption to someone they weren’t even friends with?

        (I usually avoid speculating like this but there is some part of the puzzle missing here.)

        1. I&I*  

          I might look at this the other way. LW, I’ll take your word for it that you and this man only knew each other as friendly-enough colleagues, and that you weren’t missing him until you heard he’d been incarcerated.

          In other words: the fact that he’s been incarcerated is what prompted you to get in touch. If you hadn’t heard he’d been convicted for – let’s not mince words – creating the demand that creates the supply for children to be horrifically violated … it doesn’t sound like you were particularly missing him.

          I don’t think a deep personal connection or a long-held desire for his company are what’s moving you. So what else is it?

          Here are some possibilities I think you should honestly put to yourself:

          1. You’re hoping that if you connect with him as the person you remember, you will preserve him in your mind as that person. This will reduce the horror of the thought, ‘Maybe I just didn’t see it.’

          You say: ‘Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger…’

          LW. Seriously. Of course he’s going to deny it. Everybody ever arrested for this minimises it, for two reasons: one, they don’t want a longer sentence, and two, if they couldn’t tell themselves what they were doing wasn’t so bad, they wouldn’t have done it. Denial is their stock-in-trade.

          And of course your encounters wouldn’t make you think he’d hurt a real child. He’s not going to tell you the truth about anything to do with his sexuality; you know that already, because he didn’t.

          It could be you’re shocked and looking for a way to reconcile the man you thought you knew with the man he turned out to be, and are trying to find ways to keep your former image of him as dominant as possible. If you visit him in prison, he will probably tell you what you want to hear, and it’ll help with that.

          You can trust his word in future about as much as you could trust his word in the past. Evidence of the past is not in his favor.

          2. Being raised in a culture that values forgiveness, and if you’re Christian a culture that specifically praises visiting prisoners (don’t know about other religions), you’re falling back on the values you’re used to as a way of dealing with this.

          LW, if you want to do good in the world, there are many ways to do it. It doesn’t have to involve minimising what this man did.

          You could even become a prison visitor. You could visit other prisoners, who’d appreciate it too. In fact if you do insist on visiting him, I’d suggest you look into prison visitor charities and get some actual training. Bluntly, you weren’t able to spot this guy in the wild, and I don’t think you should expose yourself to him without guidance from people with more experience.

          3. You have been a victim in your past.

          Get into therapy. Talk it over with your therapist before you do anything that could make you feel worse.

          4. You have your own secrets or shameful things – not this bad, but stuff you’re not quite comfortable with. You hope that by extending kindness to him, you will entitle yourself to kindness from others if it ever comes to that. You will at least not be open to a charge of hypocrisy.

          Get into therapy. Same advice as applies as for 3. Visiting this man is not the way to work out your own issues.

          5. You hate that he took part in hurting people. You hate that there’s pain in the world that you are tangentially connected to; it weighs on your conscience.

          You can’t heal the pain of the victims. On some level, maybe you feel that if you offer kindness to him, you’re taking a little weight off the great scale of human suffering – if only on the only side you can reach.

          If so – I think you need to sit with that discomfort. There is a dangerous chance he will manipulate it.

          Also: ask yourself how the victims would feel about you visiting him. If the answer is ‘They’d want you to stop’ and it makes you feel less sympathetic to them, for the love of mercy do not visit him. Your sympathy for him must never, ever come at their expense.

          I’m not going to say ‘Don’t visit him.’ I am going to say don’t visit him without some very careful thought about how honest and insightful you can be about your own motivations, how honest you can expect him to be with you, and how proof against manipulation you’ll be if he tries. Don’t rush into anything.

          If you want to look at it with compassion for him, think of it this way. A man incarcerated for probably the rest of his natural life is in a vulnerable position, and he needs not to have his problems added to. A complicated relationship with a visitor unclear on their own motivations is liable to go wrong, and if it did, he could be left feeling worse too. Don’t go in unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing.

          2. GreenT*  

            This is a great roadmap but I’d also suggest that the LW spend some time sitting with the possibility that they feel a pull towards events in their periphery that are “big.” I feel like a lot of American culture values the sort of superhero mentality of “it’s a Big Thing! There’s a role for me here to step up!” But actually…there usually isn’t! A lot of big events are just big events, and a lot of them are far too periphery but when they’re the closest Big Thing we feel a sort of “what should I be doing here?” But…by your own admission this is a former boss from years ago, not a close friend or relative.

            1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*  

              Both this comment and I&I’s are incredibly wise, and have given me a lot to think about, thank you.

      2. Frieda*  

        I read an article a while back about a woman whose spouse was using CSA material and her choice, ultimately, was to participate in his very intensive inpatient psychological treatment and through that process she decided to continue the marriage. It was not a given for her.

        In that case, I still have *so* many misgivings and alarm bells, and … she was his spouse, not someone he used to work with X years ago.

        This LW owes their former boss nothing and the impulse to make contact is really troubling. I don’t say this lightly but it would be worth some therapy sessions to figure out whether there’s a larger pattern here of trying to redeem people for no good reason, or to engage in self-harming emotional behavior, or a desire to minimize the harm of CSA material … something is happening here in LW’s mind, and it’s troubling.

        1. RWM*  

          Frieda, I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph. LW’s impulse is very odd, and very much worth unpacking with a professional.

          1. Diomedea Exulans*  

            I think LW’s impulse is very normal. If you grew up in a culture/family/community that prioritises empathy, forgiveness, caring about acquaintances who got into trouble or have been mentally unwell, their thought process is completely natural.

        2. Another Kristin*  

          There’s a really amazing article in the New Yorker about the author Alice Munro, whose partner sexually abused her daughter. Munro at the very least suspected the abuse but did not protect her daughter or leave the abuser. The article is a tough read, but the thing that stuck out to me was Munro’s sort of negative narcissism, for lack of a better word – her daughter’s abuse meant that she (Munro) was a terrible person who deserved to be unloved and unhappy, not that her child was being victimized and she had options to try to stop it. She put herself first in the sense that torturing herself was her first priority, not her child’s well-being.

          That’s all to say, I completely agree with you that the LW might want to explore this impulse with a therapist, as they might have similar self-destructive/self-flagellating tendencies, which can be extremely harmful towards others.

          2. Media Monkey*  

            there was also a blogger whose husband was prosecuted for CSAM on his computer. she stuck by him and spent a lot of time writing about how mean everyone was to him and how it wasn’t really his fault.

          3. EmmaPoet*  

            I read that article and ended up furious at Munro for sticking her head in the sand and doing nothing. I saved this passage, where Andrea (Munro’s daughter) talks about how she is perceived by her family vs how she actually feels.

            Charlie was never particularly curious about her grandmother. The family conflict didn’t feel relevant to her life. “When I was growing up, I was thinking about my problems,” she told me, almost apologetically. She speaks to her mother on the phone every day: “She’s just this beautiful, asexual creature who doesn’t need to be attractive to anybody. She’s goddess-y in her nature. She’s just glowing and energetic, and she has this joy for life that I think I have as well.”

            The conversation with Charlie made me feel that Andrea was soaring through life, and in an e-mail to Andrea I admitted that I felt myself slipping into the place her siblings had spent so many years: “Look how amazing Andrea is—she’s thriving!”

            “Thriving Andrea,” she responded. “What a load.” The goddess-y life of celibacy was possible because “it is easy to ignore something you are not aware of missing.” She sometimes enters a state in which all her interactions are tinged with a sense of guilt and horror that she has demanded too much from other people. “Most of all, I’m afraid of being a burden,” she wrote me.

        3. Anon for this comment, please*  

          I am the daughter of exactly this kind of marriage. Spoiler alert: my parents are separated, my mother cannot divorce him without paying him alimony (even though he has a CSAM charge on the books in NJ), and both my brother and I love her, but don’t respect her.

          This is a colossally stupid choice and we as a society should actively stop people from being able to make it.

      3. Reality.Bites*  

        Not merely accused. Convicted and admitted to it.

        Also, from what I’ve read about this crime, due to well-known people being charged and convicted, the proof is generally incontrovertible – there just isn’t a way for this material to accidentally end up on your computer without you deliberately seeking it out and leaving lots of evidence that’s exactly what you did.

    4. Erin K.*  

      It can be difficult for people to reconcile the fact that the good things they like about someone can coexist with ugly or evil things. Lots of us have issues with black-and-white thinking and the assumption that people who do horrible things must also be utterly horrible in other visible ways, therefore if the person was good to them, what they did can’t be that bad. It’s a trap that many fall into unless they sit down and examine it. I’ve been guilty of this before; it’s a difficult thing to do if you aren’t used to it, it takes time and a lot of people don’t want to put in that time and sit with the discomfort. Lots of people don’t like to be wrong about things, and if they thought Joe was a nice man, they can’t believe that he also committed horrible crimes because that would mean they were wrong about him and being able to see awful, evil people immediately, and therefore it could also happen to them. (See the “what was she wearing” defense for women who were assaulted; because if the assault was the fault of the clothes, or the behaviour, they are safe because they don’t dress or behave like that.)

      Many abusers also take care to groom their character witnesses as carefully as they groom their victims; they specifically cultivate a persona which will counter any accusations the victim makes, in order to ensure the victim will not be believed.

      Letter writer does need to sit with the fact that this person contains the ability to do good while also doing extensive harm, and think about not just the person they know, but also the victims and how it impacts them. Hopefully if they do that they can stop minimizing the crimes.

    5. Popinki*  

      Real children were exploited and harmed.

      No one Clockwork Orange’d him into looking at all those images. He chose to look, and keep on looking, and paying to promulgate the suffering of children.

      He had to know he was doing something illegal and horrifically immoral, because DUHHHHH.

      If I felt sorry for someone who did that and still found them “likeable,” I’d be doing a lot of soul-searching as to why and what that said about me.

    7. Cmdrshprd*  

      My personal theory (based on no research or any other evidence) is that once people have found to like someone and they turn out to have done a bad thing(s), it can create a problem to say I fell for/liked a person who did bad things/is bad. it maybe stirs up feelings of am I bad person for having liked this person, or the other “easier” option is well maybe they really are not that bad. yes they did a bad thing, but they really are not that bad and that is why I liked them.

      1. But Of Course*  

        I think that’s sometimes a valid explanation. I also think of my mother, who provided no consequences (as an adult, I mean, not when they were children) for the fact two of her children were abusers of their children and are … maybe at best deeply troubled people I’m fine with not having a relationship with. (As with all things, it’s pretty nuanced and this isn’t the space for a big, in-depth examination.) My mother’s motivation was loneliness and a desire for family, and that allowed her to ignore some relatively terrible things in a way that made and makes me angry. But she believed that forgiveness was better than casting someone out and I think that can also be a motivation for glossing over when someone has done terrible things to another person like LW’s boss.

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*  

        They can’t change the actions of the past, so the only way to resolve the cognitive dissonance is to change their current thoughts or beliefs.

    8. Capybara*  

      Because they might have to admit something bad about themselves or acknowledge they are bad judges of character.

      1. Lydia*  

        But that’s the thing. It’s not about being a bad judge of character. All of us have known or will know someone who does something awful. Sometimes we’ll find out but a lot of times we won’t, and it’s not because we’re dumb or terrible judges of character. It’s because people who do terrible things are very good at hiding their true selves from most people.

        1. Alternative Person*  

          It’s that whole abusers groom everyone, not just their victims, thing. They treat certain people well and make good relationships so when their crimes get exposed, they get a whole bunch of people saying ‘but they would never do that!’.

    9. MissGirl*  

      I recently found out a beloved cousin did something horrible, though not at this level. It’s really shaken my core. I’m not minimizing my cousin’s behavior nor accepting it. But I now have a better understanding of how hard it is to reconcile someone you thought of as good as being capable of evil.

      It’s so much easier to judge when it’s a stranger. You haven’t witnessed all the good a person does before you discover all the bad. Processing it takes time. I’d recommend the OP not reach out until they’ve had time with their feelings. I think at this point they want to reach out to try to get some understanding of this guy’s actions for their own peace of mind. They’re trying to make sense of something there is no making sense of.

      I’d recommend using this energy to donate to causes that combat this evil or support victims. I too wish I knew what made once seemingly good people do such awful things to prevent it. The question of if they were this bad all along or something triggered it won’t be answered by the OP.

      1. Anon for this*  

        I learned that someone in my hometown who had coached/advised an extracurricular for many years of my youth, and who I’d worked for as a teen in a summer program he ran, was recently caught in a “to catch a predator” style sting arranging to meet someone posing as a 14 year old boy. I have every sympathy for you and the LW because it really is so hard to deal with the overwhelming cognitive dissonance of having positive memories and fondness for the person you thought you knew while grappling with this new knowledge of their capacity for something abhorrent. We want the world to make sense and have cartoon villains and heroes; it’s really hard to accept that two things are true, that someone was indeed lovely and charming to you and also something completely different. If the LW can access any kind of counseling, I think it would be a good safe place to spend some time unpacking this dissonance.

      2. NotBatman*  

        Agreed. I recently found out my dear uncle committed an unforgivable crime against a family member. My first impulse, which I needed to fight down, was to reach out to him in the hope that he’d have an explanation that would make it all make sense.

        OP seems like they might be hoping that if they converse with this guy then he’ll tell them something that will resolve the horrible dissonance of “I love this person, and they did something monstrous.” But that kind of answer is never going to be found.

        1. JustaTech*  

          I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head here with “an explanation that would make it all make sense”.

          People want, desperately, for things to make sense. The world very rarely obliges.

          But the OP reaching out to the criminal boss is *very* unlikely to give either the answers the OP wants *or* the truth.

          1. Red Shirt Alert*  

            This reminds me of a television interview with an FBI profiler after a school mass shooting. She was asked why someone would do this. She said there is never going to be an answer that will make sense (though some excuses may be offered). That such an act is by its nature irrational and therefore there is no rational reason. She said we want a “reason” as having one implies that it could be fixed and future acts avoided. It really stuck with me – that our need to understand drives us but we must accept we will never understand some things. For example, whether my grandfather was SA means squat to me, one of his victims. I chose not to so why didn’t he?

      3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*  

        One thing I think adds to the difficulty of these situations is that in at least some western cultures, we’re encouraged to see people as one thing or another. People are good or they’re bad. And this is their inherent state of being. They ARE good or they ARE bad. But when your cousin (for example) has done many wonderful things (I’m assuming) and has also done some horrific things, that just doesn’t fit into the model of a good / evil dichotomy. Like anyone else, the cousin has the capability for both good and bad.

      4. Hannah Lee*  

        The other thing that I think about in situations like this, though tangential to the primary crime/harm they are causing: While they were focusing on feeding this obsession, doing the thing that was harming to others, and hiding this obsession from the people they lived with, worked with, socialized with … what *weren’t* they doing? Were they neglecting their marriage, emotionally, physically, not being a supportive equal partner and participant, companion in the day to day life they shared? Were they siphoning funds away and resources away for their criminal activity?
        And the time they spent on their criminal activity, did it take away from their other obligations, ability to contribute, support … their children, parents, friends, job, community?

        All that is also causing harm, even if it’s not as devastating as the harm suffered by the children in those CSA images he bought, sold, traded, helped sustain the market for.

        For example I remember a priest active in the church I attended as a kid … he ran the youth council, organizing activities, outings, classes. I joined as a 12 year old and stayed in it for a few years, for fun but also to have another adult in my life who wasn’t my parents who I might be able to talk to about stuff, who might appreciate me (I was the youngest daughter, often overlooked in a boisterous family with multiple siblings) But though on the surface, in groups, the priest talked about ‘come see me any time if you need to talk’ or seemed like he’d be encouraging, he came across as dismissive, disinterested anytime I approached him … he’d give perfunctory info about whatever activity that was going on, but immediately turn his attention to someone else. And often, he’d arrange events that excluded the girls in the group, but encouraged the boys. That group became yet another place I was overlooked by adults, at a time it would have been life changing to have even just a little encouragement.

        Years later I learned that he was grooming and targeting the boys for abuse. Repeatedly. Boys I knew at school, their brothers and cousins too. And sadly, he did the same at multiple churches as he was moved around, for years and years.

        I was really fortunate to have him ignore me, while he was busy planning, and abusing and lying and hiding his crimes. But he created a giant black hole, took up space, where there should have been a caring adult providing guidance and non-abusive attention to the youth of that community.

        1. LBD*  

          Your comment is a very sad one, and a good example of how a person who isn’t targeted at all can still be victimized by a predator. Those actions have ripples that spread further than we might notice.

          1. Anon for this comment, please*  

            Yup — my dad never laid a finger on me, but I’m still undoubtedly one of his victims.

    10. anon for this*  

      My workplace (academia) had the fun of our (newly hired male)leader being arrested for soliciting sex from a minor (16yr old boy posing as younger to stage gotcha moments at the meetup) on campus! On the clock!

      Absolutely shocking that some (male)colleagues first response was to minimize and and somewhat defend the incident as ‘well, could happen to anyone’ sort of thing.

      Definitely made a lot of people take a harder look at those colleagues’ judgement.

      1. Mallory Janis Ian*  

        If it “could happen to anyone”, it makes me wonder what he thinks other people are generally up to! Egads!

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*  

        The reaction is infuriating! No, Fergus, it actually *couldn’t* happen to anyone. Just to the people doing sex crimes.

        1. goddessoftransitory*  

          When people get caught in that particular way, I find a horrific level of “well, they got tricked!” excusing out there. Like it was a scam email they clicked on by mistake.

          They weren’t tricked; they chose to try to arrange to abuse a child. That no child happened, thank God, to be involved is not the point of the outcome.

      3. EmmaPoet*  

        John Grisham was interviewed by the Telegraph in 2014 regarding the US justice situation and said that judges have “gone crazy” over the past 30 years, locking up far too many people, from white collar criminals like Martha Stewart, to black teenagers on minor drug charges, and those who had viewed child porn online.
        He said that a friend of his from law school had been drinking too much and whoopsie, ended up on a website for CSAM. It turned out to be a sting and Old Buddy served three years in prison. He got a huge amount of backlash.

        https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/10/16/john-grisham-child-porn-white-guys-prison-harsh-pedophiles/17344755/

    11. Not on board*  

      People minimize things or give passes to people they like all the time. Someone told me about a coworker who complained about person A doing X thing, and they pointed out that person B does the same thing, and the coworker said, “yeah but I like person B”.

    12. Emily is AUNT Emily?!*  

      Same. It sadly is deeply engrained in Western Society, especially when the perpetrators are cis men. Consider the Epstein files…

    13. Andrew*  

      Serial abusers are often really good at manipulating, controlling, and deceiving others. It’s rare for them to be the sort who would be genuinely great people if they had a conscience (think Vito Corleone, most depictions of Batman’s enemy The Penguin, or Mayor Wilkins from Buffy, for a few well-known examples), though; more often they have the more superficial, put-on charm associated with narcissists and sociopaths. But that’s enough for most people to think “Wow, what a nice guy!” and overlook the signs that this is really a monster wearing a human face.

      1. OuchOuchOuch*  

        Your examples are fictional people. Those don’t behave the same way as real people, which weakens the point you want to make.

        1. Andrew*  

          I don’t know about that in this case; after all, my point was that most serial predators and abusers AREN’T like the archetype those fictional characters represent. (Besides, who’s a real example as infamous as Corleone, Cobblepott, or Wilkins? Maybe Ted Bundy?)

    14. Worldwalker*  

      A former neighbor of mine (upstairs other side in a quadplex) beat two people to death with a baseball bat. He was a really nice guy; I liked him (though his girlfriend was psycho). But he murdered two people (and for reasons that would only make sense if you were as drunk as he was). You can’t overlook that. How could anyone?

    15. misselphaba*  

      This. I’ve cut people out of my life for far, far less.

      Hopefully my eyebrows will come back from my hairline one day…

    16. D'Arcy*  

      I find it especially shocking that OP pretty much condemns this pedophile’s friends and family for “abandoning” him. OP, that’s called having moral standards.

      1. goddessoftransitory*  

        It’s the same level of abandonment as fleeing a burning building. You aren’t abandoning the poor, misunderstood building. You are saving your own life.

      2. EmmaPoet*  

        Yeah, if I were married to someone and found out that they had collected 84,000 images of CSAM in less than two years, and whose own defense team admitted he has a “criminal interest” in boys between the ages of 11-14ish, then I would be strapping on my parachute and exiting the marriage at high speed. Ditto being friends with. This isn’t a minor flaw, it’s a heinous crime.

        1. Princess Sparklepony*  

          I’m wondering if those images had been collected starting earlier than his retirement. That is a lot of images.

    17. Jules the 3rd*  

      People minimize the crimes of Likeable Person because of two things:
      1. They identify with that person a little (“we bonded over a couple of shared interests”)
      2. Reducing cognitive dissonance, maybe “just world” fallacy. I’ve seen the thinking go like:
      In a just world, people who are “bad” are all bad, all the time, so if the person was good to *me*, they can’t be all bad, so they can’t be bad at all, and I will rewrite the actions so that it’s not bad (eg, “he may have been a victim too”). That way, I don’t have to deal with the two conflicting cognitions: “He was nice to me” and “He did a bad thing”.

      I had to dig into that when a friend was abused. The abuser was a Likeable Person, firmly embedded in the social group, and the abuse target asked to keep it quiet, so only a few people were told, and it was not talked about. One friend who had been told and had also been the focus of the Likeable Person’s charm for a couple of years *forgot* the accusation of abuse within a year, and I had to put it down to cognitive dissonance because it was so unusual a reaction for that friend. (Since being reminded, they used COVID to fade the Likeable Person out of their social group; they had not before then due to the abuse target’s request.)

      1. Goldenrod*  

        I agree, the charm of the “Likeable Person” can be a powerful factor is overlooking abuse.

        I just finished reading Brooke Nevil’s memoir, “Unspeakable Things” about the abuse she suffered from Matt Lauer. In the book, she talks a lot about how “likeable” his image is, and how he was able to weaponize this to get away with abuse in the workplace. It’s a fantastic book. Highly recommend.

        1. Mallory Janis Ian*  

          And he wasn’t even *that* likeable — eventually, even on air, he came off as a smug douchey jackass. But I think I started seeing it when I started to get wind of how he was treating my favorite: Ann Curry; hearing about that made me more critical of his actions while watching him, and suddenly I could see an ass sitting there.

      2. Andrew*  

        Affably Evil, as the pop-culture wiki TVTropes calls it. Although a lot of serial predators/abusers have strong narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies and are usually the “Faux” version rather than the genuine one. (The distinction is whether their personable side is their actual personality, but they just have little or no conscience, or if it’s just a ploy to manipulate others for their own gain… and they still have little or no conscience.)

    18. 1sttimeposter*  

      I was in a similar situation with a previous coworker (although he committed a very different crime). I struggled with feelings of empathy for the situation he found himself in. It helped when someone said very clearly to me that while I may have felt a previous connection with that person, they are not the person I thought they were. I very quickly let it go and advise you to do the same.

    19. Heart&Vine*  

      “..it’s sad knowing how he was saving up for retirement and built a business worth selling, only to lose everything. It’s sad knowing that his friends and most of his family have largely abandoned him. It’s sad knowing that if he’s lucky enough to survive prison, he’ll be in his 90s and flat broke.”

      You know what’s sadder than all those things combined? What happened to those children.

      1. Goldenrod*  

        Yes, it’s sad that he ruined his life (and the lives of many innocent others) through the consequences of his actions.

        Also: he is experiencing the consequences of his actions. It would be much, much sadder if he did not experience any repercussions.

    20. iglwif*  

      I unfortunately think I do understand, at least partly:
      – People use the availability heuristic, which makes it harder to believe that someone who’s consistently been kind to them could be horrible to other people.
      – People generally don’t like to think they could be so wrong about someone they thought they knew, which makes it harder to believe something terrible about a person they like than about a stranger.
      – Abusers are often very good at manipulating people! This includes the people they abuse, obviously, but it also includes the people they want to make a good impression on.
      – Knowing how someone behaves in one context (e.g., work) doesn’t mean knowing them how they behave in other contexts (e.g., their marriage, their family, the contents of their hard drive), but again: availability heuristic, so we (general we) think we know people better than we actually do.

      I have a lot of anecdotal and academic sources for all of this but one of those sources is people I met in my 20s who knew my father before I was born. They found him warm, charming, and funny. I, one of his middle children, found him impatient, dismissive, emotionally abusive, and scary.

    21. BekaRosselinMetadi*  

      This 100%. I will also say I’m a tad skeptical that the guy fell down this rabbit hole once he retired. Was it a coincidence that he had so many boys in his preferred age range then? But so much minimizing of child sexual abuse-it’s shocking.

    22. Go talk to someone else*  

      Exactly. It’s always “well they were nice to ME so I don’t believe the victims” in things like this. As if predators don’t do that on purpose in order to get people on their side in order to further devalue the word of their detractors and/or victims.
      There are plenty of people in jail who deserve mercy and understanding. This guy is not one of them. Think about why people like this are always given a million chances and passes. Or positions of power.

    23. Caffeine Monkey*  

      I agree.

      A member of my friend group, who some people had known well since they were at school together thirty years ago, was convicted of possession of CSAM. It was on a far smaller scale than OP’s friend, but it was CSAM.

      He got a suspended sentence, because he’s the main carer for his wife, who has physical disabilities.

      He is no longer a member of my friend group. Everybody has dropped all contact with him and his wife. I can’t imagine being able to look at him without thinking of what he’s been involved with and feeling sick.

      1. Dr Sarah*  

        That’s horribly sad for his wife, who has lost all her friends due to being in a situation that she might well be unable in practice to get out of. Unless I’m missing something such as her actively speaking out for him or staying with him when she actually does have other options, is it not possible to reach out to her separately from him?

  4. Bathyphysa Conifera*  

    Since this is my specific “Why are you totally okay with (specific politician) making similar excuses–why is this not a line you will draw?” I’m going to figure It’s A Metaphor for that.

    Lots of minimizing language.

  5. Spooky*  

    A lot of this letter read like playing devil’s advocate–like, “sure he did horrible things, BUT…”

    I would remind OP that, no matter which belief system you adhere to, the devil needs no advocate. He manages quite well on his own.

    1. Cyrano*  

      I’m always confused when people do this. Do they think *the Devil* doesn’t have enough lawyers?

      1. Reality.Bites*  

        I just read this quote recently:

        “Satan hasn’t a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.”

        ― Mark Twain

        1. Silver Robin*  

          Satan also comes from the Hebrew word for “adversary” or “accuser”. It was not a single person, but a role that an angel was given to interfere with human activity. The first time the figure appears, it is to prosecute the nation of Judah for royally screwing up and to do some loyalty testing.

          Which is to say, at one point, Satan *was* the lawyer.

          Later on, the Catholics literally had somebody who took on the role of Devil’s Advocate during the canonization process. If they wanted to make somebody a saint, there had to be somebody else looking into all the flaws of that person to ensure that sainthood was deserved. Not sure if that is still the name of the role, or if it still exists, but it did at one point.

          All of that has since evolved into a debate tactic which, when used in extremely specific contexts, can be a helpful exercise to help people strengthen their arguments (when in practice spaces) or point out holes in an argument (in adversarial spaces). But it has been so abused and put to so many unkind ends, I really think we could just abandon it. The number of people who make it into a game, like Irish Teacher mentions, makes it nigh useless.

          1. D C F*  

            According to Wikipedia, “During the canonization process employed by the Catholic Church, the ‘Promoter of the Faith’ (Latin: promotor fidei), popularly known as the Devil’s advocate (advocatus diaboli), was a canon lawyer appointed by Church authorities to argue against the canonization of a candidate.” It also says, “The Devil’s advocate opposed ‘God’s advocate’ (advocatus Dei; also known as the ‘Promoter of the Cause’), whose task was to make the argument in favor of canonization. During the investigation of a cause, this task is now performed by the ‘Promoter of Justice’ (promotor iustitiae), who is in charge of examining the accuracy of the inquiry on the saintliness of the candidate.”

            I urge anyone who thinks being a Devil’s Advocate a good idea to try instead being a Promoter of Justice. The world needs far more people willing to examine the accuracy of what they’re thinking and saying.

      2. Irish Teacher.*  

        I think it’s a combination of some people just enjoying a “debate” and being privileged enough to think that taking the unpopular stance on something like racism or child abuse is no different than taking the unpopular stance on something like pineapple on pizza and…some people getting so caught up in the idea of being “unbiased” and “being able to see all point of view” that they pride themselves on even being able to argue from the point of view of somebody most of us would think of as terrible.

        I suspect privilege plays a large part in it, people who just see these things as academic debates and think, “I’m not biased like most people. People get way too caught up in their own little bubbles but I’m more open-minded and can even argue points I completely disagree with.”

        I think it’s also a bit of not seeing nuance. Like yes, it’s good to be able to see other points of view…when it’s stuff like say religion. There is value in acknowledging that people of other religions or none (or just religions if you are an atheist) also have reasonable reasons for coming to their conclusions. Or with political issues like whether governments should cut taxes or increase spending when they have a surplus. So they decide that it’s therefore good to be able to see everybody’s point of view, when some views…are not reasonable.

        1. SimonTheGreyWarden*  

          Re: Privilege – it’s definitely the stance someone who doesn’t know someone who has been a victim of SA (or rather doesn’t know that they know someone who has been a victim of SA).

      3. Anon Again... Naturally*  

        My stock response to anyone ‘playing the Devil’s advocate’ is, “I guess you need the practice for where you’re going.” It really ticks people off, but they don’t pull that with me again. One person actually apologized. The others, of course, thought I was a terrible person because I refused to get on board with a bad faith argument and insulted them, as though they weren’t insulting me with their garbage takes.

        1. DragonAge*  

          For me it depends on the topic. I am willing to entertain the devil’s advocate for some topics while it is a hard no for other topics.

          2. UKDancer*  

            I mean when I was at school we had a debating society and we were encouraged to take positions we didn’t agree with as part of learning how to debate and disagree respectfully so I agree it has some uses. I also agree that it’s not something that one should use for things like this.

            At school it was more academic and things like “should we ban foxhunting” or “should we bring back capital punishment” or “are school uniforms a good thing”. It was handled on a fairly theoretical level as an intellectual level. This topic is not something that needs any form of devil’s advocate.

  6. Dust Bunny*  

    There is entirely too much “but he was nice to me” in the world right now, thanks.

    I would be actual money that he knew perfectly well he was into children–and don’t come at me with “p*dophile” versus “ephebophile”; I’m done with that nonsense–and that the online aspect just made it easier to indulge, not that it was a new “interest”. You don’t collect 84k images in a few years by accident.

    2. Productivity Pigeon*  

      Amen.

      And isn’t your first sentence just the crux of it all?

      People who are friendly, or nice, or likable, or funny can do terrible things.

      We want to believe that a person who does evil or deeply hurtful things have tells, that they are easy to identify, that those stains on their souls are clearly telegraphed.

      But they’re usually not. A serial abuser can be kind to animals. A narcissistic parent can be an excellent teacher. A mob boss can love and take care of his mother.

      We want people to be simple and easy to categorize. But they aren’t.

      1. ThatGirl*  

        This is not the same, but I have an uncle who is charming, friendly, funny, very smart. He’s also a horrible bigot, conspiracy nut and Holocaust denier. You might not know most of those things about him if you only encountered him briefly. He’s helped lots of people in his work who I’m sure are grateful to him. Doesn’t mean I ever have to speak to him again.

        2. Turquoise Cow*  

          I had an uncle like that. He had some terrible beliefs and was so into certain conspiracy theories that it was hard to have a normal conversation with him. But he was also beloved in the community for helping his neighbors with all sorts of problems. He’d go and help them fix their cars or pull them out of a ditch, pick up groceries, help old ladies with home repairs. Helped everyone and never dreamed of asking for money. All around nice guy. Never hurt anyone. But some of his beliefs were terrible. Makes it hard to reconcile the two halves. I’m guessing OP is having a similar issue now – Boss was probably a great person who dealt fairly with his employees, mentored them, supported them, paid them well. And collected 84,000 images of horrific things.

        3. Dust Bunny*  

          We all have that uncle. I have that uncle. He’d do anything for me. He’s also ideologically a N**i, more or less. Mercifully, he’s very elderly, lives in a tiny town, and doesn’t use the internet. I can’t change his mind but I can be glad he’s isolated. (We also don’t live near each other so he hasn’t done enough for me for me to feel beholden.)

        4. Frenchman Ben*  

          My own sire is a terrible person (not going to get into his crimes as I don’t want to trauma dump in the comments or accidentally trigger anyone) and a terrible father. But he’s also smart, with a wicked sense of humour, and loving with animals. And I share some of his tastes in hobbies and media. It’s never black and white.

      2. AngryOctopus*  

        Right? We want to think “but he was so nice to me, there’s no way that Horrible Thing could be true!” because we want to think that if someone is doing a horrible thing, we’d know, and we’d be able to distance ourselves from that person. The truth is harder, that lots of people do varying levels of Horrible Things, and we may never know!

        Wasn’t it Ted Bundy who worked a suicide hotline saving people? We all contain multitudes, and some of those multitudes are not good things.

        1. Anonychick*  

          Wasn’t it Ted Bundy who worked a suicide hotline saving people?

          Yes, and/but not only that: he worked there alongside Ann Rule, later a famed true-crime writer, including for her book about their acquaintance.

          Why is this notable? Because, at the time they worked together, Ann Rule had already:
          – had many close family members in law enforcement
          – volunteered at a jail
          – worked as a Seattle police officer

          …and yet, for all of that, she was not only a coworker of but friends with Ted Bundy, and was just as surprised, if not more so, than everyone else when it turned out this attractive, personable young man was also a serial rapist and murderer.

          We are inclined to believe what we first see, and to then discard information that contrasts with it…but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to accept that what we see is not always the full truth.

          1. That Crazy Cat Lady*  

            I remember reading about that back in the day. And then Ann Rule wrote The Stranger Beside Me about Bundy, which became her most famous book. The irony of policewoman who investigated serial killers, working beside an actual serial killer without knowing it, was mind-boggling.

            1. Anonychick*  

              Yup. But it also perfectly illustrates the point that someone can perfectly reasonably not see the very, very bad in someone. Because if Ann Rule, with all her experience, never clocked Ted Bundy as being anything other than a nice guy, of course it’s reasonable that LW might never have seen or felt anything “off” about her boss…but that doesn’t mean her boss didn’t do truly horrific things.

            2. B’Elanna*  

              It’s a good example of “anyone can be scammed.” Bundy’s ‘scam’ of getting people to believe that he was a super great guy and a good friend wasn’t the type of financial scam we usually think of, but getting people to believe exactly what you want them to believe about you operates on many of the same mechanisms as a pig butchering scam for money. In both cases you’re using social engineering to get away with harming people, and in both cases being very smart and very savvy is not a guaranteed defense against being taken in.

      3. goddessoftransitory*  

        Or as someone once put it: Adolf Hitler loved dogs.

        His crimes are not mitigated by his affection for canines.

    3. SnackAttack*  

      I recently listened to a podcast called Hunting Warhead. It was about a huge investigation into a major CSAM website on the dark web. While it focused on the CSAM admins and creators, it gave a TON of insight into how the participants go about getting the material. There are codewords, communication plans, protocols for how to know the feds showed up so you can delete your account, trading procedures, etc. They are very much active in the abuse and aren’t just innocent bystanders.

      1. Media Monkey*  

        OMG that podcast was eye opening and terrifying. I think I listened to it years ago and it has stayed with me.

      2. aebhel*  

        Yeah, it is really not something you can just stumble into accidentally. And whether or not the boss knew about his attractions before he retired, he certainly knew that this was illegal and grotesquely immoral. This isn’t a case of an underage kid having pictures of their equally underage boyfriend/girlfriend on their phone. This is not a gray area. This is deliberate participation in the exploitation and abuse of children.

        1. I&I*  

          Also … how likely is it that he’s telling the truth when he says he didn’t even know about these attractions until he retired?

          People’s sexuality doesn’t generally get stronger with age.

          People’s tendency to say, ‘The first time I got caught was the first time I did it,’ on the other hand, is pretty strong.

          Tbh if he was saying, ‘I always knew I was like this but stepped up my consumption (84 thousand!) when I had more time on my hands,’ I’d trust him more now. Insisting that what you got caught for was 100% of what you did is just too convenient.

          And if he’s still lying, definitely don’t visit him and give him someone to practice his lies with.

          1. Dara*  

            He didn’t even make that claim about not knowing about those attractions himself – OP is just speculating.

            1. I&I*  

              They said ‘based on his his testimony’, so I think they’re at least partially constructing a theory from what he said. But all they have to go on his his testimony and their own experience, and bluntly, OP:

              – His testimony is going to affect how long he spends in prison, and also how bad a person he has to think of himself being. His motivations for minimising could not be stronger.

              – Your experience of him is not relevant. You knew the most curated version of him possible.

              So OP, this idea you have of him having been a lifelong innocent who just fell down a rabbit-hole is based on one person’s testimony who has every reason to lie, both to himself and others, and your own observations of – bluntly – what he looked like when he was pretending to be a normal man.

              Everything you have about him beyond his basic humanity is, to some degree or other, false.

              You’re engaging in some very motivated reasoning. I think one reason might be that if he was an active pedophile during the time you know him, he might well have been a danger to people that you could have stopped.

              If, that is, you had psychic powers and could somehow magically know what he was at pains not to tell you.

              If it was all an act, he was dangerous, and you didn’t know and didn’t stop him, would that make you feel guilty?

              If so, it shouldn’t. Assuming someone’s a dangerous pervert with no evidence is wrong, and you had no evidence because he was making sure of that.

              You don’t have to excuse him to excuse yourself.

      3. ChairOfTheBored*  

        I would actually recommend the LW listen to both that and ‘The Darkest Web’ by BBC World of Secrets before deciding whether or not to contact their old boss. Both give a very grim, but thorough, account of how this material is gathered, and the impact it has on the children being abused (stating the obvious, MAJOR content warnings). This is knowledge you need to have if you’re thinking of making contact with someone who actively collects this material.
        LW, I work in a safeguarding role at my place of worship, and I’ve been in a similar situation. You are probably in a bit of a state of shock and trying to reconcile how your boss can be both a fair-minded and successful business owner (which he was), and someone who paid to see children being injured and violently abused (which he is), for all the reasons people have outlined above. That’s very human, because you know him personally, and you’ve never met his victims. But when you think of all the things he is suffering, please remember that he is not suffering them because a giant finger of misfortune pointed at him out of the sky and struck him down. They are the direct and foreseeable consequences of his own choices. He put himself in this situation.

      4. Damn it, Hardison!*  

        Hunting Warhead is an amazing podcast but a difficult listen for sure. Anyone who has collected images of child sexual abuse consciously chose at multiple decision points to do so. It was not an accident, or easily done, they committed to doing so.

        1. Kelly L.*  

          Yep. I’ve been on the internet *so much*. Since 1995. I was there in the early oughts when someone turned all the images from an innocuous-looking Quizilla quiz into goatse as a prank and it was on everyone’s Livejournals. I have seen.some.shit. And no CSAM at all. Because these people hide it on purpose, and you have to go looking for it on purpose.

    4. Another One*  

      I was looking up something else and ended up with an article about images in child pornography cases.

      Its includes a citation that the median number of images is 4,265.

      This guy had collected 80k more than that. 80k.

      In 3 years?

      A blessing on the people who handle these investigations because they do what most of us could never.

      1. goddessoftransitory*  

        I forget the names, but they caught one particularly horrific abuser in France a year or so ago because one detective caught onto the patterns and amassed the evidence. One person. Who had to view and collate images that Hell would reject as Too Far.

    5. CityMouse*  

      I once was sitting at a parole hearing I assisted with for a really horrific murder (my spouse has told me not to repeat the details because they’re that bad) and watched the guy’s girlfriend (I’m not sure how, they met after he was convicted) start crying when she saw the crime scene/autopsy photos presented. He was fortunately never, ever getting out due the aggravating factors.

    6. But Of Course*  

      That’s the crux of it in some ways. I’m not saying I can understand how you would end up with *one* such image – I’ve been on the internet since 1995 and have never even seen a single image – but maybe if you were, I don’t know, torrenting as a teen you could have some really unsavory stuff on a corner of your computer. But 84,000 of the kind of images that are made very difficult to access and that this person had to connect with people in another country to access? That’s not buying designer purses or mobile game credits and being surprised later you accidentally have 25 purses or spent thousands on power-ups.

    7. Dido*  

      Yeah, it’s really odd that the LW claims to have known nothing about this and yet is full of excuses for this guy (he didn’t look at the most violent images, he probably didn’t even know he was a pedophile for the first 60+ years of his life, he could’ve been a victim himself, etc. etc. etc.). Why on Earth are they giving him the benefit of the doubt here?

      1. Cow Whisperer*  

        My guess is it’s to protect himself from the fact that the LW states that a lot of his coworkers started working for the guy as teenagers in the age range of the abuse materials the boss acquired.

        Knowing your boss is a criminal is one thing; knowing you were surrounded by possible victims and missed it is far more unsettling.

        1. Anonychick*  

          Yes, this.

          But also, humans a) believe ourselves to be way more aware of others than we actually are, and b) dislike cognitive dissonance.

          Therefore, when faced with the conflicting facts of “I (a Good Person) was friends with this guy” and “this guy did this horrific thing”, many people will try to minimize the latter, rather than accept that both facts can simultaneously be true.

    8. MaybeMossy*  

      This needs to be where everyone can see it.

      I’ve been on the internet since long before it was cool, been some to some sketchy places and I have never, *never* seen or been offered CSAM because no one just happens to find that. THEY GO LOOKING FOR IT BECAUSE THEY WANT TO SEE CSAM.

      1. Worldwalker*  

        This. I predate the Web. (I go back to the Usenet days) I’m a former /b/tard. I’ve also been around some of those corners of the Internet where you want to wash your browser with bleach. And I have not come across, let alone been offered, CSAM. It’s not something you stumble across.

    9. Mid*  

      I absolutely don’t want to justify this or excuse it in any way, because the man was absolutely looking for CSAM, but it is unlikely he was looking at all those images. People who download those materials can be used as a server/host for those materials for other users, and if they aren’t computer literate, they might not be aware. So they might be intentionally downloading a few dozen or hundred images (which is still vile and inexcusable) but they might not be aware of the other things being downloaded/hosted on their computer. Again, not defending him, just wanting to share relevant information.

    2. CityMouse*  

      Yes, a former boss? Just, why? Why does LW need to reach out to someone who they aren’t close to and committed one of the most horrific crimes. Why?

    3. Asloan*  

      Honestly I would ask OP to really look hard at their instincts here. By their own account, they haven’t heard from this person beyond an occasional text for years. This colleague has also not reached out and asked OP for anything, in fact as far as we know he didn’t want OP to know about it. OP also has no inside knowledge of the crime and seems to be getting everything second or third hand. So … what about this situation is making OP feel called upon to act here? With no sense it’s even welcome or wanted? Do they perhaps like the idea of themselves as some kind of savior or something? Can I suggest channeling that instinct into something else?

    4. EmploymentAttorney*  

      My thoughts exactly. It sounds like they’ve been out of touch for years now. I might understand the impulse more if this was a very good friend.

      1. Antilles*  

        Same. If this was a very good friend or family member, I could see it. Might not be my choice personally, but I’d at least understand it.
        But for an ex-boss who OP leads off with “I wouldn’t call him friend” that you haven’t seen in six years and apparently are so far out of touch that it took you three years to even learn about this?

        1. Retired But Still Herding Cats*  

          I assume that “I wouldn’t call him friend” is essentially an attempt to minimize the minimizing.

      2. Lone Moose*  

        My partner’s best friend from growing up (that he was still close to until this) was convicted for this same thing a few years back. He was immediately cut out of our life, full stop; we don’t have kids ourselves, but a lot of people we associate with do, so by association, we’re around kids a lot and he had been around kids around us (never out of their parents’ supervision, thankfully, or I’d be in intense therapy over the guilt). He is no longer welcome in our lives for their safety and for my own peace of mind.

        I pity him; he has obviously got something very wrong mentally that he did this. But that does not mean I or my partner are people who should reach out to him. He did a horrendous thing, and that comes with consequences.

    5. Gruber*  

      I kept waiting for “I want to reach out because of X and talk to him about Y,” and it just…never came. It’s like a trailed-off thought in the form of a letter.

      1. Asloan*  

        I feel like maybe on some level what OP wants to ask is, “how can you be this person I knew and also who they say you are?” – and I don’t actually feel like anything good is going to come of asking him that and expecting an answer.

        1. FG*  

          It’s ok to be sad that the person you knew isn’t who you thought he was. Whether he always had this inside him or not, etc. It’s ok to grieve, to mourn. Given the distance from him, in time & relationship & space, and all of the unknowns about what he might feel about you knowing, etc. … there’s no guarantee that the comfort you feel compelled to offer would be the actual result.

          Grieve, but let it lie. Say a prayer if you’re so inclined, but let it lie.

      2. Joana*  

        Yeah when I saw the headline I thought it might be someone looking for a reference who stumbled upon the sentencing. I still wouldn’t list them as a reference but I can understand the pause for thought. But this…

    6. Butterfly Counter*  

      Let me preface this by saying that I work in CRJ, with my main focus being on rape and sexual assault and the incredible damage it wreaks on the most vulnerable in our society. I do not take this issue lightly (trust that this Epstein debacle has made me almost catatonic with rage and grief at times over the past years).

      But I do get the inclination to reach out and help a person you knew and liked. I’m sure, for the OP, they do have genuinely good memories of this person. Finding out that they’ve done something awful doesn’t make the good feelings brought in by those memories go away for some people. The instinct is to want to help that past person, or to coax this new person back into the person they were. I do think that’s a kind thing to do. And very human.

      However, I would caution OP against the minimization of the damage this person did and to not reach out until you confront that. He was a likeable person to OP. But in order to help anyone with comfort or understanding, you have to be willing to understand that whole person and not turn a blind eye to aspects of them that you don’t want to acknowledge. Not understanding that, while they were likeable and good at times, but also completely heinous at others, can often mean that you also encourage the sex offender to believe that they are only the good person, not the awful one as well and not take the responsibility they should for their part in these crimes. OP, you can’t make excuses or minimize, but I do commend the thought that you might want to be a comfort to an old friend.

        1. Great Frogs of Literature*  

          It may be Community and Restorative Justice — a framework for more reparation-based justice, rather than punitive justice.

          If I’m right, kudos to you, Butterfly Counter; I am sure that work can be extremely rewarding, but it also sounds incredibly difficult.

        2. Butterfly Counter*  

          Yes, I work in criminal justice (or as we rebranded, Criminology and Criminal Justice).

    7. It's Fine*  

      TL;DR I think LW would benefit from therapy to unpack this intense over-empathizing.

      I’m in therapy for a similar issue right now. If I can do some projecting, perhaps LW is so desperate to see more kindness in the world that they considering doing something extreme to be the change they want to see – showing compassion even to someone who most would never show it to.

      Recently I was in so much despair about the state of this country that I impulsively invited an acquaintance who’d fallen on hard times to stay in my home for free. I believed them to be hard working and smart and just in need of a place to land for a bit, and the lack of resources available to them was the failing of our society’s lack of a safety net. A year later they had no job, no savings left, and of course I was still the villain when I finally started expressing my frustration and setting expectations and boundaries. This is an entirely different situation from LW, but I feel a kernel of connection to LW’s attempts to humanize this man. Most people would look at my situation and say this person took advantage of me, but even after everything I still think that’s an oversimplification. So in the same way, LW is trying to see nuance in someone that doesn’t usually get that kind of grace.

      I 1000000% agree their language comes off as minimizing. I’d encourage the LW to sit more with the fact that this man fueled demand for heinous crimes AND he’s a human being who craves connection. No buts to soften the bad parts. I’d also suggest getting into therapy since hyperempathy leads us to make a lot more concessions in our life than is healthy. I think this urge to reach out to a past acquaintance now in prison is an expression of some kind of desperation or pain.

      1. here to help*  

        “…intense over-empathizing… desperate to see more kindness in the world that they considering doing something extreme to be the change they want to see – showing compassion even to someone who most would never show it to.”

        Oh this makes a lot of sense to me.

        Also really good answer from Alison.
        It would be very cool if offenders were all completely rehabilitated instead of just rotting in prison.
        I don’t think anyone can tell for sure if connecting with this man who has committed incredibly harmful acts is a step towards that or not, but LW should get their mission crystal clear.

    8. duinath*  

      yeah. they’re not even friends? this is a boss they had in their twenties and texted with for a while before the relationship (such as it was) ended. i would leave this be, if i were op. sincerely doubt reaching out will really be helpful to anyone.

  8. Productivity Pigeon*  

    ” Many of these images were violent and gruesome in ways that are too horrifying to recount, though he denies looking at the more horrific ones.”

    They didn’t end up in his possession by accident.

    This guy seems to have collected this stuff for YEARS. This wasn’t a one off or an accidental download, it was obviously a long, on-going and systematic process.

    All of this is horrible, LW. Your boss isn’t the victim here.

    1. Gruber*  

      The LW letting us know that she left the really gruesome stuff out of the letter wasn’t exactly reassuring.

    2. :(*  

      separating out “the horrific ones” suggests LW has not actually thought about what the “not horrific ones” entail. I understand they’re probably alluding to instances of blood and bruises, but you can’t produce CSAM without injuring – morally, but often physically – the victim. I’m unsettled by LW making this distinction at all.

      I’m also a little unsettled, if I’m honest, to find this letter published at all. It has nothing to do with work, is revolting to most people and deeply triggering to some (and was originally posted without an content warning), and seems both needlessly lurid and intent on minimizing the crime of CSAM possession. It’s possible this one should have stayed in drafts, A.

      1. Worldwalker*  

        No one but the OP has even slightly minimized the crimes. No one. Particularly not Alison.

        And we’re grown-ups who know where the “back” key is if words on a page are too traumatic for us to read. Discussing this sort of thing drags it out into the light to die, as it should.

      2. Katia Joy*  

        While I agree it should have had much stronger warnings from the start i disagree it’s unrelated to work. While I hope no one else is running into this specific child abuse related situation, the broader principles of how do I think about and relate to professional connections who’ve been found to have done something bad is something that its probably not that uncommon and has implications for people’s professional networking

  9. CityMouse*  

    My sibling is a prosecutor and I was a law clerk, both of us have worked in CSAM cases.

    I don’t think LW and some people are conceptualizing just how bad this stuff is. Juries commonly break down during these cases. My friend was a grand juror and had to get therapy after he handled one of these. You can never never forget this stuff. I won’t share details.

    I would 100% judge you, LW, if I knew you had reached out to someone in this situation. Don’t do it.

    1. CityMouse*  

      I should add, I’ve worked on murder cases, seen crime scene photos, autopsy photos and all that. And I’m telling you, these are much much worse.

    2. Myrin*  

      This is actually the main reason I’m glad jury duty doesn’t exist in my country – knowing my luck, I would get the kind of case that would fuck me up beyond belief, and I’m usually impervious to almost everything you can throw at me. I always wonder how people do it.

          1. Justin*  

            I’m Black and my mom is a lawyer. I know.

            I’m saying ‘jury duty is a problem’ is a surprising take

            1. Myrin*  

              I’m not saying it’s a problem, I’m saying that I’m glad I won’t ever have to do it – these are two different things!

              To take an AAM example, I don’t think listing accomplishments instead of job duties on your resume is a bad thing, either, and yet I’m happy that’s 100% not done here.

        2. anon cat*  

          Have you never heard that many countries have their criminal cases decided by judge? Even in the US plenty of cases are handled that way. It’s not uncommon at all in Canada, for a nearby neighbor. Read up on it if you’re curious. It’s very, very common.

        3. Myrin*  

          There are several different configurations depending on the kind of case, but it’s typical to have more than one judge, often on a voluntary basis (which ends up being kind of like a jury, I guess, though with fewer people; it’s just that you can’t be subpoena-ed as a random person).

        4. UKDancer*  

          When I studied in Germany we went to watch some cases and they were in front of a panel of judges (I think 3 of them) including our Criminal Law professor who was also a judge. It was more akin to a tribunal. Very interesting to observe, and quite different from the British system. I think we saw a theft involving bicycles although the details are faded through time.

      2. Irish Teacher.*  

        In Ireland, it’s pretty easy to get out of jury duty if you don’t want to do it. Like my mum literally rang them up and told them she didn’t have reliable transport when she got called and she got off it. I know that isn’t true everywhere.

    3. Asloan*  

      I would have compassion for someone like OP if the offender was someone like a family member and they felt compelled to wrestle and work through this with them. I think it’s odd that OP is an ex employee and feels like they need to jump in here.

      1. CityMouse*  

        I have a cousin who committed a horrific crime to his at the time girlfriend and most of us 100% cut him off. His sister does keep in very limited touch with him but very very distant and doesn’t let him around her kids. But a brother is a very different person from a former boss and it baffles the mind.

    4. Alice*  

      CityMouse, your comment reminds me of the experiences of “data workers” or “content moderators” who are part of the infrastructure underlying AI tools. Here is some news coverage:
      https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/in-the-end-you-feel-blank-indias-female-workers-watching-hours-of-abusive-content-to-train-ai
      https://jacobin.com/2025/06/ai-moderation-ndas-trauma-labor
      I hope that data workers, jurors, everyone involved can have support.

  10. Matthew 25*  

    Yes, what he did was horrible, but he’s paying for it and can’t hurt anyone anymore. Now he’s just a pitiful person you used to know. It’s very easy to write a short letter.

    1. Kate*  

      Yes, this. It would be an act of compassion to reach out and say “I hate what you did. I’m willing to be in touch if you need a contact.”

      OP, I don’t hear you justifying this man’s atrocities, as others have said. I hear you listening to your own better nature telling you that you’re in a position to help someone who may be greatly in need, where few others may be willing to do so. As abhorrent as his crimes are, conditions in the US prison system are beyond unjust, and putting an old man through inhumane isolation doesn’t repair the harm done to those kids.

      A Catholic priest I know had a classmate who was convicted of abusing minors and is serving decades in jail. My friend visits him once a year. He says he is the only person who visits or writes to him. I wonder how all these people saying that abusers deserve TOTAL isolation and no human contact EVAR, and implying that you’re causing harm to SA victims by extending a modest amount of human contact to an abuser, think that attitude builds a safer or more humane world.

      1. Frieda*  

        Oh man, I commented above but this reminds me – my partner’s elderly aunt somehow was the staunch supporter of someone in her town whom she *KNEW* had abused children in a religious context. She thought somehow that he deserved forgiveness even though he never admitted wrongdoing (his co-conspirator ended his life amidst the revelations of their activity – these were not unsupported allegations.)

        She told this story at a family gathering and I, my SIL, and her now-adult grandaughter just stood in the yard afterwards and said: wow, that was absolutely wild and horrifying.

        I don’t encounter this woman often but will never look at her in the same way again.

        1. I&I*  

          A point to consider, LW: visiting this man will affect how people see you. People who’ve been abused themselves will have a lot of trouble trusting you. Even people who haven’t will look at you through this lens.

          You’re either going to have to live with that, or else keep it a secret and face the consequences if it comes out.

          For a man who was already out of your life and isn’t expecting you to visit – it’s not like he’s your son or your husband – is that really worth it?

      2. more coffee please*  

        If the OP is “in a position to help someone who may be greatly in need,” then I’d suggest that they pursue this by reaching out to the many, many orgs out there that are in need of volunteer time and support.

        If the concern is about inhumane prison conditions, then there are organizations working on that systemically. That energy can go somewhere that changes the conditions for many people rather than offering simple comfort to one person.

        1. Noriarty*  

          this is where I come down, I think. I’m all for prison reform, dignified living conditions and a path to rehabilitation and reintegration when time is served. But the basic fact that someone goes to prison for committing very harmful acts, and faces accountability as in loss of money and social connections – that is accountability. That is the deterring function of a criminal justice system. (Is deterrence alone sufficient? Of course not but that’s a separate discussion).
          The OP probably doesn’t mean to imply that while what the boss did is bad, they wish that he didn’t have to suffer the consequences of his actions, but it could be interpreted that way.

      3. Cyrano*  

        I don’t believe people have been saying LW was justifying his ex-boss’ actions, but that they are minimising them. And this is correct. Every description of his misdeeds is followed by a comment that softens it, gently airbrushes it. He collected some truly appalling images of children being violently abused…but he didn’t look at those ones!

        It’s odd.

      4. Anon For This One*  

        “OP, I don’t hear you justifying this man’s atrocities, as others have said”

        I have to respectfully but STRONGLY disagree with this. OP said specifically that he felt that no one the man came in contact with was ever in danger. That is 100% justifying something that he absolutely cannot and does not know for a fact.

        1. MsM*  

          I also have to push back on the idea that the harm is entirely a thing of the past. Yes, he can’t actively hurt anyone new, but the people in these images (at least the ones who survived, given how violent the images apparently were) and their loved ones are still out there dealing with the fallout of that. And sure, him dying isolated and alone doesn’t fix or change that, but it’s not really OP’s place to mitigate the impact of his participation in the production or distribution of this content to the extent that they’re trying to let him off the hook.

    2. CityMouse*  

      There’s some red.flags that OP is already minimizing and believes some of the guy’s statements. I believe OP is already showing some degree of vulnerability to manipulation and getting into contact with this person could ruin them if they fall for further justification and manipulation. This is not hyperbolic, it happens to people.

      1. aebhel*  

        Yeah, exactly. OP seems to badly want to believe that it can’t possibly have been that bad and if it was he didn’t mean it, and that’s really not a good mindset to go into approaching someone like this. As Allison says, there are people who feel called to work with offenders of this type, but you really have to be willing and able to accept that they actually did do this horrible stuff on purpose and not minimize it so as to hold onto positive feelings for them.

        1. CityMouse*  

          Yes, I’ve worked with many public defenders and they very much have mental boundaries in their work (prosecutors do too). People need to understand that people in those roles generally in no way minimize or condone the crimes for which they are providing defense.

    4. Bologna*  

      What is pitiful about someone experiencing the consequences of their deliberate actions? Genuinely asking.

  11. Myrin*  

    OP, you say quite a bit about what you think he would get out of being contacted by you – connection to the outside world, being less sad, being less lonely – but I’m still not really sure what you would get out of this.

    You were employer and employee (second-in-command, yes, but still), had a few shared interests, and texted loosely after your natural connection severed. It doesn’t sound like you were particularly close, had strong rapport even outside of work, you saw him as a mentor or father figure, or something along those lines.

    So what makes it so that you are even entertaining this thought? Is it just because you feel bad for him because you knew a different side of him?

    Alison’s second-to-last paragraph really resonated with me on that one: “There are people who feel called to work with people who have committed some of the worst crimes possible, to find their humanity and connect with it. Maybe you’re one of them.” but I somehow… don’t get the feeling like that’s the case for you?

    Maybe I’m wrong. But please don’t feel like just because you technically could do this, you now have to because nobody else will.

    1. Productivity Pigeon*  

      I don’t get it either. I almost wanna guess that maybe LW was a LOT closer to Ex-boss than they wanted to admit in the letter and that’s why they wanna reach out to him.

      1. Asloan*  

        Also honestly, I’m wondering if it’s that natural, human instinct when something “big” happens to want to feel like part of the drama and action. I have often observed this in people, including otherwise kind of generous people. We all have a little blind spot in this area. When a news story hits I often see my friends over-exaggerating how close they are to the story and sort of casting themselves as a major character in it, because they like, went to that same shopping center only a week before, or used to live by that location, or whatever. Very normal. But not something to indulge here. Obviously I could also be wrong!

        1. Productivity Pigeon*  

          Perhaps, I hadn’t thought of that.
          But you’re right that it’s something a lot of people do (I’ve certainly done it more than once!).

          I don’t know if there’s some sort of savior complex going on too? LW speculates that maybe ex-boss was abused and that’s what made him do what he did, so maybe LW wants to see if that’s the case and LW wasn’t wrong in their estimation of him?

          1. Asloan*  

            Yeah, that’s a plausible theory too. Really I don’t know OP and probably shouldn’t speculate. But I agree with the advise elsewhere that maybe OP can work through this *themselves* with an EAP or a few counseling sessions.

            1. Productivity Pigeon*  

              I shouldn’t speculate either. It’s just that it makes no sense to be this engaged in a boss you were moderately friendly with quite a few years ago.

        2. Ask a Manager* Post author  

          I do think it can be that. It could also be a sort of resistance to accepting that someone we knew and trusted could have done something so evil (and so repeatedly over years) and the brain’s desire to somehow make it not so bad or to try to figure out a way to come to terms with it. Or the brain having cognitive dissonance and trying to resolve it.

          1. RainerMariaVonTrapp*  

            I think that’s exactly it. A well-established and respected colleague of mine was fired for sexual harassment. It has taken me a long time to reconcile that he is a person who made incredible contributions, was a stalwart colleague, AND did horrible things to women, myself included. That “and” has to carry a lot of weight.

    2. Brooklynlite*  

      As a follow up, if OP is called work with this population, there are scores of reputable social justice non-profits they can volunteer for. That might help resolve whatever is going on with OP internally (which could genuinely be coming from a good place) without getting them involved in with this particular person.

    3. Anon5673*  

      Based upon the wording they used, I am wondering if LW is concerned about being alone themselves if they are thinking about connecting with an acquaintance who clearly admits to the crimes he committed. There a many better ways to deal with loneliness than reaching out to someone you didn’t call a friend and actively harmed others to make himself “happy”. LW does need to think deeply on their feelings to determine what is at the root of them and answer the questions that Allison posed.

    4. cloudy*  

      I think also that sometimes there is some desire for closure. How do you reconcile all of your memories and experiences with a person when you know now what you didn’t know then? It has a way of coloring so much of your memory in a way that can be very disturbing.

      Reconciling these things is such a difficult thing to do, and sometimes I think there is some wishful thinking… like maybe if you just sat down and talked it out, the person would be immediately redeemed, everything would be resolved, and the pain of that disconnect would go away.

      I was in a hobby community when we identified one of the members as having sent inappropriate messages to teenagers in the group, and I saw this line of thinking quite a lot after it all came out. There were a lot of people who felt like maybe a conversation could fix this. Maybe we can talk it out and undo all of the pain of the situation. But we can’t. That’s just not how it works.

      I think maybe OP could benefit from talking this through with a therapist to help them come to terms with things that have happened. It is more likely to lead to a sense of resolution than reaching out to the boss is likely to do. Reaching out to the boss will only exacerbate the pain of this disconnect and prolong how long it takes to come to terms with it and find closure.

      OP may always have the little voice in their head to reach out. I still sometimes feel the same way about an ex from decades ago who treated me very, very poorly. Like just maybe if I reached out 15 years later, they would be kind and normal and it would undo the harm.

      Unfortunately, in reality, we have to learn how to let painful or broken relationships stay un-repaired.

  12. thatoneoverthere*  

    OP – I have been in a similar situation. My best friend’s husband did something similar (although not this high of a level) and it was incredibly shocking. This person was not only my BFF’s husband but also our friend too. I actually set them up. However, due to his crimes, what he did to my BFF and her kids (completely turned her life upside down, mountains of legal bills, lies and not to mention the horrific crime itself), I decided it was best to never contact him again. My BFF was my friend first and it deeply, deeply affected her life (in more ways than you can imagine). I also couldn’t get over the awful crime he committed. I had several therapy sessions regarding it. While he wasn’t my husband and just a friend his crimes did take a mental toll on me. This is a common thing for people who a friends/family member/colleagues of criminals. So, I advise you to seek some therapy, to work through these feelings. Perhaps as Allison suggested you may have an interest in working with those that are in prison. Maybe some research on what that could look like for you (if its appealing). Take care of yourself. It does have impact on you. Best of luck.

  13. Worker Bee*  

    As someone who works in the field of violence prevention, you don’t need to make physical contact with a child in order to be abusing them. Participating in viewing, reproducing, and trading child pornography IS sexually abusing children, not just ‘contributing to other people abusing them’.

    1. MissM*  

      Thank you. LW seems more concerned that this man lost his retirement savings than he does about the victims here.

      1. Bathyphysa Conifera*  

        Consequences landing on Someone Like Me takes away a comfortable layer of how bad things can’t happen to you.

    2. Dark Macadamia*  

      I just can’t get over “Based on my personal assumptions he probably didn’t hurt any employees (who were outside his preferred range anyway).” The teens you personally know weren’t necessarily safe just because YOU never observed him abusing or harassing them, and there’s like… a whole world of children outside your office that he may have had access to. If one of those teens he hired DID come to you and say “now that he’s been convicted I feel safe saying he always had a creepy vibe/treated me inappropriately when no one was around/straight up abused me”… would you still be saying he was super nice and simply fell victim to a rabbit hole (of horrific crime) in his retirement?

  14. ughhh*  

    This definitely needs some kind of content warning, at minimum. I personally don’t think this should be up at all. It was very upsetting to read someone claim that someone who had 84k images of this kind of content and worked with high school age kids somehow claim “no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger and he wasn’t even consciously aware of his attractions.” I know you said there was a lot of minimizing language, but I think this goes beyond that. This is disgusting and abhorrent.

    1. hold them accountable*  

      I completely agree – this isn’t a work question, and the LW goes beyond minimizing language into denialism and justification.

      1. yes PLEASE hold them accountable*  

        As I was reading the letter, all I could think was “sir this is a Wendy’s.”

        Hopefully, though, any readers who may have had conflicting feelings about an abuser in their life take in Allison’s incredibly thoughtful and eloquent response here, and do some reflection.

      3. CityMouse*  

        And look, if I heard statements like that out of someone’s mouth minimizing CSAM, I’m probably going to take a step back from you as a person, certainly be really skeptical about having you around my kids.

        Think about how you’d feel if someone in your circle got *back in touch* with someone after a CSAM conviction and used the language LW does. And that’s before any further potential manipulation, which I think LW is vulnerable to. Would you feel comfortable having them over for family game night?

        1. Dido*  

          100%. I guess the LW thinks she’s coming off as an empathetic and compassionate person (not really sure why else she’d consider doing this?) but she’s actually coming off as someone with very poor judgement at best and someone either complicit or condoning at worst. I would not keep this kind of person in my life and I don’t even have kids

    2. Eldritch Office Worker*  

      I think Alison’s response is incredibly empathetic and well thought out…and could have been delivered privately.

      I agree this isn’t a work question and I’m not terribly fond of it replacing regular content. Not my site, not my rules. But that’s the reaction I’m having.

      1. Spiderling*  

        I agree. The response is good, but I don’t agree with the choice to give this person a platform.

        1. Ellie*  

          I disagree. The perpetrator of these crimes hasn’t written in, the OP is just a normal person grappling with something awful that someone who they used to work with did. If this is real, then they are in need of some solid advice. As awful as it is, stuff like this happens. It’s depressingly common, actually. A trigger warning would be great, but there’s no point in pretending this stuff doesn’t exist. This site has covered content like this before.

          1. Eldritch Office Worker*  

            But this is a personal manner, not a professional one, and again the advice didn’t have to be posted to be given. A lot of questions are answered privately.

    4. Justy Fabulous*  

      I completely agree, thank you for writing out thr feelings I was having trouble verbalizing.

  15. Apple White*  

    “Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger…”

    Sorry, but this is exactly how so many abusers of all kinds get away with their abuse for so long. They’re strategically charming and polite, so when the victim tries to come forward, everyone around them goes “No, that’s impossible! They’ve always been so nice to me, they could never hurt anyone.” And thus the cycle continues.

    Plus, This guy frequently worked with teenagers – we can only hope nothing happened, but I am frankly very skeptical.

    OP, I don’t begrudge you for wanting to find humanity in someone you knew and respected for so many years. I don’t fault you for struggling to accept that monsters walk among us every day. But that’s what this guy is. A monster. It’s not your job to alleviate him or make excuses for him. You were deceived by someone you worked with and respected – the best you can do now is accept that and move on.

    1. Kyrielle*  

      Also, if nothing physical happened to those employees, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking of them in inappropriate ways. It doesn’t mean they were never in danger. It just means that nothing physical happened to them.

      OP, I get that this is horrifying, and that knowing that someone you knew could have this dark side is distressing. But I think wrestling with your feelings about it with a therapist is a lot better idea than reaching out to him.

      And, to speak to your original ask – what if he doesn’t *want* all the nice people he worked with to know? What if he really is embarrassed, and the fact that he knows you know makes it worse for him?

      You really can’t know that your reaching out will help him, or you, in any way. It might; more likely it won’t; it could cause harm. If you do feel called to work with people in prison / who have committed horrific crimes, please get appropriate training. I suspect you will find that you should probably work with people you don’t have a personal connection to, rather than those you do, during that training – but it will position you better regardless.

      1. MsM*  

        Now I’m thinking of the letter from the teenage mentee whose mentor gradually escalated from weird comments that she didn’t take all that seriously to outright propositioning her, and her conflicted feelings about not having said anything. I wonder how many of the kids this guy worked with are going back over every interaction with him in their heads (or at least the moments that felt weird in a way they couldn’t quite articulate), and asking themselves if they should have known or spoken up even if it seemed like there might be some other reasonable explanation at the time.

        1. Amateur Linguist*  

          Yes, that crossed my mind too. Like, she didn’t realise how tight boundaries simply have to be and how severe the consequences can be if they are overstepped even accidentally. The issue there was potentially a lack of safeguarding training, but there’s a difference between feeling empathy for someone and acting on it.

    2. Spiderling*  

      Fully agree. Even if he didn’t harm anybody he or LW personally knows, he still harmed SOMEBODY. Tens of thousands of somebodies, actually. I’m really not comfortable with the implication that the fact that he didn’t personally know his victims somehow lessens the impact of what he did.

      And yeah, LW doesn’t know for sure that he *didn’t* abuse anybody he or LW worked with.

    3. Middle Aged Lady*  

      Yeah, this sounds like the defense guys who look at porn use: “it doesn’t affect my relationships with the girls and women in my life. It’s just a fantasy!”

  16. Yes.*  

    “ Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger…”

    There are probably a lot of predators or abusers that most people would say this about. Because he was always nice to *me* I assume he always nice to everyone.

    1. UKDancer*  

      Also people are easily nice to those who aren’t their victim type. Ted Bundy used to walk Ann Rule to her car and was protective and sweet. She wasn’t his victim type so she never saw him offend. She didnt know because he didnt show her how awful he was.

      1. Two-Faced Big-Haired Food Critic*  

        Macaulay Culkin has said multiple times that Michael Jackson never did anything inappropriate with him. I believe him. I also think it means nothing. He was Michael’s insurance, like someone said above about abusers cultivating their character witnesses at the same time they groom their victims.

        1. UKDancer*  

          It’s interesting. There was a Victorian serial killer, a baby farmer called Amelia Dyer whose took in children to foster. What struck me from the book I read about her was that she kept one child in her house healthy and alive and thriving so she could point to the healthy child and show the parents who are giving their children up to her to foster, what a caring woman she was and how well she cared for her nurse children. They didn’t know about the countless deaths she was responsible for. People can be fiendishly clever on occasion.

          1. goddessoftransitory*  

            Ugh, and she wasn’t the only one. Dickens wrote Oliver Twist in part to expose “schools” of the type that flourished in his time–basically they had one set of kids who actually got an education, and the rest were slave labor or kids from first marriages that the new spouse wanted out of the way (and if they “accidentally” perished, well, so sad but clearly a terrible one off, right? Right?)

    2. ughhh*  

      also extremely wild for an adult to claim their experiences incline them to believe someone wasn’t abusing or being inappropriate with children. Like, he was never weird at me, an adult and therefore someone not in the age group he abused, so obviously the children he employed were fine and he spontaneously became a terrible person after retirement as a lil hobby??? Get real.

      1. Dark Macadamia*  

        He prefers 11-14 and hired high schoolers, who are typically 14-18. Therefore he never harmed a younger child and never harmed an employee? LW is so invested in making excuses for this guy (a former boss! not even a beloved friend or relative!) and the excuses don’t even make sense.

    3. Another One*  

      I went to elementary school with a number of boys who were molested by the senior administrator of their preschool. Only the boys.

      I’m sure he was a very nice, charming man. Plenty of parents entrusted their kids to that school.

    4. The OG Sleepless*  

      My son’s Cub Scout leader was convicted of multiple counts of CSA and possession of CSA materials. I knew several of his victims and it was only by random luck that my son wasn’t one of them. I spent *years* thinking back on every interaction I ever had with him, trying to see if I ever got the slightest vibe that anything was off. Nothing. You really can’t trust your own impressions of people.

      1. NotBatman*  

        Yes. It stands out to me that this comment section contains dozens of accounts of people (myself included) who knew and liked a person for years and then found out they’d committed a monstrous crime. Serial offenders become serial offenders by being very good at concealing their crimes.

      2. UKDancer*  

        Its interesting how predators pick out children. One of my friends grew up in Ireland and the priest where he grew up was done for it. My friend said he never had a problem and his friends didnt but all the kids who did had some form of trouble at home, familial break up or bullying. Predators look for vulnerabilities and can see which kids would go to a parent straight away and which ones may be more exploitable. They are very good profilers themselves, thats the worrying thing.

        1. EmmaPoet*  

          There was a case years ago in a hobby group some friends were in where one of the leaders was busted for molestation, and my friends all said, “But he was never inappropriate with our children!!!” No, he wasn’t. He picked the awkward son of a single mother who wasn’t well-liked or connected in the group. Your children are girls, and you were all Big Names in the org.

      3. CityMouse*  

        The debate coach my sister and I both had was convicted of SA of two classmates. We never picked up on it, he wasn’t creepy to all the girls on the debate team.

    5. Dido*  

      Yeah, that was a ridiculous comment. Pedophiles don’t usually out their own pedophile to coworkers and other acquaintances… they want to get away with it for as long as possible.

    6. AngryOctopus*  

      Possibly no human being *who worked at their specific workplace* was in danger, because the interns were 16+ and he wasn’t interested. But he DID harm lots of people (children!!!), even if it wasn’t harm that made itself obvious to you.

      OP, I get it. You want to think that someone you liked couldn’t possibly have such a side to him. But that’s what the evidence is telling you. Maybe some therapy to reconcile all this for you could help. It’s not your fault you didn’t know–he didn’t want you to know. He didn’t want anyone trying to put a stop to it, and you shouldn’t feel guilty that you yourself didn’t do so (I assume there are some guilt feelings wrapped up in here, just from some of the phrasing).

  17. Insert Pun Here*  

    I think if you do decide to make/maintain contact with this person, you need to get really clear on the fact that you do not know the whole story and, in fact, this person may have been committing this crime (or similar/related crimes) all along and you simply had no idea. That’s not a criticism of you — it is completely normal to not know a whole lot about the people we work with, and even people we think we know well can hide things from us — but it is something to keep in mind.

    Personally I do not think I would do this for someone I didn’t know well or have a close relationship with. I might consider it for a close friend, though I don’t know if I’d be able to overcome my sense of betrayal.

    1. Another One*  

      This is an important point.

      LW, if you opt to make/maintain contact with this person (or this causes you to decide to volunteer within the prison system), you need to accept that you can never 100% know someone’s life and story.

      You can only know the version they tell you. It will always be thru the lens of the storyteller.

      1. Asloan*  

        Yeah this letter caused me to do some online research. There’s a Mayo Clinic article stating that “76% of individuals arrested for Internet child pornography had molested a child.” That means OP is claiming their boss is in quite the minority of cases. Which, I don’t know the truth. I’m just saying OP shouldn’t contact him without doing a little more research and testing some of their assumptions. For general reading there’s a Wikipedia page that can get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_child_pornography_and_child_sexual_abuse#cite_note-mayoclinic04_2007-10.

  18. Warrior needs food, badly*  

    I don’t understand why you would want to communicate with this guy at all, or what you would even say if you did.

    1. ThatGirl*  

      Yeah, I’m not sure what the LW thinks they will get out of this. Write a letter and burn it. Tell it to your journal or your therapist. But I don’t see a point in contacting him.

    2. BekaRosselinMetadi*  

      Seriously. He really needs to think about why he’s even contemplating this. He feels sorry for him because he’s in prison? That’s called consequences for what he did in promoting child sexual abuse and he’s not showing much sympathy for the children in the pix, only for the man who helped promote it and that is not the right side to be on here.

  19. Knitting Cat Lady*  

    If it weren’t for the consumers of CSAM there wouldn’t be CSAM.
    The reason why he feels this attraction is absolutely irrelevant.
    He CHOSE to perpetuate harm by consuming CSAM.
    86000 individual images is a lot. That’s thousands of children being harmed. Generations of children abused for his pleasure.
    If you look at the scale of harm and the immense number of his victims the minimising way you talk about his actions is absolutely infuriating.
    Does he deserve genuine human connection? In my opinion, no. He deserves professional courtesy in his dealings with prison staff and who ever else interacts with him. And he gets to be treated with the dignity all humans deserve.
    Even though he helped rob countless children rob them of theirs.

    1. Spacewoman Spiff*  

      Exactly this. His punishment is banishment from society. And that isn’t even strong enough punishment. Not sure what the LW hopes to get out of it except some sort of weird sense of charity.

    2. Señorita Flufflekins*  

      Yes. If LW’s ex-boss was a good person, he wouldn’t have been collecting those images.

      There are some people (I don’t think anyone knows how many) who successfully resist their evil impulses: get a job where they don’t work with children, and as much as possible avoid going places where they might be tempted.

  20. Jake not from State Farm*  

    LW I’m going to try to be gentle SOLELY to keep this comment section a place that has typically been respectful. You are spending a large amount of energy worrying about an ADMITTED pedophile, while appearing to spend none thinking of his victims as actual people. Your focus is on the images, and the fact he “never harmed anyone directly”. Someone took those photos. Your boss actively sought them out. You don’t know he was a victim of abuse. You don’t know anything other that he admitted to this crime, and your focus is sympathy for him and his humanity. I would really suggest you think about why that is and what it means for you and how you interact with the world at large.

    1. Isben Takes Tea*  

      I hate the “maybe they were abused so they’re just perpetuating it” defense the most, because it’s such an egregious insult to everyone who is abused and manages to NOT perpetuate abuse.

      If anything, being abused themselves should be incriminating rather than defensible because they have first-hand knowledge of the pain and trauma and still choose to do it to other people.

      1. Anon5673*  

        “an egregious insult to everyone who is abused and manages to NOT perpetuate abuse”– 1000%

  21. EmploymentAttorney*  

    The minimizing language here is really strong. And this: “[b]ased on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger” is just wild. I bet if you had asked OP in 2020 if his boss would ever buy/collect images like this, OP would say absolutely not. What makes OP so sure that the boss never put anyone “in danger” in the way OP describes? And… why does it matter anyway, when, as Allison said, the boss actively created a market for this type of abuse?

    1. CeeDoo*  

      I am positive that everyone who knew my dad in his workplace knew him as funny and charming, never violent or hateful. He saved that part of himself for the people at home. Just because this former coworker was great to OP does not make him a great guy.

    2. What's that in the road - a head?*  

      Grrr. OP said “I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger” and I was screaming, “Say that to people abused by their priests or teachers or their own parents!”

      No one wants to think the worst of their fellow humans in general, and definitely not people they know and like, or even love. But some crimes are so horrible and evil – yes, EVIL – that the offenders forfeit their status as “safe” or to be called “a decent person who did something bad, but that’s not who they are, or at least they weren’t like that with me.”

      OP, please stop trying to categorize your old boss as someone who did something really, really bad because he used poor judgment. At the very least, he is very much a longtime criminal sexual offender.

    3. goddessoftransitory*  

      And from what’s said in the post, the only reason they have for thinking this is that it was impossible for the boss to hire eleven year olds, so they weren’t there for him to prey on. Like, fourteen wasn’t so bad? Or hopefully they’d turn fifteen within a week of being hired on and then magically lose any allure they had for this guy?

  22. SnackAttack*  

    I’ve always hated the line of thinking that people who “just look at” the abusive images are less guilty than those who create them. The material wouldn’t be made if there weren’t an audience for them. I doubt that a victim of this kind of CSA would see much of a difference between the creators and the viewers.

    1. Hibiscus*  

      Right? If you read up on the experiences of the victims, they are clear that this is an ONGOING violation into their adulthood. When these images are discovered in a new cache, the victims are notified. It goes on and on, and the attempts to curb it through asset forfeiture and victim restitution isn’t super helpful but does provide some resources for the victims.

      1. Janeway, Her Coffee In Hand*  

        Not to mention that many victims report being stalked, threatened, and harassed by people who view CSAM of them, even decades later. They are never able to recover because they are constantly being revictimized. “It’s just pictures” is a story told by predators trying to minimize their crimes. Don’t buy into it.

      2. Another One*  

        I think people see crimes as a one time event and arguably some are. But there are a lot of crimes where the victims never really stop being victimized.

    2. Emmie*  

      I also respectfully ask the OP to revisit what direct harm looks like. A California woman died in a car accident. The California Highway Patrol took pictures of her body, shared them, and they went viral. Her family, the Catsouras’, successfully sued the CHP. Kobe’s wife had to take great efforts to ensure law enforcement officers stopped sharing pictures of her husband and daughter. To each of them, sharing and accessing photos was an additional and unnecessary harm. It caused each of them direct harm, and was a needless additional trauma. In the case of child abuse, it makes the harm never-ending. Victims are directly harm when they are abused. But they are directly harmed when, for as long as they live and the internet lives, images of the abuse are accessed by others.

      Maybe the OP is wrestling with how someone who behaved so horribly was also good to them. Maybe the OP is being unrelated trauma here. Or maybe something else is happening. But these images are incredibly harmful.

  23. Hudson*  

    LW, it seems to me you have your answer. You haven’t spoken to this man in at least 3 years, you haven’t stayed in touch with him enough to know that he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced, you haven’t even stayed up to date with him enough to know that from outside sources. A coworker had to tell you. So this isn’t a close friend who is likely noticing your absence.

    It’s also so telling to me that you are so conflicted that you felt the need to reach out to an advice column for a concrete answer. The temptation to extend mercy to people who have been convicted, even of horrible crimes, is understandable. As Alison points out, a lot of people have that instinct. But it usually comes from within because, also understandably a lot of people have problems with that. This is rarely something where you’ll get an external person saying that it’s 100% ok and you shouldn’t worry about the reactions.

    If you’re so uncertain as to seek advice from an unbiased third party, and so not close to this man as to have found out about it from a coworker years later…don’t reach out to him. You don’t seem to have the relationship or the inner conviction to justify it.

    1. Asloan*  

      Yeah donate to the Innocence Project or something, and make sure you match that donation with a gift to a nonprofit that helps victims of abuse. Do not insert yourself back into this person’s life when they haven’t even asked you to.

  24. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*  

    I would add that OP, I think you need to take a hard look at your own language and how it is minimizing things. Can you not minimize it? Recognize that this man got off on the brutalization of children? That none of it was an accident, including acquiring the “more horrific” images? That he knew exactly what he was doing?

    And do you still want to make a human connection?

    I am not saying the answer is no, but some of your language tones down the seriousness of his crimes. I encourage you to look at it for what it really is before you decide what to do.

    1. CityMouse*  

      I really think LW needs to explore with a mental health professional why they’d want to get involved with someone they aren’t close to in this situation.

    2. goddessoftransitory*  

      Yes.

      Remind yourself, OP, that your former boss had at least eighty four thousand chances to do the right thing. The human thing. Eighty four thousand times, he chose to do the opposite.

  25. summerofdiscontent*  

    While I understand you know this person in real life, I agree with Alison that you are (likely unintentionally) downplaying the significance of his crimes. He contributed to a vile ecosystem, willingly and without reservation it seems, that traffics (word chosen intentionally) in some of the most horrific crimes known to the human race. He directly supported this and he deserves these consequences. He supported and derived satisfaction from child rape. Just say that last sentence to yourself and ask what it does to your perception of him.

    I wonder if this is coming from your own horror and disgust at the situation? You might be compartmentalizing your own feelings in order to make sense of or exert some control over it. It’s a horrific and very surreal thing to realize someone you thought you knew decently well (and thought was a decent person) was capable of these sorts of things. It makes us question our own reality at times. We tend to grasp for straws, explanations, downplay, etc., in order to build a buffer between us and the horror. “He couldn’t have been THAT bad because I never had a bad/creepy interaction with him.” “I can’t believe someone would accuse this person, a pillar of our community, of these crimes.”, etc. Also, he gets no credit for claiming he didn’t engage with the more extreme ends of it (which… you don’t know that for sure). He still helped sustain the system that hurt and violated children.

    With a lot of kindness, I would you talk through this with a therapist or access your EAP (if you have one), because it sounds like you might benefit from some temporary support to help process this. And there’s nothing wrong with that! You should be horrified and confused! But don’t let your horror and confusion keep you from acknowledging the depth of what he did. You can hold his humanity and his crimes in the same hand and recognize the tragedy without accidentally reinforcing a system that downplays sexual violence and crimes against children.

    If you’re still struggling and need to find something actionable, make a donation to your local child advocacy center to support the work of people who protect children and help them heal from these predators.

    Best of luck and take care of your heart! There are more good people out there than rotten ones who are working to end these horrors and help children heal from them.

    – a social worker

  26. Emily Bembily*  

    CW self-harm

    I worked for someone who, after leaving our organization, was credibly accused of crimes like this. He also took his own life before anything official happened, and it was traumatizing and upsetting to everyone! People’s reactions ranged from shock and anger to pity like this OP describes, and I can’t blame anyone for processing their feelings differently.

  27. Marie*  

    I’m not going to tell you what I would do or judge you for wanting to reach out. What I suggest, however, is to *wait*. Don’t reach out for at least 6 months. Give yourself time to really process this. It sounds like you’re heavily in the denial part of grieving and you might regret reaching out when the anger hits you.

    In those six months, really think about what you know of him. Look into the trial evidence. Listen to survivors, and listen to family members of perpetrators. (Hunting Warhead is a podcast on this topic that is very hard to listen to, but it certainly is eye-opening and helps one understand how abusers can fly under the radar.)

    You don’t have to decide now. He’s not going anywhere and you might feel differently in 6 months.

    1. Asloan*  

      I actually don’t know that I would advise OP to double-down in their interest and sleuthing instincts for this case but agree with the part where they shouldn’t do anything for six months and come back to the matter with a clearer head. Perhaps in that time they can find some novels that deal with a victim’s perspective on CSAM or something that educates them on the subject generally.

    2. Boof*  

      I think this is a good point – grief isn’t just about death, it’s about loss of a relationship even for other reasons – sometimes even good reasons (like if a close work colleague leaves because they took a job they’re excited about elsewhere, it can still hurt to lose that work relationship even if you know it’s a good thing for the person and you should be happy for them). I think that can even include losing the idea of someone you had generally had a close and positive relationship with. It’s hard to articulate it as “grief” but something for LW to consider – that they are grieving the mental relationship / image of someone.

      1. Asloan*  

        This is a good point and fits with Alison’s suggestion above that perhaps OP is just wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of it all. Which makes sense, but doesn’t mean that *getting re-involved with this person* is the right move to address it. As others have said, “what do you expect to say to this person and what do you expect them to say?” – if those questions are more about “how could you be this person I knew and also this person they say you are?” well, you don’t necessarily need him to answer that.

        1. Boof*  

          Yes – absolutely – the answer to grief usually is “grieve and let go of what was” not “try to necro it!”

      2. Asloan*  

        Also the grief for the imagined happy future he could have had, even if it’s not someone OP is terribly close to. We still want to think of people we liked in the past having happy endings.

  29. Jennifer Strange*  

    Look, I can’t imagine how I would react if someone I knew and respected were discovered to be guilty of a crime like this*. I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to determine whether or not you reach out to him. But I do hope you’ll re-evaluate your view on this. Even if he himself never touched or interacted with a child (or anyone) in a sexual manner he still knowingly and willingly took part in a market that exists at the harm and detriment of children. Yes, there is a mental sickness to this – and possibly past abuse – but there are people out there in similar situations who still do not make that choice and take those actions.

    *I do know someone who was found to have placed a camera in a girls bathroom at the high school where he worked, but I always thought he was a creep so I can’t say cutting him off was a struggle in any way. Like the LW, I heard a fair number of folks talk about how it wasn’t that bad because he hadn’t actually touched anyone, and it’s sad how folks will twist themselves into pretzels to excuse this kind of thing.

    1. LBD*  

      Even if no physical touch took place, the fact that the images exist can cause harm. Do the pictures still exist? How can anyone know for sure? What if the pictures surface? Will they end up being stalked or bullied as a result? The possibility of images coming to light would follow a person and could cause stress in and of itself.
      Physical contact with no record vs. no physical contact but non-consensual images that still exist doesn’t really leave room to say that one is any better than the other.

  30. Deborah Doughnut*  

    I am tired to exhaustion of “doing bad things doesn’t necessarily make you a bad PERSON.” I know that’s not precisely what OP said, but they cozied up uncomfortably close to that sentiment.

    Former childcare worker here. Yes, it’s important to let small children know that doing something they shouldn’t have doesn’t make them “bad.” There are a lot of good reasons to emphasize this, in child-appropriate language. Sneaking chocolate when you were supposed to wait until you’d eaten a proper meal, yelling and throwing small objects out of rage and frustration, even forgetting an important chore (or just not doing it because you don’t wanna) doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you’re four.

    Children need to know that goofing up doesn’t define them. It’s a good lesson to learn early IF it’s appropriate to the action in question. Skipping a day at the gym doesn’t make you a forever-slob. It makes you someone who can get back to a healthy routine and be all the stronger for overcoming a small setback.

    The other important lesson implicit in this is: you don’t get off the hook that easily.

    As in: no, you’re not a “bad person” so therefore, hey, what else can you do but continue in your bad ways.

    Nope. You’re a human being who can make choices. If you keep making horrific ones, yes, that says a LOT about who and what you are. Enough horrific choices can indeed come to define you. Why shouldn’t they?

    This person made choices *for pleasure* that most of us can barely stand to think about. He did so repeatedly. He really had to make an effort to do what he did.

    There’s another child-rearing practice that springs to mind here: natural consequences.

    2. Dido*  

      Yup. What is a bad person if not someone who does bad things? This guy didn’t write a bad check or punch someone in a fit of anger There is definitely a line to be crossed where you cause so much harm to humanity that you can never redeem yourself no matter how many “good” things you do to try to make up for it, and child sexual abuse is on the other side od that line

  31. FashionablyEvil*  

    LW, I have to wonder if this is more about you–if something like this happened with a former colleague I liked and respected, I would be horrified and desperately wondering what I might have missed. Like, what does it all say about YOU that you were friends with such a person? I think it’s also reasonable to very much want for this not to be true and to hope against hope that maybe it wasn’t SO bad. But you were friends with him, and yes, it was that bad. And that’s hard to process.

  32. Cruciatus*  

    He searched those images out. Think about what he had to search to find those images, or how he had to go out of his way to get his hands on them, and probably over a long period of time to amass that many. He wanted them. He *did* hurt people with his actions, the children who were (and are) exploited, his family, his friends. He has the future he deserves. Leave him to it.

  33. Boof*  

    LW, I’m really curious (and again, maybe this is more of a helpful question for you to ask yourself than to answer here) – if you weren’t keeping in touch with this person before you knew of their crimes, why are you contemplating reaching out now? Seriously, I can kind of understand and be ok with it if family/close friends and relatives decide to keep contact with someone like this – provided they are not trying to obstruct justice or minimize, but rather to try to encourage and continue the parts that weren’t awful (even the worst acting people are still human and that’s hard to wrestle with ) – but you weren’t wanting to reach out until /after you learned they’d done something pretty awful/. Can you articulate why? Is it just that you think they “need help” and do you react similarly to other less fraught serious life changes people face, or is it this one in particular?

  34. Justin*  

    I would say the reason to talk to him isn’t that ‘well he wasnt that bad.’ I have an uncle who was in prison for a violent crime (not this!) and we continued to visit him without excusing anything.

    But he’s not your relative and that isn’t how you are approaching this.

    I don’t particularly believe in prison as it exists as it mostly just makes people worse and unless you execute every single criminal, you are going to need a real plan for the aftermath. But acknowledging humanity (and they are humans) isn’t excusing depravity.

  35. Passing By*  

    There are volunteer groups that organize penpals for people who are incarcerated. Looking into those might be a good idea. I think you’re a bit too close to the situation with your former boss and are minimizing the situation because you like him as a person.

    I also think you should look into volunteering with prisoner advocacy groups. There are people in prison far more deserving of assistance than this man, some of which are innocent people awaiting trial.

    Channel that sympathetic energy you’re feeling into improving the system.

    1. CityMouse*  

      I really don’t think LW is in a good headspace to be corresponding with prisoners if they’re already on the minimalization and sympathy train. There are some people who genuinely need to talk to someone but a lot a scammed in those programs. Someone who does that needs really firm mental boundaries and skepticism.

      1. Asloan*  

        I will say, the person in my life who is best at working with difficult cases is also the person with absolutely air-tight boundaries. She’s very clear and direct, establishes straightforward systems of actions and consequences, and doesn’t “take her work home” emotionally. Work is work, she does the best job she can at work, but she doesn’t take on their problems as her own and perhaps doesn’t “empathize” with them in the way I at least was always taught to – like, literally imagining herself in their place. They find her a relief to deal with.

  36. Ana Gram*  

    It’s something to ponder, isn’t it? I had a family member go to jail for several years for sexually abusing a child. We weren’t close but I ended up writing to them monthly. My decision was based on factors that largely don’t apply here. They were young (in their 20’s), would be getting out in a few years, needed a sense of connection outside, and had committed a very serious but limited crime. They’re out now, we’ve fallen back out of touch, but they’re doing well enough. I hope my monthly letter helped but I don’t really know. It’s been a few years and they haven’t reoffended.

    Those things don’t apply to your old boss. Contact him if you want but understand he’s a bad person. He might not have been bad to you but that’s a bit like the time my husband innocently mentioned that a guy he knew didn’t seem sexist even though I told him he was. That guy wasn’t pointing his sexism at my husband so why would he pick up on it? (Husband gets it now btw.)

    I saw a quote once that basically said that the most terrifying part of evil is its banality. Evil has a regular job and goes to the grocery store and has hobbies. Evil sleeps in your bed and eats at your table. A career in law enforcement showed me the truth of that. Communicate if you decide to but understand you’ll be communicating with a predator.

    1. Involved Mom*  

      Yes to this example about the cousin. Years ago my early elementary-aged child was molested in a public place by a random middle school kid. My kid came home and told me, and we and the police managed to track down the perpetrator. It went to court, and he was held accountable. I never missed a court date. I was not in touch after the case closed, but for the years it was open, my message to the court, the youngster, and his family was, “My highest priority is that my child is safe. My second priority is that the community is safe. But as long as those two things are true, then my third interest is that this young person grow up to become a man who makes good decisions.” As barely a teen, he had a long life ahead of him. I needed accountability, but I did not see that at his age, outright condemnation would help him grow. (It was not my job to help him grow, to be clear. But I knew that I was going to keep showing up and believed then and now that a message of “You can do better” would be powerful in a young person’s life.)

      OP’s situation is not that. The letter is about an adult man who acted repeatedly (84,000 times!) to cause harm. OP is not family or actual friend, just 3- years distant supervisee. Let it go.

      1. Do these bananapants make my butt look big?*  

        I salute your compassion and strength. Your ability to find not just forgiveness but actual concern for this child is inspiring. This is how you break a chain of abuse. Thank you.

  37. CzechMate*  

    OP, I think you have to think about why it is that you feel compelled to reach out. Do you want an apology? An explanation? Are you hoping that you may find out that it isn’t actually as bad as it seems? Something else?

    This may take some soul searching and might be something to explore with a therapist. Once you know why you want to reach out, it will be easier to determine if you should.

  38. Lurking Mothman*  

    I think LW really needs to consider what it would look like, professionally, for them to reach out to their old boss. If I found out a colleague was in correspondence with someone arrested for CSAM (84,000 images!!!), I’d be horrified. At the VERY least I’d be asking why LW feels the need to be in contact with him.

    1. Dido*  

      It says a lot that all the people closest to the boss, who would’ve had a much harder time coming to terms with his actions, have abandoned him, and yet an old coworker from years ago wants to stay in touch with him. I’d think the LW knew about his actions the whole time and didn’t see anything wrong with it.

  39. Meep*  

    Ew.

    LW, I really hope you do a lot of reflecting, because while he did not personally hurt these boys, he participated in the system that actively hurt these boys. And you do not know if he hurt your employees or made them feel uncomfortable.

    Boys have a hard enough time speaking up about their SA because it is often diminished.

    IDK if it will help or hurt from hearing from an internet stranger, but someone who associates with a pedophile is someone who excuses pedophilia in my book and that is one in the same.

    1. Dido*  

      He did personally hurt those boys. They’re victimized over and over every time someone views those images.

  40. Semi-Pro Cat Referee*  

    My next door neighbor is a convicted sex offender in the same category as OP’s former boss (none of us in our condo complex learned this until he disappeared one day and we eventually found out he’d violated parole). When he was released last year, he knocked on my door and I said I want no contact from him. He has respected that. I have no idea what I would say in conversation. I will be civil if necessary, but all my empathy is reserved for his victims.

    1. Justin*  

      He seems to be doing what he’s supposed to do, so as long as you don’t see him near kids, he should be able to buy food.

      But unlike OP, you didn’t seek him out and minimize things or talk about his finances

      1. Manders*  

        I have a very similar situation. A neighbor in my small condo building is a registered sex offender, spent time in prison, and the only thing I know about the crime is that it was a child under the age of 12 and he is compliant in his requirements to reregister every year. It’s a fine line between “a crime against a child – burn him at the stake” and “everyone deserves a second chance and he has paid his debt to society”. He’s otherwise a nice guy and if I didn’t absolutely know this fact about him I never would guess. But I do know, so I don’t really want to be nice to him. But he also deserves a place to live, he has a good job, and this is what we want from people getting out of jail, right? I’m generally nice and friendly with him, but I have zero desire to be his pal. And I’m friendly with him because he is my neighbor, not because he was once my boss years ago – if he went to prison tomorrow I definitely wouldn’t be corresponding with him.

  41. Done*  

    Former prosecutor and former defense attorney here who now works in the criminal court system.

    What the guy did is awful, and child sex abuse has tentacles of ramifications all through the victims’ lives, including victims becoming offenders. However, the guy is still a human and needs some human connection and support. There is nothing wrong with sending a message to him saying you appreciate the connection you made while you worked with him. Providing him with some emotional support and connection is not condoning his actions.

    1. Dezzi*  

      I think there are a lot of things wrong with deciding to provide emotional support to someone who amassed 84,000 images of children being violently assaulted, actually.

  42. SB2*  

    LW, I would really interrogate your own feelings about why you want to reach out to this man. It may be helpful to talk it through with a therapist.

    Because from the outside looking in, I see a few possibilities:

    1) You are horrified you didn’t see that he was capable of monstrous harm when you worked with him. You want to talk to him because you’re trying to figure out what you missed. What other evil is lurking around you?

    2) You are afraid, deep-down, you have something monstrous in you that you’re unaware of. Let’s be clear, I am not accusing you of anything. It’s a really common fear in people with deep trauma, anxiety, OCD, etc. that they are actually bad people who are going to accidentally do bad things.

    3) Guilt and curiosity mixed in a really nasty stew of how the man you knew got here. Guilt because you didn’t stop it. Curiosity because train wrecks are hard to look away from.

    I am not trying to be unkind to you. But I really, really, would ask you to think on this deeply before you reach out to him. To Alison’s point, you are using a lot of minimizing language to describe this man’s crimes. You also have not described your relationship with your former boss as especially close. So, while you’re not wrong that people need human connection, I don’t think you’re the RIGHT person to be doing this work with him.

    I think you need to consider that you never really knew your boss the way you though you did. You knew facets of him. You did not know all of him.

    But please, if it’s bothering you, talk to a therapist. It’s not your fault you didn’t see it. It’s not your fault you didn’t prevent it. None of this is yours to fix. Leave it alone. I’m absolving you of whatever guilt you may be carrying.

  43. Richard Hershberger*  

    There is a strong tradition within Christianity that visiting prisoners is a virtue. Some would say a mandate. See Matthew 25 31-46 for the classic text. Note that there is no distinction between the deserving and the undeserving. (The same is true, by the way, of the poor. “Undeserving poor” is not a Biblical concept.)

    My Lutheran tradition further teaches that we are all both sinners and saints, though not necessarily in the same proportions.

    How does this work in practice? Were I in the LWs position I probably would have a heart to heart with my pastor. The trick is to perform the act of mercy without condoning the crime. As has been pointed out, the LW is putting a lot of effort into minimalizing it. They may not be the right person for this. We are also taught that we each have different gifts. Prison ministry is not for everyone.

    1. The OG Sleepless*  

      My husband had a business associate/semi-friend who went to prison for a few years for a white-collar crime (I don’t quite remember the details, but it was something inside a company, not fleecing the general public). We didn’t condone his actions in any way, but we felt bad enough for him that my husband stayed loosely in touch and asked him if we could send him anything. You know what he asked for? Books. In a minimum security prison full of educated white-collar criminals, books were always in demand. So we sent him a few boxes of books. One of them was Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and I’ve always smiled at the thought of these convicted criminals reading the scene where they discuss what makes a good member of society.

    2. Polly Hedron*  

      Yes, although like most I recommend not contacting this prisoner, I wondered if the LW were motivated by Matthew 25:36–“I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

  44. SomeonesMom*  

    I’m going to make an assumption here and say that the LW is not a parent. I could be wrong, but I get the sense that they aren’t. As a new mother, this sickens me more than it ever did before. This man does not deserve any human connection.

    1. CityMouse*  

      I’m also a mom and that’s also some of my “oh hell no” response. Because someone who actively chose this association is also someone I’m not letting around my kids. Not a question in my mind.

      1. Dark Macadamia*  

        Absolutely. LW, is reaching out to your boss worth making people believe you are not a safe person to allow near their children? Because that’s the conclusion some people will draw if they know you are actively seeking to reconnect with a pedophile, specifically because of their crimes, when you weren’t even friends before.

        1. CityMouse*  

          Yes, someone who chooses to get back in touch with someone they had no connection to and is using minimizing language to describe their conduct? Yes, I would 100% question having them around my kids.

          This isn’t someone dealing with a lifelong friend or a family member, OP hasn’t spoken to this guy in years and is only interested in resuming contact after his conviction.

  45. beepbeep*  

    I don’t normally say things like this, but Alison, is this really a good thing to post publicly? It’s not just minimizing harm, it’s outright denying that LW’s former boss ever hurt a human being (as if the children in those 84,000 images aren’t human beings continuously being harmed by the circulation of material of their abuse). The details are extreme enough that the advice won’t feel applicable to anyone else .

    I agree with your response, but I don’t think giving this letter a platform was the right move.

    1. grass*  

      I think of this column as being about life—life at work but life. It’s not just resumes and salary advice, it’s always been much more human than that. This letter, while hard, fits enough in that for me. Work brings us into contact with really rough things sometimes.

        1. Very Anon for This*  

          I very much appreciate your answer and a large portion of the comments. I have a family member I will never contact because of the abuse that he committed against other family members. All of us were kids, including him, when it happened, and I wasn’t his target demographic. Before I knew about it, he was one of my favorite people and when I learned what he had repeatedly done, I spent a significant amount of energy trying to process it… without therapy, and I was discouraged from talking about it. For years, I felt guilty that I had liked this person who had hurt our mutual family members. I look back now, after years of therapy, and I can recognize that I was dealing with massive cognitive dissonance between my experiences and what I knew he’d done. My point is: reading through the comments has been helpful. Because I can recognize that this person’s criminal choices were his choices, and he had other options. My younger self didn’t know what he had done, and once I found out, it changed how I saw him, because my previous view of him was incomplete.

    2. Sea Shell*  

      I agree that the letter is minimizing the potential that this guy harmed people or may have directly harmed someone, but even with extreme details, it could be applicable to other situations. If you thought someone was perfectly nice and then they were arrested for, say, domestic violence or armed robbery, that would probably be similarly shocking.

    3. MtnLaurel*  

      You’d be surprised how often this can happen. Details were a bit different, so I know it’s not the same case, but a similar thing happened in a workplace I entered about 25 years ago. I never met the offender, but those who worked with him had a hard time reconciling the horrible things he had done with his good leadership at work. They had a hard time until he died and even afterwards. That’s why I’m glad Alison answered this here. It may help the LW of course, but it may be able to help many others who find themselves in a similar situation either now or in the future.

    4. A Cita*  

      I have to say, while the letter made me think: am I being gaslit right now? Is this a fake letter to groom us into accepting the Epstein class as normal? I’m finding the advice SUPER helpful for a situation in my life happening right now (not this specific topic….yipes). How I’m continually feeling responsible for helping someone out, often to my own detriment, who continually makes the same mistake over and over again. And having stronger boundaries. (In this case it’s about a friend who is chronically unemployed and expects me to keep bailing them out, and the guilt I feel if I don’t help. It’s surprising how much of the advice is actually extremely relevant to my situation.)

  46. Janeway, Her Coffee In Hand*  

    LW, some advice from someone who’s been in your shoes.

    My cousin’s husband, a man who was also one of my best friends, is currently in jail for this same offense. It is his second conviction for the same crime. He always seemed like a good person. He was kind and forgiving, he went above and beyond for others, and he seemed to be a good partner. However, after much heartache and deliberation, I’ve chosen to treat him as dead. I will not forgive him, and I will never speak to or acknowledge him again.

    I chose this because, after reflecting on many conversations with him, my cousin, and my friends, I realized that he did not see his crimes as a real problem. He continuously minimized his harm and convinced others that what he did was not that bad. Confronted with his crimes, he’d lie and deflect. He never took ownership of his problem. He didn’t make efforts to stop it beyond asking another friend to be an accountability partner – and then lied to that friend when he reoffended.

    Production and distribution of CSAM has lifelong consequences for victims. Not only from the person who made the images, but from its spread. Victims report being stalked and threatened for the rest of their lives by people who view the materials. Images of them at the worst moments in their lives constantly follow them, and the people who use them for gratification feel entitled to harass them. They can never recover because what was made is still being traded, even decades later.

    I can be sympathetic towards people with an unwanted attraction to children who never offend and stay away from kids. They didn’t wish for it and they’d get rid of it if they could. I hope that someday we can treat them. But people who choose to offend do not get sympathy, especially if they won’t grapple with the gravity of the harm they did.

    If I can give you one suggestion, LW, it’s to look into the long-term harm CSAM inflicts on victims. There are accounts out there from now-adult victims about what they deal with from these predators. If you can’t stomach that, then you can’t forgive your former boss.

  47. bees*  

    genuine question: as this is not a work question, what does the readership of this website gain from it being answered publicly as its own post rather than it being responded to privately? it’s upsetting, potentially traumatizing, and as you said, largely irrelevant.

    1. Midwest human*  

      I do see this as a work question. As a survivor of a different type of abuse, figuring out how to communicate around professional network issues when someone is unmasked as a perpetrator is always challenging. I really appreciate the discussion and info here. I’m lucky that so far, nobody I’ve worked closely with has been in this situation.

  48. Media Monkey*  

    I’ve skimmed the comments so perhaps I am repeating what other people are saying. the correct term is Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) not child pornography. there is no way that content is produced without the exploitation and abuse of children who cannot consent. perhaps that framing in your head would help you feel less sympathetic towards him?

  49. Popinki*  

    Back when the website Cracked dot com used to post real articles, they posted a series on people who did unusual jobs. One of the most memorable, and horrifying, was a person who went on the dark web under deep cover to investigate the trade in CSAM.

    The author was traumatized by the whole thing because of the cruelty on show. Certain sites required viewers to post images of CSAM at regular intervals to prove that they were legit. Some of the images were just heinous. People were selling images of their own children, and one purveyor admitted to having a child just to be able to exploit them. Some were even selling kids into prostitution.

    I have no qualms at all about calling those people the worst evil humanity has to offer, and anyone who’d voluntarily associate with them for the purpose of getting their rocks off is tainted with that evil.

    LW, you sound kind of softhearted and naive, and if you get in contact with this person he’s going to buffalo you, too, and you’ll wind up tainted by him. You’re going to become known as the person who cozied up to the kiddy p0rn geezer well after you had any reasonable reason to keep in touch. That’s going to affect every relationship you have, and people will wonder why you’re suddenly so interested. Some of those people will be abuse survivors themselves.

    You’re not going to save him or reform him or be remembered as an angel of mercy who reached out to a fellow human who needs comfort. Hence, think long and hard on Alison’s question about why you want to be in touch with him, and make very sure you can live with your reason.

    1. Asloan*  

      Yes. I’ve always wondered how like, serial killers meet women and get married in prison *after* being found guilty of these terrible crimes. I wonder how many started off with a compassionate approach like OP and then just got completely bamboozled by a more sophisticated and experienced manipulator. That’s probably the least-bad version of how it happens. But I *really* don’t think someone with OP’s perspective and background is the right person to help the ex-boss if that is the goal. Donate to a prison pen-pal or book exchange program or something. Maybe even one that serves his prison. Do not get yourself back on this person’s radar.

  50. happy red panda*  

    It’s not wrong to have conflicting feelings about someone you knew for years and only just found out something horrific about them. I can understand why you’d minimize his actions but that is not okay. Please work this out in therapy! Mental health professionals are best equipped to help you sort out your feelings and move on. Protect yourself first and foremost and seek professional guidance before doing anything *remotely* related to this guy.

  51. Diane Chambers*  

    Having compassion for a person like this is admirable. However, your language here is, as others have said, really troubling. You keep telling us all the reasons you feel sorry for him – lost his friends, lost his money, will die in prison. Those things are natural consequences. He chose to do a horrible thing, and he is now facing consequences. As for him being “sick, not dangerous” – well, I’d say it’s both. If you have a compulsion like this, you have a responsibility to get help for it, not give in to it. In court, mental illness is only a defense if it legitimately destroyed your ability to distinguish right from wrong. If he knew what he was doing was wrong, he is guilty, regardless of what mental illness may or may not have driven him to it.

    Also, as far as being confident that no one was in danger who worked for him….. ok, so it’s just a coincidence he hired a bunch of high school kids?! Also, this jumped out at me: “Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him” ok. so evidence point #1 is something he said to avoid prison, and evidence point #2 is how he acted around you, an adult, at work? Come on.

    “He did something unspeakable, and he deserves these consequences, but every person can be redeemed” – OK. “He claims he didn’t look at the most violent images” – Not OK. Get the difference straight, then consider whether you want to reach out.

    1. B’Elanna*  

      Yeah, he hired teenagers, had a “criminal interest” in tween and teen boys, and yet I’m suppose to believe that he only “fell down the rabbit hole” after retirement?

  52. Emily is AUNT Emily?!*  

    Maybe redirect your intentions by contributing to a reputable organization that helps victims of child abuse or one that offers mental health resources? You are not obligated to reach out to this man because you knew him and got along with him. Captain Awkward gives similar advice regarding interacting with abusive or highly problematic family members.

  53. Carys, Lady of Weeds*  

    LW, a decent, kind person wouldn’t ever look up ONE image of CSAM, let alone save EIGHTY FOUR THOUSAND. To be blunt: this man is not the decent, kind man you thought you knew, and you should look into therapy or other support for coming to terms with that, instead of minimizing it to an alarming level because he was nice when you worked with him years ago. Under no circumstances should you reach out to him, because he will have nothing to give you except manipulation and justification.

  54. Householder*  

    Personally, I try to feel compassion towards every sentient being. I don’t believe anyone is innately evil. I believe they do evil because of greed, hatred and ignorance. They do evil because they’ve developed damaged ways of being in a damaged world, and have damaged ideas about what will relieve their suffering. That said, it’s still evil, and he’ll have to work through the Karma for that, in whatever form it takes.

    I would not contact him. Nothing in your letter indicates that you have sufficient clarity or insight on the situation to approach it appropriately. You might want to contemplate your reasons for wanting to reach out. My guess is you’ll find it’s more about your own emotional responses to the news than it is about him.

    I might chant (pray) for him, as part of my belief system is to contemplate even those I find most reprehensible with as much compassion as I can muster. But I wouldn’t contact him.

  55. Anon For This One*  

    “Based on his testimony and my own experiences with him, I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger…”

    My father’s best friend – literally best friend who thought he knew him better than anyone – was honestly shocked and stunned to hear that the “great guy” who would never hurt a fly and would give you the shirt off his back would come home, get drunk, and beat the shit out of his wife and daughter on a regular basis.

    You can be “inclined to believe” whatever you want. But you don’t know what you don’t know.

    1. Diane Chambers*  

      Seriously. Like, he must not have been into this stuff at the time because he didn’t groom his teenage employees in front of other adults? What’s the reasoning here?

      1. Ellie*  

        If he was into 11-14 year olds, they might not even have been his target demographic. Most high schoolers can’t work until they turn 15. Maybe nothing happened because they were a bit old for him.

  56. phira*  

    One of the ways that abuse is perpetuated is that abusers always, always cultivate people they do not abuse. They always have friends, family members, and colleagues who think exactly the way you do: “Based on MY experiences with them …”

    You are very, very adamant that his abuses started after he retired because he retired in 2020 and the evidence at trial stated that he began amassing his collection in 2021. Do you really think that there was nothing going on until he started amassing (amassing!! What a word!) the collection? Why are you certain that your former boss was “normal” and had some kind of “attractions” he didn’t know about until he suddenly “stumbled” on CSAM?

    I think you feel this way because, “He was a fair, reasonable guy!” which is the relationship he had with YOU.

    (I also don’t even know what to say about your reminder that perhaps HE was abused as a child. So so so so so many survivors of abuse never harm other people!)

    Abusers benefit from having people around who see them as just good people who made a mistake. Abusive behaviors are not mistakes. Your boss is not just some bumbling boomer who OOPSIE got interested in some inappropriate pornography that piqued his interest and revealed a heretofore unknown attraction. Your boss is a man who deliberately and with great aplomb amassed (amassed!!!! You used this word!!) almost 100,000 individual images of children being abused, which he finds gratifying to look at, and which directly contributes to more abuse of children.

    I’m glad he was always fair and reasonable with you. Take this as a lesson learned about what abusers are like, and not a reason to connect with him.

    2. Anon for Now*  

      YES to all of this.

      My father was a charming, friendly man who never hurt me or MOST of the children he came in contact with (which was a lot, bc he made sure it was).

      But he did abuse some children for literal decades.
      He was not found out until he was an old man.

      Some people feel bad for him. They think he wouldn’t hurt children anymore.
      Why? He was just as charming in his 30s (first known offense) and I would have sworn up and down that my dad could NEVER hurt a child.
      Because that’s what I was there for. To be the healthy, happy, well-cared for child showing that he was safe for all these other children who weren’t safe at all.

  57. Anon for Now*  

    My Guy.

    The way predators are able to prey on the innocent is by appearing innocent and charming themselves. They’re the most dangerous ones. Not the creepy guy down the road who smiles wrong.

    Why do you feel sorry for this man who paid to enjoy children being abused?
    Not just abused, abused too horrifically to describe?

    My father abused children. He’s friendly and charming and even after spending time in prison for abusing children people don’t think he’s dangerous to be in the room with their kids because he’s just a nice old man who made a mistake (hundreds of times).

    And even though these people will pay lip service to the fact that what my father did to those children was terrible – they keep talking to him because they enjoy it. They care more about enjoying his conversation than protecting children.

    Some of them are other relatives and I see the way their continued contact with him SHAPES them. This man who enjoys seeing children horrifically abused will shape you too.

    Do you want that? Is it worth chipping away at your own soul to comfort a man who has funded harming children in ways they will NEVER recover from?

    Because, what? You can’t find any NICE old men to be chums with?
    Why is that?

    1. Emily is AUNT Emily?!*  

      Excellent points. This brings to mind the Nazi leaders who lived to a ripe old age and simply looked like feeble, elderly, harmless men. They.Were.Nazis.

  58. B. Mariner*  

    This is a question for a therapist rather than AAM. Seriously, there are a lot of therapists who specialize in working with people who have committed sex crimes, and I suspect that those therapists would also be able to do a couple sessions with you to work out how you feel and what you want out of this situation.

    I had a similar situation where a high school boyfriend was arrested for this crime, and it genuinely shook me, since it was so out of line with what I knew about that person. I spent a lot of time discussing it with my therapist, and I hope you are also in a position to do so

  59. Notabot*  

    LW, I can understand where this is coming from because I had a family friend I grew up with who had similar charges against him and felt similar ways that you do.

    But then years later I unfortunately was SA’s by successful and well-respected near retirement age man, and I found out that there is no shortage of sympathy for men like that and their “mistakes” and “bad judgement” in comparison to the sympathy that someone like me gets.

    There is some bitterness in me saying that, I admit, but I don’t think the reason for this is because people sexist or don’t care about abuse, I think it’s just the mere fact that it is a hell of a lot easier to make an effort to reach out, be kind and know what to say to someone who has done something wrong, than it is to someone who has had something terrible happen to them. People who have done something wrong are likely going to be grateful for the forgiveness and the attention, it’s a situation you have the power in. Meanwhile, people who have been deeply harmed are unpredictable in how they may react.

    I’m making an assumption based on other people I know but if you are anything like them, then I think you want to do this because there is clearly something you could do to make things better for someone, regardless of who that person is, and I think you would be equally willing to do that for all of the victims of his image based abuse if it were as clear and simple as reaching out to them all and giving them some kind words.

    I wouldn’t reach out if I were you, just because I don’t think it’s going to make enough of a difference because all of your kind words will come with the massive caveat attached of how you think his crime is terrible. Plus, I think when you first are trying to come to terms with someone you thought you knew doing a terrible thing, it takes a little while to readjust to the new reality and when you’ve sat with it more you might feel very differently.

  61. Prioritize the Victims*  

    OP, I think your impulses are coming from a kind and empathetic place. They sound like a natural reaction to learning you were closely associated with someone who committed an awful crime.

    I also think your efforts to minimize your discomfort are leading you to believe this man developed this interest after you knew him and that there is no chance he ever behaved inappropriately with anyone in person. This man was skilled at hiding this part of him and living a double life. It is highly unlikely that this interest just materialized after his retirement. You should not be so credulous to believe the ways he described the limits of his crimes or minimized how bad they were. There is a high likelihood that he was not completely honest about this either.

    I encourage you to start by redirecting your kindness and empathy first to the victims. Are you still able to contact anyone you previously worked with, including those who had contact with this man while they were underage? I think you should consider sending messages to make sure that they are aware of his conviction, and saying that you hope nothing bad ever happened to them but if there is anything they need to report to law enforcement you would support them in that. I suggest contacting RAINN or a similar organization for guidance on how you might thoughtfully contact and offer support to potential victims you know. Reading their information to get informed on children and s*xual violence would also be a good step to educate yourself.

    I think you should also consider making a donation to an organization that supports victims of CSAM. It would be a good way to give back and would make me feel better knowing that I received money from someone who had these issues, even though I had no idea at the time.

    After you have done the above you can think about whether you still want to contact your former boss and why. I think you will be well guided by thinking first of the principle of what is best for the victims and only taking actions that are consistent with that. How much is a little boy worth?

  62. Gaia Madre*  

    One of the trauma responses is known as “fawn”, and it’s essentially playing nice with an abuser (as a protective measure for oneself, as a way to minimize further escalation.) OP, as you consider your reasons for wanting to reach out to this guy, please think about your past and ask yourself if you’re lumping him in a category with other people (abusers or hasslers) you have known. There is no timeline on this, so you might consider checking in with a therapist if you can, to help you sort this out. It’s entirely ok to block him from your mind forever; that won’t make you a bad person.

  63. aebhel*  

    As others have said, this is not someone you have an ongoing relationship with. You’re not trying to decide whether you should stay in contact with a friend or family member who was convicted of something like this – that would be a question with no necessary clear answer, imo. You’re asking if you should reconnect with someone you haven’t spoken to in years, solely on the basis of the fact that he’s now in prison for horrific crimes. No. You should not. There are other people in his life who can grapple with the choice of whether or not to continue speaking to him – his family, his close friends. Your desire to insert yourself into this is neither admirable nor necessary.

    1. Myrin*  

      That’s a very clear and concise way of putting it (and also possibly what made me scratch my head most of all – the “reconnection” aspect).

  64. Cookingcutie*  

    I think the real question is, why do you feel the need to reach out to someone who enjoyed such atrocious material? In this case, you cannot separate the person from the crime. His loneliness is his own fault. I don’t understand why you would feel even the tiniest amount of sympathy for him.

  65. Dancing Otter*  

    Not sure of the timeline there. Did he start collecting the materials only after he retired? Could there have been some cognitive decline affecting his judgment? A couple of acquaintances have shown major personality changes in dementia. Maybe he wasn’t a monster when OP knew him. Just throwing out a possibility…

    IIRC, offering comfort to widows, orphans, prisoners and such is praiseworthy according to the Christian gospels. (The “whatsoever you have done to the least of these” passage) But maybe this isn’t the person you should be comforting.

    1. Productivity Pigeon*  

      It’s possible, of course, that something like dementia or a brain tumor or whatever caused him to commit these heinous crimes.

      But that’s of no help whatsoever to the victims.

      And quite frankly, I have a hard time believing that someone with advanced enough dementia that it caused an extreme personality change that made them want to abuse children would have the ability to amass a huge collection of such material. That requires forethought and planning. And he was obviously deemed competent enough to stand trial and be convicted.

      I think you’re reaching for straws here.

      1. Ellie*  

        Yes. Also, judges are pretty skilled at determining sentences for this stuff, and he got a particularly long one (20 years! That’s what you get for murder in Australia). I’d suggest there’s a lot more to it that OP isn’t aware of, and few if any mitigating circumstances.

    2. AnotherAnonCommenter*  

      This is NOT helpful to the OP. Throwing out the possibility that this man experienced some cognitive decline that “affected his judgement” and caused him to amass thousands of violent images of child sexual abuse? You’re minimizing his actions, not unlike the OP.

  66. AnonJustNow*  

    I don’t know if you have any religious affiliation but this could be incredibly helpful to talk through with a member of whatever religion you identify with (if you aren’t a member you can call up and ask for counsel or do it online). Religion has a long history of dealing with issues of humanity, prison outreach, providing support to the “unsupportable” and could help sort through emotions or thoughts that may come up through this.
    For what it’s worth I personally think that even horrible people who do horrible acts deserve some connection to others and that it can be an incredible act of service and does mean you condone their behavior.

    1. CBGB*  

      I’m wondering if the reason the LW wrote to Alison is *because* they feel some religious need to reach out to the fallen, in this case the former boss. I can’t imagine most people would agonise over whether to reach out to an old boss they admittedly don’t consider a friend, who has been tried and convicted of a pretty heinous crime, just to shoot the breeze and tell him to keep his chin up on the inside. The only motivation that springs to mind for me is a religious one.

  67. Anon For This One*  

    Just one thing I want to point out for some perspective. 84,000 is a hard number to visualize. I’m a wedding photographer. My clients get, on average, around 600 proofs from an 8-10 hour wedding.

    At that rate, I would have to photograph 140 weddings to equal the number of pictures this man had. That’s roughly 3.5 years of work.

    Think about 3.5 years of children being sexually abused (and apparently horrifically worse) because he wanted to see photos of them.

    2. MsM*  

      And how much time does that add up to of him interacting with these images? Because that’s a lot of days/weeks/months/years of missed opportunities to have an epiphany that this needed to stop if he didn’t want to put his future and personal relationships in jeopardy, and…not doing that, or figuring out how to make it stick.

    3. cchrissyy*  

      this is helpful thanks

      i also notice the OP and many comments saying images, as if he only purchased or traded still photos but i believe in these cases a significant portion of the files are video. horrific.

  68. another former law clerk*  

    I would seriously question whether the person the LW felt they knew is the same person they’d encounter now. I agree with the suggestions to wait 6 months and talk to a therapist. Once predators are unmasked the whole mask may be gone, and it may be significantly less painful for LW to keep the good memories and drop this now.

    There are a lot of loose ends that aren’t addressed in this letter, like: What happens if LW gets no response? a manipulative response? a nasty response? a no-contact request? an attempt to convince LW of the person’s semi-innocence (the crime is acquisition/possession, not whether the guy had looked at every image in detail yet)? attempts at character references for future court filings or parole hearings? (Is LW ok with everyone knowing they chose to contact this person and possibly having their visits or letter be part of media reporting?)

    It’s a huge red flag to me that LW feels drawn in by what they have heard. Why this situation, and why now? Can LW meet whatever need this is in a safer or healthier way?

  69. Spaypets*  

    This case sounded so familiar, I double checked some details to see if it was the same locally famous case I know about. Nope, this is some other wealthy businessman. Ick.

    LW, please consider the victims in this crime. Plenty of abuse victims do not go on to offend themselves, so any victimization he suffered isn’t relevant to the crimes he committed. This is the 21st century. We all know about the availablity of therapy.

    1. anon cat*  

      I’m glad someone mentioned this. There is a pervasive myth that experiencing CSA almost guarantees someone will become an abuser. We just do not have the research to back that up. There have been some studies done that show a link between childhood abuse and adult offending, but the populations involved were limited, and the correlation is not remotely 1:1. In the largest study (last time I looked into this, which was admittedly a few years ago, so there may have been more since then) showed it was largely male abusers who said they had been abused, and there was a real possibility that abuse was claimed to garner sympathy/justify the crimes. And there’s no strong correlation between women who were abused as children and adult women who offend.

      1. Anon for Now*  

        This. Also, there is a series of interviews where men in prison admitted they said those things because it’s what therapists wanted to hear. It’s not scientific research it’s just… people who are good at pretending to be nice also pretending to be victims? Not a stretch.

      2. Kara*  

        While even bringing this up makes me feel gross, we have a couple of different large groups of men who were sexually abused as boys (Catholic Church and Boy Scouts), and to the best of my knowledge neither group has more than the expected background level of abusers in them.

  70. Mesquito*  

    Even if this person doesn’t deserve to lose all contact w the outside world, which is debatable and sort of not the point, I don’t think you’re the right person to stay in contact with. The minimizing language and need to see two sides of this will not serve you well in maintaining the sort of bulletproof boundaries you would need to do this. There are religious groups and activist projects that write to people like this, and they have specific ways of doing things to support each other as a group for a reason.

    If you do decide to do this, don’t do it alone. Have someone else that you trust, preferably someone with firsthand knowledge of prison life, look over all of this person’s communication with you before you reply, and have them read all of your replies before you send it. If there’s a reason you wouldn’t be comfortable asking someone to do that, that’s a sign you shouldn’t do it.

  71. Nin*  

    I think a CW would be wise for this letter. I do think it’s a valuable conversation for us to have, though, and Alison was right to include this letter. Growing up in a small town where I was SA by a pillar of the community, I learned at an early age how otherwise good people will do mental gymnastics to minimize evil. My most charitable interpretation of the letter is that the LW is struggling to process this awful revelation, and rather than see it in all its ugliness LW is trying to shave off some of the horror. That’s not healthy for the LW and it’s not healthy for society. Old boss did something unforgiveable, and his loneliness is a natural consequence of that choice. And… it WAS a choice, repeated over and over again. The consequences old boss is suffering pales in comparison to what the victims suffered. Participating in purchasing, viewing, or trading CP buoys up that industry — so even though presumably old boss never made any CP or (wishful thinking here) never actually touched a minor, he’s still guilty of SA and 100% deserves to be excluded from society. Another commenter mentioned that LW ought to get counseling, and I agree; professional help to process this news about old boss is the first step. Then, if LW is interested in dipping his toe into the cesspool and contacting old boss, OK. But it’s important first for LW to categorize these crimes correctly, process the shock/horror, then ask what LW plans to get out of the contact. As an aside, LW should be forewarned that old boss will be manipulative and seek to win LW’s sympathies, and repeated interaction may cause LW to become inured to the facts of the case.

  72. Lemons*  

    Yes, your tone when describing feeling empathy for this man is definitely “let’s not ruin this promising young man’s future just because he [horrible crimed] some girl” vibes.

    He knew what he was doing was wrong, I’m sure that was part of the appeal.

    Put yourself in the shoes of the victims. Consider that he contributed to up to 84,000 children’s lives being forever affected. Personally, I think this sort of crime is worse than murder, because victims have to live with what happened to them forever, whereas for him, they’re just some passing thrill. He probably doesn’t remember most of them.

    1. Anon Psych*  

      I understand what you’re saying–and totally agree that these kinds of crimes are not taken seriously enough–but I do want to share that I’ve heard survivors of sexual assault take real offense to that phrasing, because it implies that their lives must be so horrible that they’d be better off dead, and that’s usually not how they feel. Most survivors would not prefer to have been murdered.

          1. Ellie*  

            I once heard a survivor say something similar to, ‘being raped is like being killed but you’re still alive afterwards’. That phrasing really struck me.

            I think also, people sometimes think of it as worse than murder, because they can think of circumstances where murder might be justified. There is no possible justification for a crime like this.

      2. Lemons*  

        I think you’re taking what I said in the worst possible light, but appreciate the heads up.

  73. zinzarin*  

    “There are people who feel called to work with people who have committed some of the worst crimes possible, to find their humanity and connect with it. Maybe you’re one of them.”

    LW, if this applies to you, I’d like to urge you to channel this towards people you are not connected to. Do some research on groups that do this kind of advocacy work, and join their networks. Visit *other* abusers in prison, and provide this human connection for *them.*

    If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, well, you know that this isn’t your motivation. If your motivation is personal instead of societal, I urge you to forget about this man.

  74. It's Fine*  

    TL;DR I think LW would benefit from therapy to unpack this intense over-empathizing.

    I’m in therapy for a similar issue right now. If I can do some projecting, perhaps LW is so desperate to see more kindness in the world that they considering doing something extreme to be the change they want to see – showing compassion even to someone who most would never show it to.

    Recently I was in so much despair about the state of this country that I impulsively invited an acquaintance who’d fallen on hard times to stay in my home for free. I believed them to be hard working and smart and just in need of a place to land for a bit, and the lack of resources available to them was the failing of our society’s lack of a safety net. A year later they had no job, no savings left, and of course I was still the villain when I finally started expressing my frustration and setting expectations and boundaries. This is an entirely different situation from LW, but I feel a kernel of connection to LW’s attempts to humanize this man. Most people would look at my situation and say this person took advantage of me, but even after everything I still think that’s an oversimplification. So in the same way, LW is trying to see nuance in someone that doesn’t usually get that kind of grace.

    I 1000000% agree their language comes off as minimizing. I’d encourage the LW to sit more with the fact that this man fueled demand for heinous crimes AND he’s a human being who craves connection. No buts to soften the bad parts. I’d also suggest getting into therapy since hyperempathy leads us to make a lot more concessions in our life than is healthy. I think this urge to reach out to a past acquaintance now in prison is an expression of some kind of desperation or pain.

  75. Dido*  

    I’m finding it extremely hard to emphasize with the LW’s point of view here. I can say this: if one of my friends, family members, acquaintances, whoever reached out to a convicted pedophile because he/she felt sorry for the PEDOPHILE and thought they needed a connection to the outside world, I would cut them off with no hesitation. That’s very suspicious behavior.

    1. BadUnicornBad*  

      Same. The way everything is written, it’s like the LW thinks this was a victimless crime or something. Someone doesn’t just stumble upon that many images.

  76. Anon Psych*  

    In my work in psychiatry, I’ve met a few people who committed crimes like your boss did (and worse.) Most seemed like nice people. They had friends and romantic relationships and jobs and some had great taste in music or art and had similar political views to me. But they did what they did; they CHOSE to do what they did, and every single one minimized the seriousness of it and framed it as something that just sort of happened, or started one way and then spiraled out of control, or was someone else’s fault. I have a very hard time believing that this man “fell down a rabbit hole” after retirement. I have a hard time believing that just because he was nice to you, he can’t possibly have put the youth he encountered in danger, or even that you should believe his own testimony of what happened.

    I am someone who has chosen to work with people who’ve done really, really bad things, and also people who’ve suffered really, really bad things. You cannot do this kind of work if you’re coming from a place of doubt about the seriousness of what the other person has done. Suffering deserves compassion AND suffering doesn’t excuse making other people suffer. You can feel and exercise compassion to him–extending compassion to people who’ve done bad things is important if we want bad things to stop happening–but not if it clouds your own judgment or reduces your compassion and belief in victims.

    Gently, I think your impulse to contact him has something to do your own shock, grief, and horror. There’s a pain in trusting someone or experiencing someone as wholly good in the face of evidence that he was not wholly good, and a real yucky slimy feeling in realizing that you’ve been deceived, or that you’ve somehow benefitted from someone or something that was actually awful for other people. Exploring these feelings on your own or with someone else would probably be more helpful than contacting your former boss.

    1. summerofdiscontent*  

      “You cannot do this kind of work if you’re coming from a place of doubt about the seriousness of what the other person has done. ”

      YES. Thank you for pointing this out! It’s so common for people coming out of hard or weird situations to enter the fields of mental health or social services. But a person MUST have their own healing underway and understand their motivations for doing so or it can result in real harm. Many others here have also pointed out that the OP might be very susceptible to manipulation if they reach out to this person without being well boundaried and resourced. I think we agree that the OP should talk to anyone except their former boss right now.

    2. ALJ Dredd*  

      Seconding this as someone who has a similar perspective based on similar work experience.

  77. Not in my experience*  

    As a person who was abused as a child myself and spends a fair amount of their time volunteering in ways that serve prisoners, I do not read this as minimizing. Trying to square away the realities that a human being we know and like can do something horrific is part of being a thoughtful person who is capable of growing, and sees humanity in all people. In the same way that we should all understand that even monsters should have things that aren’t completely negative about them, and deserve to have their basic human rights. That doesn’t make the monstrous things ok, it just acknowledges a human being did them.

    Letter writer, I strongly support you sending a letter to your boss. Prison is extremely isolating, in more ways than just what has been put here. Communicating with them is not an endorsement of their crimes, but would likely be very meaningful to them.

  78. But for the grace? (Anon)*  

    possibly relevant: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-in-the-brain/202003/parkinson-s-pornography-and-pedophilia

    Source: GOV.UK https://share.google/qfwaAA0NBTxoG7FZB

    Source: ScienceDirect.com https://share.google/nDwXuxyXqZ92zJ5W6

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkmrev6z2mo

    If someone has never had to guard against such urges, I can’t imagine what it’s like trying to do so while effectively under medically-induced extreme compulsions, while in an otherwise-depleted physical state, generally with inadequate advance warning, and inadequate personal and medical oversight. If I ever have to go on that class of drugs, I’m handing off my debit, credit and ATM cards to a relative, cutting myself off from direct internet access, and hiring a “minder.” And maybe moving to a remote location.

  79. Matt*  

    Fun fact, someone can be both sick and dangerous at the same time, and not everyone deserves human connection.

  80. tina turner*  

    AG makes a good point that LW “softens” and minimizes the crimes.
    And he may have had fantasies all his life about this, even acted on them secretly. She doesn’t know. Don’t assume!
    Pedophiles can be very “mild-mannered” and not who you expect them to be. Examine your fascination w/his obsession.

  81. Pajama Mommas*  

    First, I am so impressed with the thoughtfulness and kindness of the comments here.
    One thought I haven’t seen expressed in the comments: LW, you (like all of us) have a limited amount of time and energy. What would make you decide that corresponding with this man would be the best use of your time? Are there other things that would be more helpful to the world that you could do with that time and energy?
    Also, seconding all of the suggestions in the comments that this impulse to reach out to this former co-worker would be a great thing to explore in therapy before you make any decisions about what to do.

  82. Salty Ball of Sunshine*  

    Social Worker here! I work on a crisis team and we sometimes work with people who have done horrible things. This has included sexual assault of children, and criminal abuse and neglect of children. These are individuals who were convicted, served time, and are post-release. We still work with them, and we tend to believe that every person deserves mental health care, which is our job.

    BUT, this is our job, and there are a lot of professional boundaries and standards we are following. Do not take lightly the difficulty you will face by being in contact with this man, in your own soul. It’s a lot to grapple with when you find you like a horrible person. And be clear, these are recent horrible crimes. He is not a nice person that did one bad thing years ago and has tried to turn his life around. He knowingly and repeatedly engaged in horrible things. Recently. Choosing who you spend your time and energy around is one of the most intentional ways we better or worsen ourselves, because those around us always impact us. Make good choices.

    Lastly, everyone has positive and negative qualities. Horrible people do nice things. Hitler loved dogs. It’s ok that you liked him before you knew about it, and it doesn’t say anything negative about you that you didn’t magically know that he was a predator. Now you know. Now you know the minimum they could prove, actually. You know it’s at least that bad. That should change how you feel. Understand that him being good at hiding it means he is likely skilled at deception and manipulation.

  83. some dude*  

    OP, I do believe in not unpersoning people because they screwed up and not judging folks by the worst thing they did, so I understand where your compassion may be coming from.

    However, I also believe sometimes people do something so terrible that they should rightly become untouchable. Participating in the violent sexual abuse of anyone, let alone children, is on that list. Him dying lonely or getting out of jail old and broke is thousands of times less awful than what he participated in.

  84. thelettermegan*  

    there’s a lot of clergy and social workers who work in prisons, etc, and provide care and healing without minimizing the crimes committed. They feel called by their deities/moral structure to care for people who’ve failed. Their work has the most impact when the survivors of crimes also receive appropriate care and healing.

    If you do reach out to your former boss, you’d probably want to go in with that mindset. Take a long look at what’s available to survivors and ask yourself if there’s a way you can help or provide. Then reach out to your former boss and see how they’re doing. They might feel contrite and hope that someone can hear their regrets.

  85. Miss Chanadaler Bong*  

    Someone does not receive and save 84,000 images of child sexual abuse (that is what this is, not child pornography it is child sexual abuse with real life victims) on a whim. There were no issues that you KNOW OF because many predators go undetected for years. He received and traded images and perpetuated the abuse endured by those children. He may very well have victimized other children. I echo the others, you are minimizing a lot of what he did because there was not a physical action between himself and the victims that you KNOW OF. The question I would be asking yourself is what are you hoping to gain by seeing him? Is this truly an altruistic, “this poor isolated man needs connection with the outside world?” What would seeing him do for you and is there any other way to meet that need? Is it a need to try and understand why it happened to resolve the cognitive dissonance between the person you knew and the person he was? The information that you have received of his crime devestating and that is an emotion you may need to sit with and process through. He was a wonderful and honorable person to you and it is difficult to reconcile your experiences with these horrific acts. I would encourage you to explore your own motivations here with a therapist and really take in all the comments you’ve received on this so far. This man wasn’t important enough for you to have a significant relationship with outside of work and his retirement. Why is that interaction important to you now?

  86. PattM1966*  

    My brother was convicted of possession of child porn (children under 13) and spent 8 years in federal prison. I have had to go no contact with that side of the family because they say “it wasn’t that bad” and “he didn’t harm actual children”. There is no universe where I would ever see him again and not slap him into the sun. My mom says its mean to not want to be around him and is worried about his feelings, not realizing that living children were forced to pose for this garbage. Anyone convicted of this crime should live the rest of their days shunned from everyone. There is no forgiveness for this. Cut ties with your former boss-he knows what he did was wrong on an epic level which is why he hid the evidence and he deserves to be lonely and ostracized forever.

  87. Jenn*  

    LW, I have an anecdote for you and then a fact that probably has appeared above but I feel needs to be reiterated.

    When Jian Ghomeshi’s scandal broke my parents felt bad for him and brought him cookies. I have a deep understanding of why my parents did this and let’s just say it’s part of a lifetime of minimizing sexual harm to young women (and in their case girls.) Everyone I have mentioned the cookies to gets it. You need to think about why of all the people in the world who struggle, your brain wants to focus on this former boss. It might be minimizing your own trauma in the past; it might be something else. But get that straight before you do anything.

    Also “porn” is minimizing word. Child sexual abuse materials/media is a recording of children being abused.

  88. Danish*  

    I wont retred ground others are covering, but I think I may understand some of the impulse here?

    For example – and I swear this is relevant- the current US president has done so many things that have hurt people, people I know and people I dont, among numerous other harms. I am a member of a few of the communities his party’s actions target. Most of the time I think things like, “I wouldnt spit on him if he were on fire.”

    AND YET, whenever I see a photo of him looking old and dejected and standing alone, some part of my heart hurts. I see a lonely old man who wants so badly to be adored, and I feel real empathy and sorrow over the thought that he might feel abandoned and confused over why he isnt. Those feelings, I think, have very little to do with him and more to do with my ability to see a narrative and feel empathy for the people in a story. There is no evidence he currently feels anything like the sorrow I make myself feel bad imagining.

    When I read you pitying your boss being abandoned by all, alone at 70, 80, 90, at losing his business and legacy that he worked all his life to build – I wonder if you aren’t doing something similar. Those things are tragic, and evoke deep sadness as part of a narrative (instead of as the consequences of your former boss’ actions). And you say you had a good, if not close, relationship. I can see how those positive feelings could combine with the reaction a generally empathetic person has to the concept of losing everything and being totally alone into wanting to reach out. But in that case, it may be more about self soothing than helping him in some way.

    Perhaps I am totally off base here. The attention paid to the isolation, his eventual age, being ’90 and broke if he even survives’ just made me feel that youre telling yourself a very sad story and reacting to that .

    1. Ellie*  

      I feel the same way about Trump, although its not so much for as he looks now, but his background, and the environment he was raised in. I feel sorry for that little boy who got very little love from his parents, and seems to have spent his whole life looking for a way to replace it. I think when you’re a very empathetic person, who seeks to understand why people behave the way they do, you can easily end up giving people more grace than they deserve though. I’m also not truly sure if OP really recognises the evil in what their old boss has done. As Alison says, there’s a lot of minimising language in this letter.

      1. goddessoftransitory*  

        I agree with the take in the novel Manhunter (basis for the Silence of the Lamb films) where Will Graham’s boss gets a little ill watching Graham work and seemingly empathize with the killer they are after, asking “You feel sorry for this guy??”

        Graham replies “I feel sorry for the child he *was.* Now? He’s a monster that needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.”

  89. Velawciraptor*  

    Hi LW. I’m a public defender whose caseload includes a lot of the sort of cases we’re talking about here.

    I think there’s a lot that’s commendable–on the macro level–about extending compassion to the imprisoned; recognizing that a human who did something horrific is still a human; recognizing that abuse begets abuse; recognizing that a person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done; and that most imprisoned people are eventually released and need community for any prayer of not re-offending.

    However…

    This is someone you hadn’t talked to in years. This is probably not the circumstance under which he wants to rekindle the acquaintanceship. And if you weren’t inclined to reach out/hang out before you knew this, now’s probably not the time to reconsider that decision.

    In my professional experience, people guilty of these types of cases can be pretty manipulative. If you’re not prepared for/inoculated against it, you can get yourself dragged into positions you don’t want to be in.

    It might be better for you (and honestly, more comfortable for him) if you take this energy and direct it to volunteering for any of the many prison outreach organizations that exist around the country, which would provide structure and support that you wouldn’t have reaching out to this one person on your own.

  90. badgerdog*  

    This smacks heavily of denial, and of difficulty taking in the enormity of this new information. LW, you can do what you want, and a lot of people see value in providing human connection even to people convicted of the worst crimes. But for you, right now, I wouldn’t. I don’t think you’re doing this from a place of clarity. You’re minimising like crazy – he ‘fell down a rabbit hole’? Really? You’re sure he was never a threat to anyone he physically met, you think he wasn’t even aware of this attraction while you knew him? You can’t possibly know either of those things and chances are very good they’re not accurate. You’re saying them to comfort yourself, because it jars you to the core to realise you liked someone monstrous.

    Take time. And – please don’t go around using this minimising language in real life. The person you’re talking to could easily be a survivor of child sexual abuse. It’s extremely common and extremely real.

  91. Galadriel's Garden*  

    Confronting the notion that someone you admire is capable of evil is difficult, because it throws into question your entire ability to judge character. “How could I have not seen this? Predators are evil, I would have sensed it, so it must not have been as bad as I fear it is, because if it is then my whole worldview is upended.” That minimizing is rolling through this letter; others have pointed it out as well.

    What is it that you hope to gain from contacting this person? That they are not as bad as you fear they are? That you will be reassured that your judgement of character is sound?
    This…collection is not one made by accident, or through a one-time “slip up.” This is sustained, deliberate, a meaningful effort. This is knowingly perpetuating and contributing horrific abuse and cruelty.

    You will have to reconcile the person who did heinous things with the person you admired. I cannot stress enough that it will be painful work, but work that you must do, preferably in therapy. I understand that minimizing is the easier path, but not the right one.

    I have been a classically trained musician since I was a child, a culture and industry that is now known to have harbored and shielded predators of many stripes for basically as long as it has existed. I have seen many colleagues learn that their teachers, mentors, and idols are not who they thought they were, and grapple with what it means to have taken instruction and inspiration from someone capable of tremendous evil.

    I have also seen – and experienced – what that evil looks like, and had my experiences minimized or explained away. Surely it couldn’t have been that bad; surely someone would have known before. Surely my perceptions of the people in my life are sound, because I would not associate with bad people. What was done could not have been that bad, because I would have *known*. Please, for the children whose abuse he abetted, I beg you not to be that person.

  92. Arcadia_Commons*  

    My old boss was (still is) a therapist who specializes in working with people who have engaged in Problem Sexual Behavior (PSB). So he is one of the ones who, as Alison put it, “feel called to work with people who have committed some of the worst crimes possible, to find their humanity and connect with it.” He’s an outstanding clinician and a very good man. The guy had the patience of a saint (we worked in community mental health together, which is a very frustrating system).
    I don’t know much about this specialty, so this is secondhand information. When he works with adults or even teenagers with PSB, he mentioned one of the first things he goes over would be things like laws, consequences, etc around the behavior. This is in addition to understanding what led to the behavior (trauma from past abuse, mental challenges where the person is an adult but developmentally much younger and then showing an interest in a much younger person, sex addiction, etc). And when he is working with children who exhibited PSB (which mostly comes from past trauma), he also ensures that they receive teaching on appropriate boundaries and safety.
    So, from what I understand, boundaries are the name of the game when it comes to working with people who engage/engaged in problem sexual behavior.
    OP, it doesn’t sound like you are especially close to your boss. I am unsure if it will help you or your boss at all for you to contact him. I didn’t read through every comment, so I’m sorry if this was suggested already. But I wonder if it might ease your conscience to donate to benefit prisoners who are being held at the correctional facility your boss is held in (there’s things like holiday gift bags, etc, during the holidays). So, it’s showing kindness and reflecting that we are all human, but also not randomly popping into someone else’s life after they were charged with a really heinous crime. Something like that might be better as far as both showing kindness and holding healthy boundaries.

  93. tina turner*  

    Be careful setting a precedent by contacting him. Once you start you can feel you can’t stop. Is that what you want? If so, ask why. See a therapist.
    I visited a relative in prison and felt I had to keep it up. Be sure what you’re getting into.
    He finally went through a treatment center that worked for him and maybe he “aged out” of the obsession a bit. Now I think he’s on meds that suppress his hormones and he’s led a pleasant life for years, playing bridge, having a quiet life. He chose that.

  94. BadUnicornBad*  

    Yeah. If I found out a friend or close coworker reached out to someone who was convicted of this, I’m not sure I’d continue to be friends with or interact with you unless 100% necessary. Especially if I had kids of my own.

  95. Boss Scaggs*  

    I’m not sure exactly why you want to visit this person, but if you do I wouldn’t worry about him being embarrassed!

  96. Pancakes Stack*  

    This comment section isn’t equip to handle this kind of heavy letter. They will not have compassion for criminals. I have family members who visit and work with prisoners. So my perspective is different.

    If you are a young woman, it is not wise for you to go to prison and visit someone who preys on the young. You should never go alone.

    If you do not understand the psychology behind abuse and why some abusers often abuse others, you should not go.

    If you feel guilt and want to make him feel better, you should not go. You may want to check in with a therapist.

    If you cannot 100% know that he didn’t hurt teenagers at work, you should not go. And no, you don’t know.

    If you feel reasonable in this, there are organizations who work with abusers of minors. I encourage you to look them up.

    I also encourage you to read Lundy’s book, “Why does he do that?”. There’s a free pdf if you Google it. It talks about abusive men and how to tell if someone is changing. Lundy is very experienced with working with abusers.

    1. pally*  

      Pancakes Stack- thank you for writing this. And for the book recommendation. That will be of help to me.

      See, my brother is serving time (40 years) for similar -and worse -crimes. He’ll be in his late 80’s when he’s let out. He’ll probably pass away before that.

      He fooled everybody. I still cannot wrap my mind around it all. And for how long he was able to get away with his crimes.

      Meanwhile, I handle the fallout. Our elderly mother often asks, “where did we go wrong?” -like she and my Dad are at fault for his crimes. I reassure her she did nothing wrong.
      My brother has a (now) ex-wife and 4 kids (all adults now). I’m there with the advice, assistance, cash, listening ear, etc., to help get them through life as they live it now. It’s a struggle.

      I made sure to pay the entire victim restitution because they had him on a schedule that would have taken multiple DECADES for him to pay it off working at a prison job. It angered me that the victims would have to wait for this to be paid. I probably should have let him work it off at a prison job. But this way, what little financial resources he had can remain with his family. He knows all about this and how I feel. He is sorry he put me into this situation.

      I communicate with my brother regularly via postal mail. He’s in the therapy program they offer to the inmates. Sure, nowhere near as good as if he were able to obtain treatment outside of prison. But he’s taking it seriously.

      (He has insisted that no one ever visit him. No problem!)

      Thing is, we don’t ever discuss what he did. All of his mail (incoming and outgoing) is read. And they report anything that might be of issue. We talk about current events, how things are changing (technology), things from childhood, how our mother is fairing, etc.

  97. A Cita*  

    Alison, you’re response is so level headed. Mine is: I’m so tired. There’s a huge push to minimize these sorts of crimes right now. And I am just so tired.

  98. Anon for this*  

    LW, I am a survivor of CSA. It happened a very long time ago — as far as I can remember, only once; I felt safe telling my parents and they believed me — and nothing was filmed or photographed. I don’t believe it was “violent” in the way people generally think of violence.

    It cast a *profound* shadow over much of my childhood and occasionally still influences my adult life. I don’t think pedophiles are necessarily irredeemably evil, and frankly I think there needs to be much more help and resources available for people who realise they are attracted to children.

    I can understand your impulse towards pity because I have experienced it too, in a variety of circumstances. But I fully agree with Alison that you need to do a great deal of self-examination regarding your minimising language — I felt increasingly uncomfortable as I read your letter — and *why* you feel the need to justify this to yourself. If you decide that this man meant something to you once and you want to be a source of human connection for him, well, I don’t think that’s wrong.

    But you need to understand and acknowledge that this man’s hands are not clean. He may have been ostensibly removed from the abuse, (i)but what he did still caused incalculable harm to potentially thousands of children(i).

    Connect with him, if you want to. Just don’t make excuses for him. Or yourself.

  100. Office Manager*  

    An extended family member that my husband and I were pretty close to has been having legal issues with crimes of sexual abuse nature (not to this level) and I struggled with the same thing.

    He was in jail for a while and I did choose to reach out and build the connection. I kind of convinced myself that he was growing as a person and changing.

    Then after release he got arrested again for the same crime. I really struggled to come to terms with whether to continue the connection, and realized that it was irresponsible. I haven’t settled what the right thing to do ethically was, but I eventually decided I have two young children and even though his crimes don’t target them, it would not be responsible parenting for me to maintain this connection.

    OP, when you know the person it’s so easy to minimize things. I still catch myself doing it because I care about my family member. I wish you well in processing your grief however it presents itself.

  101. Susannah61*  

    LW, I get your conundrum entirely. I agree – someone who even just trades in child porn ought to be locked up; it’s all so disgusting, etc.
    But I also understand how you can just feel … I dunno, not sympathetic to HIM, actually, but overwhelmed by the tragedy of the whole situation. And how none of us (probably) likes the idea of someone we knew and got along with being locked up for life, alone.
    Before you think about reaching out in some way, maybe figure out what’s really driving this? Is it wanting to see how the person you thought you knew (and didn’t like all that much, anyway) tried out to be a monster? Is it about wondering about your own filters and judgment of character? That’s totally legit, if that’s the case! I think that’s what would be going through my subconscious.
    And it’s harder still because we’re talking about child sex abuse. I agree – there’s an element that is more of an illness (not a word I’d use to describe, say, murderers or robbers). And he seemed to get that, at his trail. That also does not mean he should not be locked up, though. Truth is, I think I’d feel OK visiting someone who was imprisoned for embezzlement or something. This… I think I’d look at home and wonder how he could be that person while apparently also being someone else.
    Anyway – whatever you do – I do think your question is very understandable.

  102. Anon for This Comment*  

    It’s easy to see a story like this on the news, think “lock him up and throw away the key,” and move on. It’s harder when it’s someone you know.

    It is—in fact—NOT harder with people you know. I had my father arrested when I found CP in my parents’ home and had reasonable suspicion that my 2YO was being groomed, if not full stop abused. He took his own life the next day, and I haven’t felt a SHRED of guilt in the past 27 years about that part, either.

    I DID think “lock him up and throw away the key.” When decisions are made to abuse and DEHUMANIZE CHILDREN—that person doesn’t get the benefit of empathy or compassion anymore.

    And all this for someone you never even considered a friend. I have to shake my head.

    1. Anon for Now*  

      Good for you!

      My dad was an abuser for decades, maybe his entire adult life.
      When I found out, I helped the family confront him and then I NEVER spoke to him again.

      He’s living his best life – totally untroubled by what he’s done.

  103. Grandma*  

    Another aspect of this question: LW assumes the guy won’t get out of prison until he’s in his 90s. In reality, many older inmates who develop serious health issues get released early. It may be called some sort of compassionate release, but I’m thinking it’s more that the prison system doesn’t want to provide/pay for the healthcare or have him die on their watch. In any case, this guy may be released when he can’t take care of himself and his friends and family have long since cut ties. Does LW want to end up being his caretaker by default, asked, even expected, to step up? Pen Pal and/or occasional visitor is one thing, caring for an ailing acquaintance (convicted of child sex abuse and without funds) is another. I understand the impulse, but LW needs to think it all the way through.

    1. K*  

      To bring it back to workplace topics, I have the weird job of being a public guardian and the scenario you describe is why we’re involved with quite a few of our clients.

      1. Grandma*  

        Oh my. I always think of public guardians as being responsible for children or disabled adults. I hadn’t considered elderly, ill released prisoners without resources, but of course.

  104. unreliable narrator*  

    I volunteer for an organization that sends books to incarcerated people in response to their requests. It’s incredibly fulfilling work but also requires a mental balancing act between the desire to help people and the knowledge that many of the people you’re helping did despicable things. It’s hard to know that the friendly letter you’re reading was written by a convicted felon who may have been a murderer, child abuser, rapist, etc. (not all are convicted of violent crimes, of course). You have to be able to acknowledge their humanity and that they are deserving of support in the form of books, whether they’re for entertainment, education, personal growth, etc. Sometimes, this is the only contact from the outside world they have. I’m not sure how that changes when you personally know the person in prison, as the LW does. But it’s not as black and white as many commenters seem to feel.

  105. SubjectAvocado*  

    This is tough, but I also think LW is in that grey-zone of being someone’s friendly acquaintance where the actual impact on their victims is not visible, whereas the impact on the acquaintance’s life is more easily seen or imagined.

    My father was the (volunteer) head of the small congregation of our church when I was a teenager. A man who, by all external measures, was an upstanding member of the church, was arrested for a slew of crimes related to the sexual abuse of his four children. As appropriate, not all details of the crimes were shared, but the ones that were clearly articulated a very sick, depraved man. The trauma of the abuse and the subsequent legal process completely changed his children, who were my friends. One daughter, who was about fifteen, completely emotionally regressed back to the last age she felt safe, about four years old. ALL of the children were chronically absent from school because of the emotional impact of having to face it. It would be hard to exaggerate the level to which his abuse altered the course of his victims’ lives. I don’t believe that a life is ever ruined, but this was the closest I’ve ever been to using that terminology. The effect of his abuse extended well beyond his victims, as well, and his prison sentence did not align with the true violence of his actions.

    OP, your compassion is admirable, but I think in your approach to this situation, you should recognize the limits of your exposure and how that may make your compassionate/forgiving outlook easier to maintain. This man made a choice, and is now suffering the consequences of that choice. Does he need you as a friend? I can’t say. But I do know that his victims deserve your compassion and advocacy. Alison’s advise is spot on: unless you could confidently explain your actions to a survivor of similar abuse. you should exercise restraint in reaching out.

  106. anonymous for this*  

    I am not going to defend this man’s actions and I don’t have an answer for OP, but something I think about is this: our reaction regarding sexual abuse of children is SO knee-jerk, so very much “lock them up, throw away the key, and burn the jail down” that unlike a lot of other human behaviors, this is an area of psychology that simply is not well-studied. We have scads of psychologists who specialize in understanding what drives serial killers, terrorists, domestic abusers, rapists of adults, etc, but beyond OP’s mention of many abusers having been victimized themselves, there’s just not much known about what drives this, where it comes from, and if there’s anything that can be done. There is no therapeutic path or any kind of help if someone realizes they are a pedophile, no hotline to call. The only systems we have in place are for law enforcement after a child has already been abused, there’s almost nothing in the way of possible preventative measures, and I feel like it’s pretty regrettable that it’s a problem so few people are even willing to try and work on.

    There’s a really great article that has, alas, been put behind a paywall since I read it, but it’s here if anyone has a Medium membership:
    https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-dont-want-to-hurt-anyone-what-do-you-do-now-e11ce4b88bdb

    1. Adultiest Adult*  

      I want to refute your statement that there is no therapeutic path available if someone realizes that they are attracted to problematic sexual behavior. There are therapists who specialize in this work–my long-time friend and colleague is one. Yes, they are limited in terms of availability and it would be great if there were more of them, but there is treatment available, and it works if you work at it. Also, from what he tells me, it’s like any other compulsive behavior that has been inappropriately reinforced. Not a great mystery, just a series of bad choices.

      1. summerofdiscontent*  

        My local child advocacy center has groups and programs specifically for youth and children with problematic sexual behaviors. Other CACs likely have programming similar or can at least provide referrals.

      2. EmmaPoet*  

        I also know a therapist who does this work. She says it’s incredibly important to provide help for people in this situation. It’s really really hard, but she’s committed to it.

    2. Matt*  

      This. I’m sure the commentariat wouldn’t have been quite as harsh on OP if the ex-boss in question was a “normal” murderer.

      1. Former teacher, forever student*  

        Would this hypothetical murderer have committed 84,000 murders? There’s a big difference between a single act and a repeated one in terms of giving him the benefit of the doubt or being remorseful. And as commenters above you have mentioned, it is horrifically difficult for people who have attractions to children and don’t want to act on them – and there is also treatment available for such people. Collecting CSM is never the recommended treatment, and actively harms others – likely thousands of others, in this case.

  107. Nilsson Schmilsson*  

    You hadn’t been in contact with him for awhile. Now is no time to start. You don’t owe him your friendship. And, IMO, he does deserve to lose touch with all of humanity, because he is inhumane.

  108. Gideon*  

    I doubt OP is reading this far, but as someone who has worked in public defense, I want to highlight this part of Alison’s response:

    “There are people who feel called to work with people who have committed some of the worst crimes possible, to find their humanity and connect with it. Maybe you’re one of them.”

    Not everyone is able to do this work, and some people are not able to do it for their entire career. Connecting with someone’s humanity, even while understanding they committed an unforgivable crime, is a worthwhile calling. I recommend speaking through this with a therapist or someone else to decide what you want the relationship to look like. That can change. For example, you can write a letter saying he’s in your thoughts while deciding not to strike up a long term correspondence.

    You can also seek out services in your area (your local public defender, or organizations like Gideon’s Promise, Equal Justice Initiative, and Rights Behind Bars) if you’d like to donate or otherwise offer support to people doing this work.

    1. Abundant Shrimp*  

      My family had, during one of the darkest and scariest years in our lives so far, a great experience with a PD, who defended our family member pro bono. Thank you for all you’ve done in that field of work.

    2. Lizbot30316*  

      Thank you, I did 10 PD years myself. There’s little reason to do it if you don’t believe/care. Those who do it “for the experience” wash out in 6 months.

  109. Kermit's Bookkeepers*  

    OP, you might consider talking to a therapist about your feelings around this — not because your response to this is troubling, but because this sort of situation is so destabilizing that you’re probably having a lot of trouble reconciling your feelings around it, and I imagine part of why you want to reach out to this guy is because it gives you something to do with those feelings. I imagine its especially jarring both because you can’t understand why you never would have suspected him of this, and because 84,000 images is one of those numbers that’s so high that it hardly seems real. You may even feel some level of guilt and responsibility that you didn’t see the signs in this guy before (to be clear, none of this is your fault and this is not your guilt or shame to carry, but sometimes we blame things that scare us on ourselves to make them less scary.)

    It can also be really hard to balance the gratitude or nostalgia or what have you that you may feel towards a former mentor figure with the confusion and horror at learning they’ve done horrific things that aren’t in line with the person you thought you knew. And it’s really understandable that you’re dealing with this by clinging to the humanity of the person you thought you knew.

    All that said: if your boss were “sick” to the extent that he was not responsible for his actions, his lawyer certainly would have made that case in court and it doesn’t sound like this happened (or if the lawyer did take this line of defense, it didn’t hold up to scrutiny). Your former boss is responsible for participating in an absolutely evil activity (and that’s not a word I throw around lightly) and he does not regain a meaningful amount of innocence from the stipulation that he wasn’t creating the material himself. The fact that he is currently experiencing the loss of his wealth, social standing, and freedom is a direct consequence of his actions, and one he deserves. That you feel pity towards him is understandable, but that does not make him deserving of your comfort any more than it obligates you to offer it.

    Like I said: it’s completely reasonable that your feelings around this are complicated, and I highly recommend you find someone qualified to help you sort through your feelings around this. If after parsing through all of that, you feel confident you could defend your desire to get in touch with this man to a victim of his actions with a clear conscience (as Allison has so beautifully put it), then you have an answer for what to do next. But take some time to explore what’s actually going on with you first.

  110. Nysee*  

    LW, you’re being foolish. every letter you send, every call you make will be recorded. This can be used against you.. Mr. ‘nice guy’ will try to manipulate you…to the point where he’s going to try to get you to bring in contraband.

    Know one thing; your name and contact info will be on correspondence. You don’t know who he’s made friends with in prison, nor do you know who he knows on the outside. You would be putting yourself in danger if you contact him.

    Why not volunteer at organizations that help these victims.

  111. Why*  

    Just to put some numbers into perspective:
    – 84,000 csam images and videos over 20 years = 4,200 images per year
    – I’ve been using the same photo library since 2008 and the current total count is about 7,000 images & videos.

    This man was looking for that material extensively. You have a lot of excuses for his behavior (he did it, but…). Your attitude in your letter reads to me as “if I didn’t see it, it’s probably not that bad or it didn’t go too far, and it didn’t impact me”. Yet you say that some of the materials were horrific.
    You don’t know if his employees were impacted. There are many victims who will never come forward and will suffer in silence. It’s also possible that years down the road some do come forward. If that happens, will you be able to look at them in the eye and say “I had no idea”.
    Your old boss is a sick man. You need to examine why you’d want anything to do with him.

  112. Bella*  

    “ I’m inclined to believe no human being who ever encountered him was ever in danger and he wasn’t even consciously aware of his attractions until he fell down this awful rabbit hole”.

    Before you found out about his conviction were you inclined to believe he’d view child sex abuse materials? Likely not. So your inclination about his motivations now that you do know is really worthless.

    Also, people who are sexually interested in children don’t typically become so by falling down a rabbit hole.

    You’re doing a LOT of work to minimize his abhorrent actions and making it seem like something that happened to him as opposed to a series of multiple decisions he made on his own accord to seek out these images.

    The better question about whether to reach out to him is why are you so invested in minimizing his behaviour in order to justify reaching out to him?

    1. Diane Chambers*  

      Agreed. When I talk about falling down a rabbit hole, I’m talking about “just one episode” turning into a whole season of Real Housewives, or deep-diving into a message board about Star Wars theories. To use it here suggests that the line between an average person and a pedophile is “a single exposure to child sex abuse materials” which would be pretty horrifying if true, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

      1. EmmaPoet*  

        Yes, when I go down a rabbit hole, I might be starting out with reading something about Queen Victoria and then suddenly thirty minutes later I’m trying to find out how many of her grandchildren got divorced (two, they were married to each other, there was also one annulment, and at least one informal separation.) You don’t just accidentally come across CSAM.

  113. Abundant Shrimp*  

    A few things to add to what everyone else already said:

    I’m assuming that “trading on Russian sites” means that all, or most, photos and videos were taken or recorded in the country where I grew up and lived 29 years of my life. Could even be from the places where I lived – my hometown was working-class, my last place of residence was in a working-class neighborhood of an otherwise academic research center. Both places had a great deal of poverty and at least one person I grew up with, who grew up in such poverty, ended up doing s*x work as a young teen. (They are doing well now, emigrated to the West, have been in touch with me a few times, and don’t know that I know.) Could be grandchildren/relatives of people I grew up with, or lived next to! I’m not easily shaken, but honestly my hands are shaking a bit as I type this. There is no way I could be in any kind of contact with someone who spent years enabling predators; people preying on kids who had already been dealt a bad hand in life even before these vultures came along. I’m not very familiar with the ins and outs of it all, but I assume trading means he paid them for the images? therefore incentivizing them to go make more. I don’t care what a kindly old man he was, there’s no way. His cellmates probably don’t want anything to do with him because of this, why should I, or OP?

    Another thought I have, imagine you do reach out to this man and he replies back. Then what? It is easy to start something not knowing how to continue or finish it. Are you wanting to be this guy’s friend? like a pen pal? if not, then why bother writing at all. if yes, then why and how?

    I agree with the commenter before me, Gideon, who focused on Alison’s suggestion to convert this energy into productive work. I would explore that path and no other.

    1. Hello Felicia*  

      I have a similar personal connection here, and this is the most glaring thing in this letter for me. Every one of those 84,000 images is a document of a real child being harmed, some of them possibly alive somewhere today, knowing that recordings of their abuse were distributed around the world for the sexual gratification of people like LW’s former boss. The scale of it, and the deliberateness required to amass it, is almost incomprehensible. But LW has the luxury of treating this as a philosophical/moral puzzle and the victims as an abstraction because they are far removed from them.

      I don’t want to speculate on what is driving the asymmetry in LW’s sympathy, but the children whose abuse funded his collection are the ones who could actually use it.

  114. PrisonWorker*  

    I worked in a prison for over 15 years. It was and is my strongly held belief that the incarceration and associated loss of rights (the right to vote, etc) is the punishment. It was not my job to add to that punishment. I believe in extending compassion to ALL people. If you feel a pull to reach out to your former boss, I support you.

  115. When's lunch?*  

    Please, OP, don’t reach out to this guy. Move on. You don’t want to be associated with this person.

  116. ALJ Dredd*  

    I have a close family member who was harmed repeatedly as a result of CSA. I also experienced finding out that someone I thought I knew pretty well (a leader in a faith community) was guilty of possessing and making CSAM materials. Professionally, I have worked with both survivors of SA and CSA, as well as people who have been convicted or found incompetent to stand trial on charges related to CSA and CSAM. I share all of this because it has definitely had a big impact on my worldview and the advice I’m about to give you.

    I agree with a lot of other commenters that I think what you’ve written in your letter is you trying to make sense of learning some devastating news. Someone you liked and trusted and considered a friend has confessed to and been convicted of a terrible crime that caused harm to many vulnerable people, and it is natural to want to make sense of that.

    I don’t think that your impulse to see your former colleague’s humanity is a bad one at all- I agree that people who do horrible things are still people. But, as others have noted, there is a lot of minimizing language in your letter. Possessing CSAM- especially at that scale- is not in any way shape or form a victimless crime, and not something that occurs accidentally. Based on the information you have that you’ve shared with us, there is not a way for you to know whether or to what extent your colleague harmed children in his orbit. I strongly feel that it is not healthy or good to connect personally with someone (especially someone you’ve been out of touch with) who has done something seriously harmful if you don’t have a clear eyed understanding of what it is that they have done, and the impact of what they did. It is not healthy for you, and it is not helpful for him, either, because if you are in a position to minimize what he’s done, then that does not help him to take accountability for the harm he has caused.

    I agree with others that it is important that you discuss this with a therapist, and wait to reach out to your colleague until you’ve done some serious processing of this information. I don’t think that you necessarily have to write off the possibility of ever contacting this former colleague, but I think it is imperative that you strongly interrogate this desire to speak with him. It is okay to have the feelings you’re feeling, but your action step should be to investigate them and process them, rather than reaching out. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with and coming to terms with this incredibly difficult news.

  117. Boss Scaggs*  

    I don’t think it’s a bad idea in general to want to visit or communicate with prisoners, but maybe start a little smaller, like find a tax evader or embezzler and get your feet wet there

  118. Ex-Girlfriend*  

    A few years ago, I got an email from an ex-boyfriend’s roommate/chosen family, asking if I would be willing to write a letter on his behalf for his trial & then sentencing, as he had gotten “caught up in a sting” for “pornography.” I correctly deduced that it was obviously child sexual abuse material (since that’s the criminal material), but said I would think about it. There wasn’t much online about him or the case, and I wasn’t sure what to do—on the one hand, I have no problem telling the truth, but on the other hand, what good would a letter saying he had been a great boyfriend 17 years ago do? It had been so long that I just couldn’t imagine that anything I had to say would be very valuable. In the end, I never wrote the letter.

    A couple of years after the case, I decided to look up what had happened. I found appeal documents and learned that he had been sentenced to FOURTY-FIVE YEARS in federal prison (will either die in prison or get out in his 90s) and that he had been involved in the creation of some material and had been the primary driver in a really large sharing circle (this was the biggest part of his crimes). Apparently, a letter saying he’d been a good boyfriend decades ago *would* have been helpful, but I was SO glad that I hadn’t done anything. After learning this, I was able to spot a couple of red flags that I wouldn’t never have interpreted that way until knowing the truth about him.

    OP, I have never-not-once regretted not writing a letter or getting involved in any way, but I am certain I would have regretted it if I had. I literally sleep better at night for not doing *anything* for someone involved in sharing child sex abuse materials, and I recommend you give yourself the same long-term peace of mind. Your old boss hurt children; he deserves everything he is experiencing or will experience. Give no quarter to possessors of child sexual abuse material.

  119. NotARealManager*  

    I think part of you’re trying to do is square how you could’ve worked with a good colleague for years without any sense of him being a criminal in his personal time. Unfortunately, bad guys don’t always look obviously bad.

    If you had kept up your casual friendship with him before learning this information, then maybe it might be worth trying to stay in touch. But as you’ve already fallen out of touch this is NOT the reason to get reacquainted. Rather you should say, “I’m glad some distance grew between us a while ago”.

  120. Nat20*  

    Alison’s point about the minimizing language is spot on. I get that it’s hard not to look for excuses or even just a reasonable explanation when someone you previously respected does something monstrous and, in your view, out of character. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t monstrous, it doesn’t mean there are any excuses for it, and just because it’s a shock to you doesn’t mean it actually WAS out of character.

    You say you have no doubt he never actually hurt anyone, but:
    1) How can you be 100% sure? Honestly, the answer is that you can’t. Abusers are very good at hiding it.
    2) Like Alison and so many others have said, even if it’s true he never actually touched a kid, what he did do WAS still very, very harmful. He contributed financially to and got gratification out of the horrific abuse of children, and that only helps abusers themselves more.

    Yes, he is a sick person. Yes, he is probably lonely. Yes, he will likely die in prison. Yes, he is still human. I don’t know what exactly he “deserves”, but I can certainly say that none of that even *remotely* absolves or excuses him for what he did. The situation he finds himself in is the result of conscious choices he made as a sane adult; this didn’t just happen to him. You say you don’t want to make excuses for him, yet all of your reasoning for wanting to reach out do sound to me like excuses.

    I think in theory your intentions are good. But in reality, you are looking for the humanity in someone who spent money on and found sexual pleasure in *denying* the humanity of thousands — thousands! — of children. Regardless of whether or not he deserves compassion, they certainly deserve it way, WAY more. I’m not saying you don’t care about the victims, but you do need to realize you are focusing more on him than them. I would suggest redirecting your desire to offer compassion and support to someone amid all this toward victims of childhood sexual abuse, not a perpetrator of it.

  121. Coverage Associate*  

    I haven’t read all the comments, but will add some general comments:

    To people asking directly or rhetorically what LW would get from contact with the felon: People can do good things without getting something in return. We usually talk about “satisfaction” or something from volunteer work or giving to charity, but it can be out of a sense of duty or obligation and without joy.

    To people suggesting systemic ways to address prison cruelty: I know of at least 2 world religions whose scriptures refer to visiting people in prison and freeing people in chains without regards to their guilt or innocence. It took me 35 years of studying those scriptures to realize this, because they’re so often interpreted as applying to people in prison unjustly, but the passages say nothing about that.

    To people suggesting LW put the effort into an established prisoner support nonprofit: Despite the possibility of there being no joy or satisfaction in doing good, almost everyone who volunteers or gives to charity is not doing so in the most effective way. As a common example, my law firm volunteers at a soup kitchen at least once a year. It would be more efficient to do our paid work that evening and donate the profits, but there’s less tangible reasons for volunteering. Everyone who buys food to donate to charity instead of donating the cash so that the charity can buy food in bulk is living out the same reality. It is very common for people to be willing to volunteer or donate where they feel a personal connection and to be unwilling to contribute to just an abstract cause.

    1. Hello Felicia*  

      Holy moly! This is the kind of advice that is technically reasonable in the abstract but completely misapplied to this specific situation. Treating all incarceration as morally equivalent and working from the premise that reaching out to that man is an unambiguous good (what do you mean comforting a CSAM consumer is the same as volunteering in a soup kitchen?!), when the central question is specifically whether it is, is a massive sleight of hand.

  122. anonymouse*  

    I just want to say, for what it’s worth: this letter ends with “But I would get really clear in your head about what’s motivating you and whether you could explain it to someone who’s been a victim of this type of abuse and still come away feeling confident in your stance. If you can, there’s your answer. And if you can’t, I think that’s an answer too.”

    I am someone who has been a victim of this type of abuse. And I am in full agreement with the letter writer.

    I know this is an emotionally charged subject. I know that many people will disagree with me. I have zero desire to ever in my life have contact with the people who have hurt me in this way. I also believe that having contact with other human beings is a fundamental human right no one should be denied, and I think the urge to decide that humans who have committed sexual crimes are a unique kind of inhuman monster does far more to harm people like me than help us. I don’t want to be in contact with the people who hurt me, but I don’t think it’s right to say they should never have positive contact with anyone ever again.

    It would be a wonderfully easy world to live in, where the only people capable of wrongdoing are innate monsters with no humanity in them. It would be wonderful to live in a world where you can live your life without ever questioning if you’re capable of committing massive, irreperable harm to others, because you’ve decided that only monsters are capable of that, and you are not a monster. It’s much easier than grappling with the fact that people who do this are, fundamentally, the same as us, and even if we would never commit this particular kind of harm, we are still perfectly capable of taking a selfish action that does irreperable damage to someone’s life. Viewing abuse against children as being in its own unique category of harm far above all others, being something only monsters could ever commit, is a stance that feels very good and very morally righteous, and it’s also a stance that’s done horrible harm to me. Nobody believes me when I talk about my abuse because they’re convinced only inhuman monsters do that, and they know–rightly, I’d say–that the people who have hurt me aren’t inhuman monsters.

    People tell me that my ideal outcome, then, should be that the people who have hurt me *are* decried as monsters–that everyone believes me forever, that everyone hates them forever, and that I’m given carte blanche to decide their unending punishment. I don’t want that. I would rather live in a world where I can simply say “these people have hurt me in these ways and I don’t want to be involved with them because of that”, and people can accept that and make their own decisions about their personal level of contact with that person. I’d rather live in a world where I could pursue action against these people and know it would end in restorative, rehabilitative justice for all parties involved rather than someone I once cared about being condemned to a system of punishment I have a fundamental moral disagreement with.

    Again, I know people are gonna disagree with me. I’ve had plenty of experiences where people (many of them not survivors themselves) have decided that because my view doesn’t line up with what they think a survivor’s view should be, I must secretly be an abuser myself. People really love survivors who can vindicate their urge for violence & punishment and really hate survivors who don’t want that. I’m probably not gonna come back to check the comments here because, frankly, I just cannot deal with another round of people on the internet deciding that me holding compassion for my abusers means I was never abused at all (or, almost worse, that all my political stances around abolition and justice and the criminal system that I’ve formed over years of study and research and thought are, instead, simply a sign that I’ve been so manipulated I can’t see that I don’t actually agree with my own opinions). But, while this letter was certainly triggering in its own way, the response was honestly more triggering for me personally than the actual letter, and I needed to get my thoughts out on it.

    1. just popping in*  

      Thank you for sharing this. Also a believer in prison abolition and restorative justice, and while I find this topic complicated it is a little alarming to see the comments.

    3. Leeza*  

      This is a really valuable and valid response.
      The urge to put this kind of abuse in a totally separate ’monster’ category does not serve anyone well…victims, perpetrators, or the world.

      I would urge the LW to ‘get clear’ on her motivations, as Alison said but also learn about the organizations that exist to a) care for victims and b) treat perpetrators. I’d advise not doing anything until she has learned from evidenced based, best practices from people who have been doing the hard work in this arena for decades.

      LW, don’t be too disheartened by the strength of some of these responses. People feel this issue viscerally. Alison may well be right that you are called to respond in a moral, clear, compassionate way to this complex issue. But no one does this work in isolation. You need good people with insight to support you and bring perspective before you get involved with this guy. It’s for his good and your own well being.

    4. Ellie*  

      Thank you for having the courage to write in, and to show us your perspective. You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone.

    5. Anonymous poster*  

      Solidarity with you. Life is messy and I never want to associate with the person that abused me, either. But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to have friends.

  123. Properlike*  

    Just because people who commit horrific crimes can compartmentalize doesn’t mean others have to when the perpetrators are caught and *experiencing the consequences of their actions.* He chose to do this. He chose to do it repeatedly. He chose to do it when he knew it was wrong.

    There are plenty of children who were abused and don’t grow up to become child predators or child SA purveyors. It’s not an excuse.

    You can acknowledge that he was nice to you but that does not mean he was a good person. I’d recommend talking with a therapist about why you feel the need to offer this person your time and forgiveness(?) because I don’t think it’s all about this guy.

  124. Essa*  

    LW, I think you considering reaching out shows a humanity and kindness that doesn’t seem to be understood in the rest of the comments. I think your letter is clear about your motivation for considering reaching out also, despite that being a major source of discussion here. Your old boss may feel embarrassed that people are finding out, and may choose not to have communications, but I think it shows real decency for someone to be able to separate what’s happened to be able to show a level of humanity.

  125. another juror*  

    LW, I’m sorry you had to find out about this about someone you know, and I’m sorry it’s the kind of topic where you can’t even process your own emotions about it without other people accusing you of being a horrible person.

    I doubt you will wade this far in (I hope you don’t) but if you do, here’s what I’ve got:

    As someone who was on a grand jury that dealt with a lot of these kinds of cases, and therefore knows more about them than I’d like: Deliberately collecting all of those photos, and continuing to do it when he knew it was wrong, makes him a terrible person. Regardless of anything else – once you’ve looked a a few of those images, you know the people who take them are awful people, and that by participating in the trade you’re enabling and justifying those people. Yes, it’s really easy to divorce pictures on the internet from the reality of real people, and he probably didn’t hand-pick every one of those images – he would have been downloading archives with thousands of images each, very likely, and never looked at most of them – but regardless of that, you know what they are. And you are making a choice over and over again that your own sexual desires outweigh of all that, and that makes you not a safe person. (Maybe you’ll never abuse a real kid, sure. But where else have you been deciding your own desires are more important than anything else?)

    …and despite all that, those awful people are still people, many of them people who have done a lot of good elsewhere in their life. Nobody is good or bad all the way through. And all people do need and deserve certain things, including human connection, just because they are people. For someone in prison, connections outside can be a major factor not only in their own survival but in the likelihood they will reoffend. (And he almost certainly won’t be in prison until he’s ninety – as an elderly nonviolent offender with no prior offenses he will probably be eligible for parole well before he’s halfway through the sentence, and will probably get it.)

    You are not obligated in any way to be the person to provide that. Like Alison said, if you want to be that person, that might say good things about you. But it might not. And the fact that you went into detail in this letter on what exactly he’d done instead of just saying he’d done something terrible and asking your actual question makes me think you’re really just trying to process your own feelings about this, not actually interested in him. Which is also very valid! But you need to get through processing your own feelings before you contact him! Contacting him as part of the process of figuring out how to integrate what he did into your memories of him – which is probably what you would be doing if you did it now – will help neither of you at all.

    (It will also leave you really, really open to manipulation if he is that sort of person. Don’t do it now. Talk it out with a therapist, since it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find a friend who will be helpful on this specific topic.)

    Anyway, as for what I think is your actual question: Finding out you know what he did won’t hurt him. He is very, very aware that everybody he ever knew knows what he did. That does not need to be a factor in anything you decide.

  126. Lizbot30316*  

    Many of the moral and ethical aspects of this have already been covered, but I haven’t seen any warnings to OP about what contacting him could mean for her beyond satisfying her weird curiosity, so: A letter or visit is not going to be the end of it. Your naive and sympathetic vibe will be spotted a mile away. You will get very expensive collect calls (usually an “emergency”) and requests for money on his books and various items mailed if allowed, etc. ad infinitum. You’ll probably hear things like, he needs $X by Friday or he will be killed. People in prison often feel forced to desperate measures and can become quite adept at manipulating others.

    You will also be asked to write letters on his behalf for various programs (although not, it fortunately appears, parole anytime soon). And one day you’ll probably be asked (or told) that Friend 1 needs to drop off a package at your house for him and Cousin 2 will pick it up. It’s just his birth certificate for an ID, you see. Mmm-hmm.

    This is nothing you’re prepared for. Just stay away.

    1. Nysee*  

      Yes, to all of this. When I mentioned in my previous post about not knowing whom he knows on the outside, this is what I meant. Her name and contact info will be out there. You don’t know who he’s going to give it to, and what they can do. When the hypothetical friend drops off the package, law enforcement will be watching him, and then what? The FBI will be at her door, that’s what.

      I don’t think the OP is comprehending the mess she could get herself into. There are prison ministries who help incarcerated people. Leave it to the pros.

    2. Matt*  

      Regardless of what the prisoner will do or not do, OP will at least be shunned by at least a certain part of their family, friends and society. Maybe even lose their job about it. The commentariat here is less than sympathetic, and their real life acquaintances will be even less so.

      1. Teapot manager*  

        If someone I knew told me the things in this letter not only would I immediately cut off all contact, I would make sure everyone I knew was aware of the situation. OP, if you do this, not only will you be exposing yourself to the risks above in this thread, but also the reality that a lot of people you know will not be understanding 0r sympathetic about your reaction.

        ]You really need to work out why you are having this response to finding out a former boss from years ago you say wasn’t a friend was convicted 0f an absolutely heinous crime.

    3. CityMouse*  

      I agree to all of this. LW sounds vulnerable and almost willing to be convinced here and this could go very, very badly. Life ruining badly.

      Someone who does this kind of thing must have very very firm boundaries. LW isn’t there by any means.

  127. Vive*  

    Most people don’t know how surreal it is for serious crimes to happen in your own backyard and to have someone you thought you knew turn out to be someone entirely different.

    Consider the possibility that your motivation for reaching out might just be trying to make sense of things and reconcile the person you thought you knew with the monster who did what he did. And realize the result of trying is unlikely to be satisfying.

    Consider just donating to RAINN or a similar charity for abused children when you think of him instead, if you can. Your donations will actually do some good.

    1. K*  

      I agree; a couple years after I graduated from high school, someone who had been part of my friend group in school took his girlfriend’s life. Like the LW, I felt compelled to reach out to him; my motivations were a mishmash. I wanted to understand how this goofy, pleasant guy could also be someone who could do something so horrible. I wanted to let him know I still saw him as a human in spite of what he’d done. And I think I just wanted to be a part of something big.
      What made me rethink was that, while I didn’t know the victim personally, we had mutual friends, and hearing their grief and pain made me want to distance myself from him.
      It really is a hard thing to get your head around and one of the many ways violence ripples out.

  128. Ellie*  

    You’re a better person than I am, OP. If you really want to do this, you should connect with organisations who are involved with this kind of reform work, so that you know something about what you’re getting yourself into. This will affect your relationships with others, you should get some advice on how to navigate that before you do anything.

  129. learnedthehardway*  

    I can understand the incredulity and denial you face. I faced something similar when I found out that my children’s pediatrician had been arrested for molesting patients. In fact, I was so certain that it could not have happened that I called the police officer who was investigating and told them that I simply could not see how it was possible, given the fact that the walls of the office were so thin that I could literally hear every single thing said to patients and their parents from the waiting room.

    I “knew” this could not possibly be happening. I was very sure.

    And I was very sure it could not be happening to my children – I was very, very careful in any case to always be present when they were having any medical examinations (thankfully, I was correct on this part, although I learned later that it is more than possible for children to be molested right in front of their parents’ eyes, without their parents being aware).

    But – I did not know all the facts – the pediatrician was molesting patients in his offices but outside of office hours, and he was travelling to other countries to to “volunteer” as a doctor and was molesting children abroad. I found this out later, when it hit the news that he had lost his license.

    So – take what you think you know about your former manager, and recognize that you really did NOT know them. Or, more accurately, you only knew the side of themselves that they allowed you to see.

    You should definitely NOT contact this person. He was contributing to the degradation and sexual abuse of children, at a minimum by being a paying customer. He probably did more than that. Those children are real people who were horrifically traumatized, and physically and sexually assaulted. They will have lasting trauma and suffering because of what was done to them, and your former manager paid to watch it. This is NOT someone you should feel sorry for.

  131. Indolent Libertine*  

    Like many others, I will urge you to interrogate what is making you feel sorry for this man and like you are somehow responsible for ensuring that someone is still nice to him. Why? What will *you* get out of that? Will it make you feel like a savior? Will it make you feel morally superior to the people who have so very justifiably decided to cut him off without a backward glance?

    You are exhibiting a whole lot of empathy for a sexual predator here. Why is that? What about this situation is causing your thought process to be “oh, this person I once knew and haven’t thought about in years is now a convicted purchaser of literal mountains of child sexual abuse material, so I really should reach out to say hi, it would just be terrible if he were lonely.”

  132. LoveBugs*  

    I don’t think LW is in a place to be talking to this man until they can actually realistically grapple with the reality of the crime he committed without being dismissive and potentially validating.

  133. Xennial*  

    I, unlike Alison can and will tell you, OP to not do. That is ‘contact them’. Facts;

    – You don’t simply ‘stumble upon this kind of thing’. ‘Russian websites’ are almost certainly the ick sites via Tor.
    – 84k is hardly a ‘vague interest’.
    – Some of the worst grade items are ‘you can never un-see but you will wish you could’ territory.
    – He is a grown adult and knew what he was doing was wrong – in fact, I would hold a person in their 60s more guilty than one in their 20s.
    – He caused way more [redacted] to the people around him than he will ever, ever face personally – not just victims, but friends, family, contacts.
    – He almost certainly knew to some extent his desires waaay before this – I do not buy for one second the often-muttered excuse of ‘I was sucked into it’ because it simply doesn’t work that way.
    – They will not have a ‘reasonable explanation’ for all this. They got 30 odd years. There may be more ick you currently do not know about this.
    – Like Velawciraptor points out, a lot of these folks are manipulative as hell – you very well might end up being stuck in a kind of poison pen-letter situation, esp if you are ‘all they have’.
    – He probably assumes anybody who ever knew him knows.
    – If there is any help available, he will be getting it in prison.

    If you do go ahead with this tonto plan, it will not end well for you (in fact, the best result in this is that they don’t reply). Trust me on this. And everyone else here.

  134. Zola*  

    Either you believe in forgiveness, or you don’t. You believe in compassion for people who’ve made grave mistakes, or you don’t.

    So many have wondered what you’d “get out of this.” But think about who actually helps prisoners — pastors, nuns, people who aren’t looking for anything in return. So kudos to you for considering it.

    1. So so anon*  

      Respectfully, it is not that simple. I have always been more on the side of rehabilitation than punishment, as is my family and we are well aware of the impacts of the prison system on high-needs and racialised communities. We all would have said we believe in forgiveness and second chances… and then my cousin got convicted of a string of offences that are comparable to what this man did. Do I forgive my cousin? Can I, when I wasn’t one of the ones harmed, nor was anyone I know? Should I offer compassion when I know that his whole life was an escalating series of ‘boys will be boys’ misdeeds? Can I have compassion for a young person who is incarcerated for a theft or drug possession without being a hypocrite for lacking compassion for my cousin? How do I balance thinking that women in my cousin’s orbit deserve the right to decide whether being around him is an acceptable risk while also believing that the women in my community are safer if my cousin isn’t pushed to the margins. I don’t know if the path I’m navigating is the most moral and I won’t weigh in on LW (I’ve been in the middle of both sides of this argument for years now). What I do know is that it’s extremely messy and not even close to as clear cut as your comment suggests.

  135. Anonymous poster*  

    I’m a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

    I’m glad justice is being done.

    He can also be a person you talk to. Two things can be true at the same time. I would never be able to associate with this person after finding this kind of information out, maybe you can. That’s something you have to grapple with.

    Don’t try to justify what he did and you can be a contact for him from the outside world.

    Again, multiple things can be true at the same time. People are complicated and hard and messy.

  136. Matt*  

    Well, the first answer by Alison of this not being a work question might be not fully correct – everything is a work question. As you see, a majority of the commentariat is very harsh on you, accusing you of “minimizing the crime” or whatever, what you didn’t do at all in my opinion – however this gives you a taste of how the “real world” will react, including the work world. If you can’t do it in absolute secrecy (and this I’d consider illusory), you might lose your job over it and/or being unable to get a new one. People are losing their jobs over lesser things (while applauded by the commentariat). I wish it was otherwise, that what people do in their private life would stay private, but it isn’t. So better be prepared for everything, since being “too good” to a bad person indeed might make you a bad person for the world.

  137. Elizabeth West*  

    OP, you seem to be a kind person. However, as others have said, this is not something he blundered into innocently. Before the internet, this sort of material was mailed back and forth. The internet only made it more accessible.

    He was not radicalized; most of this isn’t found on the regular web. You have to know where to look. This guy is in his 60s so it’s quite possible that he already did. Either he dug for it, or someone who was into the same kind of thing told him, and that’s not just stumbling onto it.

    I would also consider what could happen if someone found out you’re supporting him. He’s not your friend, by your own admission, and he’s not family. It’s okay for you to walk away.

  138. LongTimeLurkerTurnedFrequentCommenter*  

    As everyone has been saying, which I think a lot of us can understand, is that you want to be a nice person. But what this person did was not nice or kind and does not necessarily deserve anything. They have to reap what they sowed. But think about what you would say to them? Sorry you got caught and your actions have consequences and you’re a gross human?
    I think it’s yourself trying to grasp how this nice person you knew could also be this kind of person, which is something for you to handle yourself. I don’t know that he is going to have the answers you want.

    This is weirdly similar to a couple episodes of Below Deck Down Under in season two that we just finished. The bosun had gotten blind drunk, and got into bed naked with a stewardess who was passed out drunk. Producers had to step in and get him out. The captain kicked him off the boat immediately. Another stew who was previously interested in the bosun was devastated that he was fired and continuously talked about how it was probably a joke, he was mistaken, she would have been excited if he did that to her. It was so disgusting and inappropriate.
    The bosun was brought back to the boat in the morning to gather his things, and in his chat with the captain asked what was happening, because he didn’t remember a single thing from the night before. The captain explained, and the bosun took full accountability and said “wow, that’s extremely disappointing, I’m sorry for my actions. I understand your decision”. It gave me a pause because it was definitely “nice” that he understood his actions were completely disgusting and the consequences were necessary, BUT he still did them and who knows what is really going through his head.

    People can be nice, and really bad at the same time. Which is a tough thing to understand especially when it is someone you know.

    I hope you find peace in this knowledge!

  139. Yup*  

    This is a good reminder that people who exploit children don’t look like or act what we think criminals look and act like. They look and act like your uncle, your neighbour, the mailman, a judge, your boss.

  140. JAnon*  

    I’m sure he’s lonely and living a sad existence right now. That is the point. People who commit crimes like this do not deserve the good parts of life. He had options that led to a different outcome and he did not take those. I would encourage you to make choices that do not remotely support the ones the made.

  141. Classmate to a monster*  

    LW – Something similar happened to me years ago. My undergraduate program was relatively small, so we had the same core group of students in the same classes for years. Billy and I were the program ‘leaders’ for lack of a better word. We did the best in classes, were leaders for capstone projects, worked and sat together often. We weren’t friends outside of class, but we were peers and friendly classmates. I had fond memories of secretly streaming old seasons of 24 in the back row of our night class before professors really knew that was even a thing we could do.

    About a year after we graduated, another student from our program reached out. Had I heard about Billy? I hadn’t kept up with most of my classmates beyond a casual Facebook friendship, so no, I hadn’t. It turned out Billy had been arrested for and pled guilty to crimes against children under his care as a youth pastor. It wasn’t one-off, it had gone on while we were in school together, for years, and I was horrified.

    I can’t say that I ever had the urge to reach out to him directly, though I did look up his case and where he was serving his time. But for years, I felt a sick horror that I had been friends with a monster. Should I have known or noticed something? What did it say about me that I hadn’t? I wonder if maybe you’re having these thoughts too, and that you think writing to your former boss will somehow give you some answers. I don’t think it will. Take some time to process this frankly horrifying information. I think that with some time, you won’t feel the need to reach out to your former colleague, but if I’m wrong and you do, he’ll still be there. This man is in prison where he can’t hurt anyone else, and he isn’t going anywhere.

    Plenty of other people have brought up the social and moral implications of reaching out to him, and I think their advice is worthy of strong consideration, but I wanted to bring you the perspective of someone who’s been through a similar situation. Maybe you’re not wrestling with the same questions I did, but if you are, I hope my advice helps and I hope you eventually come to the realizations that I did: what he did does not reflect on you, not realizing what he was is not a reflection of who you are as a person, and the people who commit these crimes are as dedicated to hiding the crime as they are to committing them. None of this is about you. It doesn’t matter if he knows you know. Let his sins be his sins, and let his sins be between himself, the justice system, and whatever higher power is out there.

  142. Dezzi*  

    LW, your former boss spent years amassing 84,000 images of children being violently sexually assaulted. He enjoyed having them. He enjoyed looking at them. He enjoyed how images of children being violently assaulted made him feel.

    I think you really need to sit with why your immediate reaction to hearing this is “what happened to him is terrible and he must be lonely, I should get in touch!”, and maybe unpack that with a therapist.

  143. Changing name for this post.*  

    I agree with Dezzi. It’s one thing to be compassionate and empathic but he did this to himself, he didn’t accidentally download all those pictures. I hope he is miserable honestly because what he did…it makes me feel like throwing up. If it doesn’t you, that’s not normal, because it should. It will never stop until it makes all the men feel how bad it is. Every woman I know was molested or raped as a child, every single one, including me. And that’s just women. Who knows how many boys.

    Ok, I need to go now and maybe do some crying. I can’t believe how you don’t. If you want to help someone, volunteer to help children, they didn’t do something this horrible.

  144. Numbat*  

    I am reading a fascinating piece on substack by a woman who found and read her boyfriend’s chatGPT history detailing his hesitation about their relationship, and they wound up breaking up after a period of trying to make it work.

    This part stuck out to me, that I think it’s relevant to the LW here:

    “It tempted me into mercy before I’d had the chance to fully recognize my own feelings and the aftermath of what this would mean.”

    LW, I think you’ve been tempted into mercy prematurely. Stop and think.

  145. Lizzie (with the deaf cat)*  

    Dear LW – you don’t know that he is sad. He maybe full of self-righteousness and anger and resentment. You want to ‘alleviate his loneliness’ but you don’t know that he is lonely. He’s in with a big peer group now of other men who have been imprisoned for the same criminal behaviour. He has plenty to talk about with them. He may be in his element now.
    The point is that you don’t know. You are imagining his sadness and loneliness, in your own head, and wanting to do something about those feelings. And you can! But the person whose feelings you can help, is you. Find a professional therapist you can talk to, for clarity and support about what this all means to you.
    Right now you are shocked and confused about how a man you respected could have behaved like this, and are trying to make sense of it. Let a therapist help you.

  146. FionasHuman*  

    It’s rare I disagree with Alison, but as a survivor of sexual assault (though not as a child) *and* a journalist who has covered the criminal justice system, I applaud the LW’s urge to reach out and provide a human connection to his old boss.

    There is no excuse for what the boss did. But no excuses have been made: he has been sentenced to prison for decades, he’s an older man and therefore even more vulnerable to abuse by guards and other incarcerated people, and he has been effectively cut off from society.

    People with the sickness that this boss has need help. Not just as a moral issue, but also as practical one; speaking more generally, there’s reason to believe that offenders against children are *more* likely to offend again, not less, if they are treated more humanely, particularly post-incarceration.

    So, LW, if you’ve read this far: yes, reach out. Provide that humane voice. You’re in a unique position as someone who knows your old boss as someone who is more than the worst things he’s done. From what I’ve learned of the carceral system, virtually *no one* deserves the level of punishment and near-constant humiliation that incarcerated people are forced to endure. And yes, I’ll say it — not even the two men who raped me.

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