The forgotten victims of online child abuse When your husband is caught watching, who helps?

What happened to Katie happens to scores of families every month. According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, 35% of homes raided because of online paedophilic activity include children. In 2021/22, there were 10,181 arrests for downloading indecent images of children (IIoC) — an average of 848 each month. That figure has risen from 417 a decade ago. This means that an average of 298 families with children experience the knock each month — almost 10 families a day.

This is a massive, and growing, problem in the UK. The viewing and downloading of child porn is increasing all the time. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, the number of child sex sites found by its experts increased by 1,420% between 2011 and 2020. In 2021, it found 252,000 images of child sexual abuse — up 21% on the year before. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which campaigns and provides help to encourage offenders to stop viewing child abuse content, found that “isolation, unemployment and escalating pornography habits” during the pandemic resulted in more than 165,000 people seeking help via its advisory website in 2021. That was a 107% increase on the year before.

But while the victims of abuse in online images are rightly given help when they can be found, the women and children left behind after the knock receive no special support from the state, whether financial, emotional, educational, psychological or practical. Because even though they become victims of the crime committed by the man in their life, the government doesn’t recognise them as such.

The knock came to the home of Carly Peters, a 59-year-old nurse, at 11am on a winter’s day in 2019. “You never forget it,” she says. “It’s like when people ask where you were when Diana died. For me, it came the day after a lovely evening which my then husband, Matthew, and I had had with my two sons and my daughter from my first marriage, and his daughter from his. We had been together for 11 years and had the perfect life, a great family, no money worries, a beautiful home, all of it.

“The kids — who are all grown up — had stayed over. The last time I saw the man that I thought I knew was at 8:50am that morning. I kissed him goodbye because I was taking one of my sons on an errand. When we got back, Matthew had gone into work — he owns a furniture business — and suddenly there was a knock on the door.

“Two men told me they were police officers and asked if they could come in. They said Matthew had been arrested on suspicion of ‘illegal downloading’. I had no idea what that was. Then they said he had admitted the offence at the showroom — because that’s where the downloading had taken place — and he had told them there was a computer and a hard drive in a bag under our bed. They asked whether I knew anything about that and I said no. My head was spinning.”

The police asked if there was anyone else in the house and Carly said her children were there. Visibly concerned, the officers asked how old the “children” were and she told them: in their late twenties and early thirties. The police relaxed — there were no young children at risk. The siblings were asked to gather in one room and to surrender all their storage devices, laptops, iPads, telephones, memory sticks and so on. So was Carly.

“I asked them what Matthew was supposed to have done, but they said they couldn’t tell me under GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]. More officers came in and they took my home apart. They searched everywhere and put all our devices into black bags and took them out to unmarked police cars. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but it must have been obvious to the neighbours that something strange was going on.

“Then the most senior officer took me into our bedroom and pulled a bag from under the bed. Matthew had hidden it there. But I still didn’t know what he was supposed to have done… After two hours, they were gone, and we were none the wiser. They said Matthew would be home later, and he would explain everything, but Matthew didn’t come home.” Over the next couple of days, Matthew avoided contact with Carly, her children and his daughter. He went to the home of Carly’s father, where he tried to overdose on the father’s insulin. When that failed, he took an overdose of paracetamol and ended up in hospital.

Carly had no right to be given details of their partner’s alleged crimes unless the partner gave permission. “We had Googled ‘illegal downloading’ and seen that it could be for pirated music or indecent images of children or something else,” says Carly. This is a common problem for families in this situation, and it creates a vacuum in which offenders can lie about, or minimise, their illegal activities. These periods of deception — during which women are sometimes tricked into staying with the offender — can last for up to two years because of unprecedented backlogs in court cases post-pandemic and the time it takes to have devices examined by digital forensics experts.

“A couple of days after his arrest, Matthew told me he had a problem with pornography and it involved children,” says Carly. “I asked him how old, and he said: ‘Between three and 12.’ I’ve been a nurse for many years and so I have a strong constitution, but when he told me about the poor victims in these images, I vomited.” But it took two years for Matthew’s case to be heard at Crown Court. Only then did Carly learn the full extent of his crimes. He pleaded guilty to possessing or making more than 4,000 indecent images of children.

“The ‘making’ of indecent images charge was brought because of the way he had downloaded them and organised them into folders,” she says. “They were in age groups: three to five; six to eight; nine to 12. Most of them were ‘Category A’ images, the most serious, which means full penetrative sex. We’re talking about people having sex with toddlers.”

Matthew was given a two-year suspended prison sentence, and put on the sex offenders register for 10 years. Carly stopped living with Matthew after he told her the bare basics of what he had done, and she has since divorced him. She sold their house, changed her name, gave up her job and moved to a new town. After months of counselling — which she paid for herself because she wasn’t entitled to any special help — she says she is making progress.

Families of online child abuse offenders suffer mentally, physically, socially and financially, according to research conducted by Professor Rachel Armitage and her colleagues at Huddersfield’s Department of Criminology. In 2021, they interviewed 126 family members and friends of offenders. They found that all but 17.5% of interviewees had symptoms consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); 70% had symptoms that suggested they ought to have been diagnosed with PTSD, yet only 22 had received formal diagnoses and treatment for it.

The researchers also found that 65% reported symptom levels that were sufficient to suppress their body’s immune system. According to the Impact of Events Scale they used, a score of 35 would merit a diagnosis of PTSD and more than 37 would be high enough to put immune system function at risk. The mean score for offenders’ children was 55.6 and for their wives or partners it was 44.8. One of the women I interviewed said she developed rheumatoid arthritis after her husband was arrested, while her daughter’s hair fell out.

“Some of the respondents referred to experiencing relapses of disorders that were thought to have been resolved in the past — for example, eating disorders — and several also noted that the stress of the discovery had led to them developing physical illnesses such as autoimmune system disorders and irritable bowel syndrome,” the researchers wrote in their findings.

“Participants described how the psychological impacts were exacerbated by the loneliness and isolation of being in this situation where you have little or no access to agency support, where you are unable to disclose the truth to your own family and friends, where you have lost somebody that you love.”

None of the partners and professionals I spoke to was demonstrably critical of police officers who carry out the knock, but they did wonder whether it could be handled more sensitively — in ways that could protect children from the trauma of seeing their father taken away, their homes ripped apart in searches. The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead on child protection and abuse, Deputy Chief Constable Ian Critchley, says: “The NPCC are aware of and understand the impact policing can have on families where someone has been subject to an arrest involving online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Often there are restrictions on the amount of information which can be provided due to several factors including GDPR, which we acknowledge can be frustrating and upsetting for innocent family members trying to understand why this is happening.” He says the NPCC is working with police forces, researchers and academics to find ways to make the knock and its aftermath less distressing.

During the period between arrest and trial, wives and partners (who, remember, usually don’t know the minutiae of what their man is supposed to have done) must decide whether to allow their children to see their father — usually under the supervision of a responsible adult — or whether to cut ties completely. If they suddenly remove the father, they risk damaging their children’s mental health; if they don’t, they risk being judged negatively by friends and family. Whatever they choose to do, they can’t win.

Katie White discovered this after agreeing that her husband, Bob, a 40-year-old civil servant, could see their two boys under the supervision of Bob’s mother. Within days of the knock, the Children’s Services department of her local authority had turned up, but “once they assess that your children aren’t at risk – because the offender is no longer living in the household – that’s it; they disappear from your life,” says Katie. “You get no help from them. The only time social services get involved is if your husband applies for more access rights or if you want to change the person who supervises his visits.”

Bob was convicted of possessing more than 1,000 indecent images of girls, some aged under eight. “At first, he had told me he might have accidentally clicked on a few images of girls aged 16 or 17,” says Katie. “It wasn’t until his hearing a year later that I found out the truth. I felt sick — lied to, cheated, and utterly disgusted.”

During that time, however, she had agreed to let Bob see their children once a week, supervised by his mother. The children were missing their father – to remove him completely did not seem like the right option. Not everyone agreed. One of her closest friends cut ties with her for allowing Bob to see the boys. After that, Katie, who had already given up her job, sold the family home and moved to a new town. Life was even harder there.

“I made a real effort at the school gates to get to know the other mothers, and fairly quickly I made a lot of acquaintances, but it was hard to make proper friends because I couldn’t afford to let anyone get too close,” she says. “I told them about getting divorced and said I’d moved there for a fresh start. There would be invitations to spa weekends away, or for late nights out and they would say: ‘Why can’t the kids stay with their dad?’. And I would say things like ‘It’s complicated’ or ‘That’s a long story’ but you can only keep batting away questions for so long.”

Eventually, she told three of her new friends about Bob’s offending, but they, too, judged her negatively for allowing her boys to have him in their lives. “One by one, they told me that if this had happened to them, they wouldn’t have allowed their children’s father to see them,” she says. “They didn’t drop me straight away, but they slowly melted away and don’t call any more. Now there’s nobody. I’m isolated in the community, and I feel very lonely.”

Bob re-offended last year. One of the boys wants to cut all ties with him; the other doesn’t. For Katie, this is just the latest in a long line of agonising quandaries that will inevitably see her cast her as villain, either in the eyes of one of her boys, or Bob’s family, or the so-called friends watching from the shadows.

“Every image contains a real child — an innocent victim — being abused, and that heart-breaking fact is never far from my mind,” says Katie. “All I can do is hope that they are identified and given the support they need. But our children need some professional help as well, because this crime has life-long emotional ramifications for them. They are victims of their fathers’ crimes, and they are more vulnerable as a result.”

The Ministry of Justice decides who can legally be described as a victim of crime. Under its “Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales”, also known as the Victim’s Code, the definition is: “A person who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm or economic loss which was directly caused by a criminal offence; or a close relative (or a nominated family spokesperson) of a person whose death was directly caused by a criminal offence”.

Being described as a victim is important as it confers statutory rights. Among these are the right to be kept updated with the investigation and the offender’s court appearances and, crucially, “the right to be referred to services that support victims, which includes the right to contact them directly, and to have your needs assessed so services and support can be tailored to meet your needs”.

Victims also have the right to claim compensation — something that might concern ministers — yet none of the women I interviewed mentioned compensation. Instead, their priority was getting practical and psychological support for their children, at home and at school. Neither they nor their children are currently offered counselling or any other kind of help.

Natalie Smith, a 39-year-old partner in an accountancy firm, says she is struggling with the difficult questions that her daughters, Jane, seven, and Sarah, four, are starting to ask, but she has no access to professional help or advice as to how she should answer them. She got the knock two years ago after a tip-off to the police that her husband, Brad, a 45-year-old businessman, had been sharing images of girls aged under 10 with followers on Twitter.

“After his arrest, I began to feel guilty because maybe I should have noticed something,” Natalie says. “Then you feel guilty for the children your husband was looking at, his first victims. You feel guilty for choosing this man to be the father of your girls, because now they are also his victims. And you feel guilty that this is going to affect them for years to come because they will grow up without a father.”

Natalie immediately moved out of the family home and in with her parents. She is still there, and her husband has no contact with their children. When the girls ask where he is, Natalie wants to answer honestly, but in ways that will not adversely affect them in the long term – she just isn’t sure how to do that. All she has to work with are suggestions from other mothers in an online forum set up by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.

“Jane came home one day and said there was a boy in her class whose parents didn’t live together, but he still gets to see his daddy,” says Natalie. “She asked why Daddy didn’t come home to us, and so I told her he had looked at something he shouldn’t have looked at and that meant he wasn’t allowed home. Then she asked what he had looked at, and I told her she was too young for me to tell her, but I promised I would when she was old enough. Mothers on the forum say I should give ‘age-appropriate answers’, but I have nobody to ask what is appropriate. Recently, Jane has been asking me to get married again because she wants a daddy. She didn’t say her daddy, just a daddy.”

I asked the Ministry of Justice whether it might attribute victim status to partners and children of IIoC offenders. It replied: “The Victims’ Code stipulates that a victim for the purposes of the Code is ‘a person who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm or economic loss, which was directly caused by a criminal offence’.  Therefore, families of offenders are not deemed victims of crime unless they were directly harmed by the offence. There are no plans to change this as it could inadvertently result in victims of crime receiving less support.”

It was a response that disappointed Professor Armitage. “At the very least, under this definition, children of online child sexual abuse offenders should be defined as victims,” she says. But Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham and a leading light in the fight against child sexual abuse and trafficking, not least as a result of grooming gangs in her own constituency, is the only Parliamentarian so far to back the calls to acknowledge them as “victims”. “Whenever a close relative is found to commit some of the most heinous crimes, the impact on their family is devastating, and of course they deserve our support,” she says. “But the children of online child abuse offenders become caught up in a complex and unique situation through no fault of their own. I will be doing all I can to get these children the protections and legal recognition they deserve.”

For now, this is where the story ends. This year, hundreds of families will experience the knock and its disastrous consequences — the broken homes, broken relationships and broken children — yet theirs is a dilemma borne of a despicable act that seems too difficult to talk about, too easy to ignore. “We’re a group of people that society would rather not recognise because of the horrible crime that has created us,” says Katie White. “And while I feel there is an acceptance that all of this horror is sure to have damaged my children, it seems that it hasn’t damaged them enough for anyone to care.”

 

Names have been changed and details withheld to protect children and families.

---