Jul 14, 20237 min read

'Crossing the Line' by Michael Sheath

Updated: Jul 15, 2023

Guest Blogger: Annie Hope

'I was asleep and there was this knocking on the door, not loud, but persistent:[...] 'Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap.

I thought it must be a mistake, no one calls at that time, my conscience was clear, as they say. I went downstairs, and I could see, through the frosted glass in the door, that there were three or four people there.'

I had no idea what was going on, we might have stood there all morning as they didn't appear to want to say anything and I had no idea what it meant, this crowd of...police.' (Diana, the Wife).

Crossing the Line is a series of monologues by a variety of characters affected by the Knock. It is the creative distillation of author Michael Sheath's thirty five years' experience working with men who have sexually offended, their families, and the police who arrest them.

The five stories are interconnected, allowing for common threads to be identified, but told from differing perspectives of five characters in five sections; The Wife, The Daughter, The Mother, The Downloader, The Detective.

Each section is presented with accompanying notes giving context to the creation of each character.

Michael introduces the book with his own background story. He talks of the evolution of the kind of offenders he has seen in recent years, compared to in the past, and how technology has widened the scope of (and opportunities for) child sexual abuse.

The Knock is an event familiar to a shocking number of households. Perhaps more than 1000 every month. The prolific nature of online offending is reflected in Michael's work.

'Operation Umbrella was what finished me. Twenty-seven thousand names on a list, twenty-seven thousand IP addresses accessing a site in Romania, twenty-seven thousand men, as it turned out, and we had to Hoover them up one at a time.' (The Detective, Crossing the Line).

Many people experience the fallout of a loved one's online sexual offending, and yet they are silenced by shame. They fear talking about what has happened, that people won't be sympathetic. That their stories will be minimised. That they will be told that they don't have the right to talk about it, being reminded that they are not the primary victims.

The family members and children are victims. though. In a different way; of state, community and media response (and lack of response) to their support needs. They are modern-day lepers, discriminated against by association and thrown into the lion's den.

The refusal for recognition of families affected in the fallout of the Knock by the government doesn't help. They would prefer to look the other way and pretend it's not happening, than to acknowledge and mitigate the realities of what children and families are facing.

Nonetheless, there are voices emerging from these experiences with stories that need to be told.

It is important for marginalised groups to have representation in literature. It allows for the issues that they face to be better understood. Michael's work provides an insight into the impacts that follow a knock at the door, and how the trauma does not end with the primary victims of online child abuse imagery (who, incidentally, are rarely found and saved).

'Crossing the Line is essentially about trauma, vicarious trauma, and collateral damage.' (Michael Sheath).

Michaels alludes to the impact of the vicarious trauma on himself, as well as the multiple groups represented by the characters in his work. The fallout of online offending touches the lives of everyone who encounters a part of this world.

'Thirty-five years is a long time. During that time I feel that I have been traumatised, and collaterally damaged in my own right.' (Michael Sheath).

But why has there been such a dramatic increase in the viewing of indecent material online?

Michael discusses a topic which until recently, hasn't been addressed in mainstream media; the perils of the pornography industry, and how the internet has enabled the violent, incest-themed, underage, exploitative, non-consensual material to proliferate, and to infiltrate the mainstream, creating deviant pathways.

Thankfully, the conversation is now widening, and the acknowledgement of the harms caused by this industry and by big tech in the name of profits are being recognised.

We learn from Geoff, the Downloader, of his pathway to offending, and how it began with what would be considered by society to be acceptable, only to follow a dark trajectory.

'What was I supposed to tell her? Men like porn don't they? You see when you're there on the net, how much of it there is. There has to be a demand, supply and demand, you don't need twenty years in accountancy to tell you that. Before the net I'd have the odd magazine, the odd DVD [...] With the net there was anonymity, no shame, [...] You know what? Some of the legal stuff was pretty brutal: 'pounding this', 'destroying that', wrecking her [...]I know they have some sort of algorithm , once you get into that stuff they send you more of it, highlight it, suggest something similar but a bit harder.'

Irrespective of the pathway to offending, social services will become involved with a family where children live in the household. This brings further devastation to innocent family members and is often a further wake up call to the men who don't view the children online as 'real', minimising the real abuse they have been watching, not considering themselves party to it, horrified at the thought of 'real' children being harmed.

'It was the only time I got angry, 'You think I'd do that to my kids? I said. 'I'd rather chew my arm off.' (Geoff, the Downloader).

Michael observes that 'social workers inhabit a world characterised by the grey shades of risk, but they have to make black and white decisions: should a father stay in the household or not? Can he have contact with his children or not? Should the Local Authority issue legal proceedings or not?'

Diana's response to the family's first social work visit feels relatable to someone who has experienced it, and reflects perfectly the indignation felt by many family members who endure the sudden intrusion of the state into their family life; a rapid scrutiny of their protectiveness, accompanied by the notion of the father of their children presenting a risk of sexual harm.

'Safe? My kids, well, his kids, our kids, you're saying they're not safe with their own dad? Well, one of them [the social workers] wrote that down straight away. I could see she was pleased with herself, pleased to have captured it, and she repeated it at a meeting about a week later, like she'd got hold of the Holy Grail. It indicated, she said, that I was 'not protective.' (Diana, the Wife).

Indeed, whilst one serious harm, the risk of sexual harm, is explored intensively by the state, other serious harms, (many of them caused by the fallout of the Knock) are simply not acknowledged.

Michael refers to the ACEs score. A score of 6 is concerning. 'Children of the Knock' encounter around 7 ACEs and yet no tailored support is provided to them by the state. .

It is through the voice of Geoff's seventeen year-old daughter, reflecting back on her nine-year-old self at the time of the Knock that we are privy to a heartbreaking picture of the enduring trauma. Without including any spoilers, Geoff's daughter is exposed to lifelong harm as a consequence of the brutal fallout of her father's online offending (and this harm is not of a sexual nature).

'My mum doesn't know this, I've never told her, but I was awake when they came. I didn't know who it was, of course, but my brother came into my room, it was still dark, and he said there were a lot of people downstairs, talking. For some reason we both knew we couldn't go down there.'

'We had a year where, I can hardly remember this, but my brother can, my dad used to come round and visit us, erm, have contact with us, whilst mum was there.'

'My brother took it in the way that boys do. He battered others, or tried to, whilst I battered myself, kind of. Kids at school took to calling him 'paedo', or 'son of paedo.'' (The Daughter).

Certainly, children of offenders endure several traumatic experiences; a sudden and dramatic change to the normality of their lives following the Knock, fleeing their home and leaving friends behind, the loss of family members who turned away, having to change their names to keep safe, fear of vigilantes and the fallout of their father being in the media, social, emotional and psychological disturbance, parental separation, a traumatised mother, parental imprisonment, the presence of several social workers in their lives, in a system designed to scrutinise rather than support... the list goes on..

The effects don't stop, in fact. Everyone involved is impacted somehow, and the fallout of online offending affects the wellbeing of the professionals dealing with these cases too.

'The more men I met, the more men I arrested, the more they seemed like men I knew, and I began to feel sorry for them, but the more images I had to grade, the more I hated them, and the more I had in my head that I couldn't shift.' (The Detective).

'I could see all these broken men who were just like men I knew, and I could hear Adamson's wife screaming, and the kids in the films screaming, and the faces of his kids in the expensive frames on the piano, and I downed a bottle of vodka, near enough.' (The Detective).

It is clear that there are no winners in this game. Everyone touched by this crime is impacted. From the absolute devastation to the primary victims, to the carnage and destruction on all others. This crime tears lives apart, divides families, and turns communities upside down.

'You know what they say about heartbreak? [...] I felt mine go. I really did. It's like an, ahmm, death, like a death, but you're still here aren't you?' (Diana, the Wife).

Crossing the Line is available from Aspect Design