The woman from SS was an utter bitch. There, I’ve said it. She was bloody awful with me and gave me 24 hours to tell my family what OH had done as they were flagging the children as at risk. I was working from home when I took the call. I was hysterical, I told my colleagues something had come up and rang my niece to tell her what had happened and that social services wanted to speak to her. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest, I don’t know how I didn’t have a heart attack. We had kept this big secret for so long and now we were being forced to disclose it.
My niece was understanding at first, she had known OH from being a youngster herself, knew he was prone to daft behaviour and general stupidity. But this had put her children at risk, dragged them into the spotlight with social services. Something she had been exposed to as a child with an errant mother, my brother - unusually for the time – had been a single parent with huge support from our family to keep SS away but she had seen their involvement in the lives of her half siblings. I was devastated to be causing more pain with what I was telling her. SS were lovely with her, treating her as a victim, me as the perpetrator.
The one thing I had been worried about was the family finding out and media exposure. The police told us it was a such a small case we would be very unlucky for it to be reported on. 95% chance it wouldn’t be, we clung to that.
OH went to crown and was sentenced to 2 years, suspended with 10 years on the SOR & a SHPO. He had wanted to plead not guilty but was convinced to go guilty, the evidence for possession was against him. He wasn’t eligible for the horizon programme. I’d written a letter to the judge explaining my heart condition and what pressure this had put us both under. The judge gave him a stern telling off that people like him were part of the problem. A journalist for the regional newspaper was in court.
OH came home and went to the pub for a drink with his mates determined to carry on as normal. I went on the news app for the paper and there it was in all its glory. I didn’t recognise the article as being about OH at first, it was so dramatic and referenced all his previous convictions – criminal damage as a teenager, possession of cannabis and drink driving – all when he was young and stupid and nothing for over 20 years. The judge had said it was irrelevant to bring them up, the journalist thought otherwise. It mentioned what had been found, not the context of the 90k files and that he had access to the dark web, he didn’t know how to access it. It also mentioned his partner with a heart condition and that he used to work for a prestigious company, It gave our street name and village and with his unusual surname it wasn’t going to be hard to identify us.
I rang him and told him to get out of the pub and get home straight away, my niece messaged had I seen it online. It was out there already…
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