I went into my 16 yo sons room last night and found something REALLY bad…I was searching for the phone. He was out and about with his friends and in the midst of the search I uncovered 4 pieces of paper. Flipped them over and they were black and white photos printed from a computer with child porn. Disgusting stuff. Photos of a girl about 8 or 9 and a boy about 12 . I confronted him when he came home and he was OF COURSE terrified. He swore that a friend gave them to him as a joke. I told him there was nothing funny about it. He told me he agreed that it was wrong and said he was disgusted with it as well but said the boy had given these to him in class and he couldn’t say anything to him about it without making a big deal and calling attention to it. I think he’s lying. I asked the boys name and he game me a name after much prodding. It was a name I hadn’t heard before…again I suspect a lie. I made him get out his year book. Guess what? there is no kid in the year book with that name, what a surprise.
So what do I do? Should I punish him and if so how? Go to the principal? the Police? I have to wonder where he got the photos. We don’t even have a computer at home. I can’t imagine he got them at SCHOOL!
I’m a single parent and what’s worse, I don’t want my ex to find out because I have two younger daughters and I am afraid this is something he would wig out about and I have a feeling he would try something weird like trying to take the girls away to live with him.
Well, crap.
I’m sorry… you must really be freaking out, I know that I would be.
Maybe, explain the penalties for posessing it, and the hurt that comes with the production of it.
And if he has a computer in his room, I’d be taking it out of there and putting it in the living room or kitchen pronto.
That’s just it, he doesn’t have a computer. And yeah I kind of am freaking out…there is so much to consider. He really did seem scared. I mean, do I trust him with my young daughters? (They are aged 7 and 9) Do I report him? Is this a “teen phase” kind of thing that I shouldn’t freak out too much about or a serious warning sign that I shouldn’t sweep under th rug? And how am I supposed to know? And in the mean time, I now am in possesion of this sick shit…really it makes me feel sick.
I’d say this would be a fairly obviously-solved problem if it wasn’t for the politics of your separation.
How old is your kid? If he’s between around twelve himself it’s not quite so disgusting as if he’s sixteen or seventeen, but that still doesn’t make things right.
There are organizations set up to crush kiddie porn. Give them an anonymous call and say someone at your kid’s school might be distributing kiddie porn. (Maybe even go as far as to call from a payphone. I’ve only made one anonymous call to the cops and because of the severity of what I was reporting, they made sure it wasn’t anonymous for long.)
As for your kid… I dunno, I’d be a terrible parent. Beat him and lock him in the closet. Kidding, of course, but all I can think of is try to scare him, ie. police are cracking down on this stuff, they’ve already caught someone in the area, you just have to download a few and they’ll start closing in, internet companies are working with them, mommy could go to jail or face huge fines, blah blah blah…
I don’t know if morality and child abuse will mean much to him.
Never mind, just reread your post and found his age.
Don’t let this go. You know him better than us… do you have anything telling you your daughters are in danger? Screw your maternal instincts to him, think critically for a moment.
If you think that your daughters are in any danger at all… maybe you should report him to the police. He would get the help that he needs there, I think.
I have read that sometime people are drawn to such things because they were abused at a young age, sexualizing it. Perhaps you should have a talk with him and see if that has happened to him.
This is the very first thing I have ever seen of this nature. I have found things in his room before like once I found a Playboy Lingerie issue…to me that is kind of “normal” for a then 15 year old to want to look at adult women dressed in lingerie but this is totally different. Never anything that I would consider of the beaten path and never anything that would indicate pedophilia or incest.
So these are what my instincts tell me. 1) I don’t think the name he gave me was correct, I think he lied. 2) he either downloaded the porn himself or he lied to cover up for a kid whose name I do know. If it came from someone I know then he is worried and rightly so that i will talk to the parents or talk to the kid myself.
If he downloaded it himself I want to know where it came from and I want his access to that blocked.
I have a greater worry that he may have recived it from an adult and that the person may be a pedophile and that kicks in my own maternal instincts.
I don’t know how to get the truth out of him and yes, my marital situation definitely botches the whole thing up because if my ex wasn’t such a backwards idiot I could be honest with him and we could work together instead of me feeling like I have to shoulder this whole thing alone and in the closet at that. {DRAT!}
Okay - deep breath. I like thatAnal Scury suggestion about the anonymous phone call though. I might look into that…also, my son sees a child psychiatrist about dealign with issues realting to our divorce. I am definitely mentioning this to him…Holy cow…today I think I’d like to just trade him in on a newer lower maintenance model.
There could be a “he he - look at this” thing going on between he and his friends, not sexual at all.
The made up friend could be a cover for a real friend. I would have never ratted out any of my friends at that age, especially knowing what kind of trouble child porn can get you in.
Of course take this seriously and err on the side of caution but it may not be the worst thing in the world.
I’m just making a wild guess here but i’d wager that this is probabley one of those things that one kid has got hold of and has been passed through many a childs hands as something ‘gross’ to look at but without any real thought behind the images. I’m hoping for your sake that this is the case, it sounds like it to me anyway. Obviousley something needs to be done but unfortunatley I have no idea how you should approach this as this could become a very serious matter.
Well that is kind of the way he explained it. That the kid who gave it to him thought it was a “he he - look at this” kind of thing. Said the kid was a sophomore - mine is a junior…of COURSE my kid said he didn’t think it was funny at ALL…and was indignant that i would even consider that he would think the pictures were his…I just don’t really know what to think. I did call the psuychiatrist and left a message - of course you can’t talk to real people - just voice mail!!
When I leave for lunch i am going to call the school counselor from a pay phone although I dread THAT call…ugh.
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. Look, 16 is not that far removed from the so called age of 8 that you listed as the age for the children in the photos. Today, I can’t tell if they are 11 or 17 or 8 anymore. As for being afraid of your daughters, are you crazy? Why the connection? A kid at 16 will obviously be attracted to kids around his own age, but why do you jump into the incestuous lines of thought? Many kids have siblings of the opposite sex and never interact with them in a sexual way. You are simply panicking and being too reactionary.
Lay off the Oprah for a while
Explain to him that pornography of underage persons is a huge ass legal deal that can ruin his life far faster than any drug will. Tell him that it will not be tolerated, and that he should do what kids back in the day did, and steal a few playboys from dad. Sending him to counseling will fuck him in the head, and leave a social scar on him that will follow him throughout his life.
My gut tells me it’s 2, it could be someone he’s good buddies with, and he knows or thinks he knows that if you find out, that you’ll “ruin” their friendship by going to his buddies’ parents.
It could just have been a sick joke. Boys that age can be really gross and not understand the consequences of their actions. It doesn’t mean that they are “into” kiddie porn.
Best wishes, I know this has got to be so tough. Having raised one child through the teen years, and with my son having just turned 13 and about to embark upon that “wonderful” time. I really feel for you.
Keep the lines of communication open, definitely don’t give up til you get to the bottom of it.
I think you may be overreacting. Can’t say I blame you… but reading the OP, it just seem like he got ahold of some gross papers being passed around. Were the pictures hidden away? Like under the matress or somewhere a person would hide porn? Or were they just in his bag or in a pile with the rest of his school papers? If he wasn’t actively hiding them, then I’d be inclined to think they’re just something “funny” he got from school.
If they were polaroids, then Id be worried. At this point, I think calling the shrink and throwing the pictures away should be enough. Let the doctor talk to him about it and he’ll figure out if there is a more serious issue going on. But I think the more serious issue is not being able to trust your child or believe what he tells you. Does he lie often?
Lie often…not HUGE lies…typical stuff. I turned in my homework (when he didn’t) covering his ass to stay out of trouble? OH YEAH!!! He’d lie like a BIG DOG!
If she had found just a lingere catalog or playboy or even hustler or penthouse in his room I could understand this response… but what she found was child porn so I can understand the though crossing her mind.
I’m not saying this kind of thing is happening in her house but it does happen sometimes. I wish my own mother had been paying more attention to the pornographic materials in our home as it might have saved me from a lot of abuse from my father, one of my brothers and a neighbor boy. I didn’t realize that every little girl didn’t have to do the things I did until I was 11 and even then I didn’t have anyone who was willing to help me escape.
I think contacting the school anoymously is a good idea and since he is already seeing a counselor then that is a great resource for you. The hard part is balancing making sure he knows how you feel on this and finding the source without alienating him. Good luck. This is when I wish kids came with manuals.
Remember that what you have found is a warning sign, and not actual unarguable proof that your son is a pedophile or child-porn-junkie. Your reaction should be appropriately strong, but not an overreaction.
When I was in high school, a friend gave me a phone number for a BBS (remember those?) and told me to download a specific file. It turned out to be beastiality porn (puke smilie here). Neither I nor my friend were into beastiality in any way – it was more of a Ha Ha! shock value kind of thing (I didn’t get the ha ha, but I guess he did). Then, after I bitched him out for pointing me to it in front of a few other friends, those other friends went and looked at it too. They weren’t into beastiality either – they just had to see it to believe it. I’d bet that a lot of sexually normal teens would do the same thing, just to verify that yes, the world really does sink that low sometimes.
I think in your shoes the first thing I would do is ask my son as much as possible about where the other kid got it from, why he gave it to my son, etc. Then I would tell my son I was going to call the school principal to set up an appointment with the principal, myself, my son, and the child who gave the porn to my son. If my son was lying about the source of the porn, that would probably help reveal it, and if not, then it would be an appropriate step to take. I’d ask my son whether he’d be more appropriately labeled as “the informant” or “the accomplice” in such a meeting, and represent him to the principal as such. The purpose of the meeting would be to ascertain the source of the porn and the reasons behind having it – not to start a witch hunt that would destroy my son’s reputation.
Finally, the punishment would be pretty severe. Even if the final verdict was that another child gave my child the porn as a “Ha ha!” thing, and my son was as disgusted by it as any normal person, I would still opt for strong punishment, even if that seems a bit unfair. The child must a learn a lesson that child porn is a guilty by association kind of deal, and that the only proper response to a situation like that is to vehemently refuse such materials and to contact authorities ASAP. What constitutes “severe punishment” varies from family to family, of course.
Assuming that pornography automatically leads to molestation is just plain wrong. If it did, then considering the amount sold in America, most children would be treated as such.
People all too often forget what pubescence was like, and being that this is a mother/son situation, the mother only has shades of ideas of what it is like to be a teenaged boy. Pornography is pretty much the standard sexual education and stimulation at 16. Being the case, this kid most likely does not even know that kiddie porn is wrong, or that what he had was even considered kiddie porn. As I stated before, at his age, he is attracted to kids around his age.
Education, and not punishment or hysterical reactions what he needs now. After all, his sexual education class, if he even had one, will not go through the legal and social implications of the pornography that he had. Hell, they probably wont even mention pornography to him. This is where the parents involved need to step up to the plate and discuss what is considered normal sexual activity at his age, and also the legal aspects of his porn lookings.
I know not all pornography leads to abuse and didn’t mean to suggest it did. I just wanted to point out that sometimes it is an indication of something else happening than just adolescent curiosity - especially if the source of these pictures was an adult.
So many parents tend to live in a ‘not my child’ bubble and won’t consider any of the negatives that I wanted to say that I did understand why she had these concerns.
Sex-Ed in the schools is such a joke … they teach you what the plumbing is but nothing else.
