I hate to be blunt…but I think she’d be even more shocked and hurt if the police showed up and had to arrest him because he molested an actual child.
My cousin is a cop, and at one time was part of an operation of people who’d go online undercover to nab child molestors. These people (child molestors, not undercover cops!) are the scum of the earth.
I admire your restraint, Gr8Kat. I probably would have tossed his body to the pigs by now.
I can’t really add anything to the advice, other than to second contacting a lawyer ASAP.
Corn field? This guy’ll wish he had been wished into a cornfield. From what I understand, what he’ll experience in prison will be more akin to “stripped from the waist down, bent over and tied to the grille of a Jeep, which will be driven recklessly at high speeds through a cornfield.”
It’s after 5:00, so I called and left a voice mail at an attorney’s office asking them to call me back in the morning. That’ll be fun to arrive to in the morning, I’m sure.
It’s definitely the right move to call a lawyer.
Also, if the police are not responding to you, I agree, you might want to call the FBI. I also think a call to child protective services might be in order, since he’s living in a house with minors.
That leads me to the issue of your guilty feelings about V. Though I am an atheist, civil libertarian, shacking-up, pro-choice liberal, I’m going to channel Dr. Laura for a minute. V. is evil. You owe her nothing. As Tamara so eloquently put it, she is willing to sacrifice her own children, for what? So she can feel more socially comfortable? So she won’t be alone?
You do owe something to V.'s children. You may not have much power to shield them, but you should do everything that is in your power. It sounds like you are doing that. Therefore, you have no reason to feel guilty.
I used to get indescribably angry when I’d hear about crap like this waste of skin, P. I have no words to express how much more intense that feeling is now that I have a baby daughter. Thanks for doing what you can to keep her and those like her safe.
Hang in there, Kat.
You’ve gotten good advice from the folks here… and you’re doing the right thing.
We’re thinking of you…
Yes, consult an attorney. Always a good idea when you’re vulnerable.
But screw the local yokels. Call the FBI and their ‘innocent images’ program. They’re the specialists. And, if you don’t turn him in, they’ll be the ones coming for you and Joel if things take a bad turn. Just possession of those images is good for enough headaches that you’ll want to do most anything to avoid them.
As the father of a small girl I’d consider it a great favor if you gave them a call.
You shouldn’t use the computer at all while you wait for a response from the authorities (if you want to preserve any evidence that may be on it). If there are cached or deleted files, you run the risk of overwriting them the more you use the computer.
Also, as someone said, a lot or all the data on the floppy is most likely recoverable unless you did something like burn it.
Unfortunately for you, they will likely take your computer to try and recover whatever evidence may be on it, and I believe keep it until the resolution of the case. Effectively, your computer will be gone for a long time so I would plan on getting another one if you don’t already have one (though they might want to take all the computers in your house).
I’m going to break from the crowd and say that I understand your reaction, and I don’t think you’ve honestly put yourself at risk. I’ve been involved in turning people in for this sort of thing, with a whole lot more evidence than a single disk and possible files remaining on the hard drive. Unless the police have a serious reason to act, they’re just not going to care. You can see in the lack of response by the police to your complaint just how unseriously they take it.
Let’s look at it this way:
Seriously, although people can whisper horror stories of sweeping crackdowns and of people being thrown in prison for life for accidentally viewing a single picture online, it rarely, rarely, rarely happens without some serious cause and pattern of illegal behaviour. If that was the case, they’d be filling the prisons with people accidentally clicking on the wrong popup or going to a Danish porn site to view 16-year olds. People also have an inflated opinion of the priorities of the police. How many people have actually been involved in online criminal cases? Or tried to turn someone in for criminal acts, be they child porn or threats? Well, I have, and the police, in general, don’t give a shit. Using an IRL PI, I’ve turned over names, IPs, SSN, even credit reports of two people who clearly and directly threatened my life online. Did the police care about that? Nope. Although I keep doing it, because someday some creep will end up in court and I’ll laugh…
Get a lawyer if it makes you feel better, sure, that’s a good safety net. But IMO it’s not likely to go any further and I just wouldn’t worry unduly if I were you. Just make sure the bad stuff is gone and move on.
Gr8Kat, it’s terrible that you have to go through all of this! I simply cannot imagine this monster’s wife staying with him! Let’s say that I’ve had more exposure to pedophiles than I like to admit, and my mother allowed me to be in that situation; those poor kids are going to have a long road ahead of them if they want any kind of peace in their souls at all 
.
But hang in there. Do contact an attorney, and the Feds. I hope the arrangement with Aesiron works out for you!
So that’s where my administrator is going!
You’ll like Aes. Him’s good pipple. 
Yeah, I have to add to that. He doesn’t know me and I don’t know him, but everything I’ve heard about Aesiron says that he has honour.
I hesitate to call V. evil, just because I know how hard she’s worked to provide for her kids. I know I’m too softhearted, but I prefer the terms misguided and shortsighted. She’s too focused on the here and now (they’re about to be homeless, so she wants to get him into therapy and get him making money so they can get a house) and not thinking enough of the long-term consequences. I can’t hate her, I pity her. I can’t even begin to imagine what stupid things I’d do if I found out something like this about Joel. But at the same time I’m terrified for her boys. This is such a terrible place to be in for all involved.
I just hope the attorney has more answers than the cops have had so far. I’ll do whatever he tells me to do. At this point, I’m just tired of it being in my hands.
I’m looking forward to Aes getting here. I think it’ll be fun. Joel’s a little freaked about me hiring a stranger off the internet, but hiring someone we thought we knew didn’t work out, so what the hell?
Oh, and I’ve still got the floppy right here in a zip-lock baggy. it hasn’t been cut up or burned, just slightly mauled. If they can get data off of it, would they still want to seize Joel’s computer? I hope not.
in re: post #32
Sometimes, I think I know some people online better than I know people irl.
yeah, I could be getting duped, but after a while you tend to pick up on the liars and no-lifers. It would take a pretty good effort from a damned good actor to create some of the personalities I’ve seen here, I’ll tell you whut.
Don’t even bother with the cops. This is FBI territory. The cops aren’t interested because they probably don’t know what to do. Your average cop doesn’t know much about computers, not because they’re tech dumb, but because they’re busy and there is little funding for positions like Little Cop Geek at the station.
And if nobody else has said it yet (I haven’t read all of the replies), CALL CPS IMMEDIATELY!!! I hate CPS. I think they are mostly a pain in the ass, but in this case those kids need OUT. Tell CPS what has happened. Tell 'em you’re calling whatever law enforcement organization you’re going to give the disk to and give them names and phone numbers.
Of course he’s messing with them! The hell with him and V! He’s a monster and V is an evil piece of shit for staying with him and letting him do God knows what to her kids! Do what you gotta do to get those kids taken away from them!
One of my professors is a prosecutor and her job is to put guys like this away. She says that your average pedophile will hurt 200 kids in the course of his “career.” It’s horrible, horrible that this has happenedand has come into your house (if I found shit like that in my house I’d either have my pastor come bless the house or I’d move, I swear), but maybe you can help stop this guy.
Give me ten minutes alone with this piece of shit/scumbag/waste of flesh… he’d never think about another child in a sexual way again!
What kind of mind could ever find that arousing?? I hope he gets locked away for the rest of his life, you were RIGHT to call the authorities, you NEED to keep calling! Do NOT let this go. For the sake of these poor children (the children portrayed on P’s diskette as well as V’s kids), KEEP trying to get him locked up!! I wish instant, horrible, PAINFUL death on every pedophile out there because there is no reason these people should be allowed to take another breath!! They are SICK, EVIL, and WRONG!
You have no reason to feel sneaky or guilty. You are doing these poor kids a serious favor trying to get the cops involved. Please keep trying! Hearing about this kind of situation just makes me physically ill and breaks my heart. Just please keep trying, don’t worry about V and her warped love for this freak. You’re doing her a serious favor and if she can’t see that, then she’s sick, too. She needs help and he needs those ten minutes alone in a room with me. Just ten minutes… that’s all I need. :mad:
About a year ago, a female friend of mine found child porn on her then-boyfriend’s computer. Gr8Kat, I’ve dealt with a lot of the fallout from that, and I’d suggest that you get some counseling about this as well. The fallout from something like this can be deep and far-reaching.
And yeah, call the FBI. Immediately.
I know it sounds harsh, but I’d be inclined NOT to take any apparent contrition and sob stories about circumstances at face value; maybe he IS undergoing counselling, or maybe that’s just a convenient lie to try to hush things down. Contacting the authorities is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do in this situation, for the protection of yourself and everyone else involved.
Dear god. Please report this to the FBI as soon as possible. If he’s a pedophile with easy access to children then the chances are that he has or will molest them.
A quick point on the PC - defragging and reformatting the harddrive doesn’t get rid of all the data so it is possible that evidence could still be recovered off it. However, each time you use the machine you make it harder to recover evidence. The best thing to do would be to leave that machine alone if you can until Law enforcement have had a chance to look at the harddrive. Also, please notify your ISP - if they can store their logs of the sites visited it may enable Law enforcement to track down the sites he’s been visiting even if he has been deleting them from your cache.
And please, don’t feel guilty about this. You aren’t doing anything wrong.
Tirial
Okay, I’ve got a question and I don’t want anyone to think I’m somehow excusing this man or what he did. BUT–the OP explicitly stated that the kiddie porn was of all female children. Why is everyone assuming that he’s abusing his stepsons? V should speak with her boys to be sure of course, but it seems likely that she should just fall to her knees and thank heaven that she didn’t have a daughter this man had access to.
This guy is obviously a pedophile, but we don’t at this point have any evidence that he is a molester. There is a difference. Not to say of course that he shouldn’t be harshly punished for the crime he did commit–possessing/viewing kiddie porn.
So anyway–what’s the straight dope on pedophiles who focus on young girls in their fantasies? Are they likely to molest little boys?