“I remember there were four photographs and they were quite clearly [my son]. You look at an image for a few seconds and you think, ‘That’s him,’ and then immediately, ‘Christ Almighty.’ Because it’s not what you expect to see. It takes time to assimilate what you’re looking at. You’re saying, ‘Where is that? What’s that in the picture? That’s not a finger, or a child’s arm…’”
A father identifying his child in photographs taken from a Paedophile Network
I was reading the most awful piece in the Times Magazine from a few weeks ago.
Imagine what it must be like to have a policeman knock on the door, sit you down and tell you that one of your closest friends is a paedophile. A man who has attended barbecues and become a trusted confidante.
Now think about the consequences of learning that, whilst babysitting for you, that same man has been photographing and videoing himself and his friends abusing your own child.
That’s what happened to a family in Scotland at the hands of their ‘friend’, James Rennie, a man they had known for some years before they had their baby. Who they trusted implicitly. They never thought twice when he offered to babysit. He was an upstanding member of the community, involved in lots of youth projects with invitations to Royal Garden Parties and Downing Street.
It transpired that he had been interfering with their son from the time that he was about three months old, probably the first occasion that he was allowed to babysit. The assaults continued relentlessly until he was just past his fourth birthday. That was when one of the abuser’s accomplices in an entire ring of paedophilia inadvertently sent his computer in for repair without removing the drive containing all his ‘images’ and contacts.
Those poor parents had to see pictures and footage of things being done to their little boy in their own home. As the mother said, somehow that made it worse. To recognise clothing and furniture and rooms whilst this graphic horror was unfolding before their eyes, whilst awaiting the results of an HIV test on one so small.
And then to suddenly understand rather odd traits that had been emerging in their child – like his frequent masturbation from the age of 18 months.
It is unconscionable and unimaginable.
How can a child and his family recover from something like that?
As his mother said:
“My focus is about my son, about how to support him and loving him for who he is. And who he is now has been shaped and moulded by what’s gone on.
“We’re learning to live with it. That’s the best phrase. We are seeking a degree of normality.”
I think public castration would be too kind.