Still making excuses for him

Still making excuses for him

Jenny Cuffe
BBC Radio 4's Seven Days

Users fail to realise the abuse behind the images

Ann's husband was arrested and convicted for having thousands of pornographic pictures of children. With unprecedented access to the elite Manchester police team investigating such cases, reporter Jenny Cuffe heard Ann's story first hand.

Ann's husband was obsessive about collecting.

When he made model airplanes, he had to make every type of Spitfire there was. When he found an author he enjoyed, he had to buy every book the author had ever written. He even colour-coded his shirt-hangers - red for casual, blue for smart, green for formal.

What she has only recently discovered is that he was also collecting pornographic images of children.

While she and their two young children were in bed, he was sitting at his computer downloading abusive images from the internet.

The discovery of her husband's shameful secret came early one December morning when police in riot gear arrived on the doorstep of their modest semi in Cheshire.

My overwhelming desire was to talk to him, ask him what he'd done, why he'd done it

Ann

The female officer in charge looked surprised to be invited in for a cup of tea but Ann (not her real name) saw no reason not to be hospitable.

"It was nothing like what you see on the television," she says. "They were very kind, very polite. They were very conscious there were children in the house and let me take them to nursery before they started to search the house - even in the bathroom."

When they told her why they were arresting her husband, her first thought was that someone had wrongly accused him, perhaps one of his clients at work. It was only when police brought a folder down from the attic and she heard him say: "I think you'll find that's what you're looking for" that the foundation of her world shifted.

Because there were children in the house, Ann was told her husband would not be allowed home when police released him next day on bail. To the surprise of her friends and family, she sent the children to her best friend for two days and fetched him from the police station.

"My overwhelming desire was to talk to him, ask him what he'd done, why he'd done it, and I would have moved heaven and earth for a short time together."

Disturbed

Over the next 48 hours she saw a side of him she'd never guessed at in the 14 years of their marriage. With almost a sense of relief, she realised that the strains in their relationships were not her fault, as she'd supposed, but the result of his disturbed state of mind.

"At first he tried to tell me he just looked at older girls. He found an image on the internet one night and the fact that he'd had to track it down, the thrill of the chase, made him look for more. Then he got hooked and started having to do it all the time and he started collecting them."

He told her he did not see them as children but as "older teens," who were sexually mature, with breasts and pubic hair.

Excuses

It was only later, she says, when he had had counselling that he began to see them as real people who were possibly frightened and had probably been abused.

But even now, when her husband is in jail and she's suing for divorce, Ann finds herself making excuses for him.

In court, there was evidence that among the pictures he'd downloaded were some that showed pre-pubescent children involved in acts of sado-masochism and bestiality and others of adults having sex with young children.

What did he tell her about those?

"He did try to say that once he was downloading some images and there were a series and as soon as he realised what they were he stopped but a couple were downloaded. He did say sometimes he'd get images in between the ones he wanted and, rather than spend time picking them out he'd download the whole lot and put them to one side."

But did she believe him? She simply says there was no reason for him to lie to her and, as time went on, he began to open up and she got the impression he wanted to tell her everything he had done.

Paedophile is a word that's thrown about a lot and evokes a lot of emotion but he never hurt anybody

Ann

Perhaps surprisingly, Ann has never once feared for her children. Although she realises their father will never be allowed unsupervised access, she says she does not feel uncomfortable when he is with them.

She admits to being disgusted and disturbed by what he has done but she does not regard him as a paedophile.

"I find it hard to look at him and think of a person who's looked at images even. Paedophile is a word that's thrown about a lot and evokes a lot of emotion but he never hurt anybody.

It's just that he's on the edges of it and, once you touch it, you're dragged into the middle in everyone's mind."

Seven Days is broadcast on Monday 17 March at 2000 GMT on BBC Radio 4.