My boyfriend is a pedophile

Shattered Mind wrote:You need to get his phone back and search for all .jpg and .png images. You should do the same on his computer.

... i, personally, cannot approve of anyone violating another person's privacy. you did this previously and you're now regretting it. please don't do it again. if you can't let this go, you're going to have to broach the subject with him, and in that case, i strongly suggest that you be very apologetic for what you did and what you've been led to suspect about him.

and, by the way, i refuse to believe that this otherwise lovely person is some sort of closet monster.

shock_the_monkey wrote:... i, personally, cannot approve of anyone violating another person's privacy.

shock_the_monkey, this is only just your opinion, which you have already mentioned twice before in this thread.

While I do appreciate the OP's feelings - and yours - about privacy, in the USA if the device is not password protected it has no more privacy rights than a notebook sitting on a coffee table. Also if you reread my previous post you will see I never suggested circumventing any type of password protection. If its locked and you don't know the password its off limits, otherwise what I said in my previous post applies.
-S

Shattered Mind wrote:

shock_the_monkey wrote:... i, personally, cannot approve of anyone violating another person's privacy.

shock_the_monkey, this is only just your opinion, which you have already mentioned twice before in this thread.

While I do appreciate the OP's feelings - and yours - about privacy, in the USA if the device is not password protected it has no more privacy rights than a notebook sitting on a coffee table. Also if you reread my previous post you will see I never suggested circumventing any type of password protection. If its locked and you don't know the password its off limits, otherwise what I said in my previous post applies.
-S

... Shattered Mind, i'm not going to mix my metaphors here. in my opinion, your post in this thread made this delicate situation worse - much worse. and that's why it got such a firm rebuttal from me. you may be happy with snooping on people. but don't confuse violating someone's privacy with their legal rights. morality and legality are NOT the same thing. in my opinion, you deliberately distorted this situation by suggesting that there might be something illegal here, when the original poster was at some pains to make clear that there wasn't. morally, and again in my opinion, your action implying otherwise was seriously reprehensible.

It is an option, though... I can see both arguments. It's going to be what you're willing to live with.

Would it be a violation of privacy? Sure. But if I were thinking about having this guys kids? Mmmm I don't know. It might provide needed assurance that the dad of my future kids isn't going to be dragged off in the middle of the night.

Mind you, I'm not at all convinced. For me something like POCD is perfectly plausible. But I don't know the guy. And I'm not the one that has to let this go, or pursue it.

Being in a relationship, if I don't want something of mine gone thru, I protect it. I'd prefer my partner not go thru anything, but I don't for a minute think they'd hesitate to do it if they were suspicious of me for something. I expect no privacy, save the privacy I create and maintain.

If you can let it go, great! This conversation never happened.

If it's going to gnaw at you, and you don't want to confront him directly and admit to the phone snooping, then there's Shattered's suggestion- in for a penny, in for a pound. You can only dig the hole deeper, at this point.

her only real option here now is to confess what she did and why she's concerned about it, and hope it doesn't blow up in her face. despite my carefully crafted damage limitation exercise, there's too much dirt flying around here now.

shock_the_monkey wrote:Shattered Mind, i'm not going to mix my metaphors here. in my opinion, your post in this thread made this delicate situation worse - much worse.

Seriously? Because IMO what would make this situation much worse was if a minor child or children were being abused and everybody just looked the other way. And make no mistake the downloading of that type of material IS child abuse. But if the OP is okay with plausible deniability there isn't anything we can do about that. Personally it would keep me up at night.
-S

Shattered Mind wrote:

shock_the_monkey wrote:Shattered Mind, i'm not going to mix my metaphors here. in my opinion, your post in this thread made this delicate situation worse - much worse.

Seriously? Because IMO what would make this situation much worse was if a minor child or children were being abused and everybody just looked the other way. And make no mistake the downloading of that type of material IS child abuse. But if the OP is okay with plausible deniability there isn't anything we can do about that. Personally it would keep me up at night.
-S

... this is all in black and white. where is your evidence? please highlight it. because what you're doing here is engaging in a witch hunt. mention paedophilia and all of a sudden people become oh so self-righteous. just how many people are you willing to crucify to salve your conscience? i count two!

At this point, let's agree to disagree. I think both sides of this debate have valid points, and valid disadvantages. It's a disagreeable business no matter how you slice it. Ultimately, until more opinions come in and maybe something different is tendered, what to do next, will depend on weighing what we are most able to live with.

Shock, we totally get what you're saying, and you're right. False accusations have ruined many a life, and even if he has a paraphilia, that's a long cry from assuming he would ever act on it. We had members in the paraphilia forums that I believe were people of integrity and trustworthy.

Scattered, 'trust and verify' is not an unreasonable position. As shock has pointed out, looking at his phone was quite a privacy invasion. But I think you're being practical in giving that option, since the privacy genie has already been let out of the bottle and it would go a long way in eliminating doubt, to do another quiet check. Far as I'm concerned, no guy should automatically assume a woman isn't going to keep tabs on him... To me, that's just naive.

Let's not get too upset with each other.

So I've taken everyone's advice into account. I have not looked through his phone again as I just have not been comfortable with doing so. The images I saw were, like I said, not inherently illegal... this is for the most recent commenter.... these images were things for example a mom would post to facebook, like a picture of a little girl running around with a shirt and a diaper. And the middle school girls were basically pictures that middle schoolers take at the end of the year to make memories. The thing that concerned me was that these photos were mixed in with him viewing regular pornography, which is how I knew they were being used questionably.

Now, for the person who told me what they would do... I have been trying to do what you would do. Unfortunately, it's extremely hard for me to just completely forget something. But there have been moments since then where I have been with him and I am just as in love with him as I've always been and forget about what I saw. But then, there are times when we are out at a store or somewhere where children are present and I become hyper aware of him. And he never really looks at them in an odd way, and maybe that's because he's paranoid after I brought up the whole erection when the baby was in the room thing. But I never quilted him for it or told him he did something wrong, so I'm not sure if he worries about that. Its almost summer, though, and I go swimming with my cousin and her young daughter a lot and that kind of worries me also. I just don't want to be worried about these things. But after what I saw I hope you all understand why it's hard not to be. Like I said, though, most of the time when I'm around him it's just like how it always is, and I'm just as in love with him as ever. I wish it were like that all the time, I wish I had an explanation. Or a memory eraser. I wish there was an easy answer to all of it.

Yeah there's no knowing what you know so far, completely understand that. I would be the same way. You're in a totally unenviable situation.

So are you still working out what you're going to do?