So I’m Friends With a Person Convicted Of A Sexual Offence? So Judge Me!
- empowerinnocent
- 4 hours ago
- 14 min read
Sexual offenders should be hanged, so say the many pitch-forkers that spend their time on Social Media, and ‘Rape!’ is often their go-to comment.
Isn’t prison meant for the worst of criminals, and a criminal record meant for those who do actual and lasting harm? Can we no longer differentiate between serious sexual crime and the kind of interaction in overcrowded metropolitan areas that make some people a bit uncomfortable?
Can we really ‘police’ as opposed to just ‘deal with’ every social interaction that even the most anxious member of the public deems unwanted? Do women really want ‘regret sex’ to be considered rape, so their change of mind becomes someone else’s crime? Really? It could be said that sight has been lost of what ‘unhealthy sexual behaviour’ actually is when people cannot cope with being looked at or if every touch becomes ‘sexual’ or if ‘hurt feelings’ are now crimes. Busy public transport means getting jostled. It’s unavoidable. Deal with it!! (Are modern women really that fragile?)
Sexual offenders have now become men who merely look at a woman in a way she says she does not like. Consider the following articles:
Those articles are 4 and 7 years old, respectively, but things are arguably getting steadily worse. Let’s go even further back in time though.
About 40 years ago I was a SAHM, but still with some time on my hands. To fill that gap I did some voluntary work, working with the probation service as a prison visiting volunteer. This entailed visiting men convicted of serious crimes confined to HMP Wakefield who had no friends or relatives willing or able to visit them. This wasn’t the kind of visitor who met prisoners in their cells. I attended the visiting room for scheduled visits in the same way as any other friend or family member. Unsurprisingly, I was asked to visit men convicted of THE most serious crimes, rejected by everyone who knew them. One man’s family lived only a few streets away from the jail.
Most notable - even memorable - among them were Geoff, convicted of murdering his 4-month-old daughter, when she drowned in her bath, and Dave, convicted of raping an elderly woman in her own home (all names have been changes for anonymity). Geoff was serving a life sentence and I cannot remember the length of Dave’s sentence, only that he was still some way away from a parole application and had never had a visitor from the time he was arrested and remanded.
Monsters both of them many would say. Of course, this was in the days before computers or social media, but I can just imagine the posts on any of the social platforms today.
I was initially told very little about the men I was asked to visit, the idea being that they would tell volunteers what they wanted us to know, anything or nothing, as the focus was primarily social visiting, but we had the option to talk to their probation officer at any time, and after a few visits could ask anything we wanted to about their circumstances and crimes for verification or interest or for whatever reason we wanted. We could also opt out of the visits at any time for any reason; there was no contractual commitment. We weren’t required to report back and different volunteers approached the task differently. I, for my part, wanted to know if I was being ‘strung a line’ so after a few months of visiting a new person, (the visits were monthly), I arranged to have a chat with each man’s probation officer. They were always surprised to find that almost every man I visited was painfully honest about what had brought him to his current place in the world. I understand though, that that wasn’t the case for every man. Dave for instance was so concerned that I shouldn’t be visiting him with any misapprehensions or misgivings that he almost fell over himself to tell me what he had done and why, so far as he had been able to work out, he had done what he had done. Both men had been in HMP Wakefield for well over a decade with no visitors for most if not all of that time, so they were hungry for social small talk and a deeper connection by turns.
I don’t know what I really expected when starting those visits. I was in my early 30’s, probably a bit naïve and idealistic, and I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. As a group in the training we were warned about being manipulated, that the men might try to take advantage of us and ask for money, (which we should not give them), might get inappropriately attached to we women, (there were some male volunteers but not many); a bleak ‘worst case scenario’ was painted. My visits to Geoff lasted about 9 months and ended when he was transferred to another prison as part of his journey towards parole. As ever, the move was sudden and we had no chance to say goodbye in person, and he was moved too far away for visits to continue. His literary skills weren’t great and his letters soon petered out.
My visits to Dave lasted somewhat longer and ended for similar reasons, but in the meantime, he told me much about his efforts to understand himself and his behaviour. He talked a lot about why he ‘chose’ that particular woman and of his remorse at the harm he had caused her, but it became clear that his behaviour was deeply rooted in his own life experience, which he described to me, not as an excuse but an explanation. He had been brought up by his grandmother with an absent mother and a father who worked away. Apparently, Dad earned well, and supported his son, so he wanted for little, but his grandmother deeply resented looking after his and abused him, psychologically if not physically. Unable to tell his Dad what was going on the anger just built and built until it spilled out as a young man. He’d never had a ‘proper’ girlfriend and discovered, after his crime and arrest, that his father had received the same treatment at his mother’s hands. That said, he was appalled by and unable to accept his son’s behaviour and had also withdrawn contact from him, leaving him with no-one. I say all this not to excuse him, but to show him as a complete human being.
It was here I learned the truth of ‘we are all more than our worst mistake.’
Dave was about the age of one of my own brothers, fresh-faced and looking younger than his years and he should have had his whole life before him, full of hope and promise. He’d had plans and dreams, all now put to one side. He’d been taking professional exams but was jailed before fully qualifying. The profession would be closed to him as someone with a criminal record anyway, so he’d been able to do a few practical courses over time and he looked forward to release at some point. He’d learned to paint and read voraciously, so if nothing else, we talked about his latest reading.
The fact was, we talked and laughed and joked and the terrible crime for which he was in prison was not at the front of my mind all the time. As aforesaid, he was a complete human being, and interesting person, desperately looking for ways to put right what he had done wrong. I realised that in any other life, he and I could have been friends and I was sorry when our visits came to an end.
A little aside here and I am reminded of something that occurred a few years later when my eldest son came home from school with one of the school ‘bad boys’. He was of an age when he needed some leeway in making his own friends so I bit my tongue and watched nervously. Paul was polite to me, though I knew his reputation, and I did hear my son tell him early on, in a whisper that I don’t think I was meant to hear, ‘Don’t you DARE swear in front of my Mum!’ A couple of times they went off together and my son came home alone earlier than planned so eventually, I could contain myself no longer and I asked if this friendship with Paul was wise. My son looked at me with shock in his eyes and sadness in his voice. ‘Oh, Mum!, he said, ‘I’m not going to do anything I’m not supposed to do. It won’t be for long I think, but Paul just really needs a friend right now.’
I immediately thought of Geoff, Dave and the others and realised that I’d taught the lesson but not learned it myself.
Fast forward a few more years and another of my children introduced me to one of their friends, a man whom I will call Gavin. Gavin was pleasant and personable and as they were work colleagues, I sometimes visited to find the he was also visiting and they were poring over some knotty work issue. On several of those occasions we shared a meal and basically had a pleasant couple of hours, chatting and putting the world to rights.
Then came a time I hadn’t seen him for a while so I asked if he had left work or moved or something and I got the whole sorry tale. Apparently, he had been married, had a couple of children and finally divorced a few years before I met him. All had been well and he had seen the children regularly, until his ex-wife found a new partner, they moved in together and wanted to move house. There was a 10-year-or-so age gap between him and his wife and she had been barely 18 when they married, so suddenly, and out of the blue, there were accusations of grooming, historic domestic violence, sexual assault and rape, none of which had featured in their divorce of course, and criminal charges followed. He had disappeared because he had been pressured by his lawyer to plead guilty to the lesser charges to get the serious ones dropped. Told to expect a suspended sentence, he was currently in jail and expected to be there for the next 18 months. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him since and I say unfortunately because his conviction did not turn him into a different and unacceptable person. Geoff and Dave acknowledged their mistakes and Gavin believes that a mistake was made against him. Is it justified to condemn a person for ‘mistakes’ only when it’s convenient, or to invent them for manipulative ends? Does Gavin suddenly become a different person, a socially unacceptable person when and only when it suits his ex-wife’s purpose? Is his ex-wife the only person who deserves to be believed? Was he one person before the accusation passed her lips and another after? Of course not! I think of him on occasion, wish him well and am sad for the fact that his children are missing a father for actions that either did not exist or were not considered important enough to complain about at the time they happened or the time of their parents’ divorce. Their presentation at a convenient time is suspect at best.
Moving on to the friend I have written of before – Ben
Ben continues to move through his probation, finding hurdles at every turn as if it is the life’s purpose of a probation officer to trip him up and find reasons for his recall. Terrified of returning to prison, and maintaining his innocence, I am counting the days on his behalf until the shackles are finally gone and he can speak openly and honestly about his case. Is he less worthy of friendship because he is maintaining innocence? Or convicted? Or more worthy because a third party, not the woman concerned in the case made a report to the police? What will happen if his appeal succeeds and his conviction is overturned? Does he then suddenly cease to be a social pariah?
Is that what happened for Andrew Malkinson and Brian Buckle?
And what of my friend, Dave – yes, I do consider that he became my friend, and there were others I visited I chose to not consider friends - from all those years ago, who was convicted and was remorseful for his crime?
Isn’t prison supposed to produce ‘Leslie Granthams’? So far as I’m concerned it’s supposed to take in people who have done bad things, give them time to reflect, perhaps gain skills that they lack so that they can life a useful and productive life in society, and churn them out again to do so. It’s not meant to hole people up for the rest of their natural days, inside prison and out, heaping fire, brimstone and castigation on their heads for evermore. That can lead to depression and suicide, and effective social execution. It’s not diminishing the harm visited on genuine victims to want their attacker to go on to live better lives, harming no-one else and contributing to society. Many don’t know that Leslie Grantham, the East Enders actor, served 10 years on a murder conviction, and lived the rest of his life on a life licence. That’s how a life sentence is supposed to work. Shouldn’t Dave have been able to leave prison and life a productive life too? Shouldn’t we all want that for everyone, ideally, rather than the expense of keeping people in jail for ever? Look what it does to IPP prisoners and what the UN has to say about it? Whole life sentences are arguably appropriate only for those deemed mad, bad and extremely dangerous, such as Peter Sutcliffe and Robert Maudsley.
I’m not forgetting for a moment people like Jon Venables, or ignoring the excellent article by David James Smith of 2011, further updated on 11th Jun 2026.
Note the multiple failings of those who were supposed to care for and rehabilitate Jon and the fact that Robert Thompson, his partner in crime, reportedly lives quietly and without further incident. There are people for whom something is ‘broken’ who don’t seem able to be rehabilitated and behave well in normal society, but lets not forget the part that those who walk through life with one foot either side of the criminal divide play in that. It’s not as clear as the ‘hang ‘em high’ and pitchfork-brandishing brigade would have us all believe.
But back to the sorry issue of sexual crime, the crime that seems to get everyone’s knickers in a twist with nothing short of hysteria and panic, turning every unwanted glance and touch into a crime.
What kind of society have we created with that slippery slope?
A society that has exculpatory evidence so removed from trials that the Supreme Court has deemed them ‘possibly unfair’ in Scotland, (England and Wales are no different), and the appeals courts in the UK is bracing themselves for an influx of applications.
A society that has got Parliament so paralysed at the thought of the Supreme Court ruling that not a single politician has had a single word to say about it.
A society that has got its men ‘going their own way’ and women complaining that men don’t pay them attention any more (until it’s a man they don’t like).
A society that, if Social Media is a guide, has everyone hysterical at the thought that all men are sexual predators, and if not all, they all need to be treated as such ‘just in case’.
1 in 4 women experience domestic violence!
So scream the headlines, completely ignoring the fact that the converse of that is that 3 in 1 women don’t, so, on the oft misapplied but much loved by the courts ‘balance of probability’ test, women are 3 times MORE likely to be safe in their relationships than not and in any event, most domestic violence is reciprocal and much is initiated by women.
196,000+ reports of sexual crime in 2025!
Ignoring the facts that for reasons best known to themselves, the government has included men in the figures of VAWG, that reports are not necessarily actual crimes, prosecutions and convictions are increasing overall, despite rather too many acquittals in minutes, indicating a very weak if non-existent case, unfair trails increases the likelihood of wrongful convictions and much as feminists would like everyone to believe that every unprosecuted report is a man ‘getting away with it’, ‘NFA’s often mean less ‘not enough evidence’ and more ‘we know it didn’t happen.
So where does this leave our young men and women and their social and sexual development? Courting rituals are now defunct, with dating gifts potentially deemed a red flag and ‘love-bombing’ and a first kiss almost requiring a contract. Those leaving prison report that young men wear an accusation or a conviction for a sexual offence like a badge and girls on social media claiming ‘their rapist’ like a rite of passage and ‘getting my rapist convicted’ a bucket list item.
It used to be that men who were ‘womanisers’ were recognised at 100 yards and the female grapevine dealt with them accordingly. Men who thought they were ‘God’s gift to women’ were put in their place unless you were ‘that kind of woman’ and women who got themselves ‘a reputation’ simply had to live with it and take responsibility for it. It wasn’t always ‘someone else’s fault.
Of course, life wasn’t perfect, isn’t now and it never will be, but it’s disingenuous to pretend that it’s getting steadily worse or to compare life for women in the western world to elsewhere on the planet and to pretend that we are universally oppressed and at a disadvantage. We are not.
Women unfortunate enough to be sexually harmed, by their husband or otherwise, no longer need to suffer in silence, but false and spurious allegations are clogging up the courts, men wrongly convicted find their lives and families in shreds and no-one is getting justice properly.
40 years ago, I was friends with a convicted sex offender, and I have come full circle. A friend I will call Logan is currently in jail and maintaining his innocence. Falsely accused by teenagers, unable to put forward all his evidence, he has lost his wife, children, friends, home, career and mental health to a system that insists that it never gets anything wrong and some family members who believe that lie. People who have known him all his life ask ‘how could he be like that?’ instead of trusting their own knowledge and experiences, (and the not allowed so unheard evidence), and asking ‘how could the system do this to him?’
Contrary to stated government policy he has been punished for maintaining his innocence and has been refused a move to a lower category prison on that basis. An intelligent man with a deeply felt sense of right and wrong, he finds himself in bother for asking the prison authorities to do what it’s supposed to do according to rules and regulations, and expects to serve every moment of his sentence that he can be forced to serve because of that. A model prisoner, his is the wrong sort of modelling, just as he is the wrong sort of victim – a victim of a false accusation.
He is like many, many others – languishing in prison for years, struggling to put together an appeal with ever-decreasing hope of having it heard or allowed. Many cannot even begin that process.
So, like Dave who was guilty, Ben and Logan whom I believe are not, I will continue to see people convicted of sexual offences as just and only that – people convicted, but still whole and complete human beings with likes, loves, emotions and talents.
They, like everyone else, are more than their worst mistake and sexual mistakes are part of life. Some are worse than others, some need to be punished, but we are, as fully functioning human beings, all guilty of them. The man who brushed past me on the train isn’t guilty of a sexual offence just because I say he is, the couple who have drunken sex are equally responsible and those who shout ‘rape apologist!’ contribute to the hysteria as much as anyone who claims that every woman is at risk of harm from every man she meets. Every genuinely guilty man deserves to be punished, but any one wrongly convicted does not and every man deserves a fair trial. Every man deserves for his punishment to come to an end and for him to return to society with a fresh start, because there is no proof that the myth that ‘once a rapist/sexual offender, always a rapist/sexual offender’ is true. If it were, the recidivism rate would be 100%, and there would be no possibility that volatile separating couples could ever go on to have peaceful relationships with other people, as many do.
No-one I have ever met condones or excuses rape or sexual assault, unless it seems when it’s a woman ‘having sex with’ a schoolboy or a female prison officer a relationship with a prisoner. Then it becomes ‘he wanted it’ or ‘she was groomed’ as if she has no agency of her own and this is represented throughout the media as well. It’s difficult to deny that sexual crimes perpetrated against men and boys are trivialised, and women claiming victimhood have the loudest voices.
The recidivism rate for sexual offenders ranges from 5-24% over time, rather lower than the rate for general crimes. Given that it is frequently claimed that sexual offenders and rapists ‘never stop’ and are always repeat offenders, this lends credence to the idea that many convicted sex offenders don’t ‘reoffend’ because they never offended in the first place.
With that in mind I’ll take my chances with Dave, Gavin, Ben, Logan and any other person convicted of a sexual offence, and believe those who express remorse or maintain their innocence. They are as entitled to be believed as any woman who tells me otherwise.
As we do with everyone else, we should judge the quality of our friendships on the basis of the complete human being, not just the worst mistake ever made.
By Felicity Stryjak
Director, Falsely Accused Database
Comments