Your friend tells you they're a paedophile

[Chad32]

Well it's established that this is my friend. So I should know them enough to know whether or not they're yanking my chain when they said they never touched a child inappropriately. Of course if it was a friend, and I spent a lot of time with them, including with children, I'd probably already have some idea that they liked kids a little too much.

The important thing is the present and future. Which is why I'd maintain contact with them, and make sure they got treatment and whatever else they need. I don't make friends, or throw them away, easily. Now if something comes out that proves s/he did do something wrong, that's for the cops and judicial system to work out.

See there it is you believe them because you trust them and THINK you know them. Are you telling me that my mom didn't know the man she was married to for over 15 years? Didn't see how he treated me exactly like he did my sisters? How being married to him she trusted him with her life, her children's lives, and loved him? How she had known him for over 20 years, slept next to him every night, talked about everything under the sun with him, saw that he was a substitute teacher and how all the kids loved him. How everyone, including my mother, was blindsided, stunned, unable to accept it for truth that this mason/Shriner, volunteer at charities, Christian, wonderful father/teacher/husband, charismatic man had been sexually abusing his oldest daughter for years.

You can think you know your friend all you want but that doesn't mean you do.

You do have a point. I'm not sure how someone can get away with such a thing, right in front of people who see them every day. I guess this would be a hard situation to be in.