When i was in elementary school,my dad was active in our parish and he “liked helping out” as he always told people.For several years he did this and finially we found out later on why.At every Easter vigil we would get there early and dad would tell us he had things to do to get set up.What he actually did was go into the furnace room that was next to the bridal dressing room and peer thru a hole in the wall at the preteen and teen girls being dressed in their white baptism outfits for their baptisms during easter vigil! All of the preteen and teen girls wore the traditional white,poofy,short sleeve,knee length baptism dresses with a matching bonnet,lace anklets and white shoes and a white tee shirt with a cloth diaper and plastic pants under their dresses.Dad would watch thru the peep hole as the girls were diapered and put into their dresses! He also did this on First Communion sunday when there were girls being dressed in their communion outfits.He got caught and arrested and is now in prison! Hi, this is Renee! So, your question is a really tough one to answer because the 'detection skills' I've developed are much less empirical and much more intuitive. I don't think I could give you a reliable list of things to look for because it really is just a keen feeling, a sensation I get based on the tiniest little signals I get from someone. For example, when I started dating my partner a decade ago, he had a very good friend who after a couple of meetings I just *knew* was a predator. To this day I've never seen him around children but there's something about the way he carries himself, and that same thing missing in his eyes that was missing in my dad's. I told my partner that it's fine if they remain friends but that guy is never, ever allowed in my home nor near my children. The truth is I think we all have the ability to sense when something is off…my ability is just more finely tuned than most peoples. With a family member or close friend, one thing to look out for is if that person wants to take your kid to do 'fun stuff' on a regular basis. My dad always had toys like snowmobiles that he would invite our male cousins to come over and enjoy. Also, any divisive behaviour…if you feel like your child is being influenced away from you. And following on that, any time you see your child retreating into themselves at all. I know this isn't helpful because this is often noticed after the fact. But I'm just trying to think of any signs that may be helpful to you. Rather than looking for warning signs, you might want to consider just having a super open dialogue with your kids as soon as they're able to understand and let them know that they will never be shamed for telling you the truth if something weird happens. Does this help? Thanks! I'm sure that will be very useful for someone in the US. It sounds like a great organization.

Wow! Thank you for sharing your story! You sound like such a strong person and it sounds like you used it to help you and inform you for parenting and protect your children (also to help inform you in dating). My reaction would have been so different than yours; way to be empowered! Thank you! I completely understand what u r saying. My dad also is a pediphile n he was NEVER busted or arrested even though the police were called a couple times. My dad sodomized me n my younger brother when we were VERY young. I don’t even know how young we were when it started. My mother caught him in the act n she NEVER turned him over. Why?? Why??? Can someone tell me why a mom would not turn over her husband n father of her kids? I’m having so much trouble trying to come to grips w this. My mom is dead. Hi again, I just googled signs of a pedophile and WOW, this article describes my dad with about 85% accuracy http://crime.about.com/od/sex/p/pedophile.htm. Maybe this helps more? My dad always targeted shy boys, always used money, presents, building model planes, etc as a way in. He had a sexless marriage with my mother…really just a cover to make himself look more 'normal'. He has almost no friends and the ones he does have are meek and kind of scared of him. I could go on! I hope this article helps you. It’s not even that he made excuses, he just made it look like he was a benevolent rich man who cared about the well-being of kids who didn’t have as much as our family did. He has a huge God complex and played on that to make it look like he was just being generous and charitable. They are very wealthy and usually pay to get out of the punishment from breaking the law. I am raising her brother, and he won’t even allow her brother to see her but twice a month. The courts seem to be in his favor. He has used every excuse in the book, including a desperate attempt of fabricating a story of myself threatening him. To the courts system, and sadly, without approaching me about it, they believed it.this was so hard for me to read. in fact, I didn't even finish it. my dad was a paedophile but my story is so different to yours. we grew up in a small town – not in the states – and everyone knew our family and everyone loved my dad. he was the classic groomer so no-one ever suspected anything. I was already out of the house when he was finally arrested.

Tbanks for sharing…what you have said will prove helpful to all those who are encountering this issue either as a victim or relative…It shows that you one can move beyond the poor choices their parents have made.I suspect a father with pediphilia intentions with his 18 month old daughter, but how do I prove it? He has isolated her from everyone except himself and his father. brainwashing" the kids to make the allegations. In today's courts, 90% of fathers, who have been accused of molesting their children, are awarded custody. 58,000 children PER YEAR are handed to their identified abuser. I hope that you will speak out on behalf of these victims. Hi my dad’s a convicted pedophile, I forgave him twice but told him if he looked at kids again that will be it between us, guess what!!! He looked AGAIN. He doesn’t care about me, I’m not coping well, I don’t know how

This was a really moving post, and I too have to commend 'Renee' for her bravery. I don't have any personal experiences with abuse, but it's certainly something I think about with a baby boy, and I am so grateful that you shared her story. Wow. This is fascinating and so eye-opening. Way to go for being mature enough about this to share it. I love how you realize that your father's choices don't show anything about the person you are/have the capacity to be. He abused my closest cousin for many years and recently found out he abused many many more, including more cousins and close neighbours. He is a monster. I don’t speak to him anymore and he will never see his grandchildren again. He is exactly how you describe your dad, extremely intelligent, charming, unempathetic, controlling, manipulative…a psychopath. Like your dad, he hasn’t been charged with anything yet; here’s hoping someone has the courage to press charges so he can finally pay for what he did as he shows NO remorse for his actions. The rest of us ( siblings, mom and spouses) remain strong as he’ll never break that bond. They are his actions, not mine. Sad that I have to teach my 4 year old about “who’s allowed to touch your penis” though. What are some of the warning signs? Do you (or anyone here) know of a good resource? I know I'm vigilant about strangers but how would you detect a family member or close friend? I never thought about this stuff before I had kids but I worry about everything now!

I don’t know 100% how he hid all this in Canada because I was so young, but in Central America no one was really paying attention so he had a certain degree of impunity. I do know that before I was born he was a leader in the Boy Scouts, and was dismissed under questionable circumstances. Leigh, I feel so much pain for you. I have the same questions about my mother. While our dad didn’t sexually abuse us, he was very physically abusive in other ways and my mom always let it happen. When they divorced, she didn’t even fight for us. She just let this psycho have custody of her little girls and last month, out of the blue she said to me, “I hope you didn’t feel abandoned”. (!!!!!) WTF? OF COURSE I felt abandoned! You let this pervert abuse all of us physically and then move us to Central America where he abused little boys in front of me! Mothers are not always the loving protective saints people paint them out to be, so just know that I understand your pain. I hope you are able to find some peace.

Dear wife of a pedophile, I am so sorry to hear your story but I do understand and I am really glad you left this call to action. Women should never mistrust that gut feeling that something’s not right. The way you describe your husband is SO similar to my dad. Many of the things your husband did/said were things my dad did and said. I’m really glad you got out of there and I hope there’s a way that you can get him on the Watch List with the local authorities. Please do. You have enough information about him to get him on the police’s radar, as he should be. I should probably clarify I'm more looking for signs or indicators that someone is a pedophile and less for signs of child abuse. Not that I'm not concerned about child abuse, it's more that I'd like to be able to notice things about an individual before they harm someone. Allie thanks for your comment and I think you make a very important point – that our parents choices have little to do with the person that we are and the possibilities available to us in life. We get SOOO caught up in our society around these myths of familial relationships, but the truth is no matter WHO your family is made up of and no matter what you must endure, every day that you wake up you get to choose how the story goes. *Especially* if you are a financially independent adult. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm so happy to hear that you (and hopefully your siblings) have healed and moved on as mush as one could. – In your story it sounds as though it was pretty easy for you to move on and leave your father in the past, I wonder, was it really that easy for you, or were there times of emotional hardship for you?

a) be realistic about how common dangerous people are (they ARE our dads, our teachers, our cousins, our neighbours) and I’m fortunate in that it made me be drawn to the nicest, most honest, most lovely people as romantic partners and I’ve now been with the same super mega wonderful guy for almost a decade. This book given to husbands’ sister, as proxy her parents’ malignant narcissism, family cult leader. Cyberbullies, cyber harassment as she became her parents to continue molesting her adult children and next generations. Yet, she’s cremated and gone as the rest of us live with internal scares of these monsters deliberately enjoyed others suffering. This book will be read by her family and hope it helps to heal. Thank you for sharing, this was really brave of you. You wrote "I am less worried about my kids because I know the anatomy of a pedophile/psychopath and can help them navigate the world and recognize those danger signs." So yeah, it was super hard in some respects but that's life, right? Life requires courage. Life asks us to stand up for ourselves. So I did. And I don't miss him because he was never a father to begin with. He was a keeper. At no point, even when I was living alone with him for years, could he even name my three closest friends. I was like an "it" that lived in his house. He never knew me. And I'm fine with that. We get very caught up in what our family/relations are 'supposed' to be but I don't buy that. My true family are the people I've chosen to be a part of my life and provide the support I need. I hope this answers your question! And thanks for reading.