Mother tells of heartache on learning son is a paedophile

A HEARTBROKEN mother has said her beloved son became ‘a complete stranger to me’ the day that gardaí raided their home and found child sexual abuse images on his computer.

‘Mary’ is a member of one of four families who wrote a joint letter to RTÉ’s Liveline earlier this week describing their experience of having a family member found to be in possession of sexual images of minors. She told the show yesterday that gardaí raided her home early one morning and discovered digital images of child abuse.

She described the horror she felt as she watched her then 19-year-old son collapse as he admitted that he had been viewing the images.

‘I would never have known,’ Mary said. ‘We do not condone this in any way, shape or form… but we have a person that we love very much who in one instant turned into a total complete stranger to me.

‘I can’t walk away from him. Life is not over, this doesn’t define us.’

Following the raid, gardaí told Mary to take her son to a doctor, where he was prescribed with antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. However, the doctor had no details of services or therapy groups that could deal with her family’s situation.

She later got in touch with the One In Four charity which deals with those impacted by child sex abuse.

Following a public court case which saw her son’s name featured in the media, he was handed down a prison sentence and the family experienced ‘basically a public flogging’.

Mary said that while she is in regular contact with her son, she cannot look at him without her stomach churning.

The interview provoked an emotive reaction from listeners. Children’s rights campaigner Christina Noble said: ‘I was abused, my brothers and sisters were abused.

‘It’s disgraceful and It’s a worldwide problem and it’s an Irish problem,’ she said.