It was pointed out to me that in my blog Aftereffects, pedophile goes to jail now what I was not as clear as I could be that I feel his wife was and is a victim as well. I don’t think she was anything but a victim in this. That does not mean she does not feel guilt. Guilt because she thinks she should have known, how could she live with someone like that and not know? I don’t ever want to deal with questions like that. One day your life is normal and the next you are the wife of a monster. You loose your identity and instead become the wife of a pedophile, a rapist or a killer. And people ask, “How could you not know?” and it is hard to answer because the same question is running through your head.
The wife or girlfriend of a pedophile feels guilty because she believes she should have seen through to the real person and known what he was doing and somehow stopped it. That somehow she let it happen. The truth is that unless she knew what was going on there was nothing she could have done to make things different. An uncaught pedophile is good at deceiving people otherwise they would have been caught by now. This is what they do. They need to blend in and be well liked and trusted. Pedophiles hide what they do from everyone. It makes sense that they would hide this part of their lives from their loved ones.
Once the pedophile has been found out the wife will often pay the price socially for his crimes. Suddenly people who were friends pull away. It may be that they don’t want to be associated with the pedophile in any way, not even as a friend of the wife. For others it is simply that they have a hard time separating the wife from the husband even though she is innocent. She is the one that is available to put the blame on or become angry at because he is safe in jail. What ever a persons reason it still means loss of friends and social standing for the wife.
For some wives and girlfriends the backlash is so bad that they move and change their names. They cannot live a normal life being connected or associated with a monster. People turn their anger on the person that is available, and often don’t believe that the wife or girlfriend did not know. It is hard to understand that the wife is probably more shocked then anyone else, because they really did not have a clue that this was going on.
What counts is what the wife or girlfriend does once they know. Some support their man because they cannot believe that the man they love is capable of doing something that horrible, it must be a mistake. Often this changes once there is undeniable proof, once they know for sure they accept that this really happened and leave him. Others condemn the man as fast or faster then anyone else. They leave the guy and will often try to help convict him. These ladies were victims. Unfortunately there are some who will hid it or make excuses for their men, like that Grandmother on Dr. Phil last year who hid the fact that her husband was molesting their granddaughter, and as far as I am concerned that makes them an accessory not a victim. So what a person does once they know determines if they are a victim or an accessory, prior to knowing they are just another victim being used by evil.
