A friend I've known the best part of 30 years was arrested in 2021 for indecent images.
Getting over the fact you can never truly know someone - this is something I'd never have thought them capable of in a million years. It's so completely out of character.
The long and short of it, they told me they have a porn addiction, and when downloading some via a torrent site, unbeknownst to them, one such torrent had content 'hidden' under a false name, which the police were tracking - think downloading a taylor swift album and finding out the files contain something completely different.
The police immediately had them on sharing content (the way torrent files work, as soon as you start to download, you also start to upload). He got 2 years suspended and 15 on the sex offenders register.
I'm the only one in our friend group that knows about this. I've been in an awful position (obv not as awful at friend, rightly or wrongly), of the moral question about whether it was really an accident, but also being the only one to know and being in a friend group with others that have young children.
Friend lost job, wife, house - which other friends know - and now rumour has it, has developed a drug problem.
Mutual friends are coming to me asking if they're ok - do they need to get involved, they're worried about this person, they never stick to plans, ghost when being invited out etc etc. It's so tough. I spoke to my best friend and laid it all out. Which feels like a betrayal to the first friend, but at the same time I'm so angry that I've done nothing wrong and yet feel so burdened. What if I believe the innocence, something happens and it turns out I knew?
I've advised that the friends who are in the dark be honest with this person and ask directly what's doing on. They can then decide whether to be honest about it all.
I wonder how others have dealt with similar situations, where you're the only one in a group to know a dark truth that people are probing about but have no idea.
I felt myself let this friend go over the past 2 years, selfishly it's easier for me to ignore how it makes me feel and just make no effort with this friend. Does this make me as bad as the friend cutting out others?
