Did this guy have kids of his own who were involved in all this community stuff, essentially playing on recreational teams, involved in youth groups at the church, etc? Or was he just a random adult who was always willing to volunteer?
Just curious.
Building on the theme of âgood guysâ who turn out to be sexual predators, a number of years ago a dentist in my state gave free work to low income children on Saturdays. He did not use any assistants with those children only. While they were under sedation, he sexually assaulted them, taking photos and videos that he kept in a locked closet no one was allowed to enter. Long story short, his workers got curious one day, broke in and found the evidence. He was at an out of state horse show with his daughters when he got the call to turn himself in. I didnât know him, but my trainer, who trained his daughters, asked me to explain him. Evidently, he appeared to be the perfect father, spending much time with his daughters, helping with school projects etc. My trainer said the guy made him feel like a bad father bc he wasnât as âhands on.â One thing about sexual predators, though, they either take advantage of or set up situations where there are easy targets. The free dental work was a perfect coverâsedation, age and confusion kept victims from fighting/questioning their experiences and the parents werenât going to question the generosity of free dental work. Thank goodness for the workersâ curiosity bc it could have gone on indefinitely.
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Thatâs horrific. 
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Iâve heard horrible things about the Derek guyâŠ.
Wow. Super, super, super horrible. Hideously awful not only for his victims, but also for his family.
I hope that guy ended up in prison for an extremely long time.
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Yes. Interesting end to the story: he took a plea and requested sex offender treatment which was in prison at the time. But someone got to him in the assessment part of incarceration and he was stabbed multiple times, becoming comatose. No one can say what happened to him after that.
Of course the horses were sold and wife divorced him bf he went to prison.
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YES. He was married to a local woman with children from a previous marriage. 
And yes, he was a standout volunteer with the kidsâ activities, at school and non-school teams. Stepdad of the year, as it were (not a true title). He was very active in volunteer emergency services as well. Honestly, he has been missed in those areas, as he had made himself that involved.
The family was the kind that was actively involved in everything, sports, activities, church, always busy. From photos (he showed from time to time) the kids were middle-school and older elementary, probably 8 to 13 yo. And yes the court docs from his home state were primarily assaults on âunder 14â.
Of course now many of us are wondering what really went on in their home. And with his contact with other children through his step-kids. We probably wonât know if an investigation doesnât result in charges being brought.
But interestingly, to me, most people I know who knew him here just dropped the subject of him altogether. They donât/wonât talk about him outside their closest circles. Itâs crazy because they have to be busy unwinding their business connections with him (he was a prominent contractor and real estate investor). But one day he was frequently part of a business conversation, and the next day itâs as if he doesnât exist.
His local family went dark & silent after his arrest. But Iâm not in their social circle and donât know what has happened with them since. He was known as a wealthy real estate investor, so I hope heâs been able to keep them together financially with whatever savings and investments he may have.
The arrest and extradition were reported throughout the local news. But there has never been any follow-up published reporting that I can find.
Guess what his own home town online news reported about him being arrested and returned for his crimes there? â___ , 42, was arrested in Texas on decades-old child sex abuse charges, stemming from actions when ___ was still a minor.â
They didnât even mention his later assaults as an adult, or his more recent assaults in that town when he visited not long before. Those seem to have triggered the new arrest and extradition. Mature white businessman privilege? With his court record, I canât imagine why.
This guy has a total of over 30 charges (historically), including recent, when I looked him up a few weeks after his arrest. His hometown journalists didnât report the details of what he did, that I saw online. Which I found online in courthouse records from that jurisdiction (me, a random out-of-stater).
Iâve searched for further information on what happened next with him, but itâs been hard to find anything, and the online court records seem to have come to a stop. I donât know what that means. Records are there but just not updated online, or the victims donât want publicity, maybe a judge can keep records confidential. But I donât know. Donât know where he is now.
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Back to the general-purpose question, why is it so hard to get offenders, even repeat offenders, out of organizations, permanently? It seems that people, generally, just cannot deal with this when it is âsuch a nice personâ.
Especially within groups and communities where people are trusting and friendly, and donât expect crime from within their orbit.
Many years ago someone told me this, that friendly groups have great difficulty facing up to identifying and excluding bad actors from their community. It was hard for me to comprehend then, but it seems to be true.
This is it, exactly. Even other adults see them as a role model. Enjoy being around them. How could a man or a woman who is that great of a person not be that great of a person.
Humans just donât seem to deal well with the contradiction. Lack of experience, lack of awareness ⊠after decades of increasing publicity over these issues, I just donât know why this goes on and on. But it does. People keep blinders on, minimize past issues.
People donât want to know, when it is someone they already like.
Whatâs our first reaction when we hear of a shocking arrest of someone we know and like, or know about as a âgood personâ? It canât be true. Someone lied on them for revenge over a failed relationship. The investigation went overboard. There was an extortion attempt and they didnât pay up. Someone went after them for something petty.
The first thought is an explanation for innocence. It takes some mind-bending to see them as a bad person, after we had believed they were a good one.
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Thatâs pretty common for these guys to latch on to women with kids, once they get too old to grow their own.
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Exactly. Really really sad.
It is. Although he was/is in his early 40âs. But it takes time to grow up oneâs own kids. Marrying someone with kids of the right age is a much faster gratification.
Plus sometimes they wouldnât act on their own kids if they can get to someone elseâs.
Iâve always wondered about men who have a history of marrying women with kids, and then when those kids become older, moving on to another woman with kids of a certain age. The years roll by, but they always have kids around them in that same general age range.
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So he had an arrest record in another state for this sort of stuff, but the local single mother still married him? Did she not know about his past?
And did the local organizations he volunteered with not do a background check?
Awful awful stuff. Maybe local people are being quiet now because they feel horribly for the most recent wife and step kids? I could understand that, and not wanting to foster discussions or speculation about whether those kids were abused too
Too many people donât do background checks. They donât know how. Some people think it is a terrible thing to do to someone they think well enough to marry (I donât know about this wife, though).
The old records on this offender had been there for years. I donât know how long they had been online.
Before court records were online, the only access was through the physical courthouse records. I think criminal records are all kept at the county level. In the U.S., anyone can look them up, but you have to go through whatever is the local channel to do so.
Regular people have no access to centralized databases of court records from all over the U.S. Regular people have to know where and how to look. Some records havenât been online that long, some records still arenât. That is up to the local jurisdiction.
Absolutely.
And this is what we see in the horse world as well. There is a cone of silence, whatever the reasons.
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The fact that his trail went dark makes we wonder if he became an informant and pointed FBI to big fish in child pornography/child trafficking and he ended up in witness protection. Either that or he is being protected by some high muckety-muck in the judicial system who has the same predilection and is worried about being exposed.
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People also donât want to admit (to themselves or others) that they were duped. That they trusted this person and didnât see the signs. That they were close to them/worked with them/spoke highly of them/let their kids near them and the whole time that person was actually a genuinely bad individual.
Humans donât do well with contradictions because we like our neat labels and boxes and always first assume itâs the âoutsiderâ that is bad. But these offenders tend to be over the top nice and go out of their way to be âgoodâ people - sometimes as a way to gain access and sometimes as a subconscious effort to âmake upâ for the harm they are causing.
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Thatâs the answer in a nutshell. In addition, many people fight being found wrong because it calls into question their judgment. Double this when they depend on the offender. One reason why mothers/fathers ignore red flags and even their own childrenâs clear signs of abuse/distress. Besides, sociopaths are often very charming people. They have to be.
There was a guy with a service business (business to business type thing) that weâd encountered a few times over the years. Never had a reason to hire the business ourselves, and we didnât personally associate with the owner, but weâd seen work heâd done for some of our clients.
Years later, we found out that heâd been arrested for running a child prostitution ring, apparently consisting of young teen high school girls, who would in turn recruit their friends in exchange for designer purses, etc. We were appalled, and horrified.
The little weâd known of him hadnât caused us to suspect that he was a child trafficker. He hadnât come across as the super-friendly, helpful, ingratiating volunteer described in some posts, but as more of the hard-working type who did a good job at (what was supposedly) his primary business. When he was actually a pimp.
I would imagine that the clients whoâd hired him felt sick when they found out about his side gig.
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I think not only do people not do background checks, there are companies that legitimately do not care if you are an offender if you possess the skills they need and enter the business early enough. I worked for a convicted pedophile for YEARS and I had no idea. I knew there were other people convicted of crimes at this company, but I had no idea about him. Finally, I was so annoyed at him (he was the President, by the way) that I asked my friend what his deal was. She replied with âyou didnât know?? Google him.â And thatâs how I found out. Because he got there on the ground floor of the business they just kept promoting him until he got to the top.
On another note, the priest that married my mother and father and all of my momâs siblings was a pedophile. For years. Never got caught until he was so old. It is awful.
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I think that is a big one â people just donât want to have the feeling âI didnât see it, I had no ideaâ.
I think some people are more comfortable believing that they will âjust knowâ. If they donât have that feeling, then the âbadâ person they like is actually ok. And there is some other convoluted explanation for their legal problems.
And itâs so uncomfortable to think that they arenât as rare as we would like to think.
Everyone wants to think that they can judge character. Because after all, our lives depend on it.
When this guyâs arrest hit the news I was shocked, and it also brought home to me âI guess I have zero idea what a predatory pedophile is like, I guess I may never know one when I see oneâ. That is not a comfortable feeling.
At any time, I could be opening personal doors to a predatory pedophile â as many people clearly have done â because I wonât have a feeling or some kind of recognition that alerts me. And probably have done without knowing it.
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