‘I Cut Contact With My Friend When She Married A Convicted Paedophile’

We're always taught about forgiveness. In school. By parents. In church, even, if you're that kind of family. We're told that the better person, the bigger person, will always accept an apology, will move on from a slight or a wrong, and that it is better for the soul to cleanse oneself of negative feelings towards another person. But when it comes to one of my former friends, I just can't do that. She didn't slight me personally. You could say that she hasn't done anything wrong, on paper. But she has married someone guilty of something so heinous that I saw no way of moving forward.

Three years ago, I got a call from a friend. 'We need to talk about David*', they began, ominously. 'David who?' I responded. 'Jenny's David', came the answer. My instinct was that he must have died.

We had known David for several years when he had got together with our friend, Jenny, just after university, but we weren't close. He had never become integrated in the group in the way that some partners had. He would come along to birthday parties and the occasional drink in the pub, and he'd always been perfectly nice, but for whatever reason he'd always hovered on the periphery.

'What's happened?'

David was fine. There hadn't been an accident or diagnosis. Instead, a dawn raid by police, the confiscation of a computer, and an arrest, on suspicion of the creation of indecent images of children. He was charged, found guilty, given a brief sentence, and placed on the sex offenders list over a period of a few months. Jenny hadn't said a word. My friend had found out by chance, via whispers on the grapevine.

I felt sick. My mind went straight to poor Jenny. Did she know? Why hadn't she said something? How was she handling it? I talked it out with my friend over the phone and I pledged to speak to her immediately. Scrolling through my phone and pressing 'call' felt truly horrible. Was I about to break this horrible news to my friend? She answered. After some brief small talk, I echoed the phrase uttered by my friend, minutes before.

'We need to talk about David.'

Jenny knew. David had called her on the day of his arrest, and didn't try to pretend there had been a mistake or a miscarriage of justice. He was in possession of the images because he had sought them out. He was guilty. He was remorseful and sad, resigned to the inevitable consequences, and said he would be getting the help that he needed. Jenny ended their relationship then and there, and had not spoken of it for months. When we enquired to David's health, she had made something up, offering vague excuses for his absence. I understood that, of course. We all put our head in the sand sometimes. But with things now out in the open, I assured her that we were all there to help her move on, and suggested that she might also want to pursue professional help.

I saw her for a drink a little while later. She didn't want to talk about David. She was quiet and distant, which seemed reasonable. We talked about other things. I told her I was on the other end of the phone if I needed her, and suggested that she might benefit from meeting with a therapist. In the months that followed, we caught up via text or met for dinner here and there. And then, she seemed to drop off the radar. Messages went unanswered for days. Suggestions of drinks or days out would be turned down with flimsy excuses. Months passed, and soon I got another call, from another friend.

'Jenny's engaged.' My stomach clenched. My breath stopped.

'Not to David?'

'Yep. To David.'

I haven't spoken to Jenny since then, and she hasn't been in touch. Perhaps she knew that our friendship was over the moment she reunited with David, and knew there was nothing she could say to restore things to how they were between us. She and David married in a small service with friends and family around them, shaking their hands, patting their backs, toasting the happy couple. I feel great pity for her, but also anger.

This is not a grey area. This isn't like dating someone who votes differently to you, or marrying a man who committed a minor crime once upon a time. Reforging a relationship with a man who has confessed to this sort of offence is, to me, ample grounds to cutting a friendship with immediate effect.

There have been moments where I think that I was wrong. That now, more than ever, Jenny clearly needed a friend, to try and talk her out of it maybe or, if not, to be there for her as a sounding board for her rationale. But then I think of my future children, and shake my head. I can't fathom what possible rationale there could be. All I can think about are the children of this country, and this world, whose abuse means nothing to people like David. Jenny may feel that she has forgiven him, but I don't think she truly can. Forgiveness is about accepting the apology of someone who has wronged you, and she is not the injured party. In going back to him and restarting their life together as if nothing ever happened, I feel that she has batted away something that simply can't be forgotten, that her love and loyalty is a reward that David simply doesn't deserve.

I think about Jenny a lot. She'll pop into my head when I read a news report, or as I skim past her name in my phonebook. I miss her. I hope that her everyday life is ok. But I don't regret turning my back on her for her association with this man. Maybe I'm punishing her for someone else's crime. But, surely, some things just can't be forgiven?

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