Monday, September 23rd 2019, 8:54 pm
The wife of a man recently arrested during an online child sex sting tells her story.
She says even though she and her children had no part of the crime, they are bearing part of the shame and it's even more difficult because of comments made on social media.
She says being the suspect's family there is no support group or help for their trauma.
"Telling our adult children was the hardest thing I've ever done. It would've been easier to tell them their dad had passed away," she said.
The woman was at work when her husband called and said he'd been arrested for having sexually explicit conversations with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl online. Before that, he'd never been in trouble with the law and was well respected in the community.
"No rational person would ever think they'd be in this position. We were going to celebrate our 25th anniversary next year. We had plans," she said.
She and her sons decided not to bail him out of jail and she filed for divorce the next day.
"I've had blow back from my friends, saying, 'you said for better or worse' and I said, 'this is more than worse, this involves kids,'" she said.
She says their grief was compounded by the horrible comments people made on social media, then someone posted a link to the suspect's Facebook page, that contained pictures of her and their children.
"We're angry and we're shocked, we're hurt. We're dealing with enough because we also grieving and we're almost forced to be quiet out of fear that hatred and vitriol is going to come back on us when we have nothing to do with it. We didn't know," she said.
She would like people to remember, crimes affect both victims' families and suspects' families as well.
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