I used to frequent this computer forum called neowin.net and I met a lot of people on there who had similar interests to me, mostly gaming but also Windows and computer hardware.
This one guy that I met we were friends for a few years and we shared more and more things.
One day he confided in me that he thought about children, sexually. And it was really out of the blue he just wanted to tell me and like it was getting something off his chest. Atleast that is what I thought, I think he expected me to say that I had a similar interest in that because of what happened later on.
So after he told me this, I said to him, okay well you've not actually done anything with kids right? And he said, no he only thought about it but sometimes he helps out with his mother's swimming group. This is where she teaches young children to swim at a local pool for money.
So I said to him well if he hasn't done anything then it's not too late to speak to some professionals. I was trying to be a good friend and I was also kinda shocked.
So a few months go by and I slowly distanced myself from him as I felt our interests were diverging and whenever we did speak we weren't clicking like we used to.
About 6-7 months after that, the forum we visit has a thread trending called "X arrested by police in international pedophile sting".
X being the name of my friend who had confided in me. I view the thread and it says him and several other users of the forum and past users of the forum had been arrested.
It seems that he had abused two young boys he had met around where he lived and they had reported him and when the police seized his computer they found MSN Chat Logs and images of abuse from other pedophiles he had met on the same forum and many other individuals from the web. The police had held him for a while, I don't know exactly how long, then they did an international sting operation on everyone.
One of the individuals even left the country and went to I think Czech and the police there handed him back to UK authorities.
The whole thing was pretty crazy and even the forum staff were like "this is deeply shocking" because at least 4 of the people were forum users either past or present and well known/liked.
My friend went to prison in the UK for a number of years I think he is out now but I have had zero contact with him at all. I just feel so guilty that I didn't raise the alarm when he confided to me about having sexual desires towards children and being in a position to abuse them through his mother's swimming thing. Even though that wasn't where he met the boys he eventually abused it may have alerted the authorities sooner.