The knock on effects

There are many types of relationships in life and they change throughout your life.

When doing the course, I spoke to several other people who about their future concerns, this was a difficult topic.

Some of them had a young family and when they were arrested, their relationship broke down like mine but unlike mine, they had children. Social services were involved, to ensure the safety of the children. Their parent child relationship changed over night because they had to organise joint visits with the child, this involved the offender seeing their child under supervision, quite often the offender's parents.

The same goes for future relationships, if I find a partner with younger children. I would obviously have to tell my new partner about my past because it might affect my legal duties, this is obviously a difficult conversation as you might loose another relationship but if they are understanding. Social services would have to speak to the other parent from the previous relationship, do risk assessments, understandably any parent of a child would be concerned if there was a person who has a previous conviction for child sex offenses, in their child's life.

Your future employment will be effected, I lost my original job at the time of the arrest because there were under 18s in the work place.

I then got a job at a pub chain, I should have informed them of my arrest at the time of the interview, I didn't, not sure if this was because I was still in denial of my situation or because I was desperate to have something to distract me from my current situation. As it turned out, when the company did find out about my arrest, they terminated my employment because the news getting out might bring the company's name into disrepute. However, if I hadn't told them, I could have continued working with them, as they don't do CRB checks, they rely on the employees honesty.

I have been searching for a job for two months now, there are several company's that believe in rehabilitation of offenders which is great but they either won't employ somebody with a sex offense or can't  guarantee that it won't have an impact on their decision.

There is a charity unlock that encourages companies to ban the previous convictions box, this is a move in the right direction but companies still have to look at the risks involved to the company's reputation and their other employees. So although your interview maybe good and the employer wants to employ you, there may still be physical restraints.