We understand that this is a shocking realization, but it’s important to take some time to think and reflect.
How did you find out?
- Discovering search history, where they have been looking for legal images of children
- Finding that they have a lot of pictures of children they don’t know
- Seeing messages on their device from a fellow non-offending pedophile
- Discovering they’ve been visiting websites like virped.org
- Someone that knew about them decided to tell you without their permission
Sometimes one of these is enough by itself to believe someone is a pedophile; sometimes it isn’t clear until you put several different clues together.
If somebody told you about this without the your friend’s permission, why did they tell you? What other information did they give you and will they talk about this more?
Once you are sure your suspicion is correct, you have to decide whether you want or need to start a conversation about it with your friend.
You might also be wondering why your close friend did not tell you. There could be many reasons why they haven’t told you:
- They are afraid of how you would take it
- They are afraid of ruining your friendship, and possibly being outed to more people
- Something happened in their past that they are worried you will connect this to
- They just wouldn’t ever tell anyone
Now that you do know, it’s important to think about the next steps. Three possible next steps are:
- Leaving it be and not bringing it up with anyone
- Bringing it up with someone who knows your friend
- Starting the conversation with your friend
Keeping silent (if only for the time being) may be best if you are uncomfortable bringing up the topic with your friend or with anyone. However, knowing the secret without talking about it might take a personal toll on you.
Bringing it up with a mutual friend has positives and negatives. On one hand, it might be good for you to get your thoughts out with someone you trust, and get a second opinion. However, disclosing this secret to more people might compromise your friend’s safety and/or the trust between the two of you. Often it’s fairer and wiser to leave this part until after you’ve had a direct conversation with your friend and learned more.
Opening a conversation directly with your friend can help if you are comfortable talking about the topic and you want your friendship to be as honest as possible.
However it is important to think about a few things.
We don’t know how your friend will react to you starting a conversation. Some pedophiles in this situation are too afraid and may deny or cover up. Others will open up. This may depend on whether they think they will immediately get into trouble or lose you as a friend. Many pedophiles do not talk about their attractions until it feels somewhat safe to do so.
If your friend confirms you are right and that they are a pedophile, you can check out [our page about what to do if your friend comes out to you](https://virped.org/closefriendtoldme . There is also some advice from Talking for Change about what to do if someone comes out to you .
What they tell you from this point onward, and how able they are to talk honestly will determine what the next steps can be.
If you are comfortable giving more details about your specific situation, you can email us with questions or to ask to join our forum for friends and family , which sits alongside and overlaps with our main forum for adult pedophiles.
Firstly, thank you for coming to this website to find out more. Whether this news has made you panic or made you thoughtful, we can hopefully give you some perspective on the secret you now know.
Our forum is a peer-support community. We help pedophiles anonymously and honestly discuss their experiences and feelings. We don’t allow image sharing, justification of adult-child sexual contact or encouragement of illegal behavior. Moderators enforce these rules. All posts are written in English.
When people contact Virtuous Pedophiles, the message they write comes to us. The people we hear from most are other virtuous pedophiles. Here are some of the initial messages we have received. Reading them will give a flavor of our diversity, the themes that come up over and over again, and a hint at how many of us there are.
Read about the life experiences of virtuous pedophiles
Our panel of VirPed forum members spent 2024 answering questions about pedophlia-related issues based on their life experiences and answered questions from the curious.