When Rachel searched her husband’s computer and found a stash of child pornography material, mainly images of young girls, she knew her marriage was over.
After contacting the police to inform them of what she’d found she fled to a motel – alone
“I cried a lot. I just tried to work through what had happened and I didn't have any answers. No answers came to me at all,” Rachel tells Insight.
When Nijole’s partner came home one day accompanied by two plain clothes police officers, she had no idea what to expect of the crime he was soon to be charged with.
“I'm being charged with under age on-line activities," Nijole, 71, distinctly recalls her husband saying.
Rachel, left, and Nijole have been left devastated by the crimes of their husbands. Photo: Insight Source: Insight
When police searched his computers they found 26,837 images and 702 videos of child abuse material.
After eight years together, Nijole suddenly found her world crumbling – and not everyone was eager to offer her their support.
“A few of the people that I met in the street asked me if I knew and I said 'no' and they said 'how could you not?' And I guess they thought I may have been an accomplice and of course I never saw them again,” she tells Insight.
As both Nijole and Rachel tried to make sense of it all, they found support in PartnerSPEAK, a peer support online forum for people who are affected by, and concerned about the child abuse material viewed by their partner, husband or family members.
“I at last was amongst a group of people and I joined the committee of management there and I felt that there was a place for me there because people knew what had happened in my life,” Nijole says.
We have partners and children going through the trauma of realising that the person they were most intimate with, and knew the best, and who purported to love them was not at all who they thought.
Natalie Walker, who set up the group, says because the offending is so abhorrent, people often want to distance themselves from the situation which means partners can be left unsupported.
“Some of the people that we work with, they say … they don't want to see another woman go and spend that weekend alone,” Natalie tells Insight.
“They want her to know that there is another person with this lived experience, that understands and that stands beside them and that's that we are. We're really fiercely a peer support organisation.”
Natalie also says that the offence of those looking at online child abuse material is escalating and as a result so too are those affected.
“We have partners and children going through the trauma of realising that the person they were most intimate with, and knew the best, and who purported to love them was not at all who they thought,” she says.
As Nijole and Rachel try and move on with their lives they have both been left dealing with financial insecurity as result of their partner’s crimes.
“I’m not in a good position. I rent, I work five days a week and my work prospects are going to be changing in about six months’ time which is a bit scary,” says Nijole.
