Which establishes the MO here of: that person may have criminally abused others; but, they were nice to me so we can still be friends.

It is good that you are encouraging me to examine my motives carefully, sexobon. I do not believe that I am a passive enabler, and it certainly has crossed my mind that culprit may prefer a complete break with all of his former life. In which case not answering any initial contact from me would achieve that.

That's not my line of thinking. It's more along the lines of culprit committed crimes and did dreadful things for which he is now a) being punished and b) receiving treatment. He has lost absolutely everything, and may be in need of a friend.
It seems to me that you believe that culprit does not deserve to have friends because of the severity of his crimes. If that is the case, we will have to differ on that point.

Sure. Right, exactly. And so what?

We behave this way all the time. Lots of people have been convicted of crimes, and are later befriended. So what? Restrict the pool of possible friends to perfect, flawless people?

It seems you want the reader of your post to infer that a criminal conviction is grounds for permanent disassociation--or permanent condemnation.

It seems you want to keep at least this conversation very narrowly focused on his crimes. That's cool, if that's what interests you the most, but it seems that anonymous has a wider range of aspects of this person that are important, including friendship-worthiness and an informed understanding of the person's past, likely among other aspects. No person is only the sum of their criminal convictions. Choosing to qualify or disqualify a person as a possible friend usually includes a lot more than that.

@anonymous:

Culprit is highly skilled at deceiving friends. That's not going to change because of a stint in the pokey. If you are still friends with culprit without being open about it, you will be deceiving others as well (a lie of omission is still a lie). Culprit may come to rely on that. If culprit relapses, your hidden involvement with him will be uncovered and your credibility will fall with his. The case is that there are bad ways of trying to do good deeds that can end up causing more harm than good. They occur when someone wants to be a good Samaritan; but, also wants to take convenient shortcuts. You may not be right for this.

Anon said her partner does know about the proposed friendship. It's only the specific detail about their former sex life which has not been discussed, and doesn't need to be in my opinion. Partner obviously knows she did have sex with Culprit as a logical part of their previous relationship; no one is being deceived by simply leaving out graphic details.

I don't find that relevant to my statement having to do with a former significant other coming back into her life and her not being able to disclose it to any of her other friends except for one and that one is only a maybe.

I question they assumption that shaving your pussy was because of his predilection for children. A awful lot of guys like shaved women. I doubt you were aiding and abetting by complying with that request. :headshake

Agreed. It's guys like him that give pussy shaving a bad rap.

But seriously.
Personally, I wouldn't befriend him. There are some shortcomings, peccadilloes, and foibles one can overlook with respect to one's associates; this isn't really one of them, I'm afraid.

A cow orker once told me about a guy he grew up with who beat a guy to death and threw him off a train bridge because the guy came on to him. My cow orker said the murderer was basically a good guy. WTF?


Unless you plan to go full Mother Theresa you might want your friends and associates to share your values.

I'm sure most of you will be relieved to hear I had a "Well ... DUH!" moment today. Current partner is a teacher, so there is no way that I could imperil that by offering [continued] friendship to a [now] convicted pedophile. So that's that decided.
@sexobon - certainly your comments about his skill in deception, and that I may not be the right person to do this are very fair. The argument that he might be better off without *my* friendship, without any sort of link to his previous life is, I think, a strong one. As regards *me* being deceptive - I have very few conversations about my relationships with "friends", I have very few friends, most are acquaintances, so this would have been a topic which simply did not come up, rather than one I was actively suppressing. Also, I don't understand what you meant by "convenient shortcuts" but it hardly matters now.
Thank you all for your input - it has been very helpful in clarifying the situation. I can thoroughly recommend the anonymous account for getting things off your chest discreetly.