Welcome and a big hug for you OneDay

I don't know what your fiancé did however if he committed a crime it wasn't just a stupid mistake

I want to be supportive of you so I'm not writing that to hurt you... At the same time I think minimizing or not taking accountability never helps anyone.... as it trivializes what was done and gives the appearance of not caring about who's been hurt... IMHO

I think if this is fairly recent it will take time to earn trust back and some people may choose not to open their hearts or minds to him

There is another board for family and friends that is busier and you'll probably get more responses

Another hug... I know that this is hard and it hurts... I hope that you can both work through these tough times with great success.... xo

https://support-for-families.boards.net/

Maybe your fiancé can meet your best friend sometime after the wedding in a more protected and private setting, dinner or lunch perhaps.

I have a lot of opposing thoughts on this. I think if an offender said it was just a stupid mistake I would have more of a problem with it. Sex offenses are rarely just a mistake but are selfish choices made to put ones self above others in an extremely harmful way. An offender who says it was just a mistake most likely hasn’t fully grasped the damage they have caused. A friend or a family member saying it could be saying more of, “you’ve served your time, and you’ve paid your debt, and you aren’t the danger people think you are.”

There is no research you can point to that says registering past offenders of sex offenses is helpful to preventing future sex offenses. 95% of the offenders of children are not on the registry when they commit their offense. So I can understand the frustration family members of SOs feel. As someone who made a horrendous choice as a young teenager I feel that frustration too.

So I agree suncloud we shouldn’t trivialize what happened— though it’s just gone way too far. The fact her best friend won’t even see her fiancé because he made a selfish choice isn't right either. Imagine only being looked at by the worst thing you’ve done in your life. In my situation it happened decades earlier. According to actuarial data the chance an offender with no known sex crimes after 20 years living in society commits one is the same as a random person. It just further shows the insanity of this system. We have people on the registry who aren’t dangerous according to research yet we as a society want them to be punished indefinitely even though it makes no one safer.

-Independent

I agree with everything that you've written Independent.... Sadly people can don't always do their research ... and society can vilify others terribly sadly..... Big hug.....xo

It’s just so frustrating that there is no middle ground. Either you HAVE to hate the victim or you hate the perpetrator. Why can’t you love both? Spending 90% of the resources given to fighting sexual assaults on the registry is loving neither.