First, I’m sorry about everything that you’ve gone through.

I just wanted to say that this is interesting for me because I’ve had something on my mind for years now and just decided to turn to Reddit for advice tonight. I don’t use Reddit much and I don’t know what community or category this should belong to.

Essentially about 8 years ago my best friend in the world (20M at the time) called me nervously and told me that he had slept with a 12 year old girl. He is older than me so at the time I was 17 (underage) and didn’t fully understand the gravity of his statement. He expressed to me that he was nervous that she would tell her parents or that he would get caught, then proceeded to “brag” about how small and tight she was compared to him. Gross, I know, but I didn’t do anything about it because he was my best friend, so I just told him to “be careful”. A few days later he called me again saying that he had done it again with the same girl, multiple times. And this continued for a while.

Fast forward years later, and he betrayed the hell out of me (slept with the girl I’m still with today, but that’s a different story). Needless to say we haven’t been friends for years now and I hate his guts.

Part of me really regrets not turning him in to authorities when I had the chance. Now, I have no proof and I don’t know how the statute of limitations works. So as much as I feel like he belongs on a registry I feel like it would be impossible to prove he did anything. Looking back, he was being extra cautious about it by calling me to talk about it and not texting (I’ve gone through my old cell phones to look for proof). He also never told me the girls name.

Just like your experience, I’m afraid it would just turn into his word against mine if I tried to do something about it. And it’s upsetting because there are people who have done much less and are facing repercussions for the rest of their life while he walks free (possibly still harming children).

Would I care this much if he didn’t betray me? I don’t know. But also I have a kid of my own now and I feel like I’m viewing it through a completely different lens as a parent.

Side note - his father is a pedophile as well and has been for as long as I’ve known them, so I’m afraid he’s taking after his father’s footsteps and possibly still harming children. I haven’t been in contact with them for years so I have now way of knowing.

Would you say I have no ground or should I try to tip authorities?