Real life: “My boyfriend was paedophile – I caught him and dobbed him in”

Kelly Jackson, 23, shares her true life story;

WARNING: This post deals with disturbing subject matter and may be triggering for some readers.

I put down the phone and pulled a face.

“Why is it so hard to find a decent kindy?” I sighed to my sister, Melanie*.

I’d trawled the web for hours looking for a kindy for my little girl Lucy, three, and they were either full or looked horrible.

“Why don’t you call that old friend of yours?” Melanie suggested.

“Adam!” I replied. “Of course.”

Adam was a school friend who now worked at a kindy.

After some messages back and forth, we arranged to meet for coffee.

Over a flat white, I told Adam about my dilemma.

“I just want somewhere I can feel sure Lucy will be looked after,” I said.

“She should come to the nursery I work at,” he suggested.

We chatted for ages. He told me that while he loved his job, his dream was to be a primary school teacher one day.

“That’s my real passion,” he said.

I was impressed by his enthusiasm and realised I was attracted to him.

We sent a few flirty messages to each other and after a few more dates, became an item.

Months later, Adam moved in. Naturally, because he worked with kids, he was great with Lucy.

“You’d make a great dad,” I told him one day, kissing him.

“How about it then?” he replied, pulling me closer. I giggled.

It wasn’t that simple.

Over the next two years, we tried to fall pregnant and I suffered three miscarriages.

Adam was so supportive through every disappointment.

Then one day, I woke up with a familiar nauseous feeling.

I pulled a pregnancy test from my bedside drawer and tiptoed to the bathroom.

I held my breath as the lines formed, then ran back to the bedroom and jumped on the bed.

“I’m pregnant!” I screamed.

His face lit up.

“Finally,” I said, snuggling up to him. “We’ll be a family of four.”

The months went by and we welcomed a gorgeous little boy we called Ben.

When he was a month old we went on a family holiday to the beach, but Adam was distant.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as we were walking along the beach one day.

“Nothing,” he shrugged and changed the subject.

I knew he was hiding something from me.

So, one afternoon when he was playing outside with Lucy, I decided to do some digging.

I went onto his phone and gasped when I saw he was using a dating app.

I braced myself and clicked on it.

Sure enough, he’d been sending flirty messages to two young women.

He’d been pretending he was single with no children.

How could he?

When he came back inside, I confronted him.

“What are you doing chatting to girls online?” I raged. “We have a one-month-old baby!”

His face instantly crumpled. “It was a moment of madness,” he said.

He told me he was feeling overwhelmed by our growing family.

It was a pathetic excuse.

I put on a brave face for Lucy’s sake but when we got home, I told Adam he needed to stay with his mum.

I needed space.

I was so heartbroken and the days went by in a blur.

We wanted to try to keep things normal for the kids so I let him pop by every day to see them.

It was awkward between us and I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more going on with him.

So one day, I seized the opportunity to look at his phone again.

This time, I noticed he was having some WhatsApp conversations with girls.

I clicked on their profile pictures and my heart skipped a beat at how young they looked.

They weren’t women. They looked like schoolkids.

I wrote down their numbers, and didn’t mention it to Adam.

Later, I sent the girls messages asking them how old they were.

One replied, saying she was 16.

She said she’d spoken to Adam on Habbo, a social network for teenagers. Teenagers!

I felt sick. Was my boyfriend, my child’s father, a paedophile?

I needed to know, so I decided to catch him in the act by posing as a teenager myself.

I set up a fake profile on Habbo.

I put down my age as 15 and found a girl’s image on the internet for my profile picture.

Then I found Adam on the site and sent him a message.

Have you just finished school? he wrote.

Yes, I lied.

How old are you? he asked. I hesitated for a second.

Twelve, I replied.

I expected him to shut down the conversation, but to my horror he replied.

Cool, he typed. Can you send a pic of you in your uniform?

I clung to Ben as tears streamed down my cheeks.

My baby’s father was a paedophile.

I shuddered remembering Adam’s dream of becoming a primary school teacher.

Was that just so he could meet underage girls?

I continued to message Adam and he agreed to meet up with fake me.

What was he intending to do once he got there?

I reported him to the police and handed them my phone.

“You’ll need to keep things as normal as possible with him while we conduct our investigation,” an officer warned and I nodded grimly.

When Adam came to visit the kids, I watched him like a hawk.

A few days later, he was arrested.

Later, Adam Davis, 23, was convicted on two counts of attempting to cause or incite a female child under the age of 13 to engage in sexual activity and one count of making indecent photos of a child.

I went to court where Adam heard for the first time that it was me who trapped him.

He didn’t even look at me.

He was sentenced to three years in prison and has had to sign the sex offenders register for life.

I’d thought Adam was the perfect partner and father.

I’m just so thankful he didn’t prey on our own kids or those in the kindy where he worked.

I’m glad he’s behind bars and will never be able to work with children again.

If you have or you know someone who has been sexually assaulted, you can get help and support.

Head to the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling and information referral service, available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Call them on 1800 737 732

For more real life stories, check out Take 5