Nobody Asks How the Mother Is Doing — Especially When Her Son Is a Sex Offender

No one talks about what happens to a mother when her son goes to prison. She is expected to carry on her previous “free” life- working at her job, being in relationships, caring for other family members. But these are contaminated by now the bucketful of shame she carries, combined with self-blame, and a grief that has no recognition. Fearing judgement, most mothers hide it all from coworkers and friends, even from family. The isolation is profound and slowly debilitating.

I know these women. I am one. My son has been in federal prison for seven years. I am also a psychotherapist and founder of He's Still My Son (stillmyson.org), an online resource for mothers of incarcerated sons. I currently lead three different online support groups for mothers.

And then there are the mothers whose sons were convicted of sex crimes. For them, everything above is true — only worse. The shame is sharper, the silence more complete. Whether their sons are convicted of possessing child pornography or of assaulting a minor, the offenses are so radioactive that mothers are even less willing to share their pain with others, expecting revulsion and rejection.

What I Set Out to Learn

Facebook groups for families of incarcerated people are where most mothers find a safe place to vent and be heard. Earlier this year, I posted questions in multiple groups for mothers of incarcerated sons — including groups specifically for mothers of sons convicted of sex offenses. I asked: Did you know anything before the arrest? Once you learned, have you had to change your understanding of who your son is? How has your health been affected? What do you wish people understood about your situation?

More than twenty mothers responded over three days, from across the country. Their sons ranged from 13 years old at arrest to their mid-forties; sentences ranged from a few years to life. There is, to my knowledge, no published research that has asked these women these questions before. What follows is what I found.

The Presumption of Prior Knowledge

The culture presumes that mothers of sons convicted of sex crimes must have known something was amiss. There must have been signs, but she looked away. And if she didn’t know, she should have known.

Of the mothers who responded, three quarters said they had zero prior knowledge. The news arrived with the FBI raid, the police at the door, the phone call that rewrote everything.

"I for one was clueless," wrote one mother. "I didn't find out until after his arrest and the FBI searching our home."

"Did I know before? No. Never expected this outcome. Never expected this at all," wrote another.

A small number of mothers recalled fragments, but only in retrospect — a behavioral shift in adolescence, unusual intensity around certain online content — but even they hadn't understood what they were seeing. One mother took her adopted son to therapist after therapist throughout his teens; he lied to every one of them. "He said he never wanted me to see him the way he really was."

Not Knowing Is Not Negligence

These mothers' lack of prior knowledge is not a gap in their attention or their love, not an indictment of their parenting. It is the intended outcome of how sexual offending works.

The research on grooming is unambiguous. Grooming is defined in the clinical literature as a process whereby an offender uses deliberate deception with the victim and the people in the victim's environment — including family members — so the crime goes undetected. Concealment is a designed feature of the offense, not an accident. The indicators of grooming are only identifiable after the fact. Mothers couldn't see it because it was built not to be seen.

The statistics on victim disclosure reinforce this. Between 60 and 80 percent of child sexual abuse victims never disclose during childhood, and between 70 and 90 percent of cases are never reported to police. If victims themselves keep it secret for years, the idea that a mother on the outside should have known collapses under its own logic.

Yet several of the mothers I heard from were the ones who alerted law enforcement. One turned her own son in. Another called the police on Christmas afternoon, while making cookies with her granddaughter who had just told her the truth. They did exactly what society demands — and are still blamed for not having known sooner.

The presumption of prior knowledge is not just inaccurate. It is a second injury, delivered to women who are already suffering over the loss of the son they thought they knew and the social supports they desperately need.

What It Costs Them

The physical toll on these mothers is severe and almost entirely invisible. Like all mothers of incarcerated sons, these women described health crises that began specifically at their sons' arrests: high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, chronic pain, sleep disruption, escalating alcohol use. The psychological consequences are equally serious — severe depression and anxiety are nearly universal, PTSD is common, and suicidal ideation is not rare.

Underneath all of it is grief that the culture doesn’t recognize — an ambiguous loss, meaning that their sons are still alive, but they are denied access to them. They also grieve the loss of the person they believed their sons to be. There is no funeral, no ritual, no social permission to mourn for the ambiguous loss. "My son is alive," wrote one mother. "And gone."

And the shame breeds secrecy, which breeds isolation. "In 24 years at my job, I never told anyone," wrote one mother whose son received a life sentence. "The pain was acute — no one to help, no one to talk to." Twenty-four years. Kept entirely secret.

Staying Connected

And yet mothers stay in loving connection with their sons. That is perhaps the least understood part of all of this. Despite the shame, the isolation and the grief, the vast majority of the women I spoke with remain deeply, actively present in their sons' lives — because the alternative, for most of them, is unthinkable and because they still love their sons.

Maternal love is socially expected to be unconditional. And yet, the public finds it hard to accept that maternal love does not dissolve in the face of the most devastating facts. Learning the worst thing a child has ever done is shattering, but it does not demolish her love; it exists alongside both disapproval of her son’s crimes and concern for the victims. Showing up for a son who has done a terrible thing is a statement about the irreducibility of the parent-child bond. They believe, often against the weight of public opinion, that their sons are still human beings who deserve someone in their corner. "He told us that he needs help," wrote one mother. "There's nothing we can do but continue to pray for him and always love him."

Staying connected to an incarcerated son is itself a part-time job. It means navigating phone systems that charge by the minute, sometimes running hundreds of dollars a month. It means sending commissary funds so a son can supplement the inadequate food the prison provides — or buy soap, which most facilities do not supply. It means writing letters that are read by corrections officers before they are delivered. It means driving, sometimes eight or more hours, to visit a facility, then submitting to processing protocols that are, by design, dehumanizing. It means learning an entirely new bureaucratic language: appeals, sentence modifications, supervised release conditions, sex offender registration requirements that will follow their sons — and by extension, these mothers — long after the sentence ends.

"We have regular nightly phone calls," wrote one mother. "To say life has been hell is an understatement." She says it not as a complaint about her son but as a simple description of the terrain she navigates every day to stay in his life.

What These Mothers Want You to Know

I asked each woman what she wished the world understood. The answers were consistent:

1. They did not know. Almost none had any prior knowledge of their sons' behavior before the arrest.

2. They are not responsible for what their sons did. The crime belongs to the person who committed it.

3. Loving their sons does not mean approving of the crimes. These two things coexist.

4. Maternal love is not extinguished regardless of what a child has done. This is not a moral failure.

These mothers are not asking to be absolved or for you to set aside the harm their sons caused. They are not asking you to forgive their sons. They are asking you to see them — women who were deceived, who grieve without permission, and who have been punished long enough for something they did not do. That compassionate willingness to see them costs nothing. And for women who have lost nearly everything, it means everything.

Shame, like mushrooms, only grows in the dark. These mothers have been kept in the dark long enough.

Liz Margolies, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and founder of He's Still My Son (stillmyson.org).