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Published 09:33 29 Jun 2026 GMT
A woman who horrified people around her when she spoke out about her fears that she was a pedophile discovered that her intrusive thoughts were a form of OCD.
Dana Da Silva first had what she described as a “sticky thought” when she was bathing a friend’s young child. Although she had no intention to harm the child, she began to question whether she was capable of pedophilic acts, as well as murder or incest.
It was only after researching what her intrusive thoughts could mean that Da Silva discovered she could have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Then, while deep diving into what her unwanted thoughts could mean, she found out about Pedophilia-Themed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (POCD), which makes people have unwanted thoughts about harming or being attracted to children.
In a recent interview with The Sun, Da Silva described her symptoms, saying, “They appeared from nowhere. I never harmed anyone, but was terrified I would. I also feared being a murderer and incestuous. I ruminated on those possibilities, searching for answers. I wanted some confirmation whether the thoughts were real or not.”
Despite believing that her thoughts were a serious mental health condition, the Australian woman did not seek a diagnosis and remained silent for years for fear of being judged.
The 38-year-old found comfort in a podcast in which the host was talking about OCD, and it encouraged her to seek an official diagnosis.
Da Silva said, “I understood OCD to be repetitive physical rituals related to hygiene or organisation. But that’s a stereotype. Mental health misconceptions, resulting from a lack of awareness and education, are the reason I went so long without diagnosis and treatment.”
The mom-of-two revealed all the goriest details about her condition in a memoir that left her loved ones “shocked”.
Explaining why she wrote the detailed memoir, Da Silva said, “Everyone has intrusive thoughts. People standing on train station platforms sometimes think ‘oh I could push that person next to me’ but for most people those thoughts don’t linger.
“But for people with OCD they can and do. That’s why I call them sticky thoughts.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1.2 percent of the US population is living with OCD.
Da Silva also explained, “I learned that everyone in the world has intrusive thoughts to some degree, but someone with OCD gives power to those thoughts. OCD types fixate on them, worry about their significance, become ashamed of them. OCD mostly involves irrational anxieties. For example, ‘what if this violent thought means I’ll kill someone?’
“We focused on my compulsions, which were mostly mental – arguing with the thoughts, seeking reassurance, searching for answers.
“Of course, therein lies one of the most dangerous misconceptions regarding OCD, that compulsions are always physical, external behaviours, when in actuality they can be mental, internal and hidden from the world.”
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Published 15:57 09 Jun 2026 GMT
A woman who became convinced she was a pedophile after a single intrusive thought has revealed how she was eventually diagnosed with a little-known form of OCD.
Molly Lambert, 22, appeared on ITV's This Morning on Monday (June 8), where she opened up about being diagnosed with a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as P-OCD.
The condition causes sufferers to experience intrusive thoughts, images, fears, and doubts related to minors, often leaving them overwhelmed by guilt, fear, and anxiety despite having no desire to act on those thoughts.
For Molly, this all began when she was around 14 or 15 years old and preparing to go on vacation.
She recalled noticing a young girl wearing what she considered to be an inappropriate outfit for her age, but instead of dismissing the observation, she became fixated on why she had thought it in the first place.
That passing thought soon developed into an all-consuming fear that something was wrong with her.
Although she managed to move on from the incident, the intrusive thoughts resurfaced the following year while she was revising for exams.
"From that moment, my life was forever different," she said in a previous appearance on the Tea At Four podcast.
"From that desk day, I was just a different person - obviously everyone around me didn’t know what was happening and just thought I was stressed about my exams. Every second of every day I was just thinking about how much of an awful person I was," she added.
Molly's thoughts became increasingly severe, leading her to believe she was a danger to children and even those closest to her.
Looking back, she says she had no idea OCD could manifest in such a way.
"Obviously, when I first experienced it at 14, 15, I had no idea that OCD looked like this and could be anything that what I was experiencing," she said.
The 22-year-old knew she was experiencing thoughts about "harming people and being a pedophile," but believed that admitting them would get her into serious trouble.
"I couldn't eat. I lost so much weight. I wasn't sleeping. I was so terrified to be alone because obviously when you're alone, you know, the thoughts get worse," she explained. "My parents were like, 'Why is she always with us all the time?'
"I was quite an independent person before, and I was, you know, sitting in their bed all the time and just like terrified. They thought I was nervous about my exams. That was that was the least of my worries, you know."
She feared that if she told anyone what was happening, she could be arrested.
Molly continued to keep her fears hidden from those closest to her.
"I mean, my parents are amazing and like they've always been very, like, emotionally intelligent and quite an open household. And I thought I could never tell them that I'm obsessing about being a pedophile," she said.
Eventually, she reached the breaking point and opened up to them on Christmas Eve.
"They were amazing," she said, adding that her parents did not initially understand what she was describing, but quickly helped her find professional support.
"Obviously, they didn't know what I was talking about. I was quite distressed and um, they got me therapy pretty quickly," she said.
Although she was reluctant to seek help, therapy eventually led to the diagnosis she had been desperately searching for.
Molly now uses her platform to speak openly about her experiences in the hope of raising awareness and helping others who may be suffering in silence.
Published 13:45 09 Apr 2026 GMT
A woman who was diagnosed with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) in adulthood revealed the terrifying thoughts that consumed her brain, convincing her that she could be a danger to children.
Molly Lambert, 22, was diagnosed with OCD last year but has been battling intrusive thoughts since childhood, which took an increasingly dark turn in her teenage years.
Appearing on the Tea At Four podcast, Molly explained: "When I was younger, I would always obsess over events and social stuff, like ‘how do I act in that?’ and go over conversations.
"I was just a really anxious little bean when I was younger - which, looking back, is sad because it was obviously OCD. I was really obsessing over Madeleine McCann and if that could happen to me, and what would happen if someone came into my house.
"I had night terrors - all the signs were there at a very young age but that was put down to child anxiety and whatever."
It wasn't until she was around 14 or 15 years old that things began to worsen after she saw a small child in a crop top and shorts at an airport and thought it was a "weird outfit", which then made her worry why she'd even thought the clothing was inappropriate.
Her whole vacation was then spent obsessing over why that thought had entered her head and whether she was safe to be around other children at the pool or beach.
Somehow, she managed to put that incident out of her mind eventually, but found that stress events and triggers could make her OCD flare up even more.
The following year, while sat at her desk revising for her exams, she remebered the thought from the summer before, adding: "From that moment, my life was forever different.
“From that desk day, I was just a different person - obviously everyone around me didn’t know what was happening and just thought I was stressed about my exams. Every second of every day I was just thinking about how much of an awful person I was."
These intrusive thoughts began to spiral and make her worry that she was a pedophile, a danger to her family and friends, and even fear that she could become attracted to her family or even her dog - despite having a phobia of dogs.
"Now I’m out of it, it’s so irrational, but all these themes are irrational. If you can understand OCD from a perspective of someone wiping the side five times, because that’s irrational, right?", she explained.
"But so is me thinking I was a paedophile when I was 15 - I obviously wasn’t a paedophile, it was my brain.
"OCD is a neurodivergence so the way you process information is different, so it gets stuck and you have a loop. You just can’t forget something."
She revealed that she didn't initially think she had OCD as "I’m not clean, I’m not organized, I’m quite chaotic," she admitted.
"So I suffered for years without knowing about it, so I did not fit into [the stereotype]. But OCD is obsessive and intrusive unwanted thoughts. There are different themes within that, so harm, sexual, moral, the health and contamination - what you guys all know.
"Basically anything that you can become anxious about is a certain theme. Mine was the pedophilic, sexual, and harm themes because they scared me the most so I was attached to them the most."
She began to realize she had OCD after stumbling across a TikTok video of someone else who had similar intrusive thoughts without the stereotypical 'cleaning' symptoms many associate with OCD.
Molly finally opened up to her parents after having a few drinks one Christmas Eve, and they helped her to get therapy and finally a diagnosis.
While many people fear being labeled, Molly found it helped her compartmentalize her condition and separate it from herself, by having a medically-diagnosed reason for the thoughts that were popping into her head uninvited.
She found that the intrusive thoughts manifest around a person's biggest fears - so the thing she would least want to be is what her brain was convincing her she was capable of.
Molly revealed: "When I was growing up it was my fears about the world and danger and the things I could be put in, and then it flipped to ‘what if I am the danger?’ So I was just covering every area, basically.
"And I think we can all agree that pedophiles are the worst people in society, so my biggest fear was being that. That’s the top [worst] thing you can be, and it was almost like my thoughts of being a murderer were kind of easy compared to the pedophile ones because that’s the worst.
"The pedophile one was so distressing because why have I even had a thought that I could be that.”
The intrusive thoughts have had a lasting impact on her reluctance towards relationships, explaining: "When I was 15 - obviously that’s the kind of time you’re having crushes and figuring out your sexuality and having firsts, and I was thinking I was a pedophile so it kind of weirdly removed all of that.
"I should have been having crushes on George and Henry, but I was like ‘aghhh’. I’m joking about it but obviously it’s awful, and it kind of removed all of my nice thoughts about intimacy, sex, and romance from my mind entirely like ‘that’s not for me - I’m not allowed to do that’."
Since then, Molly has tried various types of talking therapy and even hypnosis, the latter of which she did not find very helpful for her OCD, and can manage the condition better.
She chose to speak openly about her experiences on her own platform to raise awareness of the condition and to reassure others that they are not alone if they are having obsessive and intrusive thoughts.
Check out the full episode with Molly Lambert and other episodes of Tea At Four on YouTube and Spotify now.
Published 16:18 01 Nov 2024 GMT
Published 12:10 18 Jan 2026 GMT
A woman has bravely shared the shocking moment she discovered her ex-husband was a pedophile, and the signs she now wishes she'd noticed earlier.
Lynsey Crombie, a TV personality and social media influencer, first rose to fame on the British reality show Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners.
However, her personal life took a dark turn when she learned that the father of her two children had a criminal past.
Crombie, who was 28 weeks pregnant with twin daughters at the time, found out just months before her ex-husband's arrest that he was a pedophile.
Appearing on This Morning in 2021, she described the moment she learned the truth as "unbelievable" and "completely shocking."
"I had no idea," she said. "I had gone back to visit my parents for a few days, and I just thought, 'What’s gone on while I was away?’”
At the time, Crombie was unaware of the full details of her ex-husband's crimes, but it was revealed that he was a "schedule one sex offender," meaning he had been convicted of offenses against a child.
What followed was an overwhelming emotional reaction. Crombie recounted grabbing bleach to clean her home, including herself, in an attempt to rid herself of any trace of him.
“I remember pouring it all over the work surfaces, and over my own hands and arms, and I scrubbed. I scrubbed everything - myself included - with a scourer," she recalled, per Daily Mail. "I remember thinking that this man had touched me physically and I want all his germs to go."
Looking back, Crombie believes there were several red flags that she overlooked during their relationship.
She explained how her ex-husband would often stay up late, often retreating to his office and pulling the plug out of the wall when she entered the room.
"Rather than just closing the laptop down or letting me see the screen, he’d actually pull the plug out of the wall," Crombie shared in a 2021 interview on the Life, Interrupted podcast.
"And it’s only when I look back – and I spotted this three or four times in the relationship – I think ‘what was he doing on the computer to actually physically pull it out of the wall?’” she added.
Crombie’s gut instinct told her to dismiss these odd behaviors at the time, but they now stand out as clear warning signs.
The psychological toll of learning about her husband's crimes left Crombie struggling to cope, but amidst the chaos, her children became her anchor.
After learning the truth, Crombie went into premature labor just five days later and gave birth to her twin daughters, Mollie and Olivia, who weighed under 3lbs at birth.
While initially struggling with the idea of having children with her abusive ex-husband, she now credits her daughters with saving her.
“Thank goodness that when my girls arrived, I looked at them and felt nothing but love. They actually saved me because I had to rebuild my life for them. I don’t think I’d be here without them,” she said.
Crombie has since moved on from the trauma of her past and found happiness with her second husband, Rob. The couple shares a teenage son, and the TV personality revealed that her daughters consider Rob to be their dad.
As for her ex, whom she refers to as "The Freak," Crombie says he has been incarcerated multiple times, most recently in 2022. Police had discovered disturbing content on his computer, involving children and animals, The Mirror reported.
She has since severed ties with his family, and her children will grow up without any connection to their father's relatives.
Published 09:58 10 Aug 2018 GMT
Welcoming a new partner into your family home and introducing them to your children must be a nerve-wracking and scary part of being a single parent. However, while the majority of these meetings will pass by with little-to-no incident, one woman had the scare of her life after introducing her new partner to her kids.
LA Times reporter Libby Hill took to her Twitter account to share a post from a Reddit user, in which they were extremely anxious about the intention of their new partner. In the post, the woman said that she was worried her boyfriend was plotting to "do something terrible" to [her] family. Here's what it said:
"I’ve raised my 7 year old son as a single mother. But last year, I started dating and met my current boyfriend. He’s perfect and is great with kids and we’ve even been flirting with the possibility of marriage recently."
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/midwestspitfire/status/1026476653382225923]]
All sounds good, right? Well, it all seemed a little too perfect and the woman in question quickly realised something freaky was going on.
"That was until last week, I discovered some disturbing writing by his desk. I don’t know what it means and I’m getting really paranoid.
"I stole it from his desk. It says: 'Kill the KID d4 Nf6 g6 Nc3 Bg7 e4 d6 Nf3 0-0 Be2 e5' I have no idea what these numbers/letters mean and I’m really worried about the title that says “Kill the KID”.
"I’ve got a really overactive imagination, but I’m wondering if those numbers/letters are co-ordinates of previous children he’s killed or something sick like that. I don’t know. Please just tell me I’m paranoid.
"I really like him and don’t know why he would write this. tl;dr boyfriend has weird writing about killing what I assume is my kid."
However, while you may think that the Redditor's worries were understandable, it turns out the drams was a complete anti-climax and her boyfriend was, in fact, a massive nerd.
A wise Redditor responded to the post and explained what the suspicious note means:
"Kill the KID is a chess book. KID stands for the King’s Indian Defense. The “co-ordinates” are chess notation. The dude isn’t planning on killing your kids lmao”
Given the comedic nature of Hill's tweet, the story quickly went viral, with plenty of people laughing at the punchline. However, one person struggled to believe that the story was real.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/GregShahade/status/1026586035243773952]]
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1027388870458007553]]
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/DBanksy/status/1026779355811389440]]
And, as the below tweeter pointed out, "playing chess" may be a cover-up for something else.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Hasufin/status/1026895228618174464]]
"Miss, I'm sorry to tell you. Your boyfriend... "plays chess". Based on the evidence we've found, he's a serious "chess player". This isn't a casual thing. We don't know for sure, but odds are he meets with other "players" in a "chess club" where they seek to "checkmate.""
While the woman's fears turned out to have no substance to them, she did find out something else about her partner: he is a nerd.
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