Anti-pedophile activism encompasses opposition to pedophiles, pedophile advocacy groups, child pornography, and child sexual abuse.
Anti-pedophile activism encompasses opposition to pedophiles, pedophile advocacy groups, child pornography, and child sexual abuse.
Organized social activism against child sexual molesters occurred in the 18th century, by the Society for the Reformation of Manners. [1]
The National Vigilance Association was a British society established in August 1885 for the enforcement and improvement of the laws for the repression of criminal vice and public immorality, in response to articles exposing child prostitution published by W. T. Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette .
In the Netherlands, the pedophile activist group Vereniging Martijn has been protested against by the far right Nationale Alliantie. [2] In the UK, the far right National Front party was protesting in front of Paedophile Information Exchange conferences in the 1970s [3] and against the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal in 2014, [4] alongside EDL and BNP. [5] There have been incidents in which vigilantism intended to be against pedophiles has been mistakenly directed against the wrong person, including an incident where a man was misidentified as a pedophile because he was wearing a neck brace similar to the one a sex offender was wearing when pictured in a newspaper. [6] [7]
A French group [8] who successfully sued Gabriel Matzneff in 2020. [9]
Perverted-Justice was an anti-pedophilia, anti-hebephilia, and anti-statutory rape organization with the stated mission to expose and convict adults who solicit and groom minors on the Internet. Perverted Justice had multiple issues with being able to supply chat log evidence in a manner that passes legal scrutiny. [10] [11] [12]
Jewish Community Watch, a global New York City-based organization with an office in Israel, focusing on prevention of child sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community, received mixed support over their posting the names of suspected pedophiles on their main website. The column titled the "Wall of Shame" listed the names of individuals suspected of abuse, their photos and testimonies from alleged victims. [13]
Letzgo Hunting is an Internet-based anti-paedophilia vigilante group based in Barwell, Leicestershire, England. A man committed suicide days after being accused and "named and shamed" of being a paedophile by the group. [14]
Another initiative, Predator Hunter, headed by Wendell Kreuth, aims to track down and expose the pornography-related activities of alleged 'sexual predators', as disclosed in his interview with Minnesota Public Radio. [15] [16] The activities of Predator Hunter in the previous years garnered more attention, particularly the actions of Bradley Willman, whose anti-pedophile activism is described below:
Between 1997 and 2001, Brad Willman was known as Omni-Potent, an Internet vigilante who would track pedophiles by spending 16-plus hours a day hacking into people's computers from his parents’ house in Langley, a suburban community just outside Vancouver. Ultimately, he was responsible for the arrests of about 40 pedophiles across Canada and the U.S. Willman's successful, albeit unpaid and short-lived venture as "Citizen Tipster," as he was known by police, is now over. But his activities have sparked intense debate over the legality of his tactics. [17] [18]
He would verify where suspects were from, and send the information on to Predator-Hunter, an online pedophile watchdog group that would, in turn, send it to other sources to be verified before passing it on to police. "Parents in a number of countries, I think, owe OmniPotent a debt of gratitude for what he did," says Wendell Krueth, president of Predator-Hunter. The end justifying the means is a concept Predator-Hunter supports. "We don't tell people to go hack, but we consider whatever information we get worthy in taking down pedophiles," Krueth says. [19]
Silentlambs and LambsRoar are both web-based anti-pedophile groups that seek to protect children through education, to provide legal assistance, and to provide assistance to victims [survivors] who have been molested as children and silenced from speaking out or seeking proper assistance as directed by religious authorities. To date, most emphasis has been on abuse within the Jehovah's Witness community. [20]
In several instances, members of 4chan and Anonymous have been involved in drawing attention to or gathering evidence regarding suspected pedophiles on the Internet. Members of Anonymous were identified as responsible for the arrest of suspected pedophile Chris Forcand. They contacted the police after some members were "propositioned" by Forcand with "disgusting photos of himself". [21] Anonymous were described as "cyber-vigilantes who seek to out anyone who presents with a sexual interest in children". [22] [23]
Anonymous, a hacktivist group, claimed to intrude on the various servers hosting child pornography resources and pull a various sensitive information—emails, forums' personal messages, credit card details, webserver logs etc. -- on the users of such websites. [24]
Creep Catchers refers to non-affiliated individuals and groups which operate in 15 cities across Canada, posing as children in chat rooms to sting, record and shame adults who try to meet them for sex. [25] POP Squad ("POP" standing for "Prey on Predators"), a Connecticut-based group, is one of several similar online groups operating in the United States. [26] [27]
Wanted Pedo is the main French association struggling against paedophile networks. Their website have been suspended by justice [28] for exposing paedophile websites.
Predator Poachers, a Houston-based vigilante group, claimed that as of 2022 its activity had led to arrests in 27 U.S. states. [29] The group was responsible for exposing comedian Bryant Moreland, more commonly known by his online alias EDP445, [30] for allegedly talking to one of their decoys in 2021. The group was permanently banned from YouTube after the event due to policy violations. [30]
One group, Dads Against Predators [also known as DAP Inc or D.A.P] was founded in Ohio and appears to be active in a number of states, utilizing similar tactics to other groups in running 'sting operations' on online dating and social networking sites or applications. They have been criticized by law enforcement on several occasions [31] for the tactics used in their sting operations. DAP tends to be more aggressive when confronting alleged predators, berating them in public, causing a scene, and at times even fighting with or physically restraining the individuals they confront, though usually any physical contact is started first by the alleged predator. They have been widely criticized as utilizing unethical or even dangerous methods, and do not always involve law enforcement in their stings as is usually done by other groups. In one particularly chaotic confrontation, one of the members of Dads Against Predators was shot inside a Target store located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. [32] According to the man alleged to have fired a round, three men confronted him inside of the store and he claims they began to assault him, during this fight he fired a single shot which struck Jay C. Carnicom of Fremont, Ohio before being disarmed by another member of the group. The bullet struck Carnicom in the leg, though apparently the wound was not fatal or particularly serious as Carnicom did not seek medical care until a day later. The three men who carried out this confrontation have had arrest warrants issued for them in North Carolina in connection to the fight. [33] Dads Against Predators have been trespassed from several retail chains as a result of their disruptive, boisterous and frequently violent confrontations. Dads Against Predators has also been accused of playing a role in at least three suicide deaths carried out by alleged predators who were confronted by D.A.P shortly before their deaths. [34] They have also been banned from YouTube, and upload their confrontations on alternative streaming platforms such as Rumble or BitChute.
A Michigan man from Pontiac named Robert Wayne Lee, 40, known under the alias 'Boopac Shakur' online, was shot and killed inside of a restaurant in Oakland County during a confrontation which started as the result of an online predator 'sting' operation. [35] Allegedly, when Lee confronted two men [17 and 18 years old] inside the restaurant, one of the men produced a knife and the other pulled a handgun after Lee struck one of the men. After the confrontation became physical, Lee was shot several times by the younger man and was transported to the hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries. Lee left behind two daughters and a son, whom he claimed inspired him to participate in his vigilante activities. Lee was well-known online for his aggressive vigilantism, frequently physically assaulting alleged predators, vandalizing their property or slashing tires on their vehicles so they could not leave the area. Funds were raised via GoFundMe to pay for his funeral costs. [36] The two men involved in the fatal fight and shooting were later tracked down and arrested. [37]
A representative of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Exploited Child Unit has stated that the NCMEC does not condone investigations by citizens because according to the NCMEC, those actions do not deter predators and can push the predators to move to other locations and become more effective at hiding their identities. [38] The Internet safety organization CyberAngels, an offshoot of the Guardian Angels echoes similar concerns. [38] Police officials in the past have been opposed to working with such groups, or have done so only reluctantly. [39]
A paper from the University of East Anglia states that pedophile hunters might "have the effect of unduly diverting criminal justice resources from sex offenders who pose a considerable risk to the public towards low-risk offenders, the so-called ‘low-hanging fruit'", and that "Paedophile-hunting groups can circumvent procedural safeguards and regulations that exist to moderate state power and protect the human rights of those subject to a criminal process." [40]
Perverted Justice Foundation, Inc., more commonly known as Perverted-Justice, was an American organization based in California and Oregon which investigated, identified, and publicized the conduct of adults who have used chat rooms and other social media in order to solicit online sexual conversations and in-person meetings with minors. Their website serves as an archive of collected data on these investigations, which they make available in order to assist law enforcement and the public in understanding the behavior and child grooming techniques of online hebephiles.
Operation Cathedral was a police operation that broke up a major international child pornography ring called The Wonderland Club operating over the Internet. It was led by the British National Crime Squad in cooperation with 1,500 officers from 13 other police forces around the world, who simultaneously arrested 104 suspects in 13 countries on 2 September 1998. The case received widespread international attention due to the highly organised nature of the ring, leading to public concerns of online child sexual abuse and legislative changes in the UK.
Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. People with the disorder are often referred to as pedophiles.
Christopher Paul Neil, also known as Mr. Swirl, Swirl Face, or Vico, is a Canadian child molester. He was the subject of a highly publicized Interpol investigation of the sexual abuse of at least 12 young boys in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, primarily owing to the Internet release of pornographic images depicting the abuse. He was arrested by Thai police in October 2007.
To Catch a Predator is an American reality television series in the television news magazine program Dateline NBC featuring confrontations with host Chris Hansen, partly filmed with a hidden camera, of adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with a minor and typically being arrested as a result. The minors are adults impersonating underage persons in online chats.
Dennis Raymond Ferguson was an Australian sex offender convicted of child sexual abuse. In 1988, he kidnapped and sexually abused three children, and was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. Ferguson was forced by public hostility and news media attention to relocate his residence on numerous occasions, from various locations in New South Wales and Queensland.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale is an Australian laicised Catholic priest and sex offender. He was convicted between 1993 and 2017 of a large number of child sexual abuse and indecent assault charges against 65 children aged as young as four years. The offences occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s while Ridsdale worked as a school chaplain at St Alipius Primary School, a boys' boarding school in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat.
The Elm Guest House was a hotel in Rocks Lane, near Barnes Common in southwest London. In a list produced by convicted fraudster Chris Fay, several prominent British men were alleged to have engaged in sexual abuse and child grooming at the Guest House in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Labour MP Tom Watson, having heard testimony from Carl Beech, suggested in an October 2012 statement to the House of Commons that a paedophile network which had existed at this time may have brought children to parties at the private residence.
Pedophile advocacy groups are organizations that advocate for the abolishment or lowering of the age of consent and the normalization of adult sexual relations with children. Such groups have existed dating back to 1962 in multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands.
Child sexual abuse is a matter of concern in Australia, and is the subject of investigation and prosecution under the law, and of academic study into the prevalence, causes and social implications.
Sweetie was a computer animated child that was created by children's rights organization Terre des hommes as a sting operation. It was used to lure online sexual predators into providing personally-identifiable information, so that this information could then be reported to law enforcement agencies.
The Jewish Community Watch is a global Jewish organization dedicated to the prevention of child sexual abuse (CSA) within the Orthodox Jewish community. Originally based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the organization has been noted for its controversial wall of shame where it publicizing the names of people it considers suspected abusers by posting their names and alleged activities on the organization's website. The organization ceased day-to-day operations in 2014. JCW restarted daily operations several months later, restructuring with a new board of directors as well as an advisory board. Jewish Community Watch focuses on abuse prevention through education and awareness as well as locating individuals thought to have abused children and warning the local community of their presence. The organization's founders are two residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Meyer Seewald, and his brother Schneur Seewald.
Dark Justice were a vigilante group set up to catch paedophiles based in Newcastle upon Tyne operated by two men using the pseudonyms Scott and Callum (1994–2021). Neither were police officers, although their tactics were similar to those sometimes used by police. The duo posed online as children, normally between the ages of 11 and 15, in order to catch online child groomers. When they met a child groomer in real life, the members of Dark Justice wore bulletproof vests. Their evidence was used in court, resulting in convictions against over 115 online groomers including Roger Lee, and Barry Scott. In May 2018, the Evening Chronicle reported that Dark Justice have secured over 150 arrests with over 40 of those being jailed.
Peter Gerard Scully is an Australian sex offender and murderer imprisoned for life in the Philippines after being convicted of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault of children. Scully was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2018. In November 2022, he received a second conviction and was sentenced to an additional 129 years in prison.
Creep Catchers are non-affiliated individuals and groups who attempt to prevent child sexual abuse by posing as minors, using chat rooms and dating sites to lure adults willing to meet the minor for sex, and then exposing the adult by publicly posting videos of the ensuing confrontation. Creep Catchers offer the opportunity to make a public statement before posting the video and chat logs to a central website and various social media. Cooperative suspects are typically lectured to in relative privacy, while belligerents or those with particularly explicit conversations are loudly shamed and profanely ridiculed. Public and official reactions to groups of Creep Catchers have been mixed, with some supporting the intent of preventing abuse and others noting dangers of vigilantism by untrained public. In 2017, Vice.com produced Age of Consent, a full-length documentary film following Toronto resident Justin Payne, an independent Creep Catcher unaffiliated with other groups of the movement.
North West Hebephile Hunters are a group based in the north of England who attempt to prevent child grooming or child sexual abuse by confronting those they suspect of doing so. Their main method is luring adults they have previously communicated with online whilst posing as minors. In the aftermath they make a live broadcast of their interaction with alleged culprits whilst airing transcripts of previous sexually explicit communications and / or involve law enforcement.
Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.
Bill Conradt, a local assistant district attorney in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, committed suicide on November 5, 2006, when Texas police served him with search and arrest warrants stemming from a Dateline NBC – Perverted-Justice online sting of men soliciting sex with children.
Jason Christian Vukovich is an Alaskan who targeted three pedophiles from the National Sex Offender List in June 2016 to beat and rob them. He is known as the "Alaskan Avenger" for targeting sex offenders by becoming a pedophile hunter.
A sex sting is a type of sting operation where a person, usually a law enforcement officer, purports to be a child or teenager on the internet in order to engage in sexually explicit activities with an adult. The evidence of the interactions between the two parties is then collected by the undercover agent and used in criminal prosecutions.
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