Vigilantism is the act of preventing, investigating, and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority.
William Woodard Self is an English writer, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Self is currently Professor of Modern Thought at Brunel University London, where he teaches psychogeography.
Thomas Anthony Watson, Baron Watson of Wyre Forest is a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019. A member of the House of Lords since 2022, he was the member of Parliament (MP) for West Bromwich East from 2001 to 2019.
Eva Ulrika Jonsson is a Swedish-British television presenter and model. She became known as a TV-am weather presenter, and moved on to present the ITV show Gladiators, and later featured as a team captain on the BBC Two show Shooting Stars.
Brian Deer is a British investigative journalist, best known for inquiries into the drug industry, medicine, and social issues for The Sunday Times. Deer's investigative nonfiction book The Doctor Who Fooled the World, an exposé on disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield and the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, was published in September 2020 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rebekah Mary Brooks is a British media executive and former journalist and newspaper editor. She has been chief executive officer of News UK since 2015. She was previously CEO of News International from 2009 to 2011 and was the youngest editor of a British national newspaper at News of the World, from 2000 to 2003, and the first female editor of The Sun, from 2003 to 2009. Brooks married actor Ross Kemp in 2002. They divorced in 2009 and she married former racehorse trainer and author Charlie Brooks.
Laurence Paul Fox is an English former actor, broadcaster, musician and political activist. A member of the British entertainment industry's Fox family, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and debuted in the film The Hole (2001). His best known role is James Hathaway in the TV drama series Lewis (2006–2015). He has also released a studio album titled Holding Patterns (2016).
Anti-pedophile activism encompasses opposition to pedophiles, pedophile advocacy groups and people who sexually communicate with minors on the Internet. It also includes acts of citizen vigilantism conducted by vigilante groups, some of which have operated alongside government agencies in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Brass Eye is a British satirical television series parodying current affairs news programming. A series of six episodes aired on Channel 4 in 1997, and a further episode in 2001. The series was created and presented by Chris Morris, written by Morris, David Quantick, Peter Baynham, Jane Bussmann, Arthur Mathews, Graham Linehan and Charlie Brooker and directed by Michael Cumming.
"Paedogeddon" is a 2001 special of the British satirical current affairs series Brass Eye. It was written, produced, and presented by Chris Morris, and directed by Tristram Shapeero. It first aired on Channel 4 and S4C on July 26, 2001. The special is a parody news programme on paedophilia. It covers farcical stories about paedophiles and sexual crimes towards children. It includes unsuspecting celebrities and politicians duped into advocating spoof child safety campaigns.
Sidney Charles Cooke is an English convicted child molester, murderer and suspected serial killer and serial rapist serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a paedophile ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself.
Channel 5 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paramount Global's UK and Australia division. It was launched in 1997 to provide a fifth national terrestrial channel in the United Kingdom.
Nick Paton Walsh is a British journalist who is CNN's International Security Editor. He has been CNN's Kabul Correspondent, an Asia and foreign affairs correspondent for the UK's Channel 4 News, and Moscow correspondent for The Guardian newspaper.
Charles Thomson is a British investigative journalist. He has written for media outlets including The Sun, The Mirror, The Guardian, Mojo, Wax Poetics and the Huffington Post. From 2011 to 2019, he worked at Yellow Advertiser. He is best known for his investigation into the cover up of a historic pedophile ring, for which he won multiple journalism awards.
Mark Alan Williams-Thomas is an English investigative journalist, sexual abuse victim advocate, and former police officer. He is a regular reporter on This Morning and Channel 4 News, as well as the ITV series Exposure and the ITV and Netflix crime series The Investigator: A British Crime Story.
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
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.
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.
Mobeen Azhar is a British journalist, radio and television presenter and filmmaker. He produces investigative reports and films for the BBC exploring themes related to politics, true crime, extremism, counter terrorism and sexuality. He has presented and produced international documentaries for BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three.
"Name and shame" was a 2000 anti-pedophile public shaming campaign that resulted in several lynch-mob and firebomb attacks in England and Scotland, most having been directed at people wrongfully alleged to be pedophiles or child sex offenders.
