“Paedophile hunters”

The ones doing it properly will go under the radar because they aren’t plastering themselves over social media. No issue with that if they are genuinely helping and not getting in the way of actual police work. The Facebook glory hunters are scum of the earth.

Oh yes that’s exactly what they are doing. They’re definitely not hindering police through entrapment or endangering families or getting it wrong or in some cases being pedos themselves.

I bet you’re the first one on their posts commenting ‘thanx sooooo much huns you’re doin a gr8 job’.

@OneFineDay13 and @shoelady2 - I suspect that you are both right, in some instances, and both wrong in others. Some of these paedophile hunters will be doing a serious, sensible, well thought out job, working with the police, and bearing in mind the families of their targets, and others will be thuggish glory seekers who just want a good video to put on social media to garner ‘likes’ and followers - and probably every degree in between.

@shoelady2 knuckle dragging idiot 🤣 can assure you I am nothing of the sort. These 'idiots' you refer to are catching the beasts because the police can't be bothered!! they do indeed hand over information and have arrests. Again educate yourself

Sorry but you sound like one of the knuckle headed idiots who support these twats and if anyone needs educating it’s you. They are glory hunters, not pedo hunters. They are anything but respectful and blasting the address and identity of innocent family members all over Facebook is totally irresponsible and dangerous.

If they are that dedicated to the cause why can’t they just hand over evidence to the police? Oh yeah cos then they wouldn’t get all the praise and Facebook likes.

Oh and they ‘give up their time’ because they clearly don’t have jobs or anything else better to do. There have been countless cases (some listed here) of times when they’ve got it wrong.

Are you a pdf file? Your comments are insane. The paedo hunters I have seen are respectful to whoever is in the house especially if it involves children or other family members being there. They are giving up there free time to get these beasts. Educate yourself

@ThejoyofNC - wondering this too. quite worrying

I think you have this the wrong way round, @Totallytoti - and it was the child suggesting the sleepover and the young person/targetsuggesting the movie.

”The “child” had asked about a sleepover and the young person had suggested the cinema and talked about films to see. The hunters actually used this against him - the fact it was a child’s film he suggested - as though he was grooming the “child” when it was obvious to see that actually this young person probably really did want ti see this film as they were clearly emotionally and mentally younger.”

Having special needs or autism shouldn't excuse an adult from the consequences of their behaviour. Generally these "paedophile hunters" confront the person with evidence that is hard to deny. And if they confront someone who is totally innocent then they can be prosecuted themselves.

I've got to be honest; of all of the predator hunter videos I've seen, not all have been professional (as in how ove described the shaming videos and forcing the predators to dress up and say silly things) but all of them approached the predators with concrete evidence with chat logs that were not ambiguous that couldn't be argued with: as in the conversation between them and the child was undoubtedly sexual at least most of the time.
Of course one sexual comment is bad enough, but some predators claimed to be drunk or otherwise influenced by disability or they said that their phone had been stolen or taken by their friend. With that in mind, when that was blamed the hunters were able to prove that mostly with the content and consistency of the messages.
However; I have never myself seen a hunt where there was not enough evidence, but that's not to say it doesn't exist.
I would be surprised, personally of that was true because they would be made vulnerable to prosecution or arrest etc. by the police due to harassment.

I feel the same.

op your example of the younger child wanting to see a movie and the ND person wanting a sleepover, does that seem fine to you?
Why suggest a sleepover after not even meeting the child? That is creepy as hell and there’s no excuse about being ND.

The "hunters" recently snagged one of our school teachers, by pretending to be a 14 year old girl. I was quite glad about that to be honest.

Thank you so much, I had been looking for charities but kept hitting a wall. His school have been amazing with him, he struggles socially with his autism anyway and is always feeling embarrassed of himself even just for nothing literally just being who he is so it's extra difficult but I had to tell him before someone else told him because if he got wind of that in school I don't know how he'd have reacted. We got the call from social services the day after the arrest to inform us and when I said contact was minimum and he absolutely won't be seeing his family either as I don't trust them they offered early help which we have said yes to and the counselling in place amongst other things and for my son I can tell him a million times how it's not his fault and doesn't reflect who he is it doesn't register, but seeing professionals for example the early help worker in her lanyard he checked her ID and anything she says is gospel and I'm so glad he trusts her. I keep telling hom it's more common than we think and these people don't get locked up we walk past some, shop in the same shops as them, public transport and they don't have a sign above their head it will be mostly forgotten about soon and he seems to be coming around a bit now. Thank you again x

I'm so sorry you went through this. This is exactly why I despise most of these groups. They give zero thought to the entirely innocent people dragged into this. I no longer work in a relevant area, but there's an organisation called Stop It Now which supports family members and can offer advise (they have a phone line I think, or used to) and signpost you towards things like counselling. Also if your son is in school do reach out to them - they will almost certainly be very very professional. If it's any 'consolation', these offences are so much more common than anyone realises. And the vast majority of people will realise it has nothing to do with you or your son. The handful who don't are just halfwits frankly.

I think there's something weird about the people who set these traps. Almost the same way that you have men who are closeted homosexuals in denial seeking out and attacking other gay men, what normal person pretends to be a child to draw someone into conversations like that?

However saying that, I think it's important to be careful not to assume that because someone is vulnerable in other ways that it means that they cannot be a predator or unsafe around children. I have worked with people with ASN for over 20 years in ASN schools and other specialised settings. I have worked with people who we have had to actively keep away from children due to predatory behaviour (there was one extreme example that comes to mind but I won't go into). There were also instances of sexually mature adults with learning difficulties. who befriended children but then tried to engage them in inappropriate or sexual activity. I don't believe that these adults were predators in the usual sense but their bodies were more advanced than their mind (for want of a better way of putting it) and they would have sexual urges they would want to explore, but as their 'friends' were younger than them and they didn't understand the boundaries, they behaved inappropriately with them.
This was a handful of cases out of the thousands of people with additional support needs that I've worked with over the years, but I think it's important that we don't just assume that because someone is vulnerable that their intentions will only ever be innocent and non-sexual.

I agree.

That's not what I said ,there are place s where autistic people can meet similarly aged,peers,similar cognitive abilities there is no reason for them to have a relationship with anyone undersge.

Bloody hell, that’s terrible! The ones I’ve watched do seem to really do their homework on their subjects to be fair to them, I’ll give them that!

I have no idea what happened and how the mistake was made, the video I saw was posted on facebook as just a short clip of him claiming to be a child themselves, them arguing back, and him presenting some proof of his age. BIL watches a lot of these stings and says he’s seen it happen a few times where the “pedophile” ends up being underage themselves, it seems some of them don’t find out any background information once finding their target, they lay the bait and see who bites then just run with that.

Yes, I get that if they’re actively seeking out kids to talk sexually with then obviously they would very likely understand what they were doing, but if they are mentally younger then it’s quite possible they have similar online hobbies to teenagers and just happen to make ‘’friends’’ that way which could then turn sexual down the line. I can see how those sorts of things can happen.

When I was about 13 I used to play a game where I met a 19 year old who was mentally around the same age. It never got sexual but it might have had I chatted to him long enough!

But surely they would have asked this lad during the chat how old he was? I mean, I know paedophiles often lie about their age to snare kids, but surely if the lad was genuinely 14 it would have been pretty easy for the decoys to corroborate? I’ve never seen anyone they catch actually being a minor themselves so that’s a new one on me.

Do you have evidence of that? From where? Can you give statistics?

I saw one a few weeks ago where they were confronting this lad about planning to meet a 15 year old (their fake account) and the lad was only 14 himself! Told me everything I needed to know about those videos. Leave it to the police, if you have something they need to know about then tell them but don’t take it into your own hands and risk ruining the whole case.