To think that the paedophile witch hunts have to stop.

[Notss]

This isn’t really a aibu; more of a rant - so sorry in advance, but I’m scared.

I posted on another thread a while ago about my brother. He’s an admin on our village Facebook page; and a teacher by trade. Until a couple years ago he taught at the local school but suffered from severe depression and ended up attempting suicide one night. Obviously from the point of view of his pupils he just “disappeared”. After months of therapy he began his current job and is very happy teaching in the next town along.

Last year a paedophile sting video was posted to the Facebook page. The police got in touch and basically said that having that on social media can hamper investigations and should be handed over to the police, not posted on Facebook. He deleted the video and posted a notice explaining the police advice. For weeks after he was hounded with messages calling him a “nonce supporter” or simply accusing him of being a paedophile outright. People made new Facebook pages with his profile picture warning him that he was a danger to kids and it did the rounds that he was fired from the school for abusing children. Both his home address and our parents address was posted online, with people encouraging others to “sort him out.” It nearly destroyed him and he almost tried to kill himself again.

Tonight someone has posted pictures of a car and a couple of young men accusing them of taking pictures pictures of young children. Again - police have said they’re informed, please can you remove it. He’s done so and posted the notice saying why.

Less than an hour ago. Already the accusations that he must be a child abuser are coming through. He’s just been speaking to me on the phone and honestly sounded like he was having a panic attack. I’m typing this from the car as DH drives me round to spend the night with him, as I’m worried he’ll do something stupid.

Please people; this has to stop.

he has to take some responsibility for all this.
he can easily avoid it by stepping down as admin.
otherwise it could impact on his career as well as his mental and even physical health, and the well-being of his family, worrying about him.
i'm sorry he's had problems but being stubborn and not reasonable in stepping down is not going to help anyone.
does he like to be the centre of attention, or have a martyr complex.

YANBU but it’s a reflection on a lack of public trust in police. If it wasn’t so common for pedophiles to go unpunished or even uninvestigsted people wouldn’t feel the need to take matters into their own hands.

He need to just delete the page all together or if there is another admin delete himself from that role. And if he ignored your advice then thats his problem.

Social media is the route of all evil caused so many marriage failures and deaths since it began it is ridiculous...

That's awful. Your poor brother. And the solution should not be "have a female admin". It shouldn't be happening.

Why are people posting these stupid vigilante things in the first place? If there really is a van full of blokes filming children talk to the police, not Facebook.

How big is the village? Are others commenting on the post that starts with the accusations? Does your brother not bump into these people in the village shop/pub/out for walk?
Personally I would step away from being an admin if I was being targeted and feeling suicidal, is he continuing with the page out of principle?

I’m admin in a local group. Everything gets pre-approved. Anything deemed unsavoury is deleted and people banned. Only last week, I didn’t publish a photo of someone having 2 fingers in the pink and 1 finger in the chocolate of the Neapolitan ice-cream tub with a stupid caption about having a good sexy time. (First time offender, next time he’s banned).
Anything racist, sexist, Britain first crap doesn’t get published. Same with poss about car X, showing ref number, driving like an idiot. Remove the reg first. If unhappy with someone’s driving go to the police.
At the end of the day, it’s a very local news page that I (and someone else) started and if you don’t like it, go. The page is about people sharing the traffic jams and water pressure issues not if you think trump is god.
PS. And I think doxxing is illegal. He needs to put his foot down and remove people.

And this is a very good example of why these ‘pedophile Hunter’ groups should not be supported.
I understand the mentality a little but such groups frequently jeopardise investigations by their actions, and accuse innocent people of dreadful crimes. Leave it to the bloody police ! If you don’t think the police do a good enough job the talk to your mp about police funding etc.

A lot of the time now I think that shouting ‘nonce!’ Loudly on the internet has become like playground bullying - accuse others or be accused yourself.

It’s beyond irresponsible because while no one gives a shit if I’m called fascist online, if you are a teacher those kind of accusations can damage careers. And all the while if one of the people in the pedophile sting videos is guilty, then it’s become 100 times harder to prosecute them because the video is all over the internet.

Can he report the pages to the police?

The paedophile hunters always make me uneasy too, they turned up at an address a few towns away to drive a convicted sex offender out and it turns out he lived in a completely different town.

They were showing it live, encouraging people to join them and when the police had been into the house and then explained the person didn't live there they just switched the camera off. The video is still up on Facebook.

I'm sorry your brother is being hounded like that with no evidence of wrong doing. It's easy to change the group settings so that comments and videos need to be approved. His first step should be to call the police though.

Our city's paedo hunters are very professional with a fantastic conviction rate. The police are called to the location and the person is handed over with a file containing chat logs and photographic evidence etc. Most of the offenders admit it on camera once the evidence is shown to them. For that reason I would have to say UABU wanting these sting operations stopped.

The issue isn’t the paedophile hunters, the issue is his page needs the settings adjusted and more admin. If he sets posts to approval only then that takes care of videos that shouldn’t be added. He can set up a post outlining rules including the fact that any attempts to post such stuff results in a warning then subsequent ban. Any abuse of admins equals a ban.

However, if he’s the only admin and refuses to add more or change the settings then he’s bringing a lot of grief on himself and I wouldn’t have much sympathy for him.

Is someone else on the page reporting the videos to the police? Because I am amazed they have already been in touch about a video posted tonight.
There are issues with paedophile hunters but that isn't the problem here. The issue is that your brother has fragile MH and is deliberately putting himself into a situation that could jeopardise his professional reputation and career. The way he is handling this is another symptom of his MH problems so you need to focus on him not the people on the page who can't be controlled. Most LAs advise teachers not to be on social media or to use a slightly different name so pupils can't find them and to lock down their page so pupils can't interact with them. Being admin of a local page takes away all those safeguards.
Yy he can lock the group so admin approve posts. Yy he could get the local police to post and make it the pinned post. But the best solution is to stop being admin. He's displaying very poor judgement.

He needs to help himself here, by standing down as admin. It's negatively affecting his MH, his safety... Why can't he just walk away? Being stubborn isn't a good enough reason when shit like this is happening.

I would definitely get the police involved in this. They need to see the messages directed at your brother and do something about them. Just stepping down as administrator at this point is not going to be enough on its own as these accusations have already been made and may continue anyway.

Goodness people are pathetic, to make your brothers life so difficult because he upheld group and tbh common decency rules

I really hate the public hunters as there is so often no context to the images or videos they share.

I work with pedophiles day in day out so am a little biased but there are correct ways of handling suspicions, online, in public is not ok. Even if they are guilty there is a reason for anonymity most of the time due to the ages of their victims.

Can he change the settings so all posts have to be approved by admin first?

And pin a note to the top of the page saying those kinds of posts won't be added to the page and include the spiel from the police.

Apologies if that's already been suggested.