To think more men than we think are undercover paedophiles

[josil]

Watching the pedophile hunter on Netflix - in summary it is about a vigilante group who go onto dating sites 18+ but post pictures of girls who look underage and then when the guy chats to them tells them they're 11 or 12 etc.

The men carry on chatting and then arrange to meet - they don't tell the girls they're too young.

This is so sad and troubling. These men were originally looking for women and then got drawn in by children. How many husbands, sons, work colleagues are doing this - what can we do as society to better sniff it out?

Sad and sickening. What can we do to protect children from this?

When I was underage I used to go on these chat sites and I’m honestly disturbed by the percentage of men that didn’t stop talking to me when I said I was 14, actually most of them (yes most) started talking more enthusiastically. It’s grim.

As a victim myself, my perspective is skewed as I see potential threat everywhere - it's a fact that pedophiles are predators and usually highly skilled manipulators.

They are usually great company, charming, and good 'family friends'. They hide in plain sight.

Please, if you have even the slightest niggle with someone that has contact with your children, listen to it.

No. We’re not cavemen.
Grown men aren’t biologically programmed to find 12 year olds attractive, stop making excuses for them.

I think on a biological level for a lot of men, age gets overlooked and there's a bit of their brain that thinks any female who has hit puberty is an acceptable potential sexual partner.

Yes, I think so too.

So I think that there are a lot of men out there who will find girls of 12+ attractive, because it's part of their make-up

This is incorrect and ridiculous. Pedophilia is NOT a natural part of men's make-up.

I DON@T disapprove of this vigilante group> hAVEN'T SEEn the netflix show, but these men need to know that there's a big risk they'll be caught.

it is absolutely depressing how many men want to have sex/rape young girls.

They are everywhere from the father that bring them up to the man that walk amongst us.

me - a caretaker who admired by pretty legs and stroked them and put his hand up my skirt aged 7, to the duke of Edinburgh instructor who wrote me letters about his sexual fantasies

Given that we've had about half a dozen of them convicted in our small town in the last couple of years I'm sure you're right!

I agree, if decent men see a young girl, no matter how pretty or dolled up she is, they will see a child.

They are unfortunately everywhere. I despise them and consider them amongst the lowest of the low in society. I have a cousin who lives abroad who was abused by one (her neighbour) when she was only 7. Also, the brother of a family friend was convicted last week - he lives elsewhere so we don’t know him that well, but it was shocking nonetheless - also the fact that he was relatively cocky and unapologetic about it.

IMO they all need to be chemically castrated. I have an 8yr old son and now and again I’ve wondered what I would do if I ever found out any sicko had approached him or worse. We keep a close eye on him but he does do a lot of activities and supervised things with friends where we aren’t present. I suspect I would probably end up doing time.

It sickens me that there are actually groups out there on social media who support and defend paedophilia and try and claim it’s natural to ‘love’ (aka abuse) children. They shouldn’t be allowed to have a voice. A paedophile apologist is every bit as bad as a paedophile.

I've spoken to many people who research, review and work with convicted pedophiles. The unanimous opinion in this field is that their criminal behaviour is fuelled not only by their fantasies and sexual desires but more by the need to control and manipulate.

They don't care about consequences or seem to take on board that they're causing any emotional or physical trauma. They simply don't care. That is not part of anyone's make-up - it's an incurable disorder.

Any girl who has reached puberty is able to reproduce, so men are programmed to find young and fit girls attractive.
So I think that there are a lot of men out there who will find girls of 12+ attractive, because it's part of their make-up.

No. What nonsense. I had a male housemate once who used to make this argument. How the fuck does a man know whether some random child walking down the street has started her periods and is able to reproduce? Even if for some reason they know she is menstruating, this is starting ever earlier in younger and younger children because of things like hormones in the water supply, NOT because we are biologically "supposed to" start having babies when we're 10, 11, 12 years old. The maternal mortality and morbidity rates associated with children giving birth are horrific.
The same housemate was a university lecturer and told me he would never teach in a school because he was afraid of getting seduced by a child student and not being able to resist. Also always banging on about what a great book Lolita was. Utterly grim and I moved out as soon as I could.

To the OPs question, yes, I think it's much more prevalent than we realise. And I think the porn industry actively contributes to the problem with all their "barely legal", "stepdaughter" etc stuff. A colleague of mine (male midwife) got arrested in a fairly high profile case and didn't go to prison because the judge felt he'd "accidentally been led down a slippery slope by the world of porn" or some enabling shite like that. Several of us complained to the attorney general to say his sentence was too lenient but it didn't get reviewed AFAIK.

I had my first boyfriend when I was 14. He was 28. I didn't see anything wrong with it, I was so naive and fully believed we were going to get married and live happily ever after. I still get angry when I think about how many adults knew we were "together" and either didn't intervene or only intervened to scold me for being such a hussy.

Honestly I feel like they're everywhere, just living free and being made excuses for. It's depressing and terrifying.

It’s not that hard for a sicko peadophile who will be familiar with the dark web to run facial recognition software on photos and then geo-locate the actual child in the photos they’ve been sent

They don’t post pictures of actual children. They are adults that look younger than they are.

I am not for one second saying it should be normal, or 'just a thing' it never should but there needs to be a way for people, mostly men, to access help before they touch a child.

See I'm torn on this point - I agree with you that someone cannot change their brain to be wired differently BUT the issue arises when they start acting out on it.

There's lots of things in life I'd like to do - be a millionaire one of them but I'm not going to rob a bank to get it because I know it's wrong. There's no support for 'do you want to be rich and need counselling to stop you robbing a bank'?!

So my point being, even though there isn't support they still should find a way to not cross the line and hurt a child.

It is estimated that there are up to 850,000 in the UK accessing indecent images of children, which I would think is certainly more than people would imagine.

Its underreported.

@Unihorn that's 1% of the population so very high IMO

And then there's those that are smart enough to not watch online stuff so it's a higher percentage technically

Massively so.

As kids many of us were fondled or flashed, told not to make a fuss by other adults when we told. "Get over it, you weren't raped. " many of us.

If you've not watched the documentary here is a small clip of this particular vigilante group catching a Prince Andrew lookalike in the act. This group are not at all violent and their work has led to ten men being convicted and some of them jailed so they're clearly doing something right;

"I just don’t believe justice should ever be in the hands of a load of bloody thirsty thugs."

The issue is that childhood sexual abuse can destroy lives. In a lot of cases there isn't justice. Men walk free from court to take up therapy. No party is brave enough to build prisons for just child sex offenders, so this therapies can be done while the men are taken out of society. We've never sent a message about how abhorrent it is as a crime. There's more defense in court given to a pedophiles about stress, loss of reputation than there is for people who commit benefit fraud. It's sickening. Child abuse in general don't get the legal response that it should. Most parents, even if there is permanent disability or death don't face charges. Until we have a justice system that addresses crimes against children, we will, quite rightly have vigilante justice handed out. The Police do chat bollocks on this because they don't admit how few of the men get their cases taken up by the CPS.

"There's lots of things in life I'd like to do - be a millionaire one of them but I'm not going to rob a bank to get it because I know it's wrong. There's no support for 'do you want to be rich and need counselling to stop you robbing a bank'?!"

That's my point about benefit claimants and people in poverty in court. There isn't the excuse making and consideration for the effect of being in court on any other crimes accept those predominantly commited by men and of a sexual nature.

The stats on the number of unique accesses to child abuse content are shocking. I think you can safely assume you are constantly surrounded by men who have at some point watched child abuse images for pleasure. Only a tiny fraction are caught.