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?

I don't like the idea of untrained, vigilante groups of men baiting "paedophiles". It sits very uncomfortably with me and I think some of these groups and individuals are dodgy in themselves.

If more people reported their real life concerns about people they know instead of covering it up and sweeping it under the carpet, we wouldn't need to "bait" them.

Thank you. I was going to say this too, but couldn't find a good link to the definitions.

They all need to get a hobby that doesn't involve paedophilia.

My friend is a police officer who monitors peadophiles and she told me they are everywhere, men downloading and watching child abuse in every street , family men who you would never guess are sickos

She said it's absolutely sickening the amount , and people who you would think are just normal men.

Yep, there’s more of them than anyone would like to know. I was sexually abused as a toddler and that, it seems, left me being a good target for these men. Had far too many encounters I’d like to forget.

I meant about the definition of paedophile. Can't really comment on the rest, but I think there is an element of truth to it for a tiny % of men.

Sorry I forgot to say. When wolf whistling was more a thing 40 years ago I started getting whistled at when I was about 11. Horrible experience which lives with me to this day. I was a slightly chubby, average looking, unremarkable school girl at the time, so nothing to do with perceived attractiveness. It was just misogyny.

I teach sixth formers. When I was dating men would quite often bring this up, usually in a “I would have fancied you if you were my teacher” way and also to ask if I ever fancy the students! I’ve chatted about this a bit with a (gay, male) colleague and we both say the same - it doesn’t matter if they’re 18, you see them as children and there’s just no question of fancying them at all. You can see if they’re pretty or whatever because you have eyes but it’s in a “aww, don’t they look nice” way like it would be with your own children and their friends.

No woman has ever asked me that question! But men seem to think it’s perfectly normal and indeed expected that I would be sexually attracted to the 16-18 year old students I teach.

FWIW, in connection with your OP, when the junior boys sports club introduced the equivalent of DBS checks back in the day, more than 75% of the coaches refused and sought new clubs then retired. Who would have thought there were so many who had such strong principles about bureaucracy, waaste, the nanny state, privacy and [insert your own 'valid' excuse] including every coach for whom there were indications of concerns.

What a totally weird way to behave. Normal people don’t make ‘joke’ tinder profiles using teen photos of themselves to ‘test’ people.

What are you talking about you nutter butter. You do realise we’re an evolved species? Well most of us are anyway. Normal men aren’t out here looking at a 13 year old going ‘she make baby! I sex her!’ Otherwise women would feel the exact same about any man of baby making age. Which they don’t.

I started to think about how many paedophiles I have come across/heard about in my life, then realised it would be far too many to list on here.

teach sixth formers. When I was dating men would quite often bring this up, usually in a “I would have fancied you if you were my teacher” way and also to ask if I ever fancy the students! I’ve chatted about this a bit with a (gay, male) colleague and we both say the same - it doesn’t matter if they’re 18, you see them as children and there’s just no question of fancying them at all.

But some of that will be the location you encounter them & how you perceive them, surely?

When I was in 6th form a friend went on a night out in the nearby city. It was at the start of september, she has a really early birthday so was already 18, and went out with her older sister and her uni mates.

She snogged a 22 year old guy in a bar, swapped numbers etc.

Found a week later he was a newly qualified teacher at our school. Both were utterly mortified and never had contact again! I would not class that guy as a paedophile. He was in a bar where ID checks on the door meant no one inside should be under 18, had no idea she was still at school, and it's not exactly a disgusting age gap for a 22 year old to fancy an 18 year old.

I agree there are far more around than we might realise. It was absolutely endemic in schools, churches and youth organisations in the 70s, before safeguarding practices became the norm.
But I think the paedophile hunter groups are very dodgy on all sorts of levels. If they want to bring people to justice, why don't they join the police and do it in a safe and regulated way? Because most of them wouldn't pass the security checks or interview process. And at least some of them are paedophiles indulging their obsession and hiding in plain site.

I think this is a little harsh. I watched a documentary on the wives of convicted paedophiles and it took one woman a few years for the switch to flick. She was standing behind him, helping him sort out accommodation and doing his laundry, shopping, cooking. Saying it can't be true and then she one day said 'oh'
imagine loving someone who turned out to be a dirty paedophile? I don't know what I would do.

There was another man who's fiance didn't want to give dirty grandad access to the children but he did. even though he was in court and had got arrested for viewing images and videos of children and babies of the same age as his children.

another was teenaged girls who's dad was one. he had viewed material of girls their age. one didn't want to see him again, the other still did and sort of portrayed him as a victim. almost like he had a disease and its so hard for him. she thought the mum was being too harsh making him move out, even though there had been instances where he had 'accidentally' walking in on their friends changing loads of times.
oh and he was a teacher.

My first thought watching was 'just realise he's sick! walk away!'
then I thought about My own dad and partner and I don't think it's that easy. I really don't. there must be so much denial. I don't know if I would hold on or let go. it is probably a battle with yourself. how could I have missed it? how could I have not known for 30 years my husbands been more attracted to the neighbour kids than me? how sick am I letting him sit alone with our grandchildren while I went shopping? Has he ever hurt them?

it is probably a process. Choosing a paedophile as a partner has repercussions too and they probably just want to wake up from the bad dream.

If we ban vigilante groups there would be more on the streets

Not necessarily, if they use any information the way they're supposed to by handing it to the police instead of meting out their own brand of "justice"

I do hope you're not suggesting the second option's the way to go ...?

@InChocolateWeTrust

Found a week later he was a newly qualified teacher at our school. Both were utterly mortified and never had contact again! I would not class that guy as a paedophile. He was in a bar where ID checks on the door meant no one inside should be under 18, had no idea she was still at school, and it's not exactly a disgusting age gap for a 22 year old to fancy an 18 year old.

I’m not saying it is - but what I am saying is that for men it seems to be completely acceptable and even expected that a 40-odd year old person would have sexual feelings towards teenagers in their care. Like, they didn’t see that as weird or abnormal. Just like ”well, I would so everybody must.” And it’s just…not true! It just shows that there’s a frame of mind many men have that is totally alien to me.

Trying not to be outing but I knew of someone in my friendship group who had met a 13 year old when he was in his mid 20s. Reported to police several times but nothing happened, he received a letter outlining the law. In the meantime they started a sexual relationship and they are still together, she's now in her early 20s and he's in his 30s. Surprisingly her parents pretty much turned a blind eye and encouraged her to move in with him. At the time he said he knew it was wrong but he had fallen for herand couldn't help his feelings. It was deeply troubling and I stopped communicating with him after that admission.

I'd just turned 15 when I entered into a sexual relationship with a 21 year old. At the time I thought he was falling for me, I look back now and see it as grooming. As I got older and moved on, I heard through the grape vine that he was pursuing a pregnant 15 year old. He would have been late 20s by then. I feel very angry about it all and powerless - I'm almost sure he's still doing it because leopards don't change their spots.

I was warned off a youth worker who was 21 when I was 15. He flirted with me, he got me on my own he flattered me, gave me lifts, told me I was so grown up, wrote sappy messages for me.

His girlfriend (also a youth worker) told my friends I was throwing myself at him, being embarrassing and she threatened to actually attack me. So I made a point of avoiding him. I then got a sort of love bombing from him, flowers, chocolates. Isolated from my friends (who thought I was pursuing him) I couldn't talk about it, he'd follow me home etc, tell me I was so much more rational than his girlfriend. I stopped going.

I heard a year or two later they both had been caught having a threesome with one of the other teens from the youth club. It took me years to really understand that the two of them were working together. Noone ever went to the police all.presented as because the teen was instigating it. And that's why they never got caught. Vigilantes actively prevent legal charges being brought. They're the flying monkeys paedophiles rely on.

Watching these things is probably making you think that this is more common than it actually is. I've worked with people who have committed sexual offences, and believe me the abuse they had suffered themselves was horrific. Whilst this does not excuse what they do, I think the main prevention we can do is actually fund social services adequately to do their job properly and protect children now (because a small minority will end up as the next generation's paedophiles). What can you do? Vote, campaign and sign petitions to this end.

‘normal’ people don’t meet underage girls to have sex with them, I would argue that’s the weirder thing in this scenario.

Sorry thought I quoted a post there but it didn’t seem to include it.

Also, I’m no fan of the idea of a nanny state but having worked in IT for 24 years, I believe strongly that a LOT more could be done by ISPs, watchdogs and other parties to clamp down on the means by which child abuse material can be accessed and shared on the internet.

Personally I think there is no need for anonymity on the internet. If you want to use it, there should be a system where you have to sign up with your ID and register. This would not just crack down on those who access child porn but also others using the normal web and dark web for criminal activity. For the rest of us, it really won’t make much of a difference. No one working in admin at your ISP is going to care if you’re looking at legal porn or pictures of unicorns, or whatever other weird stuff people might think they would be embarrassed by - as long as it’s not illegal.

I agree there’s a huge issue with underreporting and lack of prosecutions, but this film isn’t a good horse to flog. It’s made by a Muslim French-Senegalese female film director, and is a really searing critique of the sexualisation of children. Have you seen it? Rather than relying on click bait headlines and Twitter outrage - it’s a really moving and thoughtful look at what society does to women and girls, and how to let kids be kids.

It’s weird. How is it funny to make a joke of pretending to be a teen to try and ‘test’ men as pedophiles? Obviously these men are disgusting to me but if anyone I knew told me their idea of a fun Saturday night was making tinder profiles using their childhood photos to try and catch out pedophiles I would think they were a really odd individual.