Pedo Hunter in Area

[Noluckcatchingthemswansthen]

Not sure if this really is an AIBU just looking for some insights if anyone has any!

In the last couple of days a fairly well known ‘Pedophile Hunter’ group has made it known via social media etc that they are in the area where I live. It is a very small rural community and of course rumours have spread like wildfire!

I don’t really have much knowledge about these types of groups - I remember hearing something years ago about them on the news but never really looked into them. A quick google search shows a lot of debate about whether they are helpful or harmful
On the face of it it would seem like they have the best of intentions?! But they can become very violent and do sometimes get it wrong, target the person or wrong address etc

Some people locally are very excited about their presence and some are very concerned

I suppose I am just wondering really if anyone else has had any experience of this in their area and how it turned out?

for AIBU purposes

YABU - they are no threat to the community and only want to help protect children

YANBU - they are vigilante groups who hinder police investigations and often act on local gossip and end up targeting innocent individuals

Thanks for any insights 😊

This

Worked with people who had to be moved at HUGE tax payer expense…people with learning disabilities who had a bit of online access and were talking to people at their mental development age and didn’t have any harm in them at all..cornered and filmed in shopping centres. These groups are despicable and nasty bullies who don’t care about the safety of women and girls at all..they take a perverse delight in the attack

I certainly wouldn’t feel safe walking past them at night.

And I think some of them probably need their hard drives looking at.

I don’t want peados on my streets either

I don’t know how conning someone with clear learning difficulties into meeting up with a “teenager” just so you can film it and put it on social media is keeping anyone safe.

Exactly. The way the treat those with obvious learning disabilities should be a crime in itself. You can see how excited and gleeful they are to do a sting, it’s sickening.

I often think with these vigilantes there’s some kind of compensating going on. Just my personal opinion but I do think sometimes those who shout loudest are those with something to hide.

Yes that’s the one
watched a few of his videos now..such bad vibes
and unbelievably cringe the way folk are calling him a a hero and a great guy and he’s just lapping it up and going on about how the authorities have failed everyone but he’s here to sort it out! God help us

They advertise to drum up "support" the next step they will drop a street or maybe a name to build up momentum and hopefully a mob, nobody wants sex offenders in their street, but these "hunters" are vigilantes and in it for the glory, block them don't give them views it is their oxygen.

Yeah it is like the thugs shouting about protecting their women and kids whilst they regularly punch their women in front of their kids

What area are you in? I remember seeing a FB post about this type of group that was either in the area I grew up or where extended family live. They were trying to legitimise themselves but the crux of it was “protect our wimmin from forriners”

He sounds like an idiot. He's just warned any paedophiles around to keep their heads down till he gets bored and buggers off.

You won't get rid of them through organisations like this.

Self appointed vigilantes are dangerous, often racist and not very clever.

I have no time for these vigilante groups, locally we had a guy that a lot of people knew had a conviction dating back some 20 years - most of us just gave him a swerve and warned kids to stay away.

Of course leopards don't chase their spots and he was caught out in an internet sting by one of these groups - however well intentioned that might have been, it resulted in a court case, which was thrown out, because it was a sting and therefore not legal procedure. He is therefore still knocking around and a police officer friend tells me it just makes it more difficult for them as he will be more careful, and if he is still operating will do so much more under the radar.

Their intentions may be honourable, but they can cause the guilty to walk free.

I’m not a fan due to the possibilities of them

getting the wrong person

jeopardising cases due to entrapment

why does it have to be done in a blaze of glory surely it’s all about stopping paedophiles rather than internet likes

they should crack on with there work discreetly and hand it over to the authorities

Well I think the good ones are bloody great 👍

It was stuff like this that got the home of a paediatrician set alight in Paulsgrove in the late 1970's.

It's dangerous, but our police are so overstretched I'm not sure what else people can do.

We had an "organisation" where i live they regularly posted feet walking along then knocked on doors and showed more feet and muted conversations. Then started showing faces, a mob of locals vandalised the wrong house the man who lived there had to be moved he didn't do anything, the group dissapeared off the internet after that incident.

Ah the all sharing brain cells brigade, next they accidentally poke themselves in the eye wiith their pitchforks while smashing beer cans on their skulls

And these imbeciles manage to fine people to breed with, I would feel sorry for their partners but they picked them their judgement is juat as appalling

They can ruin a police case - I understand that much of their so called evidence is useless for court proceedings. There is a reason why it might be harder for the police to get a conviction - because they actually have to prove that a person is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, These vigilante groups can ruin innocent people's lives on the flimsiest of pretexts. And even if the person does agree to meet up you just have to wonder if the person would ever have offended if the opportunity to interact with "children" was not dangled in front of them. Frankly, I think they are little more than modern versions of the old lynch mobs. The nasty truth is that young people are much more likely to be abused by people they know or who are part of their family.

In your shoes I might have a chat with the local police and get their take on it. It might either put your mind at ease or alert the police if this group are doing anything dodgy.

We had them here a few years ago kn the street behind us. We're also a small rural town.

They had posed as an underage girl and spoken to this man. They then turned up at his house with all the information and filmed it all, which was of course shared on the local Facebook page.

I'm of a mixed opinion because I believe it's good to route these people out but I think the whole thing was pretty traumatic for his family, who were home. Tbf, if the man hadn't been such a sicko, his family wouldn't have had to go through that.

The community is pretty great and rallied round the family and the wife promptly kicked him out.

Perhaps if someone is up to something nefarious, they can hand themselves in before being publicly humiliated and the police case will go much smoother.

That's just a theory, no idea if that's a tactic they use.

What does that last bit mean

I have an extended family member who was caught in a police 'sting' online. I think it's preferable to leave it in the hands of the police, they saw the process through properly and he was convicted. Scumbag.

Don't agree with extra-judicial 'justice' - it's something akin to lynching and a dangerous road to go down. Suspicious of people who need to make themselves look like a hero.