Sep

Manhunt for key

suspect behind
Parsons Green
Tube explosion.
Sat

16th
V
For
Police arrest an 18
year-old man in
connection with the
Parsons Green terror
attack in West London

“WE DEPEND ON

Vigilante
THE BRITISH”
Spanish citizens warn
leaders not to mess
with Gibraltar.
Spanish citizens who
live close to the border
with Gibraltar vent their
fury with their Government’s
hardline approach to
overseas territory.

Ed Sheeran and U2 Sun On the 18th September The UK’s lead police
cancel US gigs amid
fears of further 17th officer on child protection told press that Sun
St Louis Protests.
They cancel concerts in police and paedophile hunters may have to 3rd
the US city amid security
fears over protests work together in the future.
following the acquittal of a
police officer who killed BETH JACKSON investigates the growing trend
a black man.
of vigilante paedo-hunters across the UK.
“PRESIDENT TRUMP

U
HAS AN AFFECTION Illustrations: Beth Jackson
FOR THE
UNITED KINGDOM"
Theresa May unveils
nder the cover of online anonymity,
latest plans for Donald seemingly ordinary people across
Trump’s state visit to
Britain. The British Prime the UK are arming themselves with
Minister said she “gets on” a supply of second-hand mobile
with the billionaire
businessman as she phones and profile pictures of underage girls
defended her relationship
with Donald Trump. and boys. Waging the modern war against sexual
. predators, groups work up to 17 hours a day as
Police forces may work Mon self-appointed ‘paedophile hunters’ confronting
with vigilante paedophile
hunters says Chief 18th potential offenders in supermarket car parks and
Constable Simon Bailey.
Senior officers have posting the footage online.
previously said vigilante
groups such as
Dark Justice or The The number of these groups has spiked after a
Hunted One could put
child abuse investigations disturbing timeline of child sexual abuse, includ-
at risk. The number of ing the Jimmy Savile scandal, cast doubt in the
cases being closed due to
evidence gathered by minds of the British public about the effective-
the groups has soared
figures reveal. ness of those in charge.
“We were forced to do something” ‘Scott’ tells me,
“we’re being failed by the government and seeing a
rising number of problems online.” One half of the
group Dark Justice, together ‘Scott’ and ‘Calum’ both
in their twenties, have amassed over 175,000 likes on
Facebook and have established themselves as one of
the biggest ‘paedophile hunter’ groups in the UK. Pae-
dophile hunting is a sure-fire way to gain viral fame,
but it’s also proven effective. Scott and Calum say their
group alone has led to 104 arrests and 50 convictions.
The rising number of problems online has led to a
rapid incline in the groups created to stop them. Chief
Constable Simon Bailey told press earlier this year
that these groups were putting the lives of children
at risk. “They might not perceive it that way,” he said
at the time, “but they are potentially compromising
our operations.” And the problem isn’t going away, “I
“
would encourage them all to stop,
but I recognise that I am not win-
ning that conversation, (working
Paedophiles
with them) is something we’re go- should be
ing to have to potentially look at”.
exposed,
they’re a danger to
It would be easy to dismiss these
groups as simple vigilantism, but
Simon Bailey is right in his as- our society and a
sumption that he is not winning
the conversation. The ‘hunter’ phe- cancer towards our
nomenon is fuelled by its online
popularity and the public concern future adults.”
that police cuts mean sex offenders
are potentially roaming free. A BBC
report published earlier this year shows that evidence
gathered by vigilante groups was used in 44% of court
cases for the crime of meeting a child after sexual
grooming in 2016. This isn’t to say it doesn’t come
with huge implications; false accusations, harassment
of the accused’s family, destruction of evidence and
live streaming of ‘stings’ are having a frightening im-
pact on our legal system.
However, Dark Justice insists they always work within
the law, “what we post online is 100% legal, and the
police can’t really tell us to remove something, we pro-
tect the identity of a person we catch until they have
been to court. It’s a human right to have a fair trial
if we name them online and accuse them of some-
thing we have already said they are guilty. This isn’t
our place.” Online self-regulation isn’t something all
groups follow, earlier this year The Hunted One, was
forced to give up posting live video footage after a
confrontation with a suspected sex offender led to a
mass brawl streamed live to their social network page
which has over 70,0000 likes.
Going Viral
The hunters repeatedly questioned the man: “you’re here
to meet a child for sex, yeah?” in a video broadcast in
shaky mobile phone footage. The clip culminates in the
accused being repeatedly kicked and punched before the
shopping centre’s security guards step in. One group who
still insist on broadcasting live on social media is One
Reason, a group of self-described ‘decoys’ who said, “live
videos are there to show the suspect hasn't been hurt
while being detained and also used as evidence in court.”
In October this year, Southampton
based paedophile hunter Stephen
Dure of T.R.A.P took to Facebook to
post one of his latest ambushes in-
volving 43-year-old David Baker. Just
three days after the video went viral,
Baker killed himself. Dure often posts
his footage online before handing it
to police, preferring to take justice
into his own hands. Dure declined to
comment but told his Facebook fans
“Ok so David Baker who we caught
this week has been found dead (sui-
cide) our hearts go out to his family
at this time… This is another reason why these people
shouldn't be bailed as they are a risk to themselves as
well as others.” Dure previously told ‘i News’: “There is
an argument (the men he accuses) are not convicted yet,
but I don’t trust our system and the law and the courts. In
my eyes, they’re already convicted. I don’t catch innocent
people. The way we hunt means everyone’s guilty.”
Scott says Dark Justice is in it for the right reasons, “some
people doing this work are sadly just in it for the clicks,
likes and shares on Facebook live videos. We’re in it for
the children; we just want change.” But is vigilantism the
change we need? “Paedo-hunters don’t actually work to
protect children from abuse, they just increase hysteria
and cause unnecessary victimisation,” says Candice
Christiansen, therapist and CEO of The Prevention
Project. Candice, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse
so severe it left her unable to have children, created
The Prevention Project, believing intervention is the
change we need. She believes if we separate our ideas
of paedophiles and sex offenders we can actually pro-
tect children from sexual abuse, “it’s ignorance, paedo-
phile doesn’t equal child molester.”
Candice primarily works with ‘non-offending, an-
ti-contact paedophiles’ offering them therapy and sup-
port, “a lot of the time paedophiles have suffered trau-
ma themselves, we also work with many paedophiles
who are on the autistic spectrum” Candice sighs, “but
that is a whole other issue in itself… What we would
like to see is people turn their attention to the hor-
rible people who make these awful abusive videos of
children online. Misinformation (about paedophilia)
perpetuates undue harm and does nothing to prevent
child sexual abuse, a person who molests a child may
not actually be attracted to children.”
“
Being a paedophile
“For us, the term ‘paedophile
hunter’ in itself is an oxymo-
ron” she says. “Paedophiles are
anti-contact, non-offending,
has one symptom
innocent, law-abiding people and one symptom
who have an attraction, they
don’t need to be hunted, this only: we are attracted
could push them further un-
derground away from seeking
to children instead
help and closer to offending.” of adults.”
The idea that paedophiles are the ones who need help
sits uneasily with ‘Gary’, creator of the online group
UK Paedos Exposed, which gains tens of thousands
of followers a year. “Paedophiles should be exposed,”
he says. “They’re a danger to our society and a cancer
towards our future adults.”
‘Ender Wigan’ is a man in his late thirties, married,
with children and living a happy and successful life.
He’s also a non-offending paedophile. Ender insists
he is not “sick, depraved or a monster” and he doesn't
have a desire to harm children. “Paedophiles don’t ‘get
off ’ on the idea of dominating or raping children, be-
ing a paedophile has one symptom and one symptom
only: we are attracted to children instead of adults.”
“As for paedophile hunters,” he says, “the police should
do everything in their power to stop them. We don't
accept or support any other form of vigilantism, why
would “paedo vigilantism” be any different? These
people don’t give a shit about children, they just to it
for the power trip of catching a ‘pervert nonce’.” Ender
added, “you can think that the people they entrap were
willing to meet a child for sex, and that’s true. But they
actually didn’t, because there was no child, so they
committed no crime. You don’t know how contrived
the conversations would be between the pretend child
and the ‘paedo’. In some cases, the ‘child’ probably be-
haved in a way no real child would, and therefore that
person would most likely go through his life without
ever going beyond being slightly creepy on a chat.”
The idea that we should focus on preventing child
abuse not just punishing offenders has been sup-
ported by UK police. Last year Chief Superintendent
Gavin Thomas said we need to “rethink” our current
approaches to sex offenders. Concerned there are too
many paedophiles to simply
imprison them all, he said at
the time “one of the major
concerns is managing the
register already, and its grow-
ing.”
In April, this year Mr Jus-
tice Langstaff ruled in a
ground-breaking case that
Dark Justice could continue
posing as children online, he
said their activities did not need to be regulated. Over
recent years the news has been littered with stories of
those who have taken justice into their own hands in-
cluding the murder of a man who was beaten to death
and set on fire in the street after being falsely accused
of being a paedophile by his neighbours. Some groups
still display the name vigilante on their social media
pages like a badge of honour while others work hard
to distance themselves from the term, “we’re not both-
ered what we get called” says Scott, “at the end of the
day we sleep well at night knowing we are fighting for
a change.”