Vigilante Group Exposing Alleged Child Predator Leads To Suicide

[Essence Lumin]

This recent body of research is where I'm getting it from.

By that logic a 24 year old doing it with a 10 year old is ok by you.

Adolescence now lasts from the ages of 10 to 24, although it used to be thought to end at 19, scientists say.

 

[RodeejahUrquan]

By that logic a 24 year old doing it with a 10 year old is ok by you.

I fucking HOPE they're not saying that.

Dude, Goblin, c'mon, man. That article talks about extended adolescence as a societal definition. We're going by biological definitions, rn. And that means that in terms of brain development, a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD is way less advanced than a TWENTY YEAR OLD.

Like seriously, you gonna tell me that when your ass was 20 years old, you didn't think young teens didn't seem a little...babyish to you?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Where is the proof that he knew he was meeting up with a 14 year old? There is a reason why we have a judicial system. This isn't the wild west.

Presumably the person he'd arranged to meet had claimed, in their online messaging, to be a 14-year-old boy.

However, we don't know what they actually discussed in their communications, so we don't really know what he intended to do. We can speculate all we like, but we don't have the transcripts of their online chat. We know that he was apparently gay, and from both a religious and a cultural background (Jamaican Jehovah's Witness) that would make coming out to his family as gay very difficult at the best of times, and certainly not via Facebook amid allegations he was a pedophile.

I can well imagine that he would have welcomed the opportunity just to socialise with what he thought was a sympathetic teenager, without necessarily wanting to take things any further. But without the transcripts we just don't know.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

By that logic a 24 year old doing it with a 10 year old is ok by you.

Of course that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a 20 year old isn't that sound of mind. What he did was stupid. But he was still a boy. We also don't know he even planned to have sex with the 14 year old, as Innula said.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Of course that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a 20 year old isn't that sound of mind. What he did was stupid. But he was still a boy. We also don't know he even planned to have sex with the 14 year old, as Innula said.

So what was the point of the BBC link? A 20 year old and a 14 year old is to say the least, not appropriate. Whether fully developed or not, any normal 20 year old would know that.

 

[Kaimi Kyomoon]

When men my age were 18 they got drafted and sent to harms way in Viet Nam. Mr. Kyomoon's grandmother had the first of many children when she was like 12. If a 16 year old and a 17 year old are in love is it pedophilia the day the first one turns 18? I remember when men in their 30's and 40's thought it was admirable to get teenagers in bed.

Some people might need more education about the responsibilities of adulthood and when they begin. Especially the part about who's a child and that children must be left alone. *sigh*

As for the vigilante sting operation: wrong wrong wrong.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

So what was the point of the BBC link? A 20 year old and a 14 year old is to say the least, not appropriate.

The point is that it's easier to entrap someone who's still a bit young, and impulsive and still sees themselves as a kid. Of course it wasn't appropriate. Nobody said it was appropriate. I'm saying this 20 year old likely wasn't even a pedophile, and odds are they'd have preferred other adults given more time.

 

[Kaimi Kyomoon]

And even if the 20 year old had no thought of sex, a 20 year old should never make friends with a 14 year old without first getting an okay from the kid's parents. I would be suspicious of an 18 year old who started hanging out with my 14 year old behind my back.

 

[Essence Lumin]

If a 16 year old and a 17 year old are in love is it pedophilia the day the first one turns 18?

No, I think that is really dumb. I think there should be a minimum age difference where it is OK. Maybe 1 1/2 or 2 years.

I remember when men in their 30's and 40's thought it was admirable to get teenagers in bed.

Well shoot, when I was a child the law was it was impossible to rape your wife. That is ugly ancient history though.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

And even if the 20 year old had no thought of sex, a 20 year old should never make friends with a 14 year old without first getting an okay from the kid's parents. I would be suspicious of an 18 year old who started hanging out with my 14 year old behind my back.

I totally agree. But I also think we shouldn't be too quick to crucify the 20 year old. When I was a kid (much younger than 14) I was sometimes chatty and would strike up a conversation with someone older. None of them tried anything, but I would be mortified if some moral crusader accused them of being a pedophile because they didn't run away screaming when a kid talked to them. Likewise, I suspect that many of these vigilante groups will approach the slightly older people to try to entrap them.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I totally agree. But I also think we shouldn't be too quick to crucify the 20 year old.

Well, no. Like Innula said, we really don't know what his motives or intentions were. And that is one of the (many) reasons why vigilantism is a horrible, ugly thing. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I start believing his intentions were likely benign. But 20 is old enough to know that fraternizing with a 14 year old is probably not appropriate, or at the least, unwise.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Coincidentally, this report has just been posted on the BBC website: ‘Was my dad a paedophile?’

The comments from Lesley Duff, whose father killed himself two days after video of him being confronted by a pedophile-hunter was live-streamed on Facebook, are quite telling, I think:

Mr Duff's suicide meant Lesley has been left without answers regarding her father's potential guilt, and the scale of his actions.

"This could have been a one-off thing where he's done something stupid.

"I know people would say, 'well the thought was there', but the reality is he may not have actually committed any crime at all.

"We don't know, because as soon as he [took his own life] the case was closed.

"I don't know what was on my dad's computer, if anything, and I'm never going to know because somebody deemed to put it all over Facebook rather than letting police deal with it."

Lesley feels like she has been left to deal with the consequences of her father's actions.

"I've had threats - threatening to rape me, rape my daughter," she explains, as she tries to speak through the tears.

She was not able to hold a funeral for her father because of fears that vigilantes might turn up. The inquest was closed for the same reason.

Her father was instead cremated hundreds of miles away.

His death, however, did not stop the social media videos.

Someone she knew posted a video of him being carried from his house to an ambulance in a body bag on Facebook.

For Lesley, the video is just another example of the vitriol she has received, which she says she has done nothing to deserve.

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

While searching for an article promoting male role models NOT produced by an MRA apologist (Hint: near impossible)... I landed on this.

So, were they doing good? Were they wrong? Or does it only become wrong after the guy kills himself?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

While searching for an article promoting male role models NOT produced by an MRA apologist (Hint: near impossible)... I landed on this.

So, were they doing good? Were they wrong? Or does it only become wrong after the guy kills himself?

I don't know how post-release supervision is handled in the USA and neither -- obviously -- do I know anything about the man's case, but on general principle I would say that the parole board are probably better placed to assess the risk of releasing him into the community than are two YouTube guys.

We don't know the details of the assault on a minor, though the fact he received only a 5 year sentence for that and for the unlawful images suggests to me it was must have been way down at the bottom end of the sentencing scale, and neither do we know what category the images fell into -- sentencing for this kind of offence is a complex and granular exercise, and a lot depends on the agreed analysis of the content.

Generally, in my experience, men who use child pornography don't present much risk to the general public, unless they're also involved in producing the materials. At least that's what the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of risk assessments in pre-sentence reports I've seen all say. And generally, when guys who've been convicted for downloading images of children being sexually assaulted offend again, it's almost always by downloading more images rather than by trying to assault anyone. So I'm not sure if the dramatic tag "predator" is at all appropriate here.

The children to whom such men generally present a threat are the unfortunate models for such material, in third-world countries, not their neighbours' children.

To my mind, the two young men should take their concerns to local law enforcement, who will know about his parole conditions and about any post-release restrictions imposed by the judge (assuming that the system in the US -- or is it Canada, with the Tim Hortons? -- is similar to that in the UK). They shouldn't be trying to monetise them on social media.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

To my mind, the two young men should take their concerns to local law enforcement, who will know about his parole conditions and about any post-release restrictions imposed by the judge (assuming that the system in the US -- or is it Canada, with the Tim Hortons? -- is similar to that in the UK). They shouldn't be trying to monetise them on social media.

I think people like this think police are just incompetent and therefore useless. They don't get that catching criminals is actually really easy if you aren't at all concerned about taking out an innocent person every now and again.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

So, were they doing good? Were they wrong? Or does it only become wrong after the guy kills himself?

I'm ambivalent about this. I don't think it's justified to go stalking a guy who got out of prison just because you don't think he should've been let out early.

But I'm also not Lawful Neutral; I'm not gonna ignore that they caught him taking pictures of kids at a kiddy place he had no business at, or hanging out in the kids' clothes section at a store. That's a problem.

On the other hand, there's a good chance this video is just phony. The confrontation inside the store is very low-key, almost like they don't want anyone overhearing anything. And at the end they said they "emailed this video to his probation officer", but I'm pretty sure that who any given person's probation officer is, much less the guy's email address, isn't really readily available public information.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

We don't know the details of the assault on a minor, though the fact he received only a 5 year sentence for that and for the unlawful images suggests to me it was must have been way down at the bottom end of the sentencing scale, and neither do we know what category the images fell into -- sentencing for this kind of offence is a complex and granular exercise, and a lot depends on the agreed analysis of the content.

I'm not sure I can agree with that.

Take these cases, for example. This guy got 5 years for three counts of rape of a 15-year-old girl. This guy who molested a sleeping boy got 6 years, after already having gone to federal prison twice for child porn. This guy with 3 counts of molestation got 36 years, while this guy with 2 counts got no jail whatsoever. In the US, with all its different jurisdictions with their own laws and sentencing guidelines, there's NO consistency; child molesters can get anywhere from no jail time at all to effectively lifelong sentences for very similar crimes, depending on where they are and how aggressively they are prosecuted. It really is impossible here to tell how serious his crime might've been solely by how long his sentence was. It's a big mess. I think the most we can really say for sure is that he only had one known victim, and he didn't kill them.

As for the images - even though again sentences can be all over the place, in the US it's at least simplified insofar as child porn isn't classified here. Assuming the guy didn't make the photos himself, the law makes no distinction between a photo of a child being posed naked for instance and a photo of a child being brutally raped, for possession charging purposes or sentencing purposes. Child porn sentences in the US have more to do with how much material is found, and what else besides collecting porn the guy was doing.

Generally, in my experience, men who use child pornography don't present much risk to the general public, unless they're also involved in producing the materials. At least that's what the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of risk assessments in pre-sentence reports I've seen all say. And generally, when guys who've been convicted for downloading images of children being sexually assaulted offend again, it's almost always by downloading more images rather than by trying to assault anyone. So I'm not sure if the dramatic tag "predator" is at all appropriate here.

The children to whom such men generally present a threat are the unfortunate models for such material, in third-world countries, not their neighbours' children.

I agree with you that's true like generally, buuuuuuut, this particular guy we're talking about, already got busted for assaulting a child once, no matter the details; so he's already a known line-crosser and all bets are off in that regard.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Sure, Dakata, but my point is we do not know what the guy was sentenced for, or what the assault was -- it's not, in fact, clear to me from the commentary whether the assault was a sexual assault at all, or an unrelated matter that was only concientally associated with the cache of images for which he fell to be sentenced.

Nor do we know the jurisdiction -- what state it was, or even what country it took place in. It could well be the USA but the reference to his buying breakfast at Tim Horton's suggests it may well have been Canada. So we don't know what the sentencing regime is, or how consistently it's applied, or anything.

Quite possibly, as you suggest, it may have been an unduly lenient sentence. Certainly it happens sometimes in the USA, though equally certainly US sentences sometimes seem, at least to me, unduly harsh. I remember one case in which I was involved some years ago, where a group of men exchanging unlawful images were prosecuted, some in the USA and some in the UK. The ones in the English courts ended up with sentences ranging from about 5 to 10 years, while their American counterparts were receiving terms two or three times as long for very similar offences.

So the sentence may be unduly lenient. It may be spot on. I don't know, and neither do you, and neither do the guys who made the YouTube video. We do know that the Parole Board will have had the advantage of knowing the details of the offences, and will have had access to pre-sentence reports and reports on the man's progress and conduct in prison, and that they made the considered decision to release him on licence.

I don't know if that was the right decision or not, but I do know that the Parole Board, knowing what the case was about, were better placed to make that decision than am I or than are those two YouTube chaps.

Certainly the man's behaviour seems, on the face of it, quite alarming. The woman whose child he photographed seemed very concerned and, quite rightly, reported the matter to the police. That's what the two YouTube guys should have done, too, to my mind, if they were really concerned about his behaviour rather than playing at being detectives in order boost their channel.

The police and the probation service (or whoever is in charge of post release supervision wherever this happened) will certainly be concerned, and the stuff in the man's car may well provide the probation service with a good reason to recommend his return to custody. Or there may be a perfectly innocent explanation for it all. I don't know, and I'm not going to waste time wondering -- the police are best placed to investigate that. Which is why I think the two young men should have gone to the appropriate authorities rather than putting their exploits out on YouTube.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

So, were they doing good? Were they wrong? Or does it only become wrong after the guy kills himself?

I believe they were wrong. We have a system of law enforcement and justice for a reason. Let them do their job. If these "concerned citizens" have an issue, they should call the police. Vigilantism almost never ends well.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

I used to live upstairs from a bunch of single guys. One of them had gotten a 13 year old pregnant. Sadly he never faced charges for what he did. I remember asking him if he knew the 13 year old was only 13, and he said something about, "You know 13 year old girls don't look 13..." Later I realized he hadn't really answered my question. I most certainly did not look 13 when I was 13 - I was 6'1", had big boobs.... We had a pastor at the time who made a point of announcing how old I was from the pulpit ever so often - no joke. But, I acted like a 13 year old. Anyone who spent longer than about 10 minutes with me would have realized that I was a lot younger than I looked or soft in the head - either way it would speak very poorly of anyone pursuing a sexual relationship with me.

The guys who owned and worked at a local pizza place where my friends and I would hang out also called me Jail Bait - like it was my name. "Where ya going, Jail Bait?" What are you doing Jail Bait." Looking back on it years later - they were trying to let any young men who didn't know - know that I was younger than I looked. One of them - who also lived across the street from me - also once chased an older man - who was making lewd suggestions to me - down the street with a bat.