Vigilante Group Exposing Alleged Child Predator Leads To Suicide

[GoblinCampFollower]

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.

There was a great joke that I think is relevant to vigilantes:

"In Russia, Stalin's briefcase was stolen. He called his chief of police to demand swift justice.

2 hours later, he found it had fallen over under his bed. He called his police chief to call off the search.

The police chief protested "Are you sure?! I already arrested 12 guilty men. 3 of them have already confessed!""

This joke probably wasn't made up with vigilantes in mind, but I think it's extremely relevant. I have read about cases where a vigilante saved the day. ...I've also heard of much more tragic results. That's why due process exists.

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

I think I'm trying to find a link between the legal ramifications (giving myself a cookie for using a big word) and the outcome of the OP topic. Or my head is just in a spin. Maybe in this direction: They were following him with a camera, not a gun or a knife. At worst, they were a catalyst for a guy who was a victim of his own faults. He killed himself. Why fault the vigilantes?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think I'm trying to find a link between the legal ramifications (giving myself a cookie for using a big word) and the outcome of the OP topic. Or my head is just in a spin. Maybe in this direction: They were following him with a camera, not a gun or a knife. At worst, they were a catalyst for a guy who was a victim of his own faults. He killed himself. Why fault the vigilantes?

Not sure what you mean here. Are you saying he actually did kill himself? I watched it most of the way through (using the subtitles) and it didn't seem to be going that way.

As to the legal situation, depends what the local law is. Depending on what the local statutes are like, it might have amounted to some form of harassment, though not in English law I think.

But just because something's not prohibited by law doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do.

 

[Essence Lumin]

There seems to quite a bit of evidence the Luxury Pranks youtube predator videos are fake. I'm in no position to evaluate that since I haven't even watched the videos but here is an excerpt and link.

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

Not sure what you mean here. Are you saying he actually did kill himself? I watched it most of the way through (using the subtitles) and it didn't seem to be going that way.

As to the legal situation, depends what the local law is. Depending on what the local statutes are like, it might have amounted to some form of harassment, though not in English law I think.

But just because something's not prohibited by law doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do.

The guy in the OP had killed himself. I think everyone lost sight of this while focusing on the legality of the vigilante's actions. When I happened upon the video I posted, I was hoping it could re-focus the point with a counter-situation where the suspect survived.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The guy in the OP had killed himself. I think everyone lost sight of this while focusing on the legality of the vigilante's actions. When I happened upon the video I posted, I was hoping it could re-focus the point with a counter-situation where the suspect survived.

Thanks.

For what it's worth, in general I think that groups who set out to catch people online who want to abuse children sexually, with a view to setting up meetings to confront them and then to provide evidence to the police, need to be very careful to avoid entrapment or otherwise damaging any subsequent prosecution. Law enforcement "sting" operations are conducted according to very tight rules and protocols for a reason.

People who conduct such operations and post the results on social media shouldn't, quite simply. We have courts to investigate and punish allegations of crime and, whatever the failings of a particular country's or US state's criminal justice system, that's infinitely preferable to a system of public denunciation on social media to whip up an online lynch mob.

 

[Ellie]

What Innula said, plus the idiots gleaning headlines from posting their fuckery to YouTube make it more difficult for those earnestly and often anonymously working hard to stem the deluge of abuse.

No police force anywhere has sufficient resources to deal with this.

While it's appalling that a life was lost under very iffy circumstances, I wouldn't discourage those with the real skills to make a difference by passing info gained on to law enforcement.

I'm a child sexual abuse survivor and 90% certain I wasn't his last victim.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpav4/the-controversial-rise-of-the-uks-vigilante-pedophile-hunters

An informative read.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I think part of the reason it's so hard for me to completely disavow this kind of thing despite my problems with it, is that it's so hard for me to understand the "entrapment" argument here. In all these cases, the "bait" takes care to make sure that the "fish" sees and acknowledges that the bait is claiming to be a minor. That's the whole point of it, after all. Now, if the people caught in these things were complaining that the "bait" had actually told them in the chatroom the whole time that they were over 18, and changed the chatlogs afterwards - that, I could definitely buy as an argument for entrapment. Whether it's credible or not is another story, but calling it "entrapment" at least makes sense with a claim like that.

But that's not what anybody caught in these things ever says; the argument is always more along the lines of "well I didn't originally go into that chatroom with the intention of arranging sex with a kid, THEY brought it up and then talked me into it". I have trouble sympathizing with that argument because it requires me to believe that when someone who claims to be 13 or 14 or sommat starts flirting with them heavily, these men become just completely helpless to resist the offer, to the point where it's really the "bait" who's exploiting them. And that this state of helpless trance persists after the chat is over and the fish has to make all these preparations for a (sometimes VERY) long drive to get to the house of the kid they've been just swindled into agreeing to have sex with.

This whole argument in general - that when it comes to sexual stuff, men have this weakness of will and after a certain amount of encouragement it's just simply unreasonable to expect them to control themselves, has underlain a lot of sex offenders' defenses for ages and I've never bought it. "As yourself: if you were in a chat room and a self-identified kid came in, do you think there's absolutely anything they might say that could possibly convince YOU to come to their house and have sex with them?

 

[Casey Pelous]

I think part of the reason it's so hard for me to completely disavow this kind of thing despite my problems with it, is that it's so hard for me to understand the "entrapment" argument here. In all these cases, the "bait" takes care to make sure that the "fish" sees and acknowledges that the bait is claiming to be a minor. That's the whole point of it, after all. Now, if the people caught in these things were complaining that the "bait" had actually told them in the chatroom the whole time that they were over 18, and changed the chatlogs afterwards - that, I could definitely buy as an argument for entrapment. Whether it's credible or not is another story, but calling it "entrapment" at least makes sense with a claim like that.

But that's not what anybody caught in these things ever says; the argument is always more along the lines of "well I didn't originally go into that chatroom with the intention of arranging sex with a kid, THEY brought it up and then talked me into it". I have trouble sympathizing with that argument because it requires me to believe that when someone who claims to be 13 or 14 or sommat starts flirting with them heavily, these men become just completely helpless to resist the offer, to the point where it's really the "bait" who's exploiting them. And that this state of helpless trance persists after the chat is over and the fish has to make all these preparations for a (sometimes VERY) long drive to get to the house of the kid they've been just swindled into agreeing to have sex with.

This whole argument in general - that when it comes to sexual stuff, men have this weakness of will and after a certain amount of encouragement it's just simply unreasonable to expect them to control themselves, has underlain a lot of sex offenders' defenses for ages and I've never bought it. "As yourself: if you were in a chat room and a self-identified kid came in, do you think there's absolutely anything they might say that could possibly convince YOU to come to their house and have sex with them?

Your faith in the honesty and integrity of the whole vigilante process is touching, but misplaced.

In the end these are YouTubers, not officers of the court. Heck, they're probably the same dorks who show up on YouTube comments! It's reality TV, not scrupulously documented police work -- its level of reliability as a representation of reality ranks up there with The Apprentice.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think part of the reason it's so hard for me to completely disavow this kind of thing despite my problems with it, is that it's so hard for me to understand the "entrapment" argument here.

How confident are you that the "paedophile hunters" have taken competent legal advice about what constitutes entrapment in their jurisdiction -- and, in particular, what the prosecution must prove to rebut that defence -- and have been advised on what they mustn't say/do and also on what the suspect must, without prompting, say or do, if the case not to risk falling apart once it gets to court?

Even if they avoid those pitfalls,how confident are you that the vigilante paedophile hunters have done a proper risk assessment (including the risk of the suspect realising he's being set up and destroying evidence, or destroying evidence that would otherwise be of use to the police if he makes it home before the vigilantes manage to alert the police)?

How confident are you that the vigilantes have addressed the various welfare issues surrounding vulnerable individuals in contact with the suspect?

There's so much that can go wrong. For what it's worth, here's the English Crown Prosecution Service's guidance on the topic Vigilantes on the internet - cases involving child sexual abuse | The Crown Prosecution Service and here's some guidance from a typical English police force.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

How confident are you that the "paedophile hunters" have taken competent legal advice about what constitutes entrapment in their jurisdiction -- and, in particular, what the prosecution must prove to rebut that defence -- and have been advised on what they mustn't say/do and also on what the suspect must, without prompting, say or do, if the case not to risk falling apart once it gets to court?

Hey....I'll freely admit that -I- don't even know what the legal problems and responsibilities around entrapment are, let alone think these people on YouTube do.

Rules are rules, I get that. I know there's rules about what is and is not entrapment, and that if someone ends up having been entrapped according to the rules there's no valid legal case against them, and I can accept that totally with a blank face when it happens. But with many of these cases, we're not asked to look at it just that way; we're asked to also look at the "fish" as like some kind of victim of cruel cyberbullying or harassment on top of it, and I can't really do that. I'm only saying, I have trouble sympathizing with "I was entrapped" as a character defense in cases like this.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Your faith in the honesty and integrity of the whole vigilante process is touching, but misplaced.

In the end these are YouTubers, not officers of the court. Heck, they're probably the same dorks who show up on YouTube comments! It's reality TV, not scrupulously documented police work -- its level of reliability as a representation of reality ranks up there with The Apprentice.

You are right about that. There's no question in my mind that the people who do this kind of thing are far more interested in making a name for themselves than they are about protecting children.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

we're asked to also look at the "fish" as like some kind of victim of cruel cyberbullying or harassment on top of it, and I can't really do that. I'm only saying, I have trouble sympathizing with "I was entrapped" as a character defense in cases like this.

I'm not offering it as any sort of character defence. I am saying it's very possibly an issue in any sort of prosecution, and I very firmly believe that the correct way to deal with anyone who is alleged to have committed a crime is to let their guilt be properly proved in court, where the evidence against them is properly scrutinised and tested.

I don't know what the law is like in the US, but I'd imagine that in order to prove this sort of offence the prosecution must prove, to the criminal standard, the defendant's state of mind at the time -- that is, was he intending to meet the child for sexual purposes? That might well seem obvious but, as you'll probably recall, I speculated earlier in the thread that the young man who killed himself may simply have intended to meet someone he could talk to about being gay, and then found himself confronted with the vigilante and his camera, saying that he was going to post the video on Facebook.

I've no idea if that would have been his defence, and I don't know if it would stood up in court, because I've not been able to read the papers in the case. But people are innocent until proven guilty, so we can't dismiss the possibility.

For an actual example of where things can go wrong take a look at United States v Poehlman. He was cruising the net looking for an adult partner and met an undercover agent, "Sharon," who said she had two young daughters. The matter is summarised in the judgment and in this article, so I won't go over it again, but in the Appeal Court's view (or at least in the majority view) there was sufficient doubt about Pohlman's intentions when he travelled to California to meet Sharon that his conviction was unsafe. I find it hard to disagree with them.

Furthermore, even if the defendant is guilty of intending to commit a crime, if he were arrested by the police (or at least in the UK) there would be some consideration given to his welfare. Almost certainly he'd be treated as a suicide risk while in custody, at least until the shock of the arrest had worn off, and if there were serious worries that he'd kill himself that would a reason for objecting to bail. That's quite proper, to my mind.

I suppose my concerns can be summarised thus: at least in the UK, the police would never be allowed to conduct an investigation in the way YouTube vigilantes conduct theirs, and certainly they wouldn't be allowed to release video of their sting operation before the man had even been charged, let alone convicted. I think YouTube and Facebook vigilantes should be held to similar standards.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I think part of the reason it's so hard for me to completely disavow this kind of thing despite my problems with it, is that it's so hard for me to understand the "entrapment" argument here. In all these cases, the "bait" takes care to make sure that the "fish" sees and acknowledges that the bait is claiming to be a minor. That's the whole point of it, after all. Now, if the people caught in these things were complaining that the "bait" had actually told them in the chatroom the whole time that they were over 18, and changed the chatlogs afterwards - that, I could definitely buy as an argument for entrapment. Whether it's credible or not is another story, but calling it "entrapment" at least makes sense with a claim like that.

But that's not what anybody caught in these things ever says; the argument is always more along the lines of "well I didn't originally go into that chatroom with the intention of arranging sex with a kid, THEY brought it up and then talked me into it". I have trouble sympathizing with that argument because it requires me to believe that when someone who claims to be 13 or 14 or sommat starts flirting with them heavily, these men become just completely helpless to resist the offer, to the point where it's really the "bait" who's exploiting them. And that this state of helpless trance persists after the chat is over and the fish has to make all these preparations for a (sometimes VERY) long drive to get to the house of the kid they've been just swindled into agreeing to have sex with.

This whole argument in general - that when it comes to sexual stuff, men have this weakness of will and after a certain amount of encouragement it's just simply unreasonable to expect them to control themselves, has underlain a lot of sex offenders' defenses for ages and I've never bought it. "As yourself: if you were in a chat room and a self-identified kid came in, do you think there's absolutely anything they might say that could possibly convince YOU to come to their house and have sex with them?

I feel for you, and I really want to agree with this - and I do, especially with your entrapment point. After all, nobody held a gun to these men's heads and forced them to go seek out sex with a minor. BUT - I still have a very basic problem with vigilantism, in that, among other things, it deprives the suspects due process of the law, and convicts them long before their day in court, if they even make it there. And these clowns are doing it for Youtube hits, which makes the whole thing just that much more reprehensible.