Perverted Justice

I happened across this link from FARK.com, its Perverted Justice (the server is FARKED at the time of this post, kinda like a /. effect but not as severe).

Anyhow, the gist of it is that these people pretened to be children on chat rooms and seek out pedophiles.

Personally I think it's great that someone is doing this, as regular law enforcment really doesn't have the resources to implement this kind of crime prevention.

My favorite part: the pics of the sick bastards.

Eh...eww.

Okay I admit I only clicked on this because it had "perverted" in the title.

Well this is bound to be an unpopular opinion, but I think what these people are doing is just plain wrong. I wonder how many of the guys that end up branded on that site would have kept their noses clean if not for someone agressively coming on to them while pretending to be a kid. I think they're almost as slimey as the pedophiles they're after.

I think its sick to post the whole conversations. you know now there are probably people just reading the conversations to get off.

I've not read the site (not cause i'm lazy, but for my own reasons)... so my opinion is based only on the posts here... if i'm wrong, lemme know <g>

I see where you're coming from Chip, but just wondering. From your post it sounds like with the right amount of pressure, anyone would cave :\ Even if the guys were pressured beyond belief... it's still not right to do it.

I'll agree in a slight way in as much that they may not have approached a child at another time... just as much as we all do things sometimes due to say, peer pressure, that we wouldn't neccessarily do without it....

That being said though, the fact that they caved, no matter how aggressively they were come on to (by someone pretending to be a child), is disgusting.

So yeah, maybe they're not on the same level as some pedophiles... but they're still as bad in an overall sense... whether they'd done it once or a billion times.

I kinda support what the site is doing. A newspaper in the UK did this same thing a while back... using one of their reporters who looked younger than she was... when the men went to meet her, they would take pictures and bust them. If it helps to warn even one child/parent... or stop just one pedophile... then i think it's a good thing.

ARgh....ack...such a weird concept.

Chip: Just curious, that's almost like a cop posing undercover as a drug dealer or prostitute or something. Are you against that too?

I don't really see their point in doing this, but as long as they aren't "aggressively coming on" to people (I'd assume they'd act normal), I have no sympathy for people caught trying to take advantage of a (supposed) kid.

I think it's totally ok, if the crime is really bad, and the authorities aren't doing enough in your opinion, to suspect, investigate, entrap, try, convict and punish people on your own.

Who was it who said "I would rather see a thousand innocent men jailed than one guilty man go free"?

I'm not in any way condoning the actions of the guys. My point is that I think these people get off on their own vigilante justice. They're playing the game just as much as the guys are. I only glanced at the site and the only thing I read was a letter from an 18 year old guy begging them to remove his picture. Makes me wonder how old the person posing as the girl was. 40? Pretending to be what, 16? But I guess it's okay if it's "just pretend" in the name of ruining people's lives. Dunno... the whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach.

Still, child molesters deserve to be shot, hanged, crucified, drawn and quartered, drowned, decapitated, whatever

I guess they do like it when they catch someone. I wouldn't calling it ruining their lives unless something more comes of it and there's legal action or whatever. Although, if there had been a real kid involved, the accused here certainly seem to have no problem with ruining someone else's life.

With the 18 year old, that's a little close to call, I wouldn't place someone that young (practically a "child" themselves) into the pediphile category. But it all depends on specifics...if it was a fake 8 year old he was talking to, fine. If it was a 16 year old or something, hmmm. It can get a little hazy...the number 18 and 21 where we draw legal lines isn't exactly a set in stone age that *really* means anything. (Not to imply 16 year olds should be meeting people from the internet...)

Note that the FBI does do this sort of thing themselves. See the following:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10052-2003Jun3.html?nav=hptoc_m

Funny how that name comes up so often with this topic, isn't it? hehe

Both sides of the issue are just plain icky

Yes, authorities do this sort of thing already. Indeed, a professor at the local university was busted a couple years ago for going to meet an underage girl when he went to meet the girl at a rest stop, and found a police officer instead.

Perverted Justice's peculiar campaign is actually a thorn in the side of lawn enforcement, since the excessive publicity they give their cases only complicates the prosecution of people the law catches doing this sort of thing.

*ahem*

But no, I don't think this is a good thing. Take a step back for a moment and ask yourself, "What crime are these people committing?" Did these people actually molest a minor? Did they have any intent to molest a minor? Did they talk to a minor about having sex?

The answers: No. Not necessarily. No. These people are being given the scarlet-letter treatment for engaging in a chat conversation with an adult posing as a minor that includes explicitly sexual content. At least, in the case of the RL professor mentioned above, the police had the fact that he went to meet with the fictional minor as evidence of his intent to follow through. But this site doesn't even have that.

And if you read the long, annoying chat transcripts, you'll find more often than not it's the "minor" initiating the sexual conversation, planting the seed and actually *pursuing* it even when the true "victim" (the target) seems only casually interested. If these were criminal cases, there'd be grounds for calling this "entrapment."

Which brings us another point. This site does not involve any sort of meaningful due process. The "accused" are allowed to protest their innocence in edited excerpts surrounded by sarcastic remarks, but besides this, there is no "jury of one's peers," no challenging of the evidence, no established process beyond the site's say-so. For all we know, the chat transcripts may be ENTIRELY FICTIONAL, or at least edited to make them more "colorful," and the "accused" would have no recourse whatsoever.

I'm not condoning the sexual molestation of minors, but let's be rational. This site only exposes people who supposedly *could be* sexual molestors, but who may not have ever approached any minor with the intent to molest them, and may never do so. This site does not have the authority or the knowledge to state that what one person says in one conversation brands them an inevitable criminal.

It is, to put it short, a witch hunt. And no, I don't think that sexual molestation of minors -- as bad as it is -- merits this sort of ultra-zero-tolerance attitude. This sort of lynch-mob action has no place in civilized society.

Disclaimer: Child molesters don't deserve due process (IMHO). If caught in the act, they deserve a 3 hour ass whuppin until nearly dead.

Having said that, why do parents put Internet enabled computers in their minor kid's rooms? If I had kids, they would get their own personal computers with Internet connections when they can buy them themselves. Until that happened, they would have to make do with the family computer, which is located where everyone can see what's onscreen.

At this point, some of you are rolling your eyes, and sayin' "What a bitch!". Some of you think that kids deserve more privacy. Well, the way I see it, kids should earn their right to privacy. If they are prone to doing everything the rest of the herd does, they don't deserve alot of privacy. If a kid acts responsibly, they get a longer leash.

Parents need to know everything they can learn about their little playmates, so the younguns don't end up dead, face down in a ditch 400 miles from home.

Yeah, now that's what I meant when I said "as long as they aren't 'aggressively coming on' to people"...that's bad. Sounds like it fits the legal definition of entrapment. I'm not sure I like the website/concept too much myself (although at least they're trying to go after bad people rather than random innocent ones?). But I can think of a few things they could better spend their time doing...

The major problem with how they're apparently conducting these things is that they're not paid professionals. The FBI would have the patience to let the potential criminals come to them rather than the other way around. But since the people on that site are doing it for fun, they're much more aggressive.

Anyway, good post Phineas.

Teeny,

Nah, that's just a responsible parent's POV. No bitch-calling here.

Everybody has a right to due process. It's guaranteed in the constitution.

No matter how dispicible the crime, you are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

You are also guaranteed the right to a speedy trial.

And representation in a court of law.

And a jury of your peers.

LF

Three statments

1)Yes, Actuall pedifiles should be beaten to an inch of their life

2)Yes, These people should be beaten to an inch of thier lives for instigating a witch hunt.

3)Yes, Pedifile crimes would decrease exponentialy were parents to take control of their children and keep them off the internet.




Unfortunately No, parents wont take control,
Thus pedifiles will continue to feed,
Thus the witch hunters will feel its their civic duty to slander anyone they want in the name of JUSTIC.

Is any of this right NO none of it is.

Is the Legal system skewed? Yes it is and without "power hungry self indulgent people" you might see a change in it and actuall perpetriaters being caught and punshied as they should be.

But untill then we will continue to see the rise in Witch hunters in the Real World just like we have a few in Second Life. Unfortunately its human nature to believe a semi credible source and run with the Noose in hand after the supposed criminal.

End of Rant.

Shadow

Since most doctors say that pediphiles and other sexual predators cannot usually be cured, surgical castration should be a standard part of any sentencing.

Interesting that so many Americans in this thread have shown themselves to be (a) opposed to the due process of justice (b) in favour of torture and (c) in favour of entrapment.

Mind you, over here in the UK people are just as bad. There was a memorable case where a paediatric nurse was forced to move house because of harrassment by those morally uplifted indivduals who were likewise opposed to due process, and who thought that anything beginning with 'paed' meant child molester.

I agree 100% with what Chip said, and I must admit I am disquieted by the way that people seem so willing to renounce the things which are the very backbone of our society when their particular buttons are pressed.

It's even worse than that in the states, Selador.

Many communities (I don't know if it's a federal thing) have public sexual offender registries where the names and homes of people who have been convicted of sex offenses are listed. Many of these people must inform their new neighbors of their status as "convicted sex offender" when they move in. So it's all very easy to exact your moral vengeance upon people convicted of these crimes.

As a Merkan myself, I find the trend to embrace cruel punishment disquieting as well. After having read about the treatment of the Tipton Three, I can see what the general effect of all this recreational slurring happens to be -- innocent people being punished unjustly.

But you'll find few Merkans who really care about the core values any more. Most people here are preoccupied with the morality plays the White House sets up to distract them from legitimate international diplomacy and national economic policy concerns.

I said surgical castration, NOT surgical castration without painkillers. And that was for CONVICTED child molesters. And...and...and...uhm, what's a Merkan?

?

Oh, sorry, I thought it was common usage.

"Merkans" is a demonym for U.S. citizens. I use it online because some of my international chat-friends find our habit of referring to ourselves as "American" (we're not citizens of "America," after all) rather chauvinistic.

Yeah, possibly PC gone haywire, but I'm a pedant as well, so I've tended to drop referring to ourselves as "Americans" as too vague anyway for something more explicit and specific. I called us "USians" for a while, but "Merkans" rolls off the type-tongue better, I think.

Come to think of it, the word itself might have begun its life as a kind of slur our dapper friends in the UK might have devised, mocking our accent(s). So adopting it might be unforgivably biased. *shrugs* I like it anyway.