TX: Online child predators: The rise of these criminals, the vigilantes trying to catch them and the legal battle that follows

Source: wfaa.com 12/11/22

As many aspects of Americans’ everyday lives continue to move more online, criminals are shifting their focus as well.

That includes child predators, and the people trying to stop them — both police officers and civilians.

According to data from multiple agencies, there has been a rise in reports of child sexual exploitation online in recent years. While different local, state and federal agencies are trying to protect families and stop these criminals, many social media influencers are also changing the focus of their videos to try catch these child predators in the act themselves.

But can both of these groups effectively and legally carry out their investigations at the same time?

Police say they cannot.

Read the full article

 

Related posts

Subscribe
Notify of

We welcome a lively discussion with all view points - keeping in mind...

 

  1. Submissions must be in English
  2. Your submission will be reviewed by one of our volunteer moderators. Moderating decisions may be subjective.
  3. Please keep the tone of your comment civil and courteous. This is a public forum.
  4. Swear words should be starred out such as f*k and s*t and a**
  5. Please avoid the use of derogatory labels.  Always use person-first language.
  6. Please stay on topic - both in terms of the organization in general and this post in particular.
  7. Please refrain from general political statements in (dis)favor of one of the major parties or their representatives.
  8. Please take personal conversations off this forum.
  9. We will not publish any comments advocating for violent or any illegal action.
  10. We cannot connect participants privately - feel free to leave your contact info here. You may want to create a new / free, readily available email address that are not personally identifiable.
  11. Please refrain from copying and pasting repetitive and lengthy amounts of text.
  12. Please do not post in all Caps.
  13. If you wish to link to a serious and relevant media article, legitimate advocacy group or other pertinent web site / document, please provide the full link. No abbreviated / obfuscated links. Posts that include a URL may take considerably longer to be approved.
  14. We suggest to compose lengthy comments in a desktop text editor and copy and paste them into the comment form
  15. We will not publish any posts containing any names not mentioned in the original article.
  16. Please choose a short user name that does not contain links to other web sites or identify real people.  Do not use your real name.
  17. Please do not solicit funds
  18. No discussions about weapons
  19. If you use any abbreviation such as Failure To Register (FTR), Person Forced to Register (PFR) or any others, the first time you use it in a thread, please expand it for new people to better understand.
  20. All commenters are required to provide a real email address where we can contact them.  It will not be displayed on the site.
  21. Please send any input regarding moderation or other website issues via email to moderator [at] all4consolaws [dot] org
  22. We no longer post articles about arrests or accusations, only selected convictions. If your comment contains a link to an arrest or accusation article we will not approve your comment.
  23. If addressing another commenter, please address them by exactly their full display name, do not modify their name. 
ACSOL, including but not limited to its board members and agents, does not provide legal advice on this website.  In addition, ACSOL warns that those who provide comments on this website may or may not be legal professionals on whose advice one can reasonably rely.  
 

21 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

We were told the database driven regime would circumvent crime. Didn’t work out…. Go figure.

This content creater is making a living doing this, “To catch a predator” crap?!? He’s going to get someone killed.

Sooner or later, somebody is going to kill him, themselves or wort of all some kid who’s not even involved with this garbage! Some actual teen, actually meeting some person. You know the thing that happens hundreds/thousands of times a day nationwide.

This vigilante crap is going to get more and more violent. Sooner or later, some completely uninvolved bystander is going to get shot! Not on purpose…just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All this so we can lock up a tiny fraction of the people that are actually hooking up with teens…at the moment. Send another 1,000 to prison…they’ll be replaced, then their numbers can start growing again. Send another 5,000…10,000…freaking million…doesn’t matter.

War on drugs idiocy all over again.

“Jean said that, after he shoots his sting, he always hands over his video and evidence to the police. But he doesn’t work with the police beforehand. He said, even if the people he exposes DON’T END UP IN JAIL, he’s still doing good by exposing them to the public through hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of views online”

If you exposed someone, and they did not end up in jail, sounds to me like the only thing exposed was an innocent person. What a scumbag piece of sh*t you are, Jean. There should be laws against people like you

Well like the song says , “Sometimes even the hero gets a bullet in the chest Once upon a time in the west” and these dummies are begging for it , like many hunters always have they tend under estimate their pray always feeling they have the upper hand and forget about that pesky will to survive , damn their luck !

“Real kids are online,” Poor said. “We know predators go where real kids go, and that’s where they’re meeting up.” LOL. Seriously? If predators go where real kids go, then why are these stupid stings always run on adult platforms?

A rise in online predators? How many online child predators have been identified or arrested apart from the stings (again, run from adult platforms)? Guessing very few…

The article states 37,872 online enticement reports in 2020. Again, how many were from sting operations? Guessing most.

252,000 URLs investigated for child porn and abuse. And how many of those originated from the FBI’s Backpage archives? A significant number, likely.

What I’m really irritated at is that our fearless reporters don’t offer even the appearance of scrutiny when statistics regarding sex or children are reported. I.e., where do those numbers come from? Have they been verified and if so, how and by whom?

Why doesn’t ever occur to reporters to ask these sorts of questions? Do they seriously think it will degrade the story’s clickbait value?

Unless the adults are primarily catfishing these minors, how are teens being exploited online by adults? Wouldn’t it be far easier to solve the problem by giving minors access to better online security tools when they are online and easier ways to report abuse and exploitation? We could really put this whole thing to rest if we stopped with these outrageous sting operations and simply empowered children online with better protection.

I would like to hear a proponent of these stings explain why they focus their efforts on catching predators when they could simply be denied access with better online security.

Okay, I just read the article. The solution sounds simple:

Dating websites need to enact robust age verification. Kids who try to pose as adults should immediately be banned and their parents notified. The level of online security to protect our most vulnerable should at least match the sophistication used to protect travelers in our nations airports.

Adults going on these sites should be able to be free from being catfished by a minor (or an adult pretending to be another adult that is pretending to be a minor). Give members tools to have these phonies booted off. Let the adults have their play time in peace!

If the child protection organizations were authentically trying to protect kids, this would have been done long ago. The fact that it hasn’t shows there’s something else behind all of this stupidity.