Essex, England
It’s a Wednesday evening, and I’m getting psyched up to go catch a pedophile with the boys. Playlist on, rocking down the A12 and chatting to my new mate, Nick, in his van. There’s a man not far from here who thinks he’s going to meet an underage girl tonight. He doesn’t know that we’ll be pulling up instead and that his sick fantasy — and his life as he knows it — will be over.
Nick is a guy I met on Facebook who runs a team of pedophile hunters called London Overwatch. He says that he’s caught 300 pedophiles, and that tonight’s is one of the worst. This man believes he has been talking to a fourteen-year-old girl and has apparently been sending her obscene videos while he’s on holiday with his family. The “girl” is really a woman on Nick’s team.
T-minus one hour before the meeting, and we park at a local health club just around the corner. The team assembles: Ben, George, Tony, Michael and Abdul. All friendly Essex boys. We discuss whether you can spot a pedophile in the street judging only by the clothes somebody wears. Yes, it’s agreed, they wear Slazenger or Lonsdale. We talk about fishing and about how Ben recently visited the no. 2 ranked sushi restaurant in the world.
Time to roll out. We move in convoy, charging down a country lane to the location. Tony and Michael are at the front, connected to us through the hands-free, and they arrive first. “He’s here, he’s here, he’s here,” Tony says. Nick chuckles and grabs my leg, shaking it wildly. We swing in second and there’s the pedophile’s car, with the man sitting behind the wheel. He doesn’t know what’s happening. We park across his front, and Nick rushes out of the van wearing a stab vest just in case things get violent. “Out the car. It’s over.” The man puts his head in his hands.
Nick and I first met last week at Café Brera in Canary Wharf, a coffee spot that he said his wife liked, for a briefing on the operation. We began with some housekeeping. First, Nick said his group prefers “Online Child Protection Team” to “pedophile hunters.” Second, we were not hunting pedophiles, but Suspected Online Sexual Predators. I had to understand that London Overwatch was by-the-books. “What we do has to be done correctly. Stings ruin people’s lives, make no bones about it.”
The sincerity seemed a bit pointless, given that pedophile hunting these days is basically a lawless business. Go on Facebook or TikTok and scroll for a minute, and soon you’ll get a video entitled something like “CHILD PREDATOR GOT THROWN IN THE BUSHES AND SMACKED FOR TRYING TO MEET A YOUNG GIRL” or “PEDO GAVE A LITTLE GIRL FENTANYL AND GOT BEATEN TO GROUND! WATCH TILL THE END!” For years, hunters have been posing as children online, luring predators in chatrooms and posting videos of their stings, but recently the videos have become weirder, darker, better.
This makes me so angry it makes me feel very violent towards the author. He should be hunted instead.
Theres needs to be a group to catch the group who are out to catch others.
It’s all theater, of course, and everyone recognizes and acknowledges that… in fact, they revel in it. It’s all fun and games to them, because they know it’s highly unlikely any of their targets would ever get violent or strike back.
Let’s see these guys go up against some hardcore drug dealers, or someone who’s truly dangerous… except, that will never happen, because deep down inside, the idea of confronting somebody who could easily kick their teeth in absolutely terrifies them. They get all the fortune and fame, without taking any of the risks.
On the flip side… what blows my mind is that this sort of thing has been going on for so long, and yet, all these people are still falling for it. A lot of folks out there must be desperate, mentally unstable, hopelessly naive, or some combination thereof. Pathetic and sad as what these “hunters” do is, it’s equally pathetic and sad that so many individuals are so eager to meet up with a random stranger they met on the internet who claims to be underage, absolutely convinced that they’re going to experience some sort of “dream come true”, or live out a “fantasy” involving a minor. Seriously people… stop taking the bait… and maybe do some inner reflection/life examination, as well…
In the article, they claim that these “stings” somehow “discourage” future offending… I call profound b.s. on that, because there’s simply no legitimate data that supports such a statement. Matter of fact, most of what I read points out that very few of the “catches” are even convicted, and that their “15 minutes of shame” is completely forgotten the moment these “hunter” groups go after their next target.
Ultimately, the entire point of all this is for a bunch of average, unremarkable nobodies to feel “special” doing something that literally anyone else can (and has) done… while they never actually accomplish anything meaningful, or make the world any better, whatsoever… and the show just keeps on going…
…”hunters have been posing as children online, luring predators…”
I would ask how many shootouts in the Walmart parking lot it is going to take to see how these “Hunter Clowns” endanger everyone, but I already know the answer, and it is infinite?
How may hookup folks have groups like this made into, permanently “Missing persons”? How may more will they over the next few years? Oh and how many bystanders became, additional Missing Persons? I hope none, but… even if that is true, how much longer will if remain true? No matter how many violent vigilantes attacking their victims in public places there are, no bystanders ever get Hurt? None of these clowns ever make a mistake of any kind, ever? No Hook Up ever decides to, not get caught by these people, by any means necessary? Oh and no matter what happens, no witness will ever need to be…?
None of these things will ever happen? Just like none of these groups are just extortionists? They also never fabricate the appearance of an underaged hookup as a way to extort people! Not possible! That would be as silly as thinking racist and/or homophobic groups might be doing that to disguise their hate crimes! That will obviously never, happen… anywhere… ever! 😁
A number of years ago, many of the earliest, “proto”-“pedophile hunters” all turned out to be…(wait for it) “PEDOPHILES!” Anyone ever heard of the late Mike Echols who wrote the book entitled “I Think My Name Is Steven?” He became a self-styled vigilante with the Biblically-inflected website name of “Better A Millstone” that he used to identify to the world anyone he thought was interested in boys. He was a hot, self-hating mess. He ended up choking on his own vomit in a jail cell after he physically assaulted a boy because, of course, it’s okay to beat a kid, just don’t have sex with him.
It’s always that way just as the “fag-bashers” who used to stalk people who are gay (I was targeted, myself – I got a concussion after being attacked walking down the street in the middle of the day) invariably turned out to be homosexual, themselves.
The shrinks have a completely unintuitive term for this phenomenon of redirected self-loathing: “reaction formation.”
“None of this is entrapment, by the way. The Sexual Offenses Act 2003 makes clear that you only need to “reasonably believe” the person to be under sixteen for any kind of sexual communication to be a crime.”
What if you didn’t believe the person was under sixteen? What if the person lied and said they are over 18? I don’t know about British law, but it’s still a criminal offense under American law
Gloating in the downfall of others will have its price. One day each one will have their turn standing defenseless before Justice to answer for their deeds, known and unknown.
Mercy triumphs over judgement.
It just seems to be that violence may occur at some point and someone may get hurt.
An honest report might question who the “predator” is in these situations.