Ethics is a very complicated and confusing subject. Decisions
are very often not black-and-white and dilemmas are lurking around every
corner. I understand the lure of moral nihilism. It is so easy to throw your
hands up and set yourself free from this burden simply by becoming a
pseudo-psychopath, see here for details:
http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/02/humiliation-reply-to-stefan-molyneux.html.
A perfect example is the phenomenon of paedophile hunters. This is a new
movement that has emerged mostly in the
British Isles
and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the English-speaking world, which takes
advantage of an aspect of internet child protection laws. If a sexual predator
targets a child through online social media then it makes no difference who the
child is, or even if it
is a child at
all; so long as the offender
believes
that they are addressing a child. Therefore some people have set up sock
accounts which portray themselves as children and wait for a predator to
approach them. They then gather evidence of the person "grooming"
them; this means posting content designed to manipulate a minor into sexual
activity. Once this entrapment is complete they call the police and also
confront the predator publicly, usually livestreaming the situation in order to
"name and shame" them. Many paedophile hunters are survivors of child
sexual abuse themselves and a there are over a hundred teams. Because of his
media presence, the best known of these teams in the one led by Stinson Hunter,
see:
https://www.youtube.com/user/lingzune.
The paedophile hunting community has developed its own lexicon, see:
Paedophile hunting
terminology:
"Decoy"-
somebody impersonating a child online to entrap predators.
"Door
knock"- a sting that takes place at a predator's home.
"Excuse
bingo"- a list of common pretexts predators use, such as "I thought
she was eighteen not thirteen!" or "My mate was using my phone at the
time!" etc.
"Hebephile"-
somebody sexually attracted to children around the age of puberty.
"Nonce"-
online predator.
"Pandora's
bracelets" (often shortened to "Pandoras")- handcuffs
"Predator"-
a paedophile before their first criminal conviction for child grooming.
"Re-offender"-
a predator who has been stung before or convicted in court of grooming before.
"Sting"-
public confrontation with predators.
"Taxi"-
police car.
"To light
up"- to expose a predator publicly.
"To take
(somebody) to the floor"- physically restrain a violent person during a
citizens' arrest.
"Wrong
'un"- any person who is utterly evil and degenerate.
A typical sting involves the predator arranging to meet the
decoy somewhere and instead of the underage person they expect, a group of
burly adults brandishing cameras appear and place the predator under citizens'
arrest in accordance with Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of
1984. They will reassure the suspect that they are not there to harm them, and
even talk about the duty of care they have according to the law. They then
immediately call the police. The livestreams are usually posted to public
profiles and the comments boxes fill up with expression of rage and hatred. Most
stings end when the police arrive and arrest the suspect. The response from the
captured suspect varies a lot. Some collapse in shame and beg for forgiveness,
but these are a minority. Most of them are not emotionally moved at all when
confronted by the reality of their own behaviour. They often try to talk their
way out of it by making up lies about what they did or plan to do. Experienced paedophile
hunters soon become accustomed to what they tend to concoct, hence "excuse
bingo". A few panic and try to escape by running or fighting, a futile
effort because sting teams always consist of two or more large men who act as
security. The hunters never turn the camera on themselves; guarding their anonymity.
I suspect many use false names because all their surnames seem to be "Hunter".
They never reveal the names of the decoys or the descriptions of their sock-puppet
profiles. Any sock publicized would then be considered doxed and therefore
useless for decoys because the targets could all find out what it is and who is
behind it. This could jeopardize missions in progress. At the time of writing,
there are several thousand recordings of stings available on social media.
Hunters claim they gain a conviction with every case and never carry out a
sting unless they are absolutely certain of the predator's identity and have ample
evidence of their misdemeanours. Usually they track the suspect for several
months or longer before confronting them in a sting. Most of them are engaging
with more than one decoy. However, their record is not one hundred percent
perfect, see:
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/man-caught-hull-paedophile-hunter-1935171.
The teams vary in professionalism and competence, in my view. Paedophile
hunting is very controversial and has been the subject of several news and
current affairs TV programmes, for example see:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50302912.
Paedophile hunters have been described as vigilantes; however this is not
literally true for most of them. The majority of teams operate completely
within the law. However senior police authorities are very critical of
paedophile hunters. They accuse them of taking the law into their own hands by
publicizing their stings so enthusiastically. So far no paedophile hunter has
been convicted of any offence as a result of their activities. The reason they
make a sting public every time is because they claim that the police do not
have the resources to deal with the problem of online child grooming which is,
nobody can deny, a horrific scandal. They claim that punishment under the law
is too lenient for child protection cases, which I agree with. Some predators
are not even imprisoned, at least for their first offence. The name-and-shame
strategy acts as an additional deterrent by embarrassing the suspect so blatantly.
It also allows people who know the suspect to be wary of them. However, paedophile
hunting of this kind does indeed bypass the usual legal process. At the time of
writing, eight suspects have committed suicide after being stung and before
their prosecution. Therefore the experience of being stung has so upset them
that it has induced them to end their lives when they have not been legally
convicted of a crime, for example see:
https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/08/man-kills-48-hours-confronted-paedophile-hunters-7812198/.
Being destroyed socially and professionally, these men then see the only way
out is to destroy themselves biologically. I'm not going to mourn for these
individuals, but do I actively desire them to kill themselves? No. Do they deserve
this outcome in legal terms? No. Could these suicides be described as an
extra-judicial death sentence? It's a tough question that's not easy to answer.
As I said, morality is very rarely open-and-shut or unmistakable. There are
very often bad side effects to good actions and vice versa. What is the right
thing to do? I think my decision on this conundrum is influenced by the fact I
have a daughter. She is now an adult, but of course I do remember her childhood
and teenage years. I find the idea of her being pursued at a young age sexually
on the internet by an adult as totally obscene and infuriating. I was also
abused myself as a child; not sexually, but physically and emotionally, see:
https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/09/centaur.html
and:
https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2019/10/peter-croft-and-ben-emlyn-jones.html.
Despite the harm sometimes done by paedophile hunters, they do an awful lot of
good that prevents harm that would otherwise not be prevented. They are
dedicated volunteers who do this work in their own time for no pay; and stings
often involve a lot of travelling. Children are far safer as a result of their
actions. There is a case here for what philosophers call "the doctrine of
double effects", see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/.
Therefore my solution to this dilemma is to support the paedophile hunters, and
I do.
