Family and Friends Forum

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Its a very fair point. If the vigilant has started a conversation. What is the guarantee they are not masking their deepest instincts by writing such stuff, infact instigating and enjoying the conversation.

Probably someone from LFF can explain why the law is not applicable to vigilant.

My husbands solicitor said his conversation with an adult police decoy was 'akin to entrapment'. Sadly they are a literal law unto themselves.

My husband is a retired police officer and hearing about police decoys appals him as he says a similar behaviour in his everyday policing would get him into big trouble as yes, it would be entrapment. I do wonder about the personalities of the officers who volunteer for this job.

I completely agree my understanding was that a decoy would make a false profile of a child and wait for an adult to contact them, and, as previously said, take a passive role. This was certainly not the situation with my OH, adult 'chat roulette' website, adult profile, randomly matched, leading and suggestive comments from decoy.

Ultimately he should have told them the get lost when they said they were under 18, but he knew it was an adult and replied with sarcastic comments. It wasn't explicitly sexual, the police called it 'suggestive' but that seems enough to destroy him and our family. I just wish he had been a bit more aware of the dangers of the internet and that you never know someone else's motivations.

I find it hard to think that there is a room full of police officers who wake up in the morning and go to work with the intention on engaging people and catching them out with these conversations.

Post deleted by user

JenJo - wow, a complete lack of empathy from the officer. If the repercussions weren't so severe (and in some respects disproportionate) I could understand it.

Pippin,

Sadly empathy is not something that I've seen much of in the last months.. except from the women here of course x

My OH was on an adult dating site ( that's an issue to be dealt with another time ) so was not looking for children. Do these vigilantes just cast a net and then see who takes the bait. If they had anything about them they would just take any evidence to the police but instead they throw the grenade and walk away. Not thinking of the wider implications of the families.

My son told me he was contacted by a possible decoy. Made suggestive comments that he didn't rise to but did respond to a person who said they were under 16.

Maybe naive but I thought the person being arrested would have had to have been communicating on a sexual level not just responding to messages.

Post deleted by user

I looked into this a few months ago where someone who had been "caught" by a vigilante group had taken the case to the Supreme Court - I think this was in Scotland under the premise of the case against him violating his right to privacy, he lost. I have seen a few cases where my issue is that it would be unreasonable to genuinely believe the decoy was a minor, decoys used on phonecalls genuinely sounding like an adult etc. I do think decoys, if done correctly, can be a useful tool for helping to safeguard real children but I find that the law doesn't help to regulate how decoys should behave and this is a problem. Anyone caught under these circumstances could of course request that their barrister argue to a jury that the chat with the decoy was unrealistic and therefore they are not guilty because they did not reasonably believe they were communicating with a minor but I think this would be difficult to prove and herein lies the problem.

I do find it bizarre that some decoys will be placed on certain chatrooms which are 18+, I personally find this placement asks for people to question the authenticity of the decoys and this is where some of the crimes stem from. I'm not sure what the answer is or how things could change for the better but I do know that something does need to change because it's not working.

I haven't come across vigilantes being involved with cases that are encouraging the abuse of children but they're on very sticky ground if they are because they absolutely could find themselves handcuffs!

There are possibly men out there that need to be 'caught', my son was, his behaviour had developed / he needed to be stopped and get help (?? - some joke that fact is)......

But many men are being 'lured' into this world and so many are taking the bait ending in dire consequences, not only for themselves but their friends & families. On top of that labelled as a P. It's the 'lure' and the 'witch-hunt' that I find distasteful and wrong.

Dear Forum Users

Thank you for raising an important and interesting discussion on vigilantes, also known as Online Child Abuse Activist Groups (OCAGs).

In recent years there has been a rise in groups of vigilantes operating online to identify child sex offenders, and the controversy surrounding the practice is widely known and accepted within this field. We know that the methods used by these groups can increase the risk posed to potential victims, the suspects, and their families, and the way in which some groups operate can also impede police investigations. The CPS does have specific guidance in relation to cases involving vigilante groups, which we hope can shed some light on the discussions which have taken place in this thread: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/online-child-abuse-activist-groups-internet

Kind Regards

The Forum Team