After some searching, I dug up that first thread about them that caused me to join their site and see what was up.
Website provides pictures of young girls for pedophiles
I was mistaken, as it was a little over three years ago.
(missed the edit window)
[QUOTE=faithfool]
Ergh! erie774, I apologize for being such a lame brain that you had to write all that out. Because I totally agree with you and that had, roughly, been my opinion for years. What I obviously failed to make clear, was that I simply wondered why you were disdainful of the particular labels? Those that would specifically differentiate between molestation of a child versus molestation of someone post puberty. Tis all. The rest was me just rattling on about why I thought the use of those definitions were a good thing by the ‘adults in waiting’ under discussion. Maybe I too accurately remember feeling disrespected when I was a youngun’. 
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=saoirse]
That explains why adults should not have sex with teens. It doesn’t explain why you make no distinction between a pedo and an ephebophile. Bad as having sex with a 15-year-old would be (even where it’s not illegal), I wouldn’t get as angry about it as I would about someone having sex with a 6-year-old.
I also think saying “I have no sympathy for the offenders” is kind of dumb. Who said they did? The last time I saw this show, though, I looked up the PJ website, and I have really bad feelings about people who pretend to be teenage girls online and engage in sex chats. I don’t care how noble their stated goals are, you have to be kind of a sicko to do that.
[/QUOTE]
For the distinction I will have to give you a little background. When I was 16 I used to babysit. One of the mothers was 32 and divorced. After babysitting for her a few times she started getting flirting with me. Eventually we had sex. I was not a virgin at the time and I thought it was pretty cool. Wow! Me and an older woman!
After a couple times, though, I began to feel that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the fact that I was going to her house and she was still paying me :eek: even though the kids were out of the house. It wasn’t just the fact that I had to hide what was going on. It just didn’t feel right.
Any time she would call, I’d find some excuse to not go. I told my folks that I didn’t like her kids (which was another lie) and so didn’t want to sit for her anymore. Eventually, she stopped calling but she would give me nasty looks if she ever saw me outside. I didn’t tell anyone about it for years.
When I got older, I realized that I was being used by her. She was 32 and divorced with 2 kids. She felt trapped in suburbia and like she had lost her youth. She used me to try to reclaim it.
There was no relationship there and no hope of there ever being one. It was all about satisfying her emotional and physical needs. For a few hours she was young again. I was a tool, a dildo with legs. Fortunately, I was well adjusted enough to see that what was going on was not about me, it was all about her.
Ephebophiles and pedophiles don’t care about having a relationship with a teenager. They are turned on by someone who is under the legal age of consent, a minor. They know how to manipulate conversations and appeal to the inherent neediness of a child, looking for approval and acceptance. It is not a healthy way for a person to behave.
Making a distinction based on age is deceptive. Whether the child is 6 or 16, they are still being used. The teen might agree to do it, but they don’t really understand what it means. The adult does, though. He (and occasionally, she) abuses this trust.
As for the second part, the people working as decoys are doing this in cooperation with law enforcement. What they are doing to trap these people is on par with a cop going undercover as a drug dealer, mob member or a hit man. Feds who have infiltrated the mafia have to smile and laugh with guys that wouldn’t think twice about chopping someone’s fingers off.
My friend worked undercover with a metropolitan drug enforcement division. He could pass as Italian, Mexican or Arabic (he was a quick study with languages, so that helped). He had to hang around with guys that thought it was OK to cut coke with rat poison or to pass out ecstasy to kids. He had to put on this persona of a piece of shit drug dealer every day and yuck it up as guys around him talked about beating the shit out of some kid who used too much merch instead of selling it. He hated it but did it because it helped to get them off the streets and kept the poison out of kids bodies.
I don’t agree with the idea of people playing vigilante by contacting the person’s boss or coworkers. I do think it is OK for neighbors to be aware of what is going on which is why I like the online registry. However, the registry does not show minors who have been convicted but are out on parole. The only people who will know are the school and the local police.
In our situation, the neighbor pleaded guilty to criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to 3 years probation and 300 hours of community service. He has to undergo sex offender therapy and report to his parole officer every week. As a stipulation of his probation he is not allowed to be unsupervised with any non-family member who is younger than him. Do you think his folks are going to tell anyone that? Yeah, right. And Dubya is a Mensa member. The police and states attorney have said that we cannot tell anyone about him, but they cannot stop our friends from spreading the word.
[QUOTE=erie774]
…
Ephebophiles and pedophiles don’t care about having a relationship with a teenager. They are turned on by someone who is under the legal age of consent, a minor. They know how to manipulate conversations and appeal to the inherent neediness of a child, looking for approval and acceptance. It is not a healthy way for a person to behave.
Making a distinction based on age is deceptive. Whether the child is 6 or 16, they are still being used. The teen might agree to do it, but they don’t really understand what it means. The adult does, though. He (and occasionally, she) abuses this trust…
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I see which end you’re coming from. I couldn’t care less about making the distinction for a perpetrator, but I care enormously for the victims involved. They’re the ones of imminent importance, but one should also not forget that we shape the public’s opinion by these sorts of choices that we make. For instance, in your situation (and I’m very sorry that happened to you), I doubt seriously if you’d have wanted to be called a “child.” True, it was all about her physical and emotional needs as to why it happened, but your response was definitely not that of a child. You behaved maturely and made an adult decision. Obviously, you weren’t a grown-up nor could you give consent, but then I think I’d best honor you by referring to you as what you rightfully were, a teenager, and in turn, she a ephebophile.
All of that would be for the victim. Fuck the person who made that happen.
Thankscatsix for linking to that. My search-fu is so bad, heaven only knows if I’d even have looked in the right database. 
I’ll certainly have to catch up on that, but goodness, if that first site Duckster linked to is even remotely trustworthy, those folks really are in a strange state mentally to do what they do, how they do it. To harass the webmaster, his estranged father ( 
) and his mother (and by extension her friends possibly) by email, IM and PHONE, well you got me. That’s got to be illegal. If not, handing out flyers about them being pedophiles would have to be. :eek: :eek: :eek:
This just seriously reeks of witch hunting. We’re one step away from rounding people up and burning them at the stake without investigation. But I guess it’s justified because they’re pedophiles and we haven’t anyone we can all universally hate anymore.
[QUOTE=The Chao Goes Mu]
I assume Borderline Personality Disorder
[/QUOTE]
Yes, thank you.
[QUOTE=Carnick]
This just seriously reeks of witch hunting. We’re one step away from rounding people up and burning them at the stake without investigation. But I guess it’s justified because they’re pedophiles and we haven’t anyone we can all universally hate anymore.
[/QUOTE]
I really don’t understand this comment. No one is rounding up anyone. No one makes these sickos get in their car and drive (in some cases over 150 miles) with comdons in their pockets.
If they were attempting to arrest these guys after chatroom conversation, I would be furious - but they are not. The guys arrested have shown that they seriously want to engage is sexual behavior with a person they know is not of legal age to consent to it. They have taken steps to make it happen. That is wrong.
I don’t have kids, but I have friends with kids. One of my friends has had some problems with her daughters giving out too much info on MySpace - and had a 21 year old guy sniffing after her 15 year old daughter. My friend now has a MySpace account - and has the passwords to her daughter’s accounts. She monitors them carefully. She has computer programs that allow her to see what they have typed. It bothers her that she has to do this, but her kids just don’t take it seriously. “That’s just on TV, it doesn’t really happen”. “Mom, you’re so old.”
I’m glad I don’t have kids.
[QUOTE=Carnick]
This just seriously reeks of witch hunting. We’re one step away from rounding people up and burning them at the stake without investigation. But I guess it’s justified because they’re pedophiles and we haven’t anyone we can all universally hate anymore.
[/QUOTE]
That’s a pretty major leap to make. Pedophiles are using the internet to find potential victims. Along comes the police or PJ working in conjunction with law enforcement to dangle their own bait in front of these predators. Sometimes they get spooked off and leave. Other times they’ll nibble for a while, go away and then come back until eventually they are hooked and caught.
No one forces them to carry on the conversations. No one forces to steer the chat towards sex. No one forces them to get graphic about what they want to do. No one forces them to send pornography. They do it all on their own.
Maybe you should go read their site. They’re busily destroying the lives of people who have never been arrested for nor convicted of a crime on their website while pretending to be totally above-board on TV.
Like I have said a million times before, I’m not saying that the people who commit crimes against kids shouldn’t be caught. I am saying that a vigilante group that acts as irresponsibly as I’ve personally seen Perverted Justice behave should be stopped.
They certainly have perverted justice.
[QUOTE=catsix]
Maybe you should go read their site. They’re busily destroying the lives of people who have never been arrested for nor convicted of a crime on their website while pretending to be totally above-board on TV.
[/QUOTE]
I’d certainly love to see them set everything up, take video, do interviews, and not air it until the conviction comes down. Then they’re only showing people who have been convicted and the audience gets to know the final outcome of the case.
[QUOTE=The Scrivener]
If the decoy posters all type the same, the decoy actors are even worse. Most of them don’t seem to think this encounter thing through, even as a duff acting gig. Why the same enthusiastic welcome for one and all? Wouldn’t even a teen slut still experience some sense of uncertainty, trepidation, embarrassment, guilt, or foreboding?
[/QUOTE]
Guess you’ve discovered the difference between TV and reality.
Who says such a scenario even exists in real life? If you think there really are such teen sluts out there, you’re thinking like the men on the show.
[QUOTE=catsix]
Maybe you should go read their site. They’re busily destroying the lives of people who have never been arrested for nor convicted of a crime on their website while pretending to be totally above-board on TV.
[/QUOTE]
I’m with you there. Having sex with an underage girl is a crime. Having dirty chat and driving to meet someone posing as an underage girl isn’t (or if it is, I’m not sure how). How about focusing the resources this show uses on people who have actually broken the law?
That still only considers the Dateline stuff. The rest of their website is full of ‘profiles’ of ‘busts’ who did less than the people on Dateline. They post phone numbers out of the phone book, and pictures however they can get their hands on them. They don’t even know if that’s actually the picture of the guy they spoke to when they post it, nor has the person been arrested for anything when they start calling their bosses and putting fliers around neighborhoods.
They have good intentions. What they don’t accept is that the ends do not always justify the means, and I don’t consider vigilantism justified.
[QUOTE=catsix]
Why are you so quick to insult me? Taking a page out of the Perveted Justice handbook? They think anyone who opposes any of their actions is trying to help pedophiles hurt kids.
[/QUOTE]
No, I don’t think you are some kind of pedophile enabler, but you have a penchant for hyperbole that you love to preach as fact. This is not exclusive to this thread. Much of the content of your posts would have PJ in legal hot water if it happened as you state. Your experiences and relaying of the actions of your friends as I understand them would never be endorsed by PJ in any of the time I have participated in their operations. People talking about what they “would do” or “could do” is a major step from “have done”.
I don’t have much pity for those who do get the full treatment, but nowadays the hounds do not get let loose on just anyone followup does not begin until PJ has offically approved it. The followup teams are the ones who crawl into their life but even they are looking for information, not confrontations.
I cannot speak for history beyond my time, and would never participate in the type of confrontational contact described in catsix’s posts, its conterproductive to the goal which is to see these guys arrested, spooking them just makes them more careful or forces you to restablish a new persona to try and bait them again.
Why does PJ post full chat transcripts? So we can all enjoy it?
Oh yeah, look how sick that perv is. He wants to rape me in the ass. See? Look how much detail he goes into. I’ll now ask him to tweak my nipples with a wrench. Look he wants to do it! See? What a sick perv! Oh yeah.
[QUOTE=Lizard]
Having sex with an underage girl is a crime. Having dirty chat and driving to meet someone posing as an underage girl isn’t
[/QUOTE]
Yes it is. How could you possibly have read this whole thread and not understand that? I suppose that you could disagree and argue that it shouldn’t be a crime but it absolutely is one.
Once again. Attempting to commit a crime is a crime. Like trying to buy drugs from an undercover cop of trying to have sex with a fake child.
That said, I too have some problems with some of PJ’s techniques, at least from what I saw when I read their web site a couple of years ago. It wouldn’t be hard for me to pretend to be someone else and frame them. It wouldn’t work on Dateline because someone would have to actually show up but it would for some of their busts. Someone could send another guy’s picture and go by his name and that would be enough to get them after the wrong guy. They just aren’t as careful as I would like them to be.
What ‘friends’ do you keep bringing up? I’m talking about things that I personally saw at Perverted Justice’s website and that I personally saw Perverted Justice’s members doing during ‘busts’. The ‘actions of [my] friends’? I never had any friends at Perverted Justice. I quietly played their game for a couple of months, found out how disgustingly vigilante I found them, and left.
‘Endorsed by’ Perverted Justice? Fuck man, they were carried out by Perverted Justice. Continuing to claim that it was ‘[my] friends’ and not Perverted Justice is at this point deliberate dishonesty.
So they’re still vigilantes who consider themselves to be judge and jury. They still decide who’s guilty and put the pictures and the personal information online and then encourage their membership to try to get them fired or to contact their families. Pardon me if I don’t trust a vigilante group with no oversight and a proven tendency to get off on the thrill of terrorizing a bust when they give their word about a ‘followup’.
I guess quietly turning it over to law enforcement wouldn’t be as exciting or get them as much attention. It wouldn’t give them the rush of being in control of someone else’s life.
[QUOTE=catsix]
‘Endorsed by’ Perverted Justice? Fuck man, they were carried out by Perverted Justice. Continuing to claim that it was ‘[my] friends’ and not Perverted Justice is at this point deliberate dishonesty.
[/QUOTE]
Last I checked, Your evidence has no more factual weight than mine.
[QUOTE=Lizard]
Who says such a scenario even exists in real life? If you think there really are such teen sluts out there, you’re thinking like the men on the show.
[/QUOTE]
Just for the record, I know a girl who was one of those “teen sluts.” Except it was more like “dumb teenager with low self-esteem who was easily manipulated and didn’t really know what to do about being horny.” There were no arrests, no bodies being dumped in alleys, no Lifetime movies. It was just a very sad, pitiful, and emotionally shattering experience that left her with a lot of psychological problems as an adult now. She wasn’t forcibly raped, but she lacked the maturity to grasp what was really going on. She didn’t particularly want to do it, but felt like she couldn’t say no. Essentially, it was just a kid getting in over her head, not grasping how bad the situation was until it was too late.
So, yeah, it does happen. Yeah, teenage girls do want attention from grown men, but these guys don’t want to date mature seventeen year olds. They want to take advantage of immature and confused kids, regardless of how far into puberty they are.
The key is not to try to track down every last perv out there, because that’s just never going to happen. The best thing people can do is to pay attention to their kids, know what they’re doing and who the people calling for them are. Love them and educate them to the point that they aren’t easy targets. That doesn’t mean that it’s the kids’ or parents’ fault for what happens, though. It just means that the best offense is defense. Yes, lock the bad men up. Definitely. But focusing on trying to lure them into traps to “stop the menace!” is ridiculous. There’s always going to be another perv out there, willing to do whatever stupid thing he can to get his rocks off, as the OP mentions.
I’d feel much safer walking to my car with a can of mace in a well-lit parking lot than walking unarmed, in the dark, knowing that somewhere down the street someone was pretending to be a potential mugging victim to lure in criminals. :rolleyes:
You’ve gone out of your way to say that it was ‘[my] friends’ who were doing things outside of Perverted Justice that wouldn’t be approved of at Perverted Justice.
Are you deliberately being obtuse, or does it come naturally to you? I talked about what saw at Perverted Justice, and you claimed that it was another group of people entirely!
[QUOTE=catsix]
What ‘friends’ do you keep bringing up? I’m talking about things that I personally saw at Perverted Justice’s website and that I personally saw Perverted Justice’s members doing during ‘busts’. The ‘actions of [my] friends’? I never had any friends at Perverted Justice. I quietly played their game for a couple of months, found out how disgustingly vigilante I found them, and left.
‘Endorsed by’ Perverted Justice? Fuck man, they were carried out by Perverted Justice. Continuing to claim that it was ‘[my] friends’ and not Perverted Justice is at this point deliberate dishonesty.
[/QUOTE]
Your evidence so far is no better or worse than mine. Bluster about what people claim to have done on a message board is worth about as much as the pixels they are printed in.
IME this is not the way PJ people operate. Single chat sessions are not enough, patterns have to develop, the baiting FAQ’s are pretty clear on wanting to see a pattern emerge. Confronting those people before an attempted meet would be self defeating. You want to set up a time for a meet and see if the person shows up. If they provided pictures, you can see if the same person shows up for the meet as they claimed to be. Pictures of the person as well as noting make model/plate number of the vehicle they drive are very helpful bits of information when it comes time to hand them over to the police.
The PJ people I have dealt with face to face play smart, making confrontations and threats is a good way to get arrested yourself and getting sued by someone who probably is some flavor of youngun fancier. Not a good plan. Establish a pattern, get them to commit to the pattern, collect good evidence, and see the perv go down in flames.
It might be fun to think every PJ volunteer is some kind of frothing pitchfork weilding psycho who will not sleep until he has killed a pedophile, but its not true. Identifying the potential victims of these people are like finding needles in a haystack, PJ is trying to make sure they haystack is full of very sharp needles. IIRC rule number one for bait volunteers is not to initiate the conversation or the sexual aspect of the conversation. If you stand guard, the pervs will come to you, I have seen it just as you have.
I guess it comes down to what you believe, that on average PJ is truly a rotten to the core bunch of psychos who get off on the misery others or are they little more than watchdogs.
Yes they bite, but you had to find your way into the yard they guard to even get barked at.