I once created an AIM account with the name “Sunset Land” or some variant thereof. I didn’t put my age or my sex into my profile, yet still received solicitations: “r u a girl?” “my name is brian i like sunsets to”
I can only imagine what it’s like being a 14-year-old girl who puts her first name, age, and gender into her profile and has a screen name like “sweetkelly” or something.
A few years ago, I created an AOL IM account, and included all the normal details; thirtysomething male, location, blah blah blah. In the period of a few days, several users claiming to be teenage girls – between 13 and 16 – wanted to chat. I didn’t; I prefer the company of women that are a lot closer to my age, thank you very much. A few were quite persistent, though. I dumped IM, convinceced that cops or pervertedjustice.com-types were hunting for Chester the Molester-types. Could that have really been the case?
No – cops pretending to be underage girls would never solicit you, as that would be entrapment.
And to add to Bill The Cat’s to elmwood, it likely wasn’t the Perverted Justice people either. After reading an article on that Dateline show I spent some time checking out the PJ site and apparently they cannot approach someone online, the “child” must wait for Chester to initiate the contact.
Except that they leave out any part of the conversation that happens in the public chat room, and they edit their logs, and um, well you really need to read the anti-perverted-justice site especially the section where they quote abuses commited by those from PJ.
Don’t just buy PJ’s claims hook, line and sinker.
I only spent a limited time checking them out, and what I posted was what I had seen as their general guidelines. But I have no doubt that there would be member’s or even PJ wannabe’s soliciting adults. I haven’t checked out the Anti-PJ site either, so I imagine I’m in for something interesting when I do. PJ does sometimes seem fanatical.
Do they also edit the “Right of Reply” text that people may use to answer back? None of those make any allegation that the text logs were edited. Not one.
I don’t know. I only started reading the opposition’s site yesterday, having read the PJ site (and joined it for a while) a couple of years ago.
If the opposition’s information is accurate, PJ has been denounced by law enforcement agencies, including the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office where their Dateline, NBC media-busts were carried out as well has sued numerous times by ‘busts’. Notably, one of those persuing legal (criminal and civil) action against PJ is the family of a mentally handicapped 20 year-old who was ‘busted’ by PJ.
[url=http://www.julieposey.com/]Julie Posey
[/quote]
, who works with law enforcement and whose efforts have been instrumental in convictions in several states, has not had kind words to say about PJ or their tactics of harassment (which they are careful to term ‘contact’) and threats.
While a member there, I witnessed the very same tactics that are currently on display on the anti-PJ site in the form of board quotes, although at the time I did not log or save any of that information. I left the site after only a few months because of my disgust at the way their members gloated over destroying the lives of not only the ‘wannabe pedos’ (PJ’s term), but their families as well.
The fact of the matter is that although I cannot outright prove that the logs of private chats were selectively edited to show only the worst of the comments or to even alter the statements made, the very strong possibility for this type of editing does exist. The logs were edited on more than one occasion to insert ridicule and commentary, usually as parenthetical references, to statements made by the PJ ‘bust’ target. It is also true that no log of the public chat that led up to the ‘bust’ speaking privately with the ‘baiter’ is published on the site, nor is any transcript of the voice conversation done by the ‘verifier’.
According to the e-mail published on the anti-PJ site from the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, none of what PJ did on their Dateline, NBC media-bust met evidentiary requirements to even make an arrest. From my own experience as an administrator who has had to preserve evidence of one of my users possessing child pornography, it does not seem that their methods are consistent with properly perserving and proving the untampered nature of the chat logs they present.
I’ll also admit that when I first heard of them, and when I joined their site, I was in support of what they were doing. It was what I witnessed at PJ itself that changed my mind and put them into the ‘dangerous stalker-like vigilante’ category for me.
The only thing I would ask anyone here is to look at both sides of the issue instead of snapping to the judgment that because these people want to ‘stop pedophiles’ they are doing a good thing. Opposition to vigilantes who count themselves above the law and use harassment and threats does not equal support of pedophiles or child molestors.