Perhaps I’m missing something here, but shouldn’t everyone concerned be grateful that she’s not scarred by the events (at least as far as I could gather from this post?)
I’m not defending paedophiles (and by that, I mean people who intentionally seek out and screw little kids or 12yo girls- not some guy who had sex with a 15/17yo who’d lied about her age), but even if this girl is the victim of a paedophile, is there any harm in simply letting her believe what she believes, instead of using “counselling” to tell her she should feel bad/used/violated/abused etc etc?
I do believe there’s a time for “self-help” (as opposed to Vigilantism), but given that we live in a civilised society with civilised recourses, “self-help” should be kept for the most serious of circumstances, in which no other recourse is available.
What this lot at Perverted Justice do is well beyond the pail, IMHO.
If they simply used chat logs and then passed them into the local law enforcement authorities, I’d still disagree with it, but actually calling people up and harassing/threatning them makes them almost as bad as than their alleged paedophile targets, IMO.
I’d also say it’s only a matter of time before someone, faced with this sort of intimidation from PJ, decides that a box of .45 cartridges is cheaper than the cost of a court case to prove their innocence (or to get them to leave him alone), which is not a good situation by anyone’s standards…
I’m sure they say they’re releasing the info for public safety reasons. Is that the only requirement legally (and in the court of Bricker) to determine their intent?
I swear, judge! I only put the guy’s boss’s home phone number online to WARN THE PUBLIC about this criminal! His grandma who lives in another state’s home address? I just wanted to WARN THE PUBLIC, your honor!
Anyone who reads their forums can easily see that they do repeatedly contact by telephone and/or email and/or instant messeger the people who they have targetted.
The members of perverted justice are told to use pre-paid calling cards, different ones each time, when contacting by phone so that it will be harder to prove that the same person called more than once.
Once a ‘confirmed’ number is posted on the site, Phillip Eide and his posse encourage all the members of the site to call those numbers - always with a pre-paid calling card.
If you need proof, join the site and lurk. Maybe you’ll find the thread where they’ve left information including one North Carolina address and phone number that used to belong to a target of theirs. Despite the fact that an entirely new family moved in there two years ago, perverted justice is leaving the phone number, address, and name of the previous resident on the site as a pedophile and still encouraging members to call.
I don’t feel any particular need to be charitable to you further, Bricker. Something about the insinuation that I collaborate with pedophiles really doesn’t make for a desire to cooperate with you.
There are several posts above about the use of this phrase.
Since you’re using it, let me ask you the same questions catsix dodged like a …um… dodgeball champion.
Joe Stevens is accosted in an alleyway by a man with a gun. The man points the gun at Joe and demands his wallet. Joe complies. The man takes the wallet and flees.
Joe reports the crime to the police, and goes home. The next day, visiting a friend, Joe sees the man that mugged him. Joe calls the police, and they respond and arrest the man, one Carl Simmons.
Question: is there any legal principle or prudent practice that requires Joe to refer to Carl as his “alleged” mugger? Must Joe say the Carl is "innocent until proven guilty?
Question: is there any sort of legal principle or prudent practice that requires the newspaper writer who reports the story to refer to Carl as an “alleged” mugger?
And finally, question: is there any sort of legal principle that the court trying Carl for the armed robbery of Joe must apply regarding Carl’s presumption of innocence? Must the court say that Carl is “innocent until proven guilty?”
No. Their statements aside, people may be assumed to intend the ordinary consequences of their actions. For example, if you showed me a case in which they posted the home address of a target’s out-of-state grandmother, absent some pretty extraordinary reason I’d be willing to say that proves your claim of harassment rather than public safety.
So… have they, as you suggest, actually done that? Show me, and you’ve won the argument.
Temper, temper Bricker. Raise your voice like that in a courtroom and I doubt the judge will be very pleased.
First, I’ll disregard your added detail about Carl having been first reported to the police and arrested, since it doesn’t apply to the actual incidents being discussed. PJ is calling and shaming people without their having been arrested or charged with any crime. If the target has actually been brought to trial and found guilty, then I have less problem with PJ’s actions.
Then, I’ll answer your question with a question. Am I Joe Stevens?
Because if I’m not, then what is the difference from where I’m standing between Joe pointing out the guy who mugged him, and Joe spreading rumors about a innocent guy he just wants to torment?
Very well. Let’s change the hypo – the police have given Joe a mugshot book to look through, and he has identified Carl as his attacker. But Carl has not yet been arrested.
You’re not Joe. You’re Joe’s next-door neighbor.
You want to take a stab at actually answering the questions now?
The thing I’m trying to point out is that if I know someone’s committed a crime, I have no obligation to “presume him innocent.” I can say he’s guilty, because I saw it. He’s not “found guilty” - he IS guilty. Now, the court that tries him must presume him innocent, and put the burden of proof on the state to show otherwise, before they declare him guilty. That’s what “presumed innocent” means.
It does NOT mean that a person with knowledge of a criminal act must still pretend that the criminal is innocent.
Well, i’ve come to this thread too late to make much of an original contribution, but i did just want to make one observation:
I know that you’re a conservative, and that we’ve disagreed with each other about a bunch of things in the past, but i never pegged you for a member of the “If you oppose the war you must be a supporter of Saddam” school of argumentation.
I tried to post this reply this morning when the boards were acting up. This is a copy of it.
But the point that’s relevent here is that you don’t have knowledge of a criminal act. You’re not Joe’s next-door neighbor here. In this thread, you’ve been taking it completely on faith that when a group of anonymous strangers accuses a person completely unknown to you of a crime, they must be telling the truth because somehow you know their target is guilty.
In each hypothetical you’ve presented, you’ve granted yourself the luxury of knowing that Carl is in fact guilty, and that just doesn’t apply here.
Allow yourself the possibility that your assumption of the target’s guilt could be wrong, and justification for PJ’s actions, beyond collecting data and handing over to authorities, falls apart in my opinion.
According to catsix, they tell their members to call the target, and threaten to tell his employer he’s a pedophile unless he does what they tell him. I’m not a lawyer, but is it possible that this is blackmail? Can you blackmail someone by threatening to do something that is perfectly legal?
Actually there is plenty of “hooking up” via net among teenagers. IF the predators play teenager…may be a chance. Of course in my experience (as a parent) kids are all to happy to hand out addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc where a perv will be more hesitant to give out trackable info.
The argument that the people at PJ wouldn’t lie is really funny to read on an internet message board. I have seen some of the most vicious attempts to destroy other people’s lives through rumor and harrassment online. Anonymity allows the vicious to thrive.
I had an internet stalker who loved to put my work number on sex sites so that I’d get phone calls. That person would have loved to able to put my number on a site like PJ and tell people that I was a pedophile. It’s the ultimate revenge on an internet enemy. So safe. So damning. Destroy a life with a little creative logging. This was a guy who used to call me and tell me how he was going to rape and murder me. Would someone like that have qualms about setting me up on a site like PJ? Not likely.
In the case of those folks who are arrested, I am sure they confiscate the predators computer and check the chat logs to make sure they match those that are turned over by the Perverted Justice group.
I am not sure if I am mis-remembering, but I think there was one time when officials were checking a perverts computer they found much, much more evidence of child rape/sex/porn.
I have no dog in this race, but I just wanted to point out if logs were being manipulated, I’m sure one of the accused would have came forward with a law suit and used his “real” logs as evidence.
Do you use chat programs a lot? The reason I ask is that not all of them (zero, actually, of which I am aware), create these “chat logs” automatically. You have to click “File-save as” in order to save them, and they’re saved as plaintext or html files.
And I am sure there has been more than “one time” where officials have checked “a perverts computer” and found more evidence.
It wouldn’t be a huge strech to imagine that IF a person is perverse enough to hit on preteens and very young teens,looking for sex/dirty talk that they MIGHT save the chat logs to read over and get off on again and again.
Probably. But then if you’re not doing anything like that, you’d probably have no reason to save your chat logs (assuming you were even chatting in the first place), and therefore no evidence to show to counter an accusation.