It's the adoration of this brand of justice that I disagree with. If a rapist is an "animal", what are the people who will chop off someone's dick? What about the people who cheer it on? It's all fucking sick if you ask me.Originally Posted by Joey2407
Sarcastic. Skeptic Tank. Self-deprecating.
Excellent. Let's hope all the vigilantes listen to the police request & fuck right off so that we never have to read another post about them.
I'm sure everyone has had the thought of revenge in an extreme way inflicted on a person who commits abhorent crimes, but we're supposed to be better than them.
https://www.bendbulletin.com/localst...tcher-arrested
Now a Prineville Man has been detained for being a Creep Catcher.
The Prineville man who films himself in confrontations with alleged pedophiles was arrested last week during one of his busts.
Authorities are not releasing information about the arrest of Cougar Martin Joanis, who was cited on suspicion of first-degree disorderly conduct and menacing and taken to Crook County jail, according to the jail website.
Joanis, whom The Bulletin profiled last month, has been released, and the Crook County District Attorney’s Office has yet to make a charging decision in the case.
A self-styled vigilante, the former fast-food employee poses as a 13- to 14-year-old on dating apps and arranges in-person meetups with adults, then films the ensuing confrontations. He and a few friends have posted more than a dozen videos of the confrontations. Despite his enthusiasm, Joanis’ efforts have netted zero arrests. Until now.
Joanis told The Bulletin he arranged a meetup at his home last week with a 48-year-old man from Portland. The man arrived around 2 a.m. Friday. Joanis approached him and filmed a confrontation lasting about three minutes, he said.
Joanis was wearing a bulletproof vest. He had a scarf covering his face, and he was armed with a 6-inch fixed-blade knife, he said.
Police driving by shined a spotlight in their direction, he said.
“I think the cops saw a man clad in black waving a phone and berating a 48-year-old man in a parking lot at 2 and assumed I was hurting him or something else,” Joanis wrote to The Bulletin.
Joanis was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car while police spoke with one of his associates.
According to Joanis, police spoke with the older man for about a half an hour before releasing the man and taking Joanis to jail.
Joanis said he never learned the older man’s name.
Local law enforcement officials and Crook County District Attorney Wade Whiting have personally asked Joanis to stop, citing safety concerns and the possibility he will jeopardize an ongoing investigation. In the past month, Joanis has remained active in his mission and posted three new videos.
He’s now trying to get by without his phone, which he calls his main tool for catching “creeps,” and which was confiscated by police as evidence.
“I’ll need to gather some new gear before I do anything,” he said.
if we take 'justice' into our own hands, then we are no better than the criminal....oh, and what if we're wrong about the person who we inflict our 'justice' on????
I disagree with vigilantism but I'm about ready to form a vigilante group against vigilante posts. I don't know how many I missed while I was away but I've only been back a day & I've already seen more than we'd usually get in 5 years.
"Someone" needs to go & start a vigilante blog for their fetish.
Trust, everyone has said the same thing many times.
I say we all have to take a shot everytime the phrase "Blame the hero" is in a post.
I find these parameters too limiting. I'm just gonna fire whenever I feel irritated, which is now every time I see something 🐐 posts that's even remotely related to vigilantism, or a thread title that starts with "Now" or anything containing the words "in play", or threads posted to completely unrelated subs, or weird irrelevant shit that could've just gone in Chit Chat or something instead of getting an entire fucking thread for a single link that no-one gives a shit about etcetcetc
It's been going on for so often & so long that it's all like nails on a blackboard for me now.
& I'm definitely going to throw myself a party when the mods are back
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2019/...up-high-court/
A vigilante child protection group has been strongly criticised by a High Court judge after it confronted and aggressively interrogated an intellectually disabled man who arranged to meet a 13-year-old girl he met on the internet.
The group carried out a sting operation on the man, who is brain damaged and a ward of court, and posted a video of their encounter with him on Facebook.
President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, who manages the Wards of Court list, was alerted to the incident yesterday and ordered Facebook to remove the video by this afternoon.
The video was later removed by the social media company as it breached "community standards".
The judge today described the actions of the group as "appalling" and said it had serious consequences for the man who was described as vulnerable and lacking mental capacity. His carers said he was distressed and suicidal after the incident.
The court heard the man lives in a residential placement and is addicted to internet sites, particularly dating sites. He made contact with a woman he understood to be 19. Despite stopping contact when told she was 13, he later agreed to meet her for a hot chocolate.
When he went to meet her he was met by two women and three men, grabbed by the arms and aggressively questioned. A video was then posted on social media.
Garda?, who were aware of the man's intellectual disability, came on the scene and took him away for his own safety.
As the video had been viewed by tens of thousands of people there was a concern for his safety and that of others sharing the same residential care, the judge was told.
Mr Justice Kelly made orders preventing any unauthorised person coming within 200 yards of the care facility. He said people with intellectual disabilities needed to be treated with respect and dignity and the last thing they need is to be "confronted by a baying mob screaming for vengeance against a person who because of their disability cannot have mental intent of a deliberate type".
He said he presumed the group did not know the man had an intellectual disability and is a ward of court. The judge said he hoped that if they knew that, they would not have done what they did. The video, he said, made it clear these people were about "a particular task" and did it in a way that was "very frightening" and a huge setback for the man.
The judge said the man had used the internet hoping to meet a "lady friend" but had only met charlatans, including one who got his bank details from him. His use of the internet had been supervised but he managed to evade the supervision of his carers on this occasion.
Mr Justice Kelly said he would make orders preventing the man having any phone or internet access as it had proved so detrimental to him.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/952599...ile-neighbour/
andra Walker, 75, lives just a few doors down from Mark Williamson, who avoided jail for downloading and possessing 5,000 child abuse images.
A gran had the word 'BEAST' spray-painted on the side of her house in an attack she thinks was meant for her paedophile neighbour
3
A gran had the word 'BEAST' spray-painted on the side of her house in an attack she thinks was meant for her paedophile neighbourCredit: Media Scotland
Sandra Walker, 75, pictured with her daughter Evelyn, of East Kilbride, said she's terrified in her home
3
Sandra Walker, 75, pictured with her daughter Evelyn, of East Kilbride, said she's terrified in her homeCredit: Media Scotland
The gran-of-four, of East Kilbride, said she's terrified in her own home and feels "violated" that the vigilante got so close.
She told the East Kilbride News: "I'm anxious in my own home when I should be safe – every little noise makes me jump. The fact that someone has been that close to the house feels like a violation.
"It takes a lot to frighten me but I must admit this has really scared me because you never know if there's a brick that's going to come through the window or what and I'm here myself. I’m lucky my daughter is only a phone call away, but it's still frightening."
You never know if there's a brick that's going to come through the window
Sandra Walker
Williamson was handed a two-year supervision order after he admitted possessing the sick images.
He avoided jail, despite telling police that some of the victims looked like they'd "enjoyed" their abuse.
The pervert was put on the sex offenders' register for the length of the order and banned from using the internet.
Sandra said it took her relatives four hours to clean the graffiti up.
Her daughter Evelyn Kenny, 54, is now worried the attack is affecting her diabetic mum's already poor health.
The family are also concerned about what the vigilante could do next.
Scottish police say enquiries into the vandalism are ongoing and they're appealing for witnesses.
She believes it was meant for Mark Williamson, pictured, who avoided jail for downloading and possessing 5,000 child abuse images
3
She believes it was meant for Mark Williamson, pictured, who avoided jail for downloading and possessing 5,000 child abuse imagesCredit: Media Scotland
http://www.loopjamaica.com/content/s...ild-molester-0
Congrats to the Judge for the vigilantes who attacked an accused child rapist. No Jail time for the Vigilantes!!
Although having taken the law into their own hands, two St Elizabeth men were spared prison sentences and fined $75,000 each for attacking a child molester in the community of Lititz in 2013.
The convicted men, Roger Gillings and Evon Dent, were found guilty of unlawful wounding in the St Elizabeth Circuit Court earlier this year.
The men were found not guilty of the more serious charge of wounding with intent, for which they were initially indicted.
On Friday, High Court Judge, Justice Chester Stamp, fined Gillings and Dent $75,000 each, with a one-year prison term as an alternative.
Allegations are that on September 10, 2013, Gillings and Dent confronted a man who had been alleged to have molested a female child from the Lititz area.
The alleged molester was attacked by Gillings, who used a machete to slap him over his back, while Dent, in joining the act, used a piece of board to hit him.
Prosecutors led evidence through testimony from the complainant that Dent used a piece of electrical cord to tie him around his hands, feet and neck.
The alleged molester was then transported by the men to a shop in another section of the community, where Gillings continued to beat him with the machete and then sent out shock waves in pulling down the man’s trousers in an attempt to castrate him.
However, a resident of the area intervened and the police were alerted of the developments.
Following an investigation, Gillings and Bent were arrested and charged.
Meanwhile, the molester, whose identity was withheld in court, is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2016 for buggery and sexual touching of the female child, the act for which the jungle justice was applied to him.
https://www.malaymail.com/news/world...mbodia/1772856
PHNOM PENH, July 18 — Deadly mob justice is a “chronic social disease” in Cambodia, a justice official said today at the launch of a UN report which highlights the fatal consequences stemming from Cambodians’ distrust of the justice system.
Cambodia has undergone rapid development in the past decade, but its judicial and police system remains rife with corruption, leaving people believing they cannot go to the authorities with their grievances.
Perpetrators of mob violence are also rarely arrested or convicted.
“The killings outside of a court system is a challenging problem,” said Chin Malin, secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice, at the launch of the report by the UN’s rights arm (OHCHR).
“We consider it to be a chronic social disease of Cambodia... that we all have to work together to resolve,” he said.
The report, titled “People’s Court”, detailed 73 cases of so-called “popular justice” from 2010 to 2018, with 57 cases resulting in death.
Of those, 35 cases occurred because victims were believed to be “witches or sorcerers” and seen as “scapegoats for a variety of problems” in rural provinces — where belief in black magic remains strong.
In a 2014 case, a group of 600 stoned to death a traditional healer, accusing him of witchcraft.
Other cases occur because of hit-and-run traffic accidents — common in Cambodia — where the crowd will chase down an offending driver who attempts to escape.
The actual figures are likely higher since there is no comprehensive data, the report added, with the practice persisting because mob killings often go unpunished — showing an “implicit acceptance of this practice by state authorities.”
Authorities have “to be very clear that it is a criminal act... and it is not acceptable,” said OHCHR representative Simon Walker, addressing police officers and officials at the report’s launch.
One especially gruesome case in 2014 left a man decapitated, hacked to death with axes by at least six attackers.
He was believed to have magic powers, and villagers had got suspicious of him when his ex-wife’s new husband died soon after their marriage, police said. — AFP
https://www.indiatimes.com/news/indi...na-370020.html
An SUV driver was hacked to death after he lost control of his speeding car and ran over three children sleeping in footpath in Patna, Bihar. The incident happened in the wee hours of Thursday. The mob, mostly slum dwellers, also beat up his co-passenger, who is now in critical condition and admitted to hospital.
A section of local residents said the driver, identified as 30-year-old Saurav Ganguly, died after his vehicle hit an electric pole.
The fourth child is severely injured and admitted to hospital.
The deceased were identified as Halendra Manjhi (9), Rohit Manjhi (13) and Raju Manjhi (11). Manish Manjhi (10) was critically injured.
ANI
✔
@ANI
Bihar: 3 children died, 1 injured after an SUV mowed then down while they were sleeping on the footpath in Agam Kuan area of Patna, yesterday. The locals later staged protest on the road. Police say, "3 children died, 1 injured. 1 man in the SUV also died. Investigation underway"
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
38
9:20 PM - Jun 25, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
21 people are talking about this
“Ganguly was a resident of Nawada’s Ishwar village, and the vehicle was registered in Nawada,” said a report by Hindustan Times.
“After the incident, the driver tried to escape but the locals chased and caught him. There were two persons in the SUV at the time of the accident,” HT quoted an eyewitness.
DON'T MISS
The CCTV footage accessed by the police suggested that the three children had actually slipped on the road from footpath in their sleep. Their bodies have been sent for autopsy.
The horrific CCTV camera footage of the incident has surfaced in which the SUV can be seen travelling at a high speed and ramming a wall of a banquet hall and an electric pole before running over three children.
A few children were sleeping on footpath and those who were mowed down were sleeping on the road, just below the footpath.
"Footage also shows couple of people beating mercilessly a person lying on road with bamboos and sticks while he begs for mercy with folded hands. It was yet not clear if it was driver or co-passenger. In another CCTV camera footage, couple of youth were seen repeatedly attacking on head of a person lying lifeless on road. Locals were also seen trampling his head with repeated blows,” said a report by The Times of India.
Police said the driver was dragged out of the vehicle after which he was lynched.
After the incident, protesters blocked road till morning and burnt tyres on road. Later. Rs 4 lakh ex-gratia was handed over to the kin of deceased.
This is my biggest point about being against the death penalty (mostly, I'm a little near the fence). But I am definitely anti-vigilante justice. A bunch of trigger happy lunatics hear a rumor that so-and-so did such-and-such and let their bloodlust lead the way. What could go wrong?
Sarcastic. Skeptic Tank. Self-deprecating.
I meant alcoholic shots, not bullets. Like a drinking game lolI find these parameters too limiting. I'm just gonna fire whenever I feel irritated, which is now every time I see something 🐐 posts that's even remotely related to vigilantism, or a thread title that starts with "Now" or anything containing the words "in play", or threads posted to completely unrelated subs, or weird irrelevant shit that could've just gone in Chit Chat or something instead of getting an entire fucking thread for a single link that no-one gives a shit about etcetcetc
It's been going on for so often & so long that it's all like nails on a blackboard for me now.
& I'm definitely going to throw myself a party when the mods are back
Hahaha, well in my defence, it's a Kambing thread so my mind just went immediately to violence
Fair enough lolHahaha, well in my defence, it's a Kambing thread so my mind just went immediately to violence
https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-mex...they-really-on
FILO DE CABALLOS, Mexico—The assault force rolls through this small mountain town not long after dark. Traveling in a fleet of pick-ups with about 15 men in each truck, they are dressed in pixelated camouflage uniforms and ballistic vests and at first glance they look like official army units, but their weapons give them away. Many of these commandos carry AK-47 model assault rifles, which aren’t used by the Mexican armed forces.
The logo stamped on the doors of the trucks shows a figure from the Mexican Revolution wearing a sombrero and brandishing a rifle astride a charging horse. Below that are the words Policia Comunitaria, or community police, and a phrase which, roughly translated from Spanish, reads: “Death before surrender or humiliation.”
The men in the trucks are members of the United Front of Community Police of Guerrero State, better known by its Spanish acronym of FUPCEG. Tonight FUPCEG’s shock troops are on their way to assault the nearby town of El Naranjo, which is currently held by the forces of an organized crime group called the Cartel del Sur.
“We fight to free communities that have been isolated by the criminals,” says a squad leader who asks to be identified only as “El Burro” in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Everyone has a right to security. And to economic freedom. Campesinos [small farmers] and their children shouldn’t suffer under the rule of bandits,” Burro says. “The people of this town have asked us for help, and so that’s what we’re going to do.”
El Burro says he got his nickname, which means “the donkey,” because he can bear heavy loads a great distance despite his slight stature. In his backpack he carries several cans of tuna and crackers and canteens of water. His battle harness holds some 300 rounds of ammunition for his AK-47.
Later tonight he’ll lead his squad on foot through the dense pine forests that surround El Naranjo, until they reach the pre-assigned rendezvous point. From there the coordinated strike force will crawl on their bellies until they’re in sight of the cartel stronghold, then wait for dawn to attack.
Will my family understand what I died for?
— ‘El Burro’
Burro is a veteran of a dozen such engagements with the comunitarios and says he’s personally registered 20 confirmed kills of sicarios, the cartels’ contract killers. A former farmer, he joined the movement “because I was tired of hearing the people’s cries for help go unanswered.”
The Cartel del Sur is known for its brutal tactics, including torturing prisoners, and for that reason Burro says he prefers death on the battlefield to being captured by los contras, as he calls members of the Cartel del Sur.
“Will I come back from where I go tonight?” he asks rhetorically. “And if I don’t,” he says, “will my family understand what I died for?”
‘We Have To Protect Ourselves’
FUPCEG is an alliance of civilian autodefensas, or self-defense groups, that boasts about 11,700 fighters across 39 municipalities in Guerrero, meaning they’re now present in about half the state. Similar communitario movements have sprung up across Mexico over the last decade, but FUPCEG is by far the largest of its kind.
The spike in vigilante militias has polarized public opinion. Some observers see them as noble freedom fighters who succeed where traditional law enforcement has failed. Critics claim the autodefensas and comunitarios (the words are often used interchangeably in Mexico) are at best undisciplined mobs and at worst cartel patsies who do the criminals’ grunt work for them.
Either way, their power is growing. A new study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission suggests vigilante activity is up by more than 300 percent since the start of 2018, and blames the increase on “insecurity, violence, and impunity.”
In fact, violence in Mexico has reached historic levels this year, with the country averaging an all-time high of 94 killings a day through the first half of 2019. Both 2017 and 2018 also broke previous murder records. As one autodefensa fighter put it, repeating what has become a kind of mantra, "If the government can't protect us, then we have no choice left but to protect ourselves."
FUPCEG’s founder and leader is 40-year-old Salvador Alanis. A Guerrero native, Alanis is something of a polymath. An economist by training, he’s also worked as an electrical engineer in North Carolina, and at one time owned several successful fruit and cattle ranches in his home state. Those ranches are gone now. Some were sold off to help fund Alanis’s crime-fighting endeavors, while others have been seized by the mafia groups he opposes.
“I spent 12 years working in the U.S.,” Alanis says during an interview in the FUPCEG base in the strategically vital town of Filo de Caballos, high in the sierra of central Guerrero. “In the States I came to know a better life, a better world. I came to take safety for granted,” he says, “but there’s no security like that in Mexico.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-new...fears-18667970
The terrified mother of murdered schoolgirl Lucy McHugh has pleaded with "vigilante" groups to leave her family alone after her partner was allegedly attacked in the street.
Police have been stationed outside their home in Southampton and mum Stacey White is too terrified to visit her slain daughter's grave.
Lucy McHugh, 13, was brutally murdered by her step dad's paedophile 'best friend' Stephen Nicholson, who had been lodging in the family's house.
He groomed and sexually abused the youngster before killing her to prevent her revealing what had happened.
Lucy's mum Stacey White attending Winchester Crown Court for the murder trial (Image: PA)
Richard Elmes, who acted as a stepfather of Lucy, had been 'best friends' with Nicholson (Image: PA)
After Lucy's killer was jailed for life, her stepdad Richard Elmes has been attacked outside a convenience store near the family's home, leaving him needing hospital treatment.
During Nicholson's trial, a court heard the 13-year-old's mother Stacey White, 31, and stepfather Richard Elmes, 22, had dismissed claims Lucy was in a relationship with her killer as a 'teenage crush' and 'fantasy'.
Today, close family and friends of Miss White revealed she is now scared to even visit her daughter's grave after receiving abuse online as police stand guard outside her home
Mr Elmes was allegedly assaulted by two men outside a nearby shop just days after Nicholson was jailed for life for the murder and rape of the youngster. A family member said: "The whole situation is scaring me. It is so dangerous.
"There is a vendetta against Richard and Stacey. Stacey fears for her life, she doesn't even feel she can go to Lucy's grave for fear of being attacked."
And a friend of Mr Elmes added: "They have police outside their home. It's not right, it is wrecking their life."
Nicholson, 25, had been a lodger at Mr Elmes and Miss White's home when he began his sick sexual abuse of tragic Lucy, which was only revealed after her death because of diary entries and notes the youngster wrote.
After luring the schoolgirl to Southampton sports centre on July 25, he stabbed her to death in a frenzied attack.
Lucy McHugh's body was found in woodland at Southampton Sports Centre (Image: PA)
He then dumped the clothing he was wearing in a nearby stream, changed his phone, deleted Facebook messages between him and her and burned the trainers he was wearing during the killing on a bonfire.
He was jailed last week for a minimum of 33 years at Winchester Crown Court, Hants, following a four-week trial.
Today, Lucy's mum pleaded with people to leave her and her family alone.
Miss White said: "All I want is for us to be able to process what we have heard in court and grieve for our little girl, not have to live how these people are making us."
I really don't understand how you can read this article & come away thinking vigilantism is the most important detail.
This article should be a secondary post in a death thread for Lucy, because vigilante idiocy is nowhere near as relevant as the fact a young girl was abused & murdered.
https://qz.com/1671916/the-global-mo...nt-pedophiles/
Tony Blas is a plumber in his mid-thirties who lives in Queens, New York. He has two young daughters. In his spare time, he hunts for people who try to groom children online and lure them into sex.
We first met on a sweltering summer day. I suggested a pizzeria around the corner from Blas’ house, but when I was sitting there waiting for him, I realized it might be uncomfortable to talk about pedophiles with children eating their slices at the next table. We went to the park across the street, and sat on a bench.
“I could’ve stayed in there,” Blas said. He didn’t care that the other patrons might overhear details of our conversation.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at his lack of discretion, since he regularly shares his work with his 40,000 followers on Facebook, via a page he founded called “Team Loyalty Makes You Family.”
He is one of dozens of people around the world who’ve created communities on Facebook which—in the name of street justice—stage real-life sting operations to name and shame people they suspect of being child abusers. They broadcast all of it live from their phones.
“Pedophile hunting” or “creep catching” via Facebook is a contemporary version of a phenomenon as old as time: the humiliating act of public punishment. Criminologists even view it as a new expression of the town-square execution. But it’s also clearly a product of its era, a messy amalgam of influences such as reality TV and tabloid culture, all amplified by the internet.
The hunters are responding to very real dangers lurking online. Drawing a child into sex can be as easy as an online chat, and child pornography has proliferated with the rise of the internet. It’s not difficult for people to view the problem as a vast specter hovering over children everywhere, even though (or perhaps because) accurate statistics on grooming are hard to come by.
But using social media to name and shame potential offenders is deeply problematic. It has led to a number of suicides in several countries. The hunters’ efforts can unravel into violence. They can be counterproductive, endangering ongoing investigations, and the evidence obtained from stings is legally shaky. The hunters harness social networks like Facebook to unleash the all-powerful ostracism of the universally abhorred figure of the child abuser, but they might not have all the facts and context. They have little regard for due process or expectations of privacy. The stings, live-streamed to an engaged audience, become a spectacle, a form of entertainment—a twisted consequence of Facebook’s mission to foster online communities.
To Catch A Predator, redux
Before Facebook became the juggernaut it is today, there was a popular reality television show called To Catch a Predator, which aired in the US between 2004 and 2007. Show host Chris Hansen would take viewers through sting operations he carried out in cooperation with an online vigilante group called “Perverted Justice.” Adult decoys would pose as children, chatting with the “predator” on online message boards in order to eventually get him to meet up in real life, only to be exposed by hidden television cameras, and later arrested by collaborating police.
One 2012 study examined why people joined pedophile-hunting chatrooms. Many said they did it out of a sense of injustice and parental concern, but more than half cited To Catch A Predator. The series showed audiences how horrifyingly easy it was for adults to lure children online, but it also gave them the idea that they could try to do something about it.
In 2019, “Perverted Justice” posted that it would cease decoy operations, claiming more than 600 convictions. “As the internet changed, elements like twitter (sic) and social networking in general has spread the problem wide and thin,” founder Xavier Von Erck wrote in the post. “Internet predators are no longer confined to mostly a few deep wells as they were when we started up.” He added that the group has been less able to keep up technologically.
Social media may have made it easier for pedophiles to find their targets, but it’s also led to a proliferation of people hunting them down. Operations like “Perverted Justice” were replaced by dozens of groups around the world—many of them seemingly less organized and more amateurish, whose main hub of operations is Facebook.
The platform gives the hunters greater exposure than the obscure message boards they depended on in the earlier days of the internet. There’s also no need now for expensive cameras and a TV network time slot to spread the word.
The suave TV host is replaced with a local plumber, or a long-haul trucker, broadcasting shaky footage from their phone.
A global phenomenon
In the UK, these groups have been “hunting” and publicizing their “busts,” in hunter lingo, since roughly the start of the decade. There are multiple UK-based hunter communities with hundreds of thousands of followers. The British media have been breathlessly following their shenanigans, and their rocky relationship with law enforcement. They’re popular in Canada, and imitators have popped up in other countries, like Australia. In the past two years, they’ve started appearing in the US, seemingly influenced by their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. Blas, for example, says he started his operation after watching a sting from a UK group in his feed.
The stings, live-streamed to an engaged audience, become a spectacle, a form of entertainment—a twisted consequence of Facebook’s mission to foster online communities.
An NBC investigation in January tracked down about 30 active hunting groups in the US, and Quartz was able to independently find 24 such groups in July, and a variety of pages and groups that call themselves “hunters” as well, but usually just share information about sex offenders caught by police.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Visitors sit under a Marvel sign at the China International Cartoon and Game (CCG) Expo in Shanghai,
Why China is angry about Marvel’s first Asian superhero movie
July 22, 2019Quartzy
It’s unclear why exactly this phenomenon popped up when it did, but in the UK, for example, there’d been a number of high-profile cases that emerged in the early 2010s, like the Rotherham scandal, where more than 1,500 child victims were found to have been abused and trafficked by a gang over a 16-year period. There was also the case of Jimmy Savile, the BBC star who sexually abused hundreds of children. The case brought more attention to the problem of the sexual exploitation of children, sociologist Daniel Trottier, a media and communications professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, told Quartz. But the British tabloids, which have a strong presence in the country, have been drumming up the issue’s salience years before that.
In 2000, for example, following the murder of the eight-year-old Sarah Payne, the tabloid News of the World’s pedophile naming-and-shaming campaign helped spur a spate of vigilante attacks. Today, UK tabloids re-publish footage from online stings, headlines screaming things like, “WATCH: Perverted paedophile begs for mercy when he is cornered by vigilantes.”
Anti-pedophile vigilantism is generally a global phenomenon. In 2018, 11 people were arrested in Myanmar after a violent crowd formed demanding the police turn over to them a suspected pedophile. In Indonesia, a mob attacked and killed a man suspected of being a child molester in 2017. In India, rumors of child trafficking and pedophilia, spread on WhatsApp, have led to lynch mobs that killed at least 29 people.
The power of social media
The Facebook vigilante groups use similar tactics to their predecessors, but they function in a different internet universe. Almost everything that characterizes social media today helps these groups thrive, from the platforms’ emphasis on community and video, to the way they are saturated with misinformation and divided into filter bubbles.
It was easy for two hunters I spoke with to launch their efforts on Facebook. (They use YouTube as well, but both said their content would quickly get taken down on the video platform—although it’s not clear why). They already knew how to use Facebook. And it is exceedingly easy to find an audience.
Using Facebook makes the experience feel more familiar for viewers. Followers know how the site looks and functions, and it sanitizes the vigilante effort, taking it from dark, obscure folds of the internet to the social network that everyone uses every day. Facebook’s requirement for users to register with their real names might also boost the hunters’ credibility.
Jesse Weeks is 28, a truck driver, and founder of “Hunted and Confronted,” a vigilante group which has 18,000 followers on Facebook.
“People can see, ‘Hey, that’s my neighbor,’ ‘Hey, he’s my mailman,'” Weeks pointed out.
The content pedophile hunters post on Facebook is tailor-made to flourish there. It’s highly visual, which the algorithm rewards. By playing on people’s fears and moral outrage, it gets shared and re-shared. (The most shared English-language news story in the first three months of 2019 was a 119-word piece about a sexual predator). The busts offer tales of danger and vengeance, and there’s nothing the internet loves more than schadenfreude. The posts are often quickly amplified by local news, which latch onto the story of a pedophile in the community.
Followers cheer on the hunters, thanking them for doing “god’s work,” congratulating them, and cursing out the alleged predators.
Eight people have been killed in mob attacks in Bangladesh after false rumours about child abductions spread online, police have said.
The victims were targeted over rumours that human sacrifices were needed to build the Padma Bridge, south of the capital Dhaka.
Rumours claimed children were being beheaded as offerings to the $3bn (?2.4bn) project.
Vigilante groups in turn lynched people they suspected of kidnappings.
Burned to death for reporting sexual harassment
Sixteen charged in Bangladesh for burning girl alive
India 'WhatsApp child abduction rumours'
None of the victims were involved in child abduction, police chief Javed Patwary told reporters in Dhaka.
Taslima Begum, a single mother of two children aged 11 and four, was among the eight people killed. More than 30 people were reportedly attacked over the rumours.
Eight people were arrested over Ms Begum's murder, and five others are being held in connection with the rumours, according to AFP news agency.
Who are the victims?
The three most recent killings happened last week, police say.
On Saturday, Ms Begum, 42, was beaten to death outside a school in Dhaka by a mob who suspected her of being a child kidnapper.
Image copyrightPOLICE HANDOUT
Image caption
Mum-of-two Taslima Begum was among the victims
Locals became suspicious of Ms Begum after she visited the school to enquire about the admission of her children, witnesses told bdnews24.com, a Bangladeshi online newspaper.
A teacher who witnessed her murder told the website "we could do nothing against the wave of people" attacking her.
The other victims were a man in his 30s, beaten by a mob in Keraniganj last Thursday, and a woman in her 30s, assaulted by a mob in Savar on Saturday, bdnews24.com reports.
How did the rumours start?
The rumours, local media have reported, started circulating on social media networks about two weeks ago. They were mostly spread in posts on Facebook and videos on YouTube.
One report claimed a young man had been found allegedly carrying the severed head of a child in Bangladesh's northern district of Netrokona.
The posts on Facebook, according to local media, say that "child abductors are on the prowl to collect heads and blood for the construction of Padma Bridge".
Image copyrightWIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Image caption
A picture of the Padma Bridge, south of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, under construction
The BBC has seen several posts and videos on Facebook perpetuating the rumour.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Patwary said the posts were being spread deliberately to "create unrest in the country", without elaborating on the culprits.
What are the authorities doing?
Police are attempting to quell the rumours by raising awareness of them through the media and warning people not to take the law into their own hands.
At least 25 YouTube channels, 60 Facebook pages and 10 websites accused of spreading the rumours have been shut down, Mr Patwary said.
In rural towns, officers are using loudspeakers in an attempt to drown out the rumours.
"We are building awareness about the rumour and ask people not to get panicked," a police chief in north-western Chapainawabganj district said.
Media captionFalse rumours shared on social media in India sparked similar mob violence in India in 2018
Local media say similar mob lynchings in Bangladesh, also linked to the construction of a bridge, happened in 2010.
The most recent episode is reminiscent of mob-related violence and killings in India following the spread of false rumours about child abduction on messaging app WhatsApp.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49102074
https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news...s-find-a-home/
Apparently the 17 year old attacker is only sentenced to 17 days of detention.
In the wake of the death of a homeless veteran in Logan, ABC4 is looking into housing options available to local veterans.
On Monday, we visited with the Homeless Veterans Fellowship in Ogden. The program began as a storefront back in 1989. It’s now housed in multiple buildings along 23rd Street.
“Our main goal is to assist veterans with obtaining housing and various other resources,” said Jeff Kane, the Executive Director.
Resources that include case management that spans throughout the state of Utah and Idaho as well as some financial assistance.
“When a veteran is making $300-$500 on disability, it’s hard to save up first and last month’s rent,” said Kane. “So, we have a grant that allows us to go in and assist them with that.”
In the past year, the program has served nearly 200 veterans.
ABC4 looked into the program following the recent developments in the Michael Fife case.
Fife, a homeless veteran, was tackled to the ground back in April in Logan. He died just days later due to head trauma he suffered after his head hit the concrete.
According to his son, Michael Fife II, his father’s 17-year-old attacker was sentenced to 30 days in detention last month.
This incident happened after the teen’s 16-year-old sister told her brother Fife sexually assaulted her on a Cache Valley Transit Bus.
ABC4’s efforts to obtain bus surveillance video were unsuccessful.
However, during the investigation, Logan City Police Chief Gary Jensen said, “it just doesn’t appear to what we were told, and the video that we watched that the two stories come together.”
Fife was 62-years-old.
Its 30 days of Detention.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote