On-Line Vigilantes Hunt Pedophiles

Newspaper article

By: Marisa Schultz

Date: March 09, 2004

Source: Schultz, Marisa. "On-line Vigilantes Hunt Pedophiles." The Detroit News. (March 09, 2004).

About the Author: Marisa Schultz is a journalist writing for The Detroit News and The Gannett News Service.

INTRODUCTION

As the world wide web becomes progressively easier to navigate, computer costs plummet and technology proliferates (in homes and in public settings such as libraries, cafes, schools, etc.), and the intimate (in the colloquial sense) chat rooms of the internet become progressively more user-friendly and accessible to juveniles, serious problems are bound to occur.

Children and youth have always been particularly vulnerable to the influence of adults, especially those that they idealize or in some way want to please. The most vulnerable young population is that which is neediest either due to lack of adult or familial supervision or because of a dearth of stability in their home lives. Statistically, those children are the most likely to engage with adults who purport to offer them security and affection, and to be willing to take risks in order to meet the demands of the requestor (whether that be a local meeting, continued contact, secrecy, or even distant travel). The internet makes the job of the pedophile, whether experienced or neophyte, very easy. Message boards and chat rooms abound, and afford relative anonymity.

While it may well be true that the internet renders the predatory behavior of the pedophiles easier and more widespread, so, too, is it the case that the internet has spawned a myriad of watchdog groups and online vigilantes, who, both independently and in concert with a variety of law enforcement agencies (the Federal Bureau of Investigation among them), attempt to ferret out potential or actual predators and either expose them to public humiliation, halt them in their (cyber) tracks, or arrest and prosecute them. Many local and state law enforcement agencies utilize undercover officers whose job it is to lurk on the internet chat rooms and "sting" would-be criminal pedophiles. During the past decade, there have been numerous newspaper, magazine, and television features written by reporters who posed as underage internet surfers and were approached on line by adults (typically males) who attempted to arrange meetings with them for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with a purported minor.

There are three significant legal and philosophical issues to be raised by these activities: is it entrapment if a person intentionally poses as a juvenile with the expressed purpose of catching adults interested in engaging in sexual behavior with underage persons? Is the behavior of the "posers" such that it might lure a person to commit a criminal act that they might not have considered if a sexually-oriented conversation had not been sought by a provocative (and often sexually-explicitly monikered) "baiter?" Is it a violation of Civil Rights to videotape or publish the chats or photos of the alleged potential perpetrators on the internet or in other media venues, with the intention of using humiliation as a deterrent for future criminal behavior?

PRIMARY SOURCE

Five minutes into his Internet chat with a fourteen-year-old girl, Ray Dooley's conversation turned from snow-boarding to sex.

Enticed by "Rachel" of Harper Woods, Dooley, twenty-three, drove fifty miles the next day, apparently expecting to see her in a short leather skirt. Instead, the Port Huron man met a camera crew.

He was caught not by police, but by representatives of the civilian-led vigilante Web site Perverted Justice, who posed in the chat room as Rachel and then posted Dooley's picture, phone number and chat details online.

Dooley is one of about forty Michigan men whom the Web site has embarrassed as "wanna-be pedophiles" in its increasingly controversial effort to keep the Internet safe for kids. While some praise the effort, many law enforcement officials say the site leads to few arrests and may even impede growing efforts to police the Web.

"It helps to educate parents and make them aware how big of a problem this is," said Wayne County Deputy Bill Liczbinski, who is one of four investigators in the county's Internet Crime Unit.

"But from a law enforcement standpoint, those people should be in jail. It's one thing to put their picture up on the Web site and embarrass them, it's another to make them pay for the crime they committed," Liczbinski said.

There's ample evidence of the public safety problem posed by Internet predators. One in five youths ages ten-seventeen received a sexual solicitation over the Internet within the past year, according to a survey by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, based at the University of New Hampshire. One in four kids had an unwanted exposure to pictures of naked people or sex within the last year, the survey found.

The seriousness of Internet crimes was underscored last month when a thirteen-year-old Pontiac girl was taken to West Virginia by a man she met online. Sexual assault charges have been filed against Michael Wiedenbein, 48, of Columbus, Ohio.

Parent Tina Pietrykowski feels Perverted Justice's role is needed now more than ever. She's pushing to have Internet safety taught in her Roseville school district and even has considered volunteering for Perverted Justice.

"Sometimes you have to take the law in your own hands, Pietrykowski said. "I would hate to have what happened to the girl in Pontiac happen again."

Gaining attention

Perverted Justice has gained attention in Metro Detroit for exposing a Warren Mott High School math teacher, and for its partnership with WDIV-Local 4 to broadcast sixteen men within forty hours showing up at doorsteps for what they thought would be sex with minors.

Since the site began in July 2002 in Portland, Ore., 600 men nationally have been exposed. Just a dozen have been arrested. Dooley, who served almost four years in the U.S. Navy before being dishonorably discharged recently for a drunken driving conviction, remains the only Michigan man to be charged after a run-in with Perverted Justice.

Dooley's mother, Louise, said her son shouldn't be charged with a crime: There was no girl and no sex.

"He was not given the opportunity to walk away," said Louise Dooley, whose husband called police to stop the barrage of e-mails and phone calls after their son's chat was publicized. "No one knows what would have happened."

Others exposed by the site, perverted-justice.com, have lost their jobs and changed their phone numbers.

Brian Graves, the Warren Mott math teacher, will learn this month if the school board will allow him to return to the classroom. Graves, a forty-two-year-old Grosse Pointe resident, was exposed by the site in September for having a sexual conversation with a Perverted Justice volunteer posing as thirteen-year old Keely from Ferndale.

Graves, who is on paid administrative leave, never received an address from Keely to meet her for sex. He was not arrested.

"That creates an interesting dilemma for the school district," Warren Consolidated School District spokesman Bob Freehan said. The site "stops short of a violation of law, and it tosses the decision back to an organization like us."

The Oakland County Sheriff's Department is executing twelve search warrants for men exposed by the site and on WDIV-TV. If police can verify that a crime was committed, arrests could be made, Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.

"We are diligently trying to get the facts and circumstances of those cases," Bouchard said. But "we haven't received one hundred percent cooperation from Perverted Justice."

Perverted Justice officials, who decline to be interviewed using their names, say the group is not opposed to getting pedophiles arrested. Putting men behind bars is not the site's mission, but officials will work with police on arresting men only if the police contact the organization.

Unreliable information

Other police officials say they can't rely on the Perverted Justice chats alone to arrest someone.

"What people don't realize, if a person pulls over drunken drivers and then turns them over to the police (for an arrest), we didn't witness that," Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said. "Same with the chats. We are going to say, 'That's nice. But how do we know who that is with certainly?'"

To fight Internet crimes, Hackel uses volunteers who are trained at catching predators in online chat rooms. Volunteers are needed because the Internet task force, which began in 2001 with five officers, also is busy handling fraud and identity theft cases. These trained civilians are different than Perverted Justice volunteers because their work ultimately will lead to arrests, Hackel said.

In Wayne County, investigators have nabbed more than fifty people for computer crimes. They boast a hundred percent conviction rate because, officials say, they are very careful not to initiate contact with the men so that their evidence holds up in court. The unit began in 1998, but was shut down in 2002. After his election, Sheriff Warren Evans re-created the unit in 2003.

Since February, Liczbinski said he lost at least three men he was on the verge of arresting. The men no longer were chatting online. But the fix may just be temporary.

"It's really easy to just log on as someone different," said Tim Lorenzen, law enforcement coordinator for ISAFE, a nonprofit Internet safety organization. "This site may have the best intentions, but they are going to possibly screw up an investigation. They are trying to expose pedophiles, but they are allowing them to get away without prosecution."

SIGNIFICANCE

Perverted Justice uses trained adult volunteers to surf local (geographically local to the adult volunteer's location) chat rooms, with the explicit objective of ferreting out adults who seek to engage in "live" sexual behavior with juveniles. As stated in their website, their primary mission is to work cooperatively with law enforcement authorities to accomplish the arrest and prosecution of adults who solicit sex from underage youth (this specific goal comes from the second launch of the site, in July 2003). They report that they will attempt first to work with local law enforcement agencies; in those situations where that venue is not successful (the police department makes a choice not to follow up on the case, for example), they will post the complete and unedited chat log in question on their site and contact the adult who has engaged in same. They do this in order that the adult who has been caught can respond and have equal time to explain his/her perceptions of the interaction. They also verify any telephone numbers sent by the would-be-pedophile during the course of the on-line communications.

Perverted Justice (also known as "Peej") has created a large-scale file exchange repository for use by law enforcement and legal authorities that contains the transcripts of all web chats, any photographs sent by alleged potential perpetrators, identifying information for the poser's and alleged would-be perpetrator's computers, as well as any notes pertaining to individual cases, in an effort to facilitate prosecution of attempted illegal activities (solicitation for sex with an underage person, and similar criminal behaviors). According to information published by Perverted Justice, they have aided in the apprehension, prosecution, and conviction of nearly fifty criminal cases, have an additional 770 (individual) transcripts in their database, and have facilitated the recovery of a juvenile who was abducted, illegally held, and repeatedly sexually assaulted by a man she had met over the internet.

Psychologists and sociologists who specialize in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions and desire disorders refer to the allure of the internet's alleged anonymity (in reality, cyber anonymity is a very relative thing), perhaps lowering inhibitions against acting on desires for (potential) sexual encounters with juveniles. The philosophical case has been made that prior to the advent of the internet, some of those who engage in cyber chats and attempt (sometimes successfully) to meet underage sexual partners might have repressed those desires, or chosen not to act on them. There is also a prevalent belief that the alleged anonymity of the internet lulls would-be perpetrators into the belief that they will not be caught or prosecuted.

As organizations such as Perverted Justice gain media attention, legislators and local law enforcement agencies have begun to seek resources for creating similar venues within their own organizations. There have been a series of undercover stings across the country in recent years, all aimed at capturing and prosecuting internet pedophiles. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has made the investigation of high-technology crimes, particularly those involving the use of the internet for the facilitation of perpetration of illegal sexual acts with children a very high priority issue since the start of the twenty-first century. One of the responsibilities of the FBI's Cyber Crimes Squad is to have agents pose as children or juveniles on the Internet and conduct sting operations in order to capture alleged pedophiles.

There will remain those who have ethical and moral qualms about using adults posing as minors in order to lure actual and potential pedophiles, viewing these activities as a violation of privacy. The law enforcement agencies and volunteer organizations, such as Perverted Justice, who are committed to continuing their work, state that their mission is to reduce the number of sexual predators, and to increase the safety of children and youth. They plan to be a permanent fixture of the cyber landscape.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York, New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris. Free Expression in the Age of the Internet: Social and Legal Boundaries. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000.

Quayle, Ethel & Max Taylor. Child Pornography: An Internet Crime. New York, New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.

Web sites

KY-3 News—Springfield, MO. "Sex predator stings spur new legislation." 〈http://www.ky3.com/news/2293456.html〉 (accessed March 28, 2006).

News Channel 11—Lubbock, Texas. "Internet Watchdog Group Helps Lubbock Authorities Nab Sexual Predator." 〈http://www.kcbd.com/Global/story/〉 (accessed March 28, 2006).

WashingtonBlade.com. "National news: Gays help expose online predators. Internet group asks gays to be more vocal in stopping teen abuse" 〈http://www.washblade.com/2005/11-25/news/national/〉 (accessed March 28, 2006).

Worcester Telegram & Gazette News. "Cyber-sleuths target sexual predators." 〈http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/〉 (accessed March 28, 2006).