An England-based online child protection group involved in stings of alleged sexual predators claims over 1,500 people a year are being snared by so-called paedophile hunting groups in the UK.
Fleetwood Enforcers, a group that has been running volunteer-led investigations into internet groomers since 2018, said a lack of police funding has led to “predator hunters” filling a vacuum to catch those preying on children in Britain.
Analysis by The Epoch Times has found that in the past eight months alone, stings carried out by groups such as Fleetwood Enforcers have led to more than 125 men and women accused of online grooming offences either being arrested, charged or put before the courts.
They include drag artist Andrew Way, an LGBT Pride organiser known as Miss Gin, who was last week jailed for almost three years for sending explicit and sexualised messages to what he thought was an underage boy.
The 61-year-old admitted to attempting to engage in sexual communications with a child, as well as breaching an existing sexual harm prevention order at Caernarfon Crown Court, Wales.
His activities were uncovered after a joint operation by two groups, Lincolnshire-based “Guardian Angels” and “STOP Stings.”
The sting targeting Way was streamed live to Facebook on July 3, with multiple members of both groups confronting the man in a public car park.
Long Justice Delays
The Epoch Times spoke to some of those involved in prominent UK paedophile hunting groups.One man working with Fleetwood Enforcers said that not all of the groups’ stings lead to successful prosecutions.
“I can tell you that over 1,500 a year are [arrested] through teams like ourselves,” he said.
“Not all are successful prosecutions due to certain things that happen on a sting, like a team being violent with the suspect or if the suspect pleads mental health.”
Some of those charged with offences relating to the covert activities of the groups, also face a long time within the justice system before being brought to court.
According to Casey, a member of the England-based “Children’s Voices” team, some cases they have been involved in gathering evidence for have taken years to come before the courts.
“Cases can take up to three years before they are charged or convicted due to digital downloads of all their devices,” she told The Epoch Times.
“Really just depends on if they are a reoffender. We had one arrested in January and he was sentenced this month. Another was reoffender of a real child, who has been stung three times in 12 months, and will be sentenced in eight weeks.
“We still have ongoing cases from 2021 who haven’t been charged yet so they are still under investigation.”
Asked about police attitudes towards their work, the Fleetwood Enforcers spokesperson said: “I think it all depends on the attitude of the people on the ground that day towards the police that determines their attitude with us. But I’ve never had a problem with them.
“The police are extremely underfunded and if they had the funding it would be them doing what we do, but the funding isn’t there unfortunately.”
Landmark Ruling
The rise of so-called paedophile hunters began around 2014, and since then their work and activities have both been heavily praised and criticised, particularly by the police.Referred to as Online Child Activist Groups (OCAG), most police forces say they do not proactively engage in OCAG activities but will “assess any intelligence” provided to them.
In 2019, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for online child abuse activist groups, Assistant Chief Constable Dan Vajzovic, previously accused the groups of often exceeding the boundaries of the law.
He warned some were “perpetrating offences including extortion, blackmail and exhibiting violence against those that they are targeting.”
Mr. Vajzovic said more than 250 prosecutions coming through the work of these groups was a positive, but pointed out that every month UK law enforcement agencies arrested more than 500 suspected child abusers.
“Overall the activity of these groups is not positive.”
In 2020, following a huge rise in the number of groups streaming stings of individuals across the UK, a landmark ruling was made on whether the activities, and the evidence gathered, by paedophile hunters is lawful.
The case was brought by Mark Sutherland, who was caught by paedophile hunting group Groom Resisters Scotland two years earlier.
The court held that such evidence obtained by paedophile hunters can be used in criminal trials and that doing so does not breach a defendant’s human rights.
Sutherland was arrested, prosecuted using evidence gathered by the activist group and jailed for two years in August 2018.
Suicides
Other serious controversies surround the impact of paedophile hunting activities, which includes the live-streaming of suspects sometimes to social media audiences of tens of thousands.They include 47-year-old Nigel Sheratt whose body was found at a house in Cannock, Staffordshire, in August 2018 two days after he was stopped by members of vigilante group Soul Survivors in his car.
The group posed as a 14-year-old girl in Facebook chats and claimed he had tried to groom her. They also confronted him with printouts of messages containing sexually explicit language, according to the news site.
Forty-seven-year-old David Baker was arrested after a confrontation with the Trap group in Southampton on Oct. 4, 2017.
He was questioned on suspicion of arranging to meet a child aged under 16 before being released under investigation.
The gardener was found dead at his home in Wickham, Hampshire, three days later after taking an overdose of prescription medication, an inquest was told.
Baker’s fiancee, her daughter and granddaughter fled their home after his arrest out of fear of an attack on the property.
In June, 29-year-old Sam Millar became the first paedophile hunter to be locked up over a sting of a man accused of sexually communicating with a child online.
Following a trial, Miller, of Front Street, Witton Gilbert, County Durham, was found guilty by a jury of one count of false imprisonment. He was jailed for nine months.
Another member of the group, James Moss, 58, of Northumberland, was also convicted of false imprisonment and handed a suspended prison term.
Online Grooming Soars
According to the Internet Watch Forum (IWF) UK cases of online grooming of children have soared since the COVID-19 pandemic.Research carried out by the child internet safety group shows that images of children as young as seven being coached to perform sexual acts have risen by more than 1,000 percent.
The IWF works to track down videos and imagery of child sexual abuse online and have it removed.
The charity warned the pandemic saw thousands of children relying on the internet to learn, socialise, and play—something that internet predators have exploited to coerce more children.
Speaking in January, Susie Hargreaves OBE, chief executive of the IWF, said: “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We have all adjusted our lives to be more online than ever before, and that is not going to change.
“During the pandemic, the internet was a lifeline. But we are only now unpacking the full effects. What is clear to us is that younger children are being pulled into abusive situations by rapacious predators, often while they are in their own bedrooms.
“Their parents are often unaware there is this online backdoor into their homes which is leaving their children vulnerable. I fear this could be the tip of the iceberg.”
Its report found that police lack the capacity to respond to the growing levels of reporting of online grooming.
It also said that despite every incidence or report of online child sexual abuse presenting a risk to a child, “there is no way the police could ever pursue all of them all.”
