Your daily adult tube feed all in one place!
Paedophile hunters inc: Vigilantes are gaining fame and fortune by beating and humiliating alleged sex offenders... and even driving them to suicide. Now police say they're making things WORSE
Kenneth is a 20-something man who has been chatting online to a 14-year-old girl named Courtney.
They have organised a date and he turns up excitedly to an apartment in Los Angeles clutching cigarettes and several packs of condoms – only to find Courtney looking rather older than she claims online.
He barely has time to get over his surprise before he receives a far worse shock when a posse of stocky men emerge from the bathroom, armed with cameras and transcripts of his sleazy online chats with the supposed underage girl.
Kenneth initially tries to bluff it out, until he realises he’s only making matters worse and attempts his escape.
In covert footage filmed by the Predatorial Investigation Unit (PIU), one of several 'predator chasing' group in the US, 20-something Kenneth meets 14-year-old 'Courtney' for a date in LA
Kenneth arrives clutching cigarettes and several packs of condoms – only to find that 'Courtney' looks rather older than she has claimed during their chats online
The duo continue to talk as the PIU's hidden cameras keep rolling - and the honeytrap is set
His interrogators give chase and there follows a bizarre pursuit through the streets of suburban LA as his pursuers – clearly a lot fitter than him – harry him loudly about his alleged sex crimes.
This is all caught on video, which ends more than 15 minutes later as Kenneth is finally arrested and handcuffed by police officers summoned by his pursuers. Exhausted, he looks almost relieved to be taken in by officers.
Kenneth was the latest catch of a tried-and-tested honeytrap. His persecutors? A Michigan outfit that calls itself the Predatorial Investigation Unit (PIU) – one of scores of so-called ‘predator chaser’ groups that in recent years have become a national phenomenon in the US.
They conduct sting operations on online sexual predators, then stream the final, increasingly violent, confrontations for salivating viewers.
These are vigilantes for the clickbait-obsessed social media age. And they are attracting huge and financially lucrative online followings – the PIU compilation video on which Kenneth’s capture was filmed has been viewed nearly seven million times on YouTube and the group’s frontman, who uses the name ‘Skeeter Jean’, is a social media star who has 1.6 million subscribers to his videos.
Kenneth barely has time to get over his surprise as a posse of men emerge from a bathroom armed with cameras and transcripts of his sleazy online chats with 'Courtney'
Kenneth is confronted by the PIU's frontman, Skeeter Jean. The compilation video of Kenneth's capture has now been viewed nearly seven million times on YouTube
Kenneth got away lightly compared with some the groups catch. Others who fall into the hands of ‘ped chasers’ are filmed getting repeatedly slapped, punched and even viciously beaten up in supermarket aisles and car parks by vigilantes itching to for any excuse to hit them – attempting to flee or refusing to admit their guilt is usually sufficient reason.
Some of the groups have been banned from more reputable video-sharing websites over the violence but they still manage to find their way to less policed corners of social media.
The violence can be sickening. In one recent video, a terrified, skinny young man is filmed running blindly through a Florida supermarket as two men pursue him, one filming on his phone and the other – a thick-set man in a baseball cap – raining down vicious blows, giving him a black eye in seconds.
‘Please help me,’ their target endlessly pleads – to no avail – to fellow shoppers as he’s repeatedly punched to the floor and kneed in the face after being warned he was going to get ‘f***ed up’ if he didn’t cooperate by admitting on camera that he was intending to ‘rape a 13-year-old’.
After initially trying to bluff it out, Kenneth attempts to escape and runs into traffic. His interrogators give chase and harry him loudly about his alleged sex crimes
The chase ends more than 15 minutes later as Kenneth is arrested and handcuffed by police summoned by his pursuers. Exhausted, he looks almost relieved to be taken in by officers
They follow him out to his car, smashing his head against the door before letting him go with a final warning to ‘stay away from kids’.
In another video, a man named Eric is repeatedly slapped around the face as he’s pursued through a department store in Burlington, New York, by a pursuer who accuses him of suggesting to a ‘little boy’ that they be ‘friends with benefits’. Astonishingly, a store manager steps in as Eric is sprawled on the floor – but not to put a stop to the assault, rather to say that ‘we’ll get him outside and you can keep this going’.
Some of these vigilantes say they have a personal motive, having been molested themselves as children or having seen young family members assaulted. Others are clearly jumping on the bandwagon.
YouTube personality and renowned online prankster Vitaly Zdorovetskiy is a heavily muscled Russian-American part-time boxer who has 762,000 followers on Instagram and, accompanied by a posse of black-clad cronies and an armed security guard in a flak jacket, surrounds hapless targets at rendezvous in apartments and subjects them to an oppressive ordeal lasting hours.
Skeeter Jean is a social media star who has 1.6 million subscribers to his videos
He likes to shave their heads (sometimes then pouring milk over them) and wire them up for lie detector tests in which they’re quizzed on anything that takes his sniggering questioners’ fancy. (In one video, Zdorovetskiy and his friends, all apparently Trump backers, reserve special treatment for a Mexican who admits to being an illegal immigrant.)
The men meekly comply, believing that they’ll be spared the police. It all just looks like a shameless power trip but, promising more such videos if more people subscribe to his internet channels, Zdoroveskiy solemnly informs viewers: ‘We’re saving children right now.’
In May, 32-year-old Zdoreveskiy and his gang accosted a 73-year-old man in the street who they accused of being a predator. Seconds later another man who had heard what was being said punched the pensioner in the face, knocking him out cold. Zdoreveskiy later insisted he and his friends didn’t condone violence but noted with relish that the man had been arrested.
The vigilantes like to tell their targets that they’re giving their evidence to the police but it’s often an empty threat. Prosecutors say amateur sting operations could actually damage their chances of catching and convicting predators as they rarely provide sufficient evidence that can justify an arrest or an ultimate conviction. (Of the 50 sting operations conducted by Skeeter Jean’s outfit up to early 2023, only three resulted in an arrest.)
Vitaly Zdorovetskiy – a heavily muscled part-time boxer with 762,000 followers on Instagram - is a ‘predator chaser’ who subjects his targets to ordeals that include shaving their heads
Officials also complain that these gung-ho vigilantes are putting themselves and members of the public at risk – at least one ‘paedo chaser’ has been shot dead by a suspect he confronted, while another was shot in the leg.
Concern has been further fuelled by a spate of cases in which men targeted by these groups have promptly committed suicide – even before facing criminal charges.
Online paedophile hunters have long operated in the UK, although to a far lesser extent and not with anything like the same emphasis on commercialising the process - or indeed, the same willingness to use violence in apprehending the suspects seen in America.
In 2019, Nigel Sheratt, 47, from Cannock, Staffs, took his own life two days after being confronted by a group called Soul Survivors, which streamed footage on Facebook of his sexually-charged messages with a fictitious 14-year-old girl.
In 2017, the chief constable in charge of child protection admitted police might have to work with such groups after figures revealed a dramatic rise in the use of vigilante evidence in prosecutions for the crime of meeting a child after sexual grooming.
In the US, there are hundreds of predator chaser groups with names such as Dads Against Predators, Predator Poachers, Bikers Against Predators, Vans Against Predators and Colorado Ped Patrol. Ensnaring sexual predators has, like so much else in the US, been turned into an industry.
The groups’ leaders insist that they often barely make a living from filming their footage and that, in highlighting a neglected problem in US crime, they are providing a public service.
These groups are inspired by an famous NBC TV series, To Catch A Predator, in which broadcaster Chris Hansen conducted undercover sting operations on men arriving at a covertly filmed house to have sex with a minor.
Jay Carnicom (left), the co-founder of Ohio-based Dads Against Predators, with Skeeter Jean. DAP’s YouTube channel was getting 30,000 views a day before it was removed
Jay Carnicom with DAP's co-founder Joshua Mundy (centre). Ohio police have accused the group of ‘careless and reckless disregard for law and order, and due process’
Police became involved in the series as its popularity took off. But it was abruptly cancelled after four years in 2008 following a case in which a Texas lawyer shot himself as officers attempted to serve him with a search warrant after he’d been caught exchanging pictures with a fictitious 13-year-old boy.
These days, predator-chasing groups are becoming ever more extreme, but the modus operandi is essentially the same.
The fishing operations involve group members – who are mostly male – creating fake dating app profiles for boys or girls generally aged 12 to 14. With photo and video editing software, they can make pictures of an adult look like a child.
The profiles are posted on dating sites – gay ones for boys, straight ones for girls – such as Grindr, MeetMe and Skout. And then they wait to see who takes the bait and gets in touch.
Dads Against Predators (DAP), an Ohio group set up in 2020, has become one of the most prominent but has increasingly resorted to violence. It claims it often ‘catches’ as many as 16 potential predators over a typical four-day fishing operation at locations anywhere across the US.
Jay Carnicom, who founded DAP along with another young father Joshua Mundy, explained how the group works in a Vice News documentary last year: ‘We’re just on our phones, tapped into this weird little world of trying to act like, say, Gracie, a 13-year-old girl whose mother is gone at work or something. As soon as [the suspects] say they’re good to meet, we don’t waste no time.’
When his partner Joshua Mundy has to take a phone call from another suspect anxious to meet him, he puts on a convincing high-pitched voice to impersonate the teenage boy he is pretending to be.
Although they’ll try to get men to ‘say as much bad stuff as possible’ they draw the line, they say, at sending anything like naked pictures.
DAP tends to confront targets in supermarkets and department stores, but other groups choose a private residence or motel room where they’ll install hidden cameras and often using a stand-in for the fake child to greet the target, hoping to get the paedophile to further implicate themselves on camera.
Either way, the hunters will suddenly pounce mob-handed, encouraging their target to spill the beans on camera with the threat that otherwise they will simply go straight to the police.
Surprisingly, this line often works. One 65-year-old grandfather and builder targeted by Skeeter Jean went as far as to offer to fit a free kitchen in the house in which he was confronted if they took the matter no further. Groups like Skeeter Jean’s Predatorial Investigation Unit that don’t use violence routinely call the police after haranguing their target – and film that, too. It’s all grist to the viewing figures mill.
Before it was removed from the site for violating its terms of service, DAP’s YouTube channel was getting 30,000 views a day and the group even has a rock-song jingle (the lyrics go: ’DAP’s going to find you, DAP’s going to get you, DAP’s going to find your motherf****ng ass’). On its website, fans can buy DAP-branded merchandise such as T-shirts and baseball caps.
Carnicom and Mundy admit their work is deeply polarising but ‘feel passionate’ about the issue. (Carnicom says he was molested as a child while Mundy says his stepdaughter was abused by someone in her family).
The duo claim that five people they’ve targeted have subsequently committed suicide – which to them is an indication of their success in rooting out evil rather than an indictment of their tactics. Ohio police have accused the group of ‘careless and reckless disregard for law and order, and due process’.
Dave Frattare, commander of Ohio Police’s online child protection unit, questions whether any of these groups would exist if it wasn’t for platforms such as YouTube. ‘If someone goes out and creates a channel for the simple reason of getting clicks or views or subscribers, this really makes me question their motives for why they’re doing this in the first place,’ he said. Nor is it likely to stop anyone reoffending. ‘When you put someone on a YouTube channel and they receive their 15 minutes of shame, what’s that really doing a year or five years on?’ he asked.
He and other police officers say that putting out these videos and alerting everyone before detectives have had a chance to build a case makes catching them much harder. And in many states, including Ohio, these men are not even committing a crime by just talking to children online, so the evidence amassed by these amateur sleuths cannot lead to a prosecution.
Knowing that, many of the groups are simply content to expose, publicly humiliate and lash out – confident that their terrified quarries will do anything that might avoid being handed over to the cops.
As critics point out, the vast majority of child abusers aren’t strangers on the internet but people their victims already know. That, of course, is unlikely to deter the predator hunters as they keep their social media followers usefully entertained.