I take your point. Does evidence from a 'concerned citizen' carry any more or less weight with the CPS than from a copper? Or is evidence just evidence?
Letzgo hunting paedos
- Thread starter butchersapron
- Start date
I take your point. Does evidence from a 'concerned citizen' carry any more or less weight with the CPS than from a copper? Or is evidence just evidence?
Athos
Well-Known Member
Yes, that is the aspect that sits least comfortably with me. Albeit, there's a limit to how much they can be held responsible for others' actions.
Athos
Well-Known Member
I expect there'd be questions of admissibility if the private individual acted in a way that was a breach of the rules in place to protect defendants' rights to a fair trial, and which (in theory at least) the police ought to know better than to breach.
rioted
redundant
Its an attempt to absolve any member of the working class for any responsibility for their actions.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Yep I know, it wasn't the Sun that did it. The case will always be remembered for Colin Stags police 'honey' entrapment and not the awful crime and legacy left for both Rachel's son, her family and his father. I can't even remember the name of the guy eventually convicted of the murder, says it all.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Based on your postings, you think entrapment is ok? your saying it's wrong on one hand, but then sending out different messages on other posts.
I think this is one of those areas where it is black and white. Entrapment and vigilantism is simply wrong, full stop. Even if there are successful entrapments, it always goes wrong at some point. Violence will eventually erupt, miscarriages of justice will formulate and lynch mob mentality takes over, even if it's not at the source of the original vigilantes/hunters whatever you want to call these knobs.
Fucking nonce threads are the worse....
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Police creating a situation where a crime that could be argued would not otherwise have been committed, are on dodgy legal ground I think you will find. I do not agree with this police practice.
And in any event it is wholly different to the vigilante nutters who run round filming their entrapment on their mobiles posting their rantings on line. They are misguided egotistical cunts.
Athos
Well-Known Member
I don't think you've been clear about what entrapment is.
And the legal position is not as clear cut as your post suggests. After all, some of the hunters' evidence has been accepted by the courts.
As I've said, I am not comfortable with the online reveal.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Sure. The insistence by the authorities and experts (with their own interests) on total secrecy around issues like this helps create paranoia that breeds irrational and violent responses. In this case, the coppers didn't go around and make it clear that this bloke wasn't a paedo, they had no community networks through which they could credibly establish it even if they wanted to. All they did was satisfy themselves as the experts and authorities and left him to it, left him to the mercy of that aforementioned paranoia to which he then fell victim.
Second worst. After those threads on which some posters see fit to benefit us with the wisdom of their inner Columbo. See the McCann thread/Tia Sharpe etc
discokermit
Well-Known Member
and yet you can't stay off 'em.
I knew some wankshaft would say that. Yes, I could stay off them or I could benefit urban with my thoughts on them. It's up to me really. I'll say this though - If my presence on the McCann thread in any way disrupted it then that only serves to render the moral high ground fog on the tyne all mine all mine.
Not since your dad sawed the handle off and used it for an arsewank.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
Anyone else find the motivation of people that get involved in this a bit creepy? Kind of makes me think of the kids at school who tried really hard to let everyone know they weren't gay by being as vocally homophobic as possible, only to show up in gay clubs years later. I wonder what makes some of these people want to nose into this world?
(trusting that you're all smart enough to know that I'm definitely not intending to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia in this post).
(trusting that you're all smart enough to know that I'm definitely not intending to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia in this post).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Give it a rest Frances, that stuff on a thread about this (esp after the link to the russian stuff above) is well out of order.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Well that's the whole point, entrapment per se is messy and not clear cut legally and therefore dangerous, especially when undertaken by what are essentially vigilantes having a wankfest over their 'heroic' deeds to society. Deeds that despite your comments you have actually partly applauded and justified because some kiddy fiddling nonces have been caught.
You don't seem to fully see the real bigger picture of the danger involved in such entrapment, they may well help secure some convictions, but it is dangerous if that is at the cost of some innocent person taking their own life, which will happen (brings to mind the teenage boy who was persuaded to take his clothes off and perform a sex act on a webcam thinking it was some girl only to be blackmailed with exposure by some shit arse cunt crooks, he then killed himself, tragic) the principle is related, if you secure some convictions with such tragedies in the background then it's almost hollow.
You need to put aside the emotive subject of peadophiles in order to get a better perspective of what entrapment and vigilante behaviour can lead to. We have a due legal process for a reason despite some of its flaws and entrapment and vigilantism is a rocky road littered with tragedy and injustice
For what it's worth the general legal consensus on entrapment is that if you encourage someone to commit a crime that they would otherwise not commit then you are on shaky ground and equally if you obtain confession by an entrapment of temptation then there is the chance that it will fail to stand up in court, as has been seen.
Athos
Well-Known Member
I've said more than a few times that I don't support those methods. Yet you accuse me of applauding them!
What with that and you asserting speculation as fact, relying on non-sequiturs, and presuming to tell me what the 'legal consensus' is (inaccurately, as it happens), I'm not sure that we can take things much further.
A shame, because there's the kernel of a really interesting discussion around the respective roles of the state, society and individuals in protecting children and policing (with a small 'p'). And it's a debate far more nuanced than your position will admit.
What with that and you asserting speculation as fact, relying on non-sequiturs, and presuming to tell me what the 'legal consensus' is (inaccurately, as it happens), I'm not sure that we can take things much further.
A shame, because there's the kernel of a really interesting discussion around the respective roles of the state, society and individuals in protecting children and policing (with a small 'p'). And it's a debate far more nuanced than your position will admit.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Indeed. The insight and evidence people have by their keyboard is startling. The Daily Express has built a business empire on the back of them
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
The motivation behind these vigilante actions can either be sinister or end up that way. Its littered with male ego and desire to be seen as masterful and heroic. A power trip to impress others especially women. Or in short urban speak 'wankcunts'.
Most kids at school who might be gay are probably having a shit time figuring it all out especially considering the shocking amount of homophobia in school playgrounds. So if some are being overly vocal it may be understandable, whilst I see how you've made the connection, I don't think it's creepy or connected to this thread.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Well we can all be accused of that. There is an almost morbid fascination with certain media obsessed stories, the recent nonce case of the corrie 'star' Kevin was a prime example of a number of people giving their 'expert' judgement, yet they are not privy to facts or evidence. So it winds me up too, I will step on a thread to try to tell people they are talking tosh, as they are nowhere near having access to hard facts or evidence.
I fucking hate it when people either slow down to look at the crash on the other side of the motorway or get their metaphoric knitting needles out to watch the hanging of someone. That was the analogy I used on Kevin mechanic thingybob thread. The McCann thread would be the same. It's gossip porn.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Oh no you don't!
Let's get all this straight, if I've understood this rather garbled debate correctly.
Identifying someone you think might be sexually abusing children, setting up a false honey trap for them (i.e. not a real child) and then reporting it to the police is one thing. The police can then decide whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. If they can be relied on to act professionally - evidently, sometimes they can't.
But that is completely different from shouting from the rooftops that someone is a paedophile on the basis of a rumour. Or beating them up.
The witch hunt analogy that's been discussed here (though the accuracy of those stories from a long time ago is questionable) is appropriate in that in both sets of cases, completely innocent people have been persecuted by a hysterical mob for whom all reason and common sense has gone out of the window. I don't know what psychologists would say about this kind of behaviour, but it seems there's a certain kind of person who, when part of a like-minded crowd, can be whipped up into a frenzy and become murderous. William Golding illustrates this in Lord of the Flies. I suspect paranoia comes into it somewhere. According to what I've read, those women accused of being witches were just a bit unusual in some way, like the murdered man in the Mirror story.
The press are partly to blame for all this, due to the frenzy they've whipped up over the last ten years or so, which has encouraged people who are a bit paranoid to see paedophiles everywhere.
But there's a positive side to that as well, in that the subject of child sexual abuse is now out in the open and people are a bit clearer about what a paedophile is. Thirty years ago the average person couldn't tell the difference between a gay man and a paedophile who targeted boys: both were called 'homosexuals'. We keep hearing, as with the Jimmy Savile case, that in the past, children who complained about sexual abuse were usually called liars. It's quite tragic that all those people, long since grown up, had to wait until he was dead before they felt able to come forward. I've met lots of people who were sexually abused as children (by family members and not strangers), and some have never recovered from it.
So the pendulum has swung from one extreme - making it a taboo subject - to the other, encouraging people to see paedophiles everywhere. People need to calm down, use a bit of common sense and listen to reason, for the pendulum to swing to the middle, where it should always have been.
Identifying someone you think might be sexually abusing children, setting up a false honey trap for them (i.e. not a real child) and then reporting it to the police is one thing. The police can then decide whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. If they can be relied on to act professionally - evidently, sometimes they can't.
But that is completely different from shouting from the rooftops that someone is a paedophile on the basis of a rumour. Or beating them up.
The witch hunt analogy that's been discussed here (though the accuracy of those stories from a long time ago is questionable) is appropriate in that in both sets of cases, completely innocent people have been persecuted by a hysterical mob for whom all reason and common sense has gone out of the window. I don't know what psychologists would say about this kind of behaviour, but it seems there's a certain kind of person who, when part of a like-minded crowd, can be whipped up into a frenzy and become murderous. William Golding illustrates this in Lord of the Flies. I suspect paranoia comes into it somewhere. According to what I've read, those women accused of being witches were just a bit unusual in some way, like the murdered man in the Mirror story.
The press are partly to blame for all this, due to the frenzy they've whipped up over the last ten years or so, which has encouraged people who are a bit paranoid to see paedophiles everywhere.
But there's a positive side to that as well, in that the subject of child sexual abuse is now out in the open and people are a bit clearer about what a paedophile is. Thirty years ago the average person couldn't tell the difference between a gay man and a paedophile who targeted boys: both were called 'homosexuals'. We keep hearing, as with the Jimmy Savile case, that in the past, children who complained about sexual abuse were usually called liars. It's quite tragic that all those people, long since grown up, had to wait until he was dead before they felt able to come forward. I've met lots of people who were sexually abused as children (by family members and not strangers), and some have never recovered from it.
So the pendulum has swung from one extreme - making it a taboo subject - to the other, encouraging people to see paedophiles everywhere. People need to calm down, use a bit of common sense and listen to reason, for the pendulum to swing to the middle, where it should always have been.
Humberto
dreamin man
They should be disciplined and persuaded to come back from their iniquity. Its a simple choice. Obey and live happily. Disobey and be killed. Much of the anger against them is hypocritical because the victims are ruined in youth and are set on a path.
Just some thoughts take it however you like.
Just some thoughts take it however you like.
Humberto
dreamin man
Paedophiles obviouslly
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