An Illinois man who created a Facebook group known to track potential sexual predators was charged in connection with a sting operation that went awry in early January, prosecutors said Monday.
Kyle Swanson, 30, was indicted on a charge of unlawful restraint, obstruction of justice and assault in connection with his involvement with the KTS Predators Hunter Organization, according to court records. For more than two years, the vigilante group has posed as children on social media, tricked men into meeting up at public spaces in Illinois and uploaded YouTube videos of them confronting the supposed pedophiles.
Madison County State Attorney Tom Haine said, “The Grand Jury’s decision here reflects the fundamental idea that when members of a community decide to take justice into their own hands, even for laudable purposes, they can place themselves and others in danger and damage potential cases.”
Cops warned him for roughly 2 years to stand down. This should have stopped when one of his targets committed suicide. But these cops don’t take these THUGS seriously enough.
I can think of a few more vigilantes that need to spend time in lockup.
The pretend heroes who are running these unethical stings need to be held accountable for their sick behaviors. Those stings are not about protecting children at all. They are doing it for their own pleasure. Seems more like they’re playing out their own fantasies. Why else would they actively be seeking men online for sexual purposes, then pretend to be a teen who is doing that? Real teens don’t do that.
And if they want to say that real teens do are doing those things, then why aren’t they looking for teens to remove them from that risk, get them help, notify their parents of what they’re doing, etc.? That’s exactly what real heroes and those who truly care about protecting minors from this would be doing.
They would also be bringing public awareness about teens doing this; educating the public, especially parents of teens, community members who work with teens, etc.
Notice how they do none of that all?
Why are they not informing these websites and apps that they’ve seen minors seeking adult men for sexual purposes on their platforms? So that the websites and apps can monitor for that and inform their users to watch for it and instruct on what to do if anybody comes across anybody who is obviously looking for a hook up with a man but is claiming to be a minor. They can inform users to not play along because it may be a real minor. This is a real problem, with minors, etc.
Wouldn’t real heroes be doing this to help prevent this? It’s even written in the law and in the ICAC standards that bringing public awareness is one of the main goals of this. If prevention is the main goal of this, why are they keeping this problem (teens seeking adult men online for sex) a secret from everybody?
Based on the law about ICAC and ICAC standards it is their obligation and duty to bring public awareness about this. Instead, they’ve being lying to everybody, pretending that the men from these stings targeted minors and convinced the minors to have sex with them. That is not at all what happens in these online sex stings. 🤦🏻♀️
Peter Aiken’s explanation about they’re just “casting a wide net and catching a lot of little fish” is in accurate. These stings specifically target adult men who are seeking a casual hook up (including casual sex) from other adults in places where adults go to find that. The decoys specifically offer these men a hook up and casual sex. The catch is that the men have to state they agree to sex with a minor. That is not even close to catching child predators. They are purposely creating a lot of confusion and curiosity to trap men to use for this scam. Why wouldn’t anybody not want to go see for themselves who this extremely rare human being they just came across is? Nobody has ever experienced anything like that before, because of course it’s something real teens DON’’T DO!
I’m curious to know if “Facebook” is culpable as an accessory after the fact. Must be something they are liable for to condone and promote such actions.
I’m not crazy about the “laudable purposes” comment in the SA response.
Facebook supplies the venue for this to occur. If pone was to form some kind of hate group one would be banned. This IMHO is no different.
BTW there are these kind of people who actively search for possible or alleged offenders on many of the platforms. If they cannot get you, they try to ostracize or vilify. They use of pedo, etc is thrown all over the place. It is a sickening war going on on many platforms.
I know of a group who monitors the registry and actually do their on pseudo checks.
This is just another armchair of hate.