He felt threatened?

Charwell. I did see some of the programme but it all seemed a bit OTT. Do 13 year old girls (who are still getting used to junior tampax) take a look at some fellas hot throbbing todger, when they've never even seen one before invite him round to come and **** them?
I'd have thought that they would immediately switch off their computer and not go near the internet for next six months!

There's another group doing this and one of the men they interacted with claims all along that he knew it was not an 11 year old due to her sexual knowledge and said he thought something was going on. Yet he still agreed to meet up.
Now I'm not suggesting he was after sex but if you smell a fish why not just move on and ignore the person?

I like the theme of this programme though I have not watched it yet. Perhaps we could capture some terrorists by a similar method.

It would be so much better if the police did their job but they don't.Just happy to go after ageing celebs instead of politicians and gangs systematically raping vulnerable girls.

Too many people for ever rush to protect these scum. Guess as long as lessons are learnt everything will be alright.Haven't seen the program and he possibly is a bully but at least he's keeping the problem in the public eye.

absolutely right bigmo, it's not ideal that vigilantes are replacing the police but these predators are rightly being put in the spotlight, it's just a shame that so few are being caught and the real question is why the police do not have enough manpower to tackle the issue

stinton hunter is not the solution, but people like him open the debate and make people aware of the risks that kids face online

it appears to be a huge issue based on the ease with which three rank amateurs have reeled in their catch, i can understand people opposing their methods but can see no reason to then defend what are sad/sick elements of society preying on kids, the more that get locked up the better

It was an odd and difficult watch. I got the impression that Stinson's motivation was complex and he wasn't primarily fuelled by taking these people down.

I must admit to being shocked at the sentencing though with the number of suspended sentences being handed down seeming very lenient. As for vigilantism not protecting the relatives of the offenders, surely Yewtree would demonstrate that the police aren't really too worried about the anonymity of people they haven't even formally charged, let alone those convicted.

and technically kelly is of course right. It should have really been called "The Hebephile Hunter", but given that it's a rarely used word, and that it's not Stinson's epithet, it doesn't really seem too important.

2012 article

Dan is a detective sergeant, and a covert internet investigator with the Metropolitan police. At the Met's paedophile and high tech crime unit, we sit in front of his laptop as he navigates to an internet chatroom. He's already set me up with a username — louiseis14 — and clicks the button that tells users I'm online.

Within 10 seconds, two men whose profile names suggest they're in their 30s and 40s want to talk to me. Dan selects one at random — lets call him 'anonman_37' — and starts typing a response.

As the conversation goes back and forth, notifications from men inviting me to get in touch appear so fast that the list runs off the screen. We've been online for less than three minutes.

Dan continues to type responses in purposely ungrammatical teenage jargon. It takes just 11 lines of dialogue for anonman_37 to ask louiseis14: "not seeing boyfriend today?".

"Not got one" is my answer.

I'm gasping. It's pretty obvious where things are going.

Dan logs out quickly: he doesn't want to get into a conversation which might lead to a crime being committed. This would require his team to mobilise an instant response, something officers here do regularly, but not typically with a journalist watching proceedings.

The internet has provided new opportunities for paedophiles to prey on children, and the demonstration Dan's just given of just how many are waiting online to engage with young girls is alarming. "It's either the biggest library in the world or the biggest porn shop in the world," he says.

As one of 60 investigators working specifically on online paedophile crime at the Met, Dan knows better than most the ease with which (mostly) men can access and groom minors on the internet. He's also engaged in intimate online interactions with some of the most dangerous child sex offenders operating in the London area today.

Since the Sex Offences Act (2002), which criminalised grooming via the internet, there has been a growing realisation in the Met that it would have to change the way it operates: to successfully pursue and prosecute the growing communities of paedophiles who commit sex crimes online, it would have to penetrate the various 'meeting places' made possible by the explosion in social networking sites. Crimes committed on these sites include causing a child to engage in sexual activity, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child online, arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sexual offence, and meeting a child following sexual grooming online.

Waiting until children are taken into care to investigate sex crimes is no longer an option when offenders are targeting minors in such an organised manner. Police now use proactive targeting using intelligence from a range of sources. To get better at building cases against the most dangerous online perpetrators, the unit's officers, overseen by detective superintendent Reg Hooke, have made it their mission to gain a detailed understanding of how offenders operate within support networks of fellow paedophiles.

To help them, Elena Martellozzo, a criminologist at Middlesex University, has been given close access to the work of the unit and the chance to observe the way that paedophiles interact online with officers assuming the identities of both vulnerable children and predatory paedophiles.

Her analysis of a single recent investigation that led to 27 arrests of men who set up, and then travelled to meetings with "children" forms the basis of a new training course that, she says, aims to extend undercover officers' understanding of the various modus operandi used by sex offenders who primarily target young children on the net.

Called "Dancing with the Devil, investigating online child abusers", the training examines a range of perpetrator profiles and looks at how well the police currently distinguish between different types of online predator.

Martellozzo looked at their profiles "from super confident and open about their tastes to very cautious" in their online descriptions — the hope is that her training will offer police an increasingly sophisticated understanding of paedophiles' online behaviours and allow covert investigators to more quickly establish who are the fantasists and who the most dangerous predators.

This training, Hooke says, is also helping his officers in policing such crimes.

He knows full well that proactively targeting and engaging in conversations with online sex offenders holds some risks. There are moments when the "legally audacious culture" he is developing in this unit — required if officers are to engage believably in online conversations — takes his team very close to the legal line. Clearly, they are not allowed to act as agent provocateurs or encourage someone to commit a crime that they otherwise wouldn't.

It takes considerable support from management before officers feel able to throw off the risk averse culture that Hooke acknowledges can hold investigations back. But the approach is working: weekly, if not more often, he confirms, people are being arrested, prosecuted and sentenced for online sex crimes against minors in chatrooms, on social networking sites and via instant messenger. Prosecutions have been supported by chatlogs of officers acting as vulnerable children, and careful recording of all information proffered willingly by the offenders themselves.

The men — and it is mostly men — who offend in this way come from all walks of life, Martellozzo explains in her book Online Child Sexual Abuse: Grooming, Policing and Child Protection in a Multi-Media World. Her analysis of those arrested in the operation described above showed that half were married or in relationships, most had no previous convictions for sex offences, and the vast majority had child abuse imagery on their computer (half had level five imagery — the most extreme) sufficient to have been charged on that basis alone. The majority had their own children, who did not disclose abuse when interviewed.

In their interactions with undercover investigators, half of the men arrested texted the 'victim'. Two-thirds exposed themselves on a webcam or in a photo, and the same proportion actually set up a rendezvous and travelled to meet the 'child'.

When caught, explains Martellozzo, "they say things like 'it was just a fantasy' but you find them with lubricants and toys — what I found very interesting was to witness the forcefulness of their online interactions, [and contrast that] with their subsequent denials in interviews."

Protecting children online is expensive both in police hours and, in a fast-moving digital world, in the regular upgrades to the kit required to stay credible to the paedophiles they interact with. "When budgets are tight, then this proactive covert type of operation is in the balance," says Hooke. His bosses, however, have indicated that they remain committed to funding the unit: Hooke is clear that the long-term value to society will be worth the money.

"Take an abused child and look at the long-term cost to health, education, the justice system and lost work opportunities for the rest of their lives," he says. "In economic terms, this work makes complete sense."

True enough Hamster, the men could have said they believed it was a form of role play. There is no crime on what roles adults play in the bedroom. It was an over 18 dating website, they could easily have stated they where meeting an adult who was fecked up in the head, no crime in that i believe.

It's on his facebook page. Don't want to link to it and give Stinson publicity.

This guy though didn't send pics only a video of him waving at the camera. He claimed he was just a friendly chap wanting to meet and have a chat with the girl, although there was sex talk in the chat logs.

the guy said he couldnt meet him as he was going home for his tea , stinson saidd he would get him something to eat , so he was forcing the meet on him a bit

^^^^ bad grand-parenting.

So what's the intelligent solution to the exploitation of innocent children?

You know full well that the police aren't doing their job regarding these child crimes. And if you feel they are shame on you.

Stop trying to protect these perverts.

find a chat forum, sign in with a pic of a youngish girl, type nothing and see how long it takes for you to realise what sort of people inhabit cyber world

*nor*

Well, that's certainly solved the problem!

a sexually mature female who enjoys sex and knows her own mind?

how can such a thing be possible?

must keep these silly immature females protected and in their place ...

Kelly your posts are very disturbing to say the least.

he/she is probably pi$$ed like most of the forum is at this time of night!!

Kelly really doesn't have a bit of a point - re reading this thread Kelly is at the very least a warped individual

Kelly do you find sexually mature boys attractive (irrespective of age)?