August 13, 2025 • 47 mins
You might remember To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen, but now streamers are making their own version, and they’re a lot more violent. New York Times reporter Aric Toler takes us inside the world of modern-day “pedophile hunters,” while Stefan Turkheimer, VP of Public Policy at RAINN, shares what justice could—and should—look like for survivors.
Check out Aric's visual investigation on online pedophile hunters.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support in English and en Español. Call 800.656.HOPE (4673), chat at hotline.RAINN.org, or text "HOPE" to 64673.
Additional music for this episode by Zeno Pittarelli, check out his new project Gravity’s Not Holding Back.
Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (860) 325-0286
For more, subscribe to our newsletter at www.nosuchthing.show and follow us on Instagram.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Devin. Just the heads up. You may have
guessed from the title, but we're gonna be dealing with
some tough stuff in this episode. So if you want
to skip this one, we totally understand. I'm Manny, I'm Noah,
and this is Devin. And this is no such thing
the show where you said our arguments in yours. By
actually doing the research on today's episode, you go deep
(00:20):
inside the world of pedophile hunters.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
No, there's no no such thing, no such thing, no
such thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Such thank no touch.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Thank growing up. Did you'all watch the show To Catch
Your Predator?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Not?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Did I watch it? I mean I that was one
of my favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, I was locked in.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I was pretty locked in.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
They're online, they're at the door, and tonight they're on
this very beach in our latest to Catch a Predator investigation.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
For those of you who don't know, the Catcher Predator
was a show on NBC that ran in the mid
two thousands. It was hosted by this guy named Chris Hanson,
and he would work with these teams that would pretend
to be children online chatting with adults. They would invite
these guys over to their quote unquote house, which would
be outfitted with hitting cameras.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Someone in the driveway, someone in the driveway, The.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Team inside Datelines hidden camera house quickly moves into position.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
They would have an actor pretending to be a child
telling the guys that, oh, come on in, and then
they would make some excuse to go in the back.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Hey, COWI I made you some sweet team a lot
throw this dyros.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Can't get up freak, and then Chris Hanson would come
out and confront these guys who thought they were there
to have sex with a child.
Speaker 7 (01:53):
I need to tell you that I'm Chris Hansen with
Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story on adults who
meet teams online and then try to meet them in person.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Perhaps and you remember his favorite catchphrase.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Hello, have a seat?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Why don't you have a seat over here?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (02:09):
Don't you have a seat there? And get comfortable for that?
Why don't you come out and have a seat real quick? Okay,
it's gonna take a few minutes. Why don't you have
a seat?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That line is so like, yeah, I think you're a
piece of shit. Yes, Like, why don't you have a seat?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah? And now you're like it's like it's the ultimate,
like you were doing some bullshit and now you're caught. Yeah,
what were your experiences like as kids watching this show? Like,
you know, did you think it was funny? Like what
was sort of a vibe?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Look, I'm a much different man than I today than
I was when I was twelve, but I was definitely
watching To Catch a Predator, you know, in a gleeful set,
in a way that's like, these guys are bad.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, they're catching them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I'm allowed to laugh and have a good time.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yes, because they're bad people.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Sure the call, Yeah, I don't think I would, you know,
consume that material the same way today obviously, but like
that's what I was doing.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Do either of you know why the show ended?
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I've heard, and I actually really I still don't even
know if it's true. I heard it was because I
think a guy was caught and then killed himself, like
right there, But I don't know if that's.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
So.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I looked into this, and there's some conflicting reporting around it,
but it seems like this may have been a contributing
factor to why To Catch Your Predator did get canceled.
So in two thousand and six, the Assistant District attorney
in Texas. Bill Conrad was caught in a sting operation
by Chris Hansen and a Dateline NBC crew.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
The officers line up information and head to the back
of the house, and.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
They actually have footage of this, and in that footage
you can hear a gunshot.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Then we hear a faint practice. The officers forced their
way in. For almost five minutes, we don't see or
hear anything. Then Lieutenant Adana Barber of the Murphy Police
Department comes out. He tells us what happened.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
And he told him he was heart them and then
shoun step he had a pistol in his hand.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Small calum So Built died by suicide. His family ended
up suing NBC. They settled outside of court, but it
really forced people to have a conversation about is this
really the best and most ethical way to be going
about this. For the record, Chris Hansen says this is
(04:48):
not the reason the show ended. He said it just
kind of ran its course. But he's still making a
version of the Catcher Predator today.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Coming up on Takedown with Chris Hansen.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Engaging in our other ad. Wow, So did it run
its course? You're still doing it?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, he's contradicting himself by continuing we found some more
product exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So the reason we're talking about to Catch Predators not
just because pedophiles are in the news again with the
Epstein stuff, but we've been seeing a lot more videos
I would say, primarily on X of these like streamers
or you know, I guess we can came the influencers
doing something that's being called pedophile hunting, which is similar
(05:36):
to the Chris Hansen show to Catch a Predator. He's
hitting me, a thirteen year old girl. So the biggest
difference with these streamers versus like the Catch a Predator
is all these streamers are getting really violent with these
alleged pedophiles. I'm a bit, am, I a bit Are
(05:57):
you gonna.
Speaker 8 (05:57):
Hit me or something?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And obviously the reason that they are doing this is
they feel like they can get away with it because
if you're being caught being in an alleged pedophile, you're
probably not gonna call the police. So yeah, we've been
sharing these videos for a while now. I'll look back
at our chats over a year ago, even before the
pod launch, we've been talking about it, sharing it in
(06:19):
the slacks, mostly about how we feel uncomfortable with what
we're seeing, But yeah, what is your experience has been seeing?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Yeah, I mean these seem like something that definitely popped
up in the X era of Twitter, where it's like
once it was kind of like the feed is just
gonna be whatever is put out there. Yeah, and like
all this stuff kind of rises, so I would just
see this way more than ever before. Definitely, like I'm
sure these were kind of happening earlier, but they kind
of blew up. It felt like at least came into
(06:49):
my purview. The whole thing feels a lot more just
like bullying. And maybe because like you know, and I'm
only seeing clips, so I don't know, maybe there's a
lot more backstory given. But like the whole thing is
like even more miserable than the edited TV version back
in the day. Yeah, It's like again, it's like, yeah,
you're kinda once it is in front of you, are
(07:10):
fixated to see it and like hear what's going on,
but it's it's just even like ten times sadder than yeah,
the old version.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And it really it made me think, like when these
videos started becoming really popular, it made me think about
the the quote unquote like content aspect of this, Yeah,
entertainment value of it, you know, makes me think about
To Catch a Predator or the TV show where it's like, Okay,
this is this is kind this is bullying, right, Like
this is like a they're parading the person out for
(07:41):
our entertainment value. And then yeah, it's like the new
version where it's like you don't even have like the
small amount of due diligence that might be happening from Okay,
we recorded this thing. Now let's see like is this
person actually guilty or let the police sort it out
or whatever, Like the intentives are even more extreme, you know, yeah,
and they I think what propels them to keep doing
(08:02):
this is this idea that I had when I was twelve,
which was it's okay for me to laugh at this
because yeah, it's ultimately they're being a deterrent, but like
I wonder how much of it is actually a deterrent.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, to Manny's point, Like, watching these, the big thing
that's on my mind is like, is this actually deterring
any of these potential predators from doing this in the future,
Like are predators watching this being like, oh I can't
talk to kids on grinder because like it may be
Dad's against predators or something, you know, coming after me,
(08:34):
and then I guess another aspect of it that just
you know, I felt it with the Catcher Predator, but
feel even more with these streamers. Is like the seriousness
of the crimes feels kind of like an afterthought, and
a lot of the sort of entertainment value is just like, oh,
(08:55):
look at this idiot getting beat up, right. I haven't
watched a lot of these, Like I see him on
Twitter and he had a kind of hard to turn
away when you're watching these like thirty second or minute
long clips. But I haven't watched the full on you know,
predator stream so maybe they're getting deeper, you know, maybe
they're doing all this stuff I just complained about is
(09:15):
maybe happening on the long version.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Yeah, you're like, you know, someone who just reads the
headline and complains exactly the real journalism they're doing exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I don't really know this world, so I am going
to talk to someone who knows a lot about this world.
I am going to chat with a reporter who has
watched hundreds of these pedophile hunting videos. That is after
the break. Okay, we're back. This is no such thing. So,
(09:52):
as I mentioned before the break, this is a topic
that we've been talking and thinking about a lot, even
before we launched the podcast. Wow and you know that
meme that's like, you know, I've been working on this
for however long and then like you just tweeted it out.
This is what happened with the New York Times. Yeah,
as we were talking about this, they published this story
which was exactly what we were discussing, which is like
(10:14):
doing a deep dive all these online pedophile hunters. So
the Times did a visual investigation titled Online Pedophile Hunters
are growing more violent and going Viral. So I talked
to one of the reporters from that team, Eric Teller,
who's been watching hundreds of these videos.
Speaker 9 (10:37):
I'm very fascinated by this weird internet subgenres and subcultures,
and this is one of the weirdest ones out there.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Eric, similar to us, grew up watching the Catch a
Predator and seeing a lot of these videos on his
Twitter feed.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Do you see all these you know, photos of these
guys getting you know, beat up, being chased and drop
kicked and thrown to the trash.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But there was one case in particular that really caught
his attention.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
One guy in particular called himself on real Jujika, and
Jiujika is the name of some like manga about like
this like revenge. It's like revenge killing is the idea
of this mang It's like this kid who goes on
revenge and killed all these people. It's like this righteous
defender or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
So the manga is called Jujika No Broken In and
so many reviews online on Reddit and YouTube are about
just how fucked up this series is.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The most dangerous character of them all is our main villain,
because this kid is really fucked up. Like he sits
there and he's talking about how he's going to be
the first killer that is going to kill without no desire,
with loving family and friends because he wants to be
an ultimate killer.
Speaker 9 (11:43):
There's this kid, you can tell, he's probably like in
his early twenties, maybe eighteen nineteen something something like that.
He had a video where he this he tied this
old man up, like he tied up his wrist and
then beat him with a hammer until he was like bloody, right,
and posts this video on Instagram on Telegram.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Whatever. All right, let me show you guys this video.
But first I want to pull up this tweet, which will,
I guess give you some insight into his thinking. So
along with this video of him beating up this seventy
three year old, this is the caption. It says, petals
walk away because they can hide it with money or power.
(12:22):
It doesn't matter to me anymore. When my friend got
pedo attacked, no one was there. So don't ever question
what I do. My hatred will never be filled unfiltered love.
All right, So here's the video of him attacking this
seventy three year old man with a hammer in his house.
(12:44):
Oh my god, Wow, it's just a questions WHOA This
video is pretty graphic, but you see a masked man
holding a hammer, posing around an elderly man whose face
is bloodied. His hands are tied. They're seen in a
cut of him hitting the man, and you could see
(13:07):
him screaming and yelling for help.
Speaker 9 (13:14):
And about a month or so after I first saw
this video, we got word that he was arrested in Pennsylvania,
and it turned out was a night at the time,
nineteen or twenty year old from kind of a well
to do family outside of Philly. He was doing this
and it was real, and I think it was real.
Like the guy who was beat up, he he was
was like an hospice care soon after because he had
he had cancer, and there was other people too. He
(13:37):
had done this to a few other people as well too,
So that's how we got into the first place. This
is especially violent kind of crazy example, which you know,
even seeing I've seen hundreds and hundreds of these videos,
that's still the most insane of all the ones I've
seen was that first one I saw.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
That really is hard to watch.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Yeah, and even like that's kind of cutting around probably
the worst and most violent.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, but it's just like I said, they were disturbing
to see, Like.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It makes me think about how like sometimes when you're
watching this, you don't feel like the person would be
doing this if it weren't for like views and clicks.
They know it's a form of entertainment that they can
get people to watch, and it's not like but then
you see like a guy like this who's got like
a fucking origin story, yeah, doing this, and you do
wonder like maybe it's not all just for the interviewing.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Not just performative and that, Yeah, if you're just like,
I want views, how do I get these? Yeah, I mean, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
All right, So this I think he's nineteen year old,
has a child date layer. This week he's being charged
with everything from kidnapping to burglary to making terroristic threats.
And obviously this is a pretty extreme example of what
these you know, streamers do. When I was curious talking
(14:47):
to Eric, what does a more like typical video tend
to look like?
Speaker 9 (14:54):
It depends on who's doing the catching, right. So I'll
give you an example of like Dad's gunst Predators, which
is probably the most alific group. They've done probably six five,
over five or six hundred to these catches since like
twenty nineteen to over about five six years. There's a
guy named Jane, a guy named Josh. There're two guys
from Ohio bada is like they are, you know, grown
men trying to bring justice to the world. By I mean,
(15:15):
I think Jay or Josh, one of them is like,
you know, we're exposing demons. Is how they do it right,
And they talk about how they brag often about how
many suicides they've caused people who've been in their videos,
who have who have committed suicide, shortly after.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The videos, I've almost I don't care.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
Hey, I don't care.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
You can't even meet a little boy, a thirteen year
old boy. You think I'll give a fuck about you,
I don't give.
Speaker 8 (15:35):
A fuck about you.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (15:39):
I think the exact what is like we kind of
bodies not arrest. It's kind of how they brak. They
see themselves like on a Holy crusade, right, and it'll
be them. Sometimes they have like an entourage people with them.
They'll like be sitting in a car and they're about about
to meet up with a guy. So they go on
to apps like Grinder or Tender or Facebook or a
bunch of special liznings and they'll like pose as they'll
(16:00):
like put their ages eighteen because that's the lowest you
can put your age. And then after they talk to
a guy for a while, they say, oh, I'm actually thirteen,
I'm actually fourteen. Do you still want to meet up?
And then this is how they describe it, And usually
they post a chat log so you can actually see this.
And then if you know, if a guy says, okay, yeah,
let's still meet up, they'll do it in a public place.
Sometimes they write like Airbnb, so like a trap house.
Usually it's like a like a Dollar General.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Or a Walmart or a grocery store or whatever.
Speaker 9 (16:23):
Right, and then there's some in the car and like, okay,
this is him. I see the guy. He's going in.
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
You go, okay, just pull it up, he said up
here there.
Speaker 9 (16:33):
Right there access and they're like kind of like spies, right,
and they go and they confront the guy like in
a like a chip aisle in Walmart, and they say, hey,
you expect them to see a fourteen year old it's
actually me, right.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
I need to know why you're here to meet a thirteen.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
Year old boy? Kay, Okay, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
Okay, Hey, well I might Hey sir, I might have
at messed up?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Is this you right here?
Speaker 8 (16:55):
Hey, don't grab my phone?
Speaker 10 (16:56):
You and get stuck boy?
Speaker 9 (16:58):
And then the guys will almost always say like, oh,
I just wanted to like get them advice and tell
them this was a bad idea. Excuses I.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Shouldn't be a grinder. You know why, ask him?
Speaker 11 (17:11):
Because because because when I was fifteen, six yard grinder,
I was taking advantage of every.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
Single fucking day.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
So you want to do it again?
Speaker 8 (17:18):
No, I was, I was coming to meet the kid.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Why did you was coming to meet the kid?
Speaker 8 (17:22):
Why did you say, have you ever been fucked before?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Because I was fucked when I was fifteen? So why
are you asking him that? Because I want to make
him fucking understand that he shouldn't fucking do that.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
They'll do so, then they'll diverge. Sometimes I just try
to commulate them publicly, like their catchphrase is they like,
excuse me everyone, this guy is a pedophile, blah blah
blah blah, and like scream and try to embarrass him
as they run away.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Tyler is here, what I mean a fourteen year old girl?
Excuse me, everyone, Tyler is here? To mean a fourteen
year old girl.
Speaker 9 (17:51):
Sometimes I just like just beat the shit out of them.
They'll just attack them and like kick them and slap
them and punch them, and or maybe they'll chase them
through the parking lot and then like beat him down.
Speaker 8 (18:02):
I don't even know, oh my god, oh.
Speaker 9 (18:19):
And then then the video wins, right. So usually the
videos are twenty thirty minutes each, sometimes are a lot longer.
Sometimes they do like live catches. They're kind of like
the lead up to it and then like afterwards and
all that stuff. But usually that's what the video looks like.
Is sometimes there's violent, sometimes there's not. It depends on
the group. Some some groups are violent some market.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I've seen situations where they have said like, hey, we
know you're a pedophile. You can either let us beat
you up or we're gonna call it op.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (18:43):
Yeah, they do that sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And and there's the situations obviously when they do both.
Speaker 9 (18:47):
Yeah, of course it works. I mean this, this is
the thing, Like there's hundreds and hundreds of these. They
don't they don't do the exact same playbook every time. Right,
So this is something that Josh, one of the two
dads ganess redit or God does is he He'll say like, okay,
you have an option all other well other slot you
get slaps or you get the police, right, And the
guy's not every time, but like not evencent the time
they asked for the slaps, like don't call the cops
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh that boy season up.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Hey, now who are you here to meet? Who are
you here to meet? Or you can call the cops
and we can we can figure it all out together,
and then I'll go to jail for smacking you, I'll
bound out. It's only gonna be like one hundred and
fifty dollars and you'll go to jail mister, for what
you've been doing.
Speaker 9 (19:28):
There are some streamers on Kick and them that we
talk about most in our reporting. In our article a
while ago was Vitali's drug Eski, who was a relatively
popular Kick streamer. I think he's like top twenty, top ten.
I don't know, he's fat Batali streamer. Read his Wikipedia.
It's wild. He's like streaked, like on like world cop.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Just ran on it.
Speaker 9 (19:52):
Has a whole weird history of like attacking on woman
when he was like a jogger. He's an attacked a woman.
He's like on drugs.
Speaker 8 (19:59):
He just came out for no reason. He just came
out and just whacked.
Speaker 10 (20:04):
Her in the face. Okay, this guy is This guy
has got this website battally uncensored.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He's had some issues before.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
He's a big muscle bound kid inside.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I don't know if he's rolled it up.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
I don't know if he's raised better.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
But he just cool cocked the manage the whole weird life.
Speaker 9 (20:20):
But his kind of new arc that he had was
he would do his pedophile catches on kick. What Vitali
does is he does like a game show is what
he calls. So like a first few streams he gets
like attack people, right, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna
start talking to because he dimensions a few times like
oh yeah, kicked told me I can't you know, it
can't be a violent or whatever. He would have the
(20:42):
electric predator and like you know an Airbnb or whatever
that he rented up and say, okay, we can either
call the cops or you could do our our game show.
And it's like five rounds of like humiliating them. So
the first round maybe like here's like a super duper
hot chip.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
There life, you're a choice.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I usually get people sixty seconds to decide.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's a fucking chip, but you're not gonna die.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
It's spicy. You eat or cops eat, or cops eat
I do.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 9 (21:15):
In the second round might be like, oh, we're gonna
shave your eyebrows. And the third round might be like
you have to call your mom or you call your
wife and tell him what you did.
Speaker 8 (21:22):
So and he's here and we caught him, what do
you think I should do to him?
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Or what do you think you have anything to say
to your son right now that he came here for us.
Speaker 8 (21:30):
No, hold on, hold on, hold on, Let you talk
to your ma and my husband.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Hold on.
Speaker 9 (21:35):
The fourth mound may be like we have a swimming
pool with like a plank over it, or like a
board that goes over with a bunch of mouse trafts.
You had to walk across the barefoot, right, So like
they have like a serious like escalating like more painful,
more humiliating things, and then after at the end of it,
they leave and you know, they may or may not
call cops and some people, you know, just like they
(21:56):
were told, well, this is the game show, We're gonna whatever.
They gets kept and leave immediately and then nothing happens.
I think got another person coming in soon, right, so
they don't want the cops show and break up their
next catch. But yeah, I me, it depends.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You know.
Speaker 9 (22:06):
He vtality has signed forty fifty to sixty of these,
so they kind of it changes, you know, stream to stream, So.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Believe it or not, we have actually talked about and
seen some of these vitality videos. M there's two that
he has with these, you know, to us famous musicians. Uh,
The first one I'm going to play features tie dollar
sign oh yeah, musician No Noah's day one dollar yeah,
(22:31):
trying to meet the fifteen year old you want to
meet on fiften ye old? Want fifteen year old?
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Why?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Why do you want to meet a fifty year old
fucking boy?
Speaker 8 (22:37):
For second?
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Are you a pedoph?
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh? No, one's gonna hurt you, bro.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Huh good personal, You're a good person.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Could you imagine?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Uh? You know, you're getting confronted on camera for your
you know, online activities whatever they are, and Ti Dolson
shows up to rub it in.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That'd be crazy.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I still know what he gets out of it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And then there's this other video which features everyone knows
who Acon is Akon singing his hit single locked Up
while an alleged pedophile is being arrested on camera. And
(23:21):
then the weird things Batali's wearing, some like Native American headdress.
I don't really know how that ties into what's happening.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
And it just goes to show you how so many people,
including celebrities, feel like this is a noble endeavor and
they're just happy to appear in these videos because they
feel like it makes them look good. It's like good
pr for them.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
In his investigation, Eric found that there have been more
than one hundred and seventy violent attack by pedophile hunters
since twenty twenty three. How did you go about like
tracking down all these videos?
Speaker 10 (24:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Because it is you know, you guys break down just
like how many violent attacks that you've seen across all
these platforms? Like how did you go about that? Like
quantifying it?
Speaker 9 (24:17):
I mean it was it was just just endless data
collection a right. I just had to spreadsheet. I still
have it. It just with hundreds of rows on Google
sheets of just listening every single group I could find.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Right.
Speaker 9 (24:27):
This is the thing that's kind of frustrating about this
is these groups kind of come and go, so they
aren't I mean, there will be a group that does
two or three catches and they kind of go away.
Some that were around forever but that we're there on
Facebook and Facebook deleted them because a lot of these
social platforms have like crackdown and you can't find traces
of it. And so I just went through and I
literally just went through Facebook and through Twitter and through
Rumble and kick and all these places. I just just
(24:49):
gathered as many as I could. The way these go
is a lot of times they are very locally driven,
so it's like there'll be a lot of especially on Facebook,
it'll be like the area code. So if it's like
New York, you know, like the two, you know the
two and two. You know predator catchers, right, those are
the ones that are kind of hard to find because
they're like very hyper local. But then you have the
big groups you know, like Dads Against Predators and Predator
(25:09):
a poachers that are national, They travel and make thousands
of dollars and all that.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So you mentioned some of the platforms, but can you
talk me through like where you're seeing most of this
stuff live.
Speaker 9 (25:26):
When it used to be back five plus years ago,
everything was on Facebook. All these plate people were on Facebook,
Slash YouTube. It's kind of like the dual places because
those are the biggest platforms the people were and YouTube
for a long time. YouTube and Facebook is to let
these people live and there's like some light moderation, but
there wasn't that much, right, So you see groups with
tens of thousands of members, local, national, whatever, who post
full videos. They would do Facebook live streams, doing their
(25:49):
live catches. This still happens, though not as much as
you used to, and they would go on YouTube and
they would they would be able to monetize and make some
pretty decent money monetizing their videos on YouTube, which is
why many of them are there. Around twenty twenty two,
YouTube had a pretty big suite and they like had
a kind of crack down on this.
Speaker 11 (26:05):
Our next witness is Neil Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I want to make clear that there's no place on
YouTube for violent extremist content.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
And many of the people that were around in twenty
twenty two, they were either demonetized or banned off the
platform entirely. Some people came back right, you know, you
find ways to dodge the band and kind of slip
under the radar. Other people just stop doing it all
together because once the money's gone, it's not worth doing.
Or they moved to other platforms, and many of them
moved to Twitter. Now, especially after Elon Too go over,
(26:35):
they can do whatever they want. There are some exceptions,
but there's much less moderation than when tracked to our
series in Charge. And the other place that's absorbed in
many of them is locals, which is a kind of
a right wing Patreon like free Speech no censorship whatever. Right,
So you can subscribe to somebody for ten dollars a
month or whatever on locals. And we know from talking
(26:55):
to a lot of these people that Locals that they
see this pedophile hunting thing as like a growth strategy.
Is how we came with from a reporting it's they
help them grow their brand, grow their videos or their audience,
because of course, the more subscribers will get, the more
fees Locals collects, and the bigger the platform gets.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I'm sorry, Locals sounds like like an obscure dating app.
That's like that. It's like kink forward.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, like you know when you get those pop ups,
is like the in your area?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Ye?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Who's the audience for this?
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Yeah? Uh, it's it depends. So for Vitally, he is
streaming on kick, so his audience is a bunch of
young men. Just imagine that an average person watching a
video game stream or like an Aiden Ross or whatever. Right,
So it's usually again I don't have like the demo information,
but if in my head, I imagine like a teenage
boy or like a guy in his young twenties, to me,
(27:52):
that's like his audience dad's and its predators is a
little different they have. Their audience is a bit more
diverse and that like I see like who's commenting on
this stuff, but it is definitely majority male. But like
they get more, get more girls in there, They get
older guys, you know, guys in their thirties and forties
of you know, carrying them on all that stuff. You
get some younger guys too, but their audience seem to
(28:13):
be a little bit older. A lot of the people
who do this stuff are explicitly right wing, you know,
hashtags of the children.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Q Andon, you know, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Yeah, yeah, but not everyone. Like I've talked a few
kind of left left wing democrat, you know, neutral slash
a political or even like you know, I got a
guy like in like the New York area who's like
pretty seems like he's pretty left wing and does this stuff.
He does he sees this as like an a political
like I'm stopping you know, child predators and.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
That sort of stuff.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
Right, So it's not Yeah, you definitely get more right
wing sentiment out of this stuff than you do left wing.
But I don't think it's exclusively of right wing conspiracy
and that thing, because often I talk to these people
and they're like they're a political.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Well, I'm always interested in like the political breakdown of
a given group. But it kind of tracks that this
would be, you know, kind of all over the place politically.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
And it's it's using now that this is coming up,
because we are seeing the left kind of hijacked the
Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Right. The Democrats tweeted from their official
count it's the Republican you know, elephant and it says
pedophile protectors on it, right, So it's like they're really
trying to take the Epstein list stuff and like trying
(29:21):
to mobilize that base to come vote for them. And
now we have these two parties being like, you like pedophiles, No,
you like pedophiles?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, And you know, it kind of speaks to the
same level of cynicism that we've been seeing from the
pedophile hunters themselves, Like obviously, I'm a liberal and I
would like to see more about these files or whatever
the hell. Yeah, but it's obviously that they're just doing
this now because it's gonna make Trump look bad and
it's like a strategic thing to capture some of his voters. Yeah,
(29:49):
they've I don't think I ever cared about this until
they realized it was like it.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Could be used a new issue.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
Yes appeared given you know this guy died her ago.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So you know, these people are getting policed online, right,
Like we see that YouTube and Facebook are saying, all right,
maybe we're not going to allow you to host videos,
or you're punching someone in a face. But spoilerler is
also illegal to just punch someone in a face in
real life too, even if they're an alleged pedophile. So
(30:22):
it's curious, like what are prosecutors and police doing about
the fact that these a lot of these guys are
hitting people.
Speaker 9 (30:30):
So like, imagine you're a sheriff in a small town
in Ohio, right or Indiana if you have to get reelected,
or if you're a juge or whatever, and do you
want to be the guy who was soft on pedophiles? Right?
Are you going to go and prosecute a violent pedophile catcher?
The violent catturers can sometimes get in trouble, but it's
not nearly two degree if it was again, they're assaulting
(30:54):
electric pedophiles right there, if there's like a racist thing
or like they're attacking someone because they're like or lesbian,
it would be a completely different situation because again they're pedophiles, right,
I mean you can it's kind of obvious, right, So
dazingest writers they have two guys, right, Jay and Josh.
They both of them have outstanding warrants in multiple states, right,
And they've they've said this on stream. They say, like
(31:15):
there a certain states we can't go to anymore because
of this. So often people do get charged and they
do have warrs put out them, but they're like, you're
not sending you know, bounty hunters to go grab them,
you know, the justice, right, And there are sometimes that
people have been prosecuted, but like it's usually the most
violent that the violent catches, like literal murder, Like this
(31:37):
guy in Texas who like shot and killed the guy
during one of this He's been tried for murder.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Tonight, a twenty four year old man is charged in
the murder of a thirty seven year old convicted sex offender.
Speaker 11 (31:47):
Some wonder if he was acting as a vigilante now.
Speaker 10 (31:50):
According to court documents, James Lewis Spencer the Third made
statements such as if the cops were not going to
do anything about pedophiles, maybe he should kill them. Himself.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Yeah, Like, no politician or sheriff or whoever wants to
be the one who's like, well, I'm going to stop
these illegal vigilantes and then be branded as like the
pro pedophile guy.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
It's it's just like the TSA stuff from a few
weeks ago we were talking about where it's like, yeah,
no politician wants to be like we're going to end
TSA and then nine to eleven happens again or whatever.
Even though the TSA is not actually helping.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's very similar connected as they look. Yeah, on the surface.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
And the last question I had for Eric was the
thing we've kind of been talking around this entire episode,
which is is any of this actually.
Speaker 9 (32:51):
Helping criminologist people look at this academically. They kind of
told me across the board, this is not helpful, this
is harmful. It actually like it these kind of videos
can do a net negative for the world, and that's it.
Like teaches predators slash want to be predators, like how
to avoid this stuff, like because a lot of times
(33:12):
police use very very similar techniques as the predator catchers, right,
and so like if they.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Are showing you on camera how to do.
Speaker 9 (33:21):
Exactly they show you the tools of the trade basically, right,
And so if people learn how to avoid this and
like go underground or hone their craft or you know
whatever disgusting thing you want to say, right, like that
could like help or theoretically increase the amount a harm
in the world right by this. But I talk to
other police and they would tell me, like, yeah, we
love what these guys are doing. Like what they're doing
(33:42):
is good. It reduces the number of creeps in the world.
But they can't go about the way they're doing it, right,
They can't be people up. They have to let us
know ahead of time, Like they have to know that
the evidence that they're collecting usually probably can't be used
in court. This may not be the thing that puts
these people behind bars.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
What's mind blowing about this is that I've seen some
of those game show formatted like to catch Preditor things,
and I always assumed that they were paying someone to
play the pedophile in some of those videos because of
how outlandish they are. But to learn that, like it's real,
(34:22):
so to speak, is it's just insane to me?
Speaker 9 (34:26):
Yeah, So Eric looked as often as I can, I
try to figure out who the people are like the
electric predators are, because we want to reach out to
as many people as we can and talk to these people, right,
and as you can imagine, we like no one responded,
so of all the dozens of people, I had to
reach out back out to me because sometimes they like
when they do the catchual, they like show like the
text messages of the incriminating messages and sunding like nasty stuff,
(34:48):
and they'll show the phone number on there so I
could figure who they are from that. Yeah, And usually yeah,
usually I search them and they have outstanding court cases
against them, or I search them when they're on their
registry right, or I see their face and like, oh,
they arrested five years ago for this or that charge, right,
I mean not always, but it does happen. So these
are not like they don't like hire a guy for
(35:09):
fifty dollars on Craigslist to pretend to be a pedophile.
I mean, maybe that happens once in a while, Like
I don't want saying one hundred.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Percents not skits.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
Yeah, maybe a few of them are fake. I mean
I don't know, because Vitality and his streaming stuff, I
don't it's a whole other world. But the vast majority
of the ones I have looked up are like these
are not like Craigslist actors, like they're legit people.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So after talking to Eric, it felt like we had
a pretty good understanding of the pedophile hunting landscape, but
a lot of these conversations still felt like they were
not centering survivors. So after their break, I will be
talking to someone who has quite a different approach to
protecting children from predators online. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
This is Devin. So I want to talk with someone
who has actually really been doing work in this field.
Speaker 11 (36:12):
I'm Stefan Turkhimer. I'm the vice president of Public Policy
for RAIN. You may know RAIN, but RAIN is the
largest anti sexual violence organization in the United States. We
run the National Sexual Salt Hotline. We provide feedback and
consulting to various media projects, movies, television shows.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
That sort of thing.
Speaker 11 (36:28):
And I lead the public policy department, which tries to
change laws to make them more survivor centered and to
help find a fender accountability but basically opening up more
pathways to justice for survivors.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So I'm just curious, like, what have the conversations been
at RAIN and survivors around pedophile hunting and is there
just like a general sentiment about this, sort of like
vigilante justice.
Speaker 9 (36:52):
That's a great question.
Speaker 11 (36:54):
I mean, the reality is, at Rain, I don't think
we've ever discussed the concept of pedalphile hunting. And I
think the reason why is because survivors are nowhere in
the conversation. Yeah, as in, they're not really a part
of this at all. It's to degree they're part of it,
it's just as an excuse for making the violence into
(37:18):
a righteous endeavor as opposed to violence in and of itself.
But I think that you know, sexual assault, sexual abuse
are violent acts and of themselves. In just deepening repeating
the violence or repeating more violence as an answer to
it doesn't really get to the underlying issue and doesn't
really act as a deterrent in my mind. But yeah,
(37:40):
but we don't discuss it because it's not really a
survivor related it's not survivor center. It's not survivor center.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah yeah, so what would you say? Right, So, one
of the big groups that does this is Dad's Against Predators,
and one of the main members of the group says
he was a survivor himself. Yeah, so for him, this
is like really personal, and this is a way for
him to take potential predators off of the street because
they're doing the work that the police are not doing.
(38:08):
And some would argued at the police don't have resources
to do it, and someone argue, that's just not higher
priority for police. So what would range response be to that,
as you know, someone who is a survivor doing.
Speaker 11 (38:18):
This, Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I mean everybody, every
survivor's journey is different, right, And I've talked to a
lot of survivors who do wish ill upon those that
hurt them, and so it's not entirely foreign concept to
think about that that way. And I do recognize there's
a lot of survivors also who feel that the criminal
(38:42):
justice system or the police let them down in the
moment and they no longer trust them to protect them
and to protect others, and so they end up in
this particular place. I would argue that that's actually not
helping the system at all, that's not actually helping other survivors.
I understand how that person can end up in this
position where he wants to exact justice in his name,
(39:08):
But I don't think it's actually practical for fixing a problem.
I don't think it's If the criminal justice system, which
is the primary means of trying to deal with the situation,
is not working, then our goal should be to fix
the criminal justice system so that it does work, so
that survivors are respected in the system, so that justice
(39:29):
can occur, and that this type of predation can stop.
Speaker 9 (39:33):
I mean, that's the end goal, right.
Speaker 11 (39:35):
A lot of survivors don't feel that they've been protected
by the criminal justice system, right, And I would argue
that the job here is to improve the criminal justice
system so the survivors can't find justice in it. But
there's really two parts of it, right, because one of
it is the criminal justice system isn't delivering on its
promises to some degree, right, whether that's because police aren't
trum informed or because juries aren't willing to listen to kids, whatever,
(39:58):
the situation is, right, And I think they're getting better
about that, and I think we have to have faith
in the system to improve it. But the other part
of that, of course, is like what are the platforms doing?
And the answer in most cases is not a lot, right,
So it's like, I mean, I can't think of how
many times we asked Meta to stop allowing adults to
message kids they didn't have any connections with on Instagram.
(40:19):
I mean, that seems common sense, right, that you shouldn't
allow that, And it took them I think eight years,
ten years to do it. And it's because they have
this real theory that they want to be sort of
agnostic about how people are using it and that any communication,
any connection that they can create is actually good.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Right.
Speaker 11 (40:40):
There are certainly guidelines and guardrails that need to be
present to protect people from this intrusion into their lives.
And kids aren't good at protecting themselves, you know, they
don't have good impulse control, they don't have a good
sense of what boundaries are. So it's like you've got
platforms and criminal justice system who are not doing an
amazing job here, so cases and so you can see
(41:02):
how someone can end up in this place. Again, I
don't think that this is what anyone should be doing,
but I do understand how a survivor can feel let
down by the systems that we're supposed to protect them.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I can't get past the fact that like these pedophile
hunter streamers are not really addressing kind of the larger
problem here. It feels like, you know, this like misguided
vigilante layer to this has been addressed before. Like this
(41:32):
sounds random, but like in like comic books, like you know,
how useful is Batman?
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Actually he's just he's just going.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
On beating up Jaywalker's And it's like, you know, this
is clear to me. It speaks to them clearly being
in this for the entertainment value, for potential to make
money off of it. Otherwise they would actually be kind
of I don't know, trying to get something on more
behind the scenes, are at precincts or trying to figure out,
(42:04):
you know, what are the flaws of the justice system
in their areas, because I'm sure it depends on where
you are in the country.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
So yeah, you feel like, you know, this is all
very cynical, even on the part of the people who
think they're doing something good.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, I'll give you know, like he says, I'll give
some grease to people who happen a victim of this stuff,
and this is their way of like feeling like they're
exacting some revenge. But like he said, it's like it's
still not productive, right, Right, We've all been in situations
where our anger is justified, but like how we channel
(42:40):
that anger really is where the focus should be. And
I feel like with so much of this stuff, to
your point, it doesn't feel solution oriented. It feels like
pure animalistic. This thing is happening, Let's go beat these
peopleeople up and we can make money doing it even better, right, Like,
(43:04):
it's not trying to solve the issue of why are
people who are posing as fourteen year olds allowed to
talk to adults online? Like how is this happening with
such ease? You know, It's like, if they're able to
catch all these people by doing it, imagine the amount
of real fourteen year olds who are actually talking to
adults online. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:23):
I also think it probably all feeds into this idea
that you see online. More and more, I feel like of,
you know, these kind of rings of pedophiles and they're
kind of these random predators out there versus like, I
think the reality is this stuff is more happening within
like networks of people who actually know each other. Yes,
you know, it's kind of the scarier thing and this
obviously kind of has nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
And to Noah's point, right, this is a rain stat.
The majority of children and teen victims know their perpetrator, right,
so they say ninety three percent of juvenile victims new
to perpetrator either an acquaintance or a family member. So
that you know, the majority of people who are victims
(44:03):
of sexual violence are not, you know, talking to strangers online,
even if that's a lot of what we're seeing in
a streaming world. So what does justice look like in
(44:25):
a perfect world?
Speaker 11 (44:29):
I think that's a great question, and I think it's
it's not really entirely for me to decide.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
I think a survivor.
Speaker 11 (44:39):
Should decide on some level what justice looks like within
the bounds of what's good for them and good for society,
like actually good, And so for a lot of people
that's wanting to see that person punished through the criminal
justice system, a lot of times when we talked to survivors,
it actually isn't about punishment for the thing that they experienced.
(45:01):
They really want the opportunity to be heard in a
court and ideally for others not to be affected by
the same person.
Speaker 9 (45:12):
So that kind of redress.
Speaker 11 (45:15):
Isn't as important as protecting others, and for a lot
of survivors and for other survivors, it's like this damage
has been done to me, and I want to get
back to where I was. I want to be made
whole in some ways. And sometimes that's like a civil
suit against like a school or against an employing entity.
So I think it really depends on what the survivor
(45:35):
wants in that moment and how they can feel that
justice best affects their recovery, and so their sort of
journey is kind of what's most important in that place
and how that will be affected. But I do think
like for that to be effectuated, those systems have to
(45:55):
actually work. So it's like, can you achieve justice within
the systems that you already have? And the answer to that,
I think is you got to try.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault,
you are not alone. RAIN offers a national sexual assault
hotline with free confidential twenty four to seven support. That
number is eight hundred six five six hope. We're also
going to put some links for additional RAIN resources in
(46:25):
our show notes.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Those those those those a sexual.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Please please please, I'm sorry if this rate us five stars,
especially if you are on Apple or Spotify. It really
makes the difference and write a nice little review. No
such thing as a production of kaleidoscope content. Our executive
producers were Kate Osbourne and Mangest How to Cutter. The
show was created by Many, Fidel mill Freeman and me
(46:56):
Devin Joseph. The theme in credit song is by Manny
for this episode by Steve Bone. Additional music for this
episode by Zeno Hiarelli, who just put out an incredible
project under his Moniker certain self. I'm going to link
to that in our show notes. Our guest this week
was Eric Tohler from The New York Times please please
check out their visual investigations and Stefan Turkheimer from Rain.
(47:19):
They were really really helpful and making sure that we
were recording on this in the right way. Visit No
Such Thing Not Show to subscribe to our newsletter where
we put some bonus content. Also follow us on Instagram.
No Such Thing that show as well. If you had
feedback or questions, email us at main Email Ademit at
gmail dot com. We also have a number that you
(47:40):
can call and leave us a voicemail that's in our
show notes. If you've made it this far, thank you
for listening. We will see you all Thanks Days.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
He's no such thing.
Hey, it's Devin. Just the heads up. You may have
guessed from the title, but we're gonna be dealing with
some tough stuff in this episode. So if you want
to skip this one, we totally understand. I'm Manny, I'm Noah,
and this is Devin. And this is no such thing
the show where you said our arguments in yours. By
actually doing the research on today's episode, you go deep
(00:20):
inside the world of pedophile hunters.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
No, there's no no such thing, no such thing, no
such thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Such thank no touch.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Thank growing up. Did you'all watch the show To Catch
Your Predator?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Not?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Did I watch it? I mean I that was one
of my favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, I was locked in.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I was pretty locked in.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
They're online, they're at the door, and tonight they're on
this very beach in our latest to Catch a Predator investigation.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
For those of you who don't know, the Catcher Predator
was a show on NBC that ran in the mid
two thousands. It was hosted by this guy named Chris Hanson,
and he would work with these teams that would pretend
to be children online chatting with adults. They would invite
these guys over to their quote unquote house, which would
be outfitted with hitting cameras.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Someone in the driveway, someone in the driveway, The.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Team inside Datelines hidden camera house quickly moves into position.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
They would have an actor pretending to be a child
telling the guys that, oh, come on in, and then
they would make some excuse to go in the back.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Hey, COWI I made you some sweet team a lot
throw this dyros.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Can't get up freak, and then Chris Hanson would come
out and confront these guys who thought they were there
to have sex with a child.
Speaker 7 (01:53):
I need to tell you that I'm Chris Hansen with
Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story on adults who
meet teams online and then try to meet them in person.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Perhaps and you remember his favorite catchphrase.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Hello, have a seat?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Why don't you have a seat over here?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (02:09):
Don't you have a seat there? And get comfortable for that?
Why don't you come out and have a seat real quick? Okay,
it's gonna take a few minutes. Why don't you have
a seat?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That line is so like, yeah, I think you're a
piece of shit. Yes, Like, why don't you have a seat?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah? And now you're like it's like it's the ultimate,
like you were doing some bullshit and now you're caught. Yeah,
what were your experiences like as kids watching this show? Like,
you know, did you think it was funny? Like what
was sort of a vibe?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Look, I'm a much different man than I today than
I was when I was twelve, but I was definitely
watching To Catch a Predator, you know, in a gleeful set,
in a way that's like, these guys are bad.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, they're catching them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I'm allowed to laugh and have a good time.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yes, because they're bad people.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Sure the call, Yeah, I don't think I would, you know,
consume that material the same way today obviously, but like
that's what I was doing.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Do either of you know why the show ended?
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I've heard, and I actually really I still don't even
know if it's true. I heard it was because I
think a guy was caught and then killed himself, like
right there, But I don't know if that's.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
So.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I looked into this, and there's some conflicting reporting around it,
but it seems like this may have been a contributing
factor to why To Catch Your Predator did get canceled.
So in two thousand and six, the Assistant District attorney
in Texas. Bill Conrad was caught in a sting operation
by Chris Hansen and a Dateline NBC crew.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
The officers line up information and head to the back
of the house, and.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
They actually have footage of this, and in that footage
you can hear a gunshot.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Then we hear a faint practice. The officers forced their
way in. For almost five minutes, we don't see or
hear anything. Then Lieutenant Adana Barber of the Murphy Police
Department comes out. He tells us what happened.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
And he told him he was heart them and then
shoun step he had a pistol in his hand.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Small calum So Built died by suicide. His family ended
up suing NBC. They settled outside of court, but it
really forced people to have a conversation about is this
really the best and most ethical way to be going
about this. For the record, Chris Hansen says this is
(04:48):
not the reason the show ended. He said it just
kind of ran its course. But he's still making a
version of the Catcher Predator today.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Coming up on Takedown with Chris Hansen.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Engaging in our other ad. Wow, So did it run
its course? You're still doing it?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, he's contradicting himself by continuing we found some more
product exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So the reason we're talking about to Catch Predators not
just because pedophiles are in the news again with the
Epstein stuff, but we've been seeing a lot more videos
I would say, primarily on X of these like streamers
or you know, I guess we can came the influencers
doing something that's being called pedophile hunting, which is similar
(05:36):
to the Chris Hansen show to Catch a Predator. He's
hitting me, a thirteen year old girl. So the biggest
difference with these streamers versus like the Catch a Predator
is all these streamers are getting really violent with these
alleged pedophiles. I'm a bit, am, I a bit Are
(05:57):
you gonna.
Speaker 8 (05:57):
Hit me or something?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And obviously the reason that they are doing this is
they feel like they can get away with it because
if you're being caught being in an alleged pedophile, you're
probably not gonna call the police. So yeah, we've been
sharing these videos for a while now. I'll look back
at our chats over a year ago, even before the
pod launch, we've been talking about it, sharing it in
(06:19):
the slacks, mostly about how we feel uncomfortable with what
we're seeing, But yeah, what is your experience has been seeing?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Yeah, I mean these seem like something that definitely popped
up in the X era of Twitter, where it's like
once it was kind of like the feed is just
gonna be whatever is put out there. Yeah, and like
all this stuff kind of rises, so I would just
see this way more than ever before. Definitely, like I'm
sure these were kind of happening earlier, but they kind
of blew up. It felt like at least came into
(06:49):
my purview. The whole thing feels a lot more just
like bullying. And maybe because like you know, and I'm
only seeing clips, so I don't know, maybe there's a
lot more backstory given. But like the whole thing is
like even more miserable than the edited TV version back
in the day. Yeah, It's like again, it's like, yeah,
you're kinda once it is in front of you, are
(07:10):
fixated to see it and like hear what's going on,
but it's it's just even like ten times sadder than yeah,
the old version.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And it really it made me think, like when these
videos started becoming really popular, it made me think about
the the quote unquote like content aspect of this, Yeah,
entertainment value of it, you know, makes me think about
To Catch a Predator or the TV show where it's like, Okay,
this is this is kind this is bullying, right, Like
this is like a they're parading the person out for
(07:41):
our entertainment value. And then yeah, it's like the new
version where it's like you don't even have like the
small amount of due diligence that might be happening from Okay,
we recorded this thing. Now let's see like is this
person actually guilty or let the police sort it out
or whatever, Like the intentives are even more extreme, you know, yeah,
and they I think what propels them to keep doing
(08:02):
this is this idea that I had when I was twelve,
which was it's okay for me to laugh at this
because yeah, it's ultimately they're being a deterrent, but like
I wonder how much of it is actually a deterrent.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, to Manny's point, Like, watching these, the big thing
that's on my mind is like, is this actually deterring
any of these potential predators from doing this in the future,
Like are predators watching this being like, oh I can't
talk to kids on grinder because like it may be
Dad's against predators or something, you know, coming after me,
(08:34):
and then I guess another aspect of it that just
you know, I felt it with the Catcher Predator, but
feel even more with these streamers. Is like the seriousness
of the crimes feels kind of like an afterthought, and
a lot of the sort of entertainment value is just like, oh,
(08:55):
look at this idiot getting beat up, right. I haven't
watched a lot of these, Like I see him on
Twitter and he had a kind of hard to turn
away when you're watching these like thirty second or minute
long clips. But I haven't watched the full on you know,
predator stream so maybe they're getting deeper, you know, maybe
they're doing all this stuff I just complained about is
(09:15):
maybe happening on the long version.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Yeah, you're like, you know, someone who just reads the
headline and complains exactly the real journalism they're doing exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I don't really know this world, so I am going
to talk to someone who knows a lot about this world.
I am going to chat with a reporter who has
watched hundreds of these pedophile hunting videos. That is after
the break. Okay, we're back. This is no such thing. So,
(09:52):
as I mentioned before the break, this is a topic
that we've been talking and thinking about a lot, even
before we launched the podcast. Wow and you know that
meme that's like, you know, I've been working on this
for however long and then like you just tweeted it out.
This is what happened with the New York Times. Yeah,
as we were talking about this, they published this story
which was exactly what we were discussing, which is like
(10:14):
doing a deep dive all these online pedophile hunters. So
the Times did a visual investigation titled Online Pedophile Hunters
are growing more violent and going Viral. So I talked
to one of the reporters from that team, Eric Teller,
who's been watching hundreds of these videos.
Speaker 9 (10:37):
I'm very fascinated by this weird internet subgenres and subcultures,
and this is one of the weirdest ones out there.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Eric, similar to us, grew up watching the Catch a
Predator and seeing a lot of these videos on his
Twitter feed.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Do you see all these you know, photos of these
guys getting you know, beat up, being chased and drop
kicked and thrown to the trash.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But there was one case in particular that really caught
his attention.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
One guy in particular called himself on real Jujika, and
Jiujika is the name of some like manga about like
this like revenge. It's like revenge killing is the idea
of this mang It's like this kid who goes on
revenge and killed all these people. It's like this righteous
defender or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
So the manga is called Jujika No Broken In and
so many reviews online on Reddit and YouTube are about
just how fucked up this series is.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The most dangerous character of them all is our main villain,
because this kid is really fucked up. Like he sits
there and he's talking about how he's going to be
the first killer that is going to kill without no desire,
with loving family and friends because he wants to be
an ultimate killer.
Speaker 9 (11:43):
There's this kid, you can tell, he's probably like in
his early twenties, maybe eighteen nineteen something something like that.
He had a video where he this he tied this
old man up, like he tied up his wrist and
then beat him with a hammer until he was like bloody, right,
and posts this video on Instagram on Telegram.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Whatever. All right, let me show you guys this video.
But first I want to pull up this tweet, which will,
I guess give you some insight into his thinking. So
along with this video of him beating up this seventy
three year old, this is the caption. It says, petals
walk away because they can hide it with money or power.
(12:22):
It doesn't matter to me anymore. When my friend got
pedo attacked, no one was there. So don't ever question
what I do. My hatred will never be filled unfiltered love.
All right, So here's the video of him attacking this
seventy three year old man with a hammer in his house.
(12:44):
Oh my god, Wow, it's just a questions WHOA This
video is pretty graphic, but you see a masked man
holding a hammer, posing around an elderly man whose face
is bloodied. His hands are tied. They're seen in a
cut of him hitting the man, and you could see
(13:07):
him screaming and yelling for help.
Speaker 9 (13:14):
And about a month or so after I first saw
this video, we got word that he was arrested in Pennsylvania,
and it turned out was a night at the time,
nineteen or twenty year old from kind of a well
to do family outside of Philly. He was doing this
and it was real, and I think it was real.
Like the guy who was beat up, he he was
was like an hospice care soon after because he had
he had cancer, and there was other people too. He
(13:37):
had done this to a few other people as well too,
So that's how we got into the first place. This
is especially violent kind of crazy example, which you know,
even seeing I've seen hundreds and hundreds of these videos,
that's still the most insane of all the ones I've
seen was that first one I saw.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
That really is hard to watch.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Yeah, and even like that's kind of cutting around probably
the worst and most violent.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, but it's just like I said, they were disturbing
to see, Like.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It makes me think about how like sometimes when you're
watching this, you don't feel like the person would be
doing this if it weren't for like views and clicks.
They know it's a form of entertainment that they can
get people to watch, and it's not like but then
you see like a guy like this who's got like
a fucking origin story, yeah, doing this, and you do
wonder like maybe it's not all just for the interviewing.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Not just performative and that, Yeah, if you're just like,
I want views, how do I get these? Yeah, I mean, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
All right, So this I think he's nineteen year old,
has a child date layer. This week he's being charged
with everything from kidnapping to burglary to making terroristic threats.
And obviously this is a pretty extreme example of what
these you know, streamers do. When I was curious talking
(14:47):
to Eric, what does a more like typical video tend
to look like?
Speaker 9 (14:54):
It depends on who's doing the catching, right. So I'll
give you an example of like Dad's gunst Predators, which
is probably the most alific group. They've done probably six five,
over five or six hundred to these catches since like
twenty nineteen to over about five six years. There's a
guy named Jane, a guy named Josh. There're two guys
from Ohio bada is like they are, you know, grown
men trying to bring justice to the world. By I mean,
(15:15):
I think Jay or Josh, one of them is like,
you know, we're exposing demons. Is how they do it right,
And they talk about how they brag often about how
many suicides they've caused people who've been in their videos,
who have who have committed suicide, shortly after.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The videos, I've almost I don't care.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
Hey, I don't care.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
You can't even meet a little boy, a thirteen year
old boy. You think I'll give a fuck about you,
I don't give.
Speaker 8 (15:35):
A fuck about you.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (15:39):
I think the exact what is like we kind of
bodies not arrest. It's kind of how they brak. They
see themselves like on a Holy crusade, right, and it'll
be them. Sometimes they have like an entourage people with them.
They'll like be sitting in a car and they're about about
to meet up with a guy. So they go on
to apps like Grinder or Tender or Facebook or a
bunch of special liznings and they'll like pose as they'll
(16:00):
like put their ages eighteen because that's the lowest you
can put your age. And then after they talk to
a guy for a while, they say, oh, I'm actually thirteen,
I'm actually fourteen. Do you still want to meet up?
And then this is how they describe it, And usually
they post a chat log so you can actually see this.
And then if you know, if a guy says, okay, yeah,
let's still meet up, they'll do it in a public place.
Sometimes they write like Airbnb, so like a trap house.
Usually it's like a like a Dollar General.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Or a Walmart or a grocery store or whatever.
Speaker 9 (16:23):
Right, and then there's some in the car and like, okay,
this is him. I see the guy. He's going in.
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
You go, okay, just pull it up, he said up
here there.
Speaker 9 (16:33):
Right there access and they're like kind of like spies, right,
and they go and they confront the guy like in
a like a chip aisle in Walmart, and they say, hey,
you expect them to see a fourteen year old it's
actually me, right.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
I need to know why you're here to meet a thirteen.
Speaker 8 (16:46):
Year old boy? Kay, Okay, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
Okay, Hey, well I might Hey sir, I might have
at messed up?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Is this you right here?
Speaker 8 (16:55):
Hey, don't grab my phone?
Speaker 10 (16:56):
You and get stuck boy?
Speaker 9 (16:58):
And then the guys will almost always say like, oh,
I just wanted to like get them advice and tell
them this was a bad idea. Excuses I.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Shouldn't be a grinder. You know why, ask him?
Speaker 11 (17:11):
Because because because when I was fifteen, six yard grinder,
I was taking advantage of every.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
Single fucking day.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
So you want to do it again?
Speaker 8 (17:18):
No, I was, I was coming to meet the kid.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Why did you was coming to meet the kid?
Speaker 8 (17:22):
Why did you say, have you ever been fucked before?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Because I was fucked when I was fifteen? So why
are you asking him that? Because I want to make
him fucking understand that he shouldn't fucking do that.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
They'll do so, then they'll diverge. Sometimes I just try
to commulate them publicly, like their catchphrase is they like,
excuse me everyone, this guy is a pedophile, blah blah
blah blah, and like scream and try to embarrass him
as they run away.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Tyler is here, what I mean a fourteen year old girl?
Excuse me, everyone, Tyler is here? To mean a fourteen
year old girl.
Speaker 9 (17:51):
Sometimes I just like just beat the shit out of them.
They'll just attack them and like kick them and slap
them and punch them, and or maybe they'll chase them
through the parking lot and then like beat him down.
Speaker 8 (18:02):
I don't even know, oh my god, oh.
Speaker 9 (18:19):
And then then the video wins, right. So usually the
videos are twenty thirty minutes each, sometimes are a lot longer.
Sometimes they do like live catches. They're kind of like
the lead up to it and then like afterwards and
all that stuff. But usually that's what the video looks like.
Is sometimes there's violent, sometimes there's not. It depends on
the group. Some some groups are violent some market.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I've seen situations where they have said like, hey, we
know you're a pedophile. You can either let us beat
you up or we're gonna call it op.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (18:43):
Yeah, they do that sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And and there's the situations obviously when they do both.
Speaker 9 (18:47):
Yeah, of course it works. I mean this, this is
the thing, Like there's hundreds and hundreds of these. They
don't they don't do the exact same playbook every time. Right,
So this is something that Josh, one of the two
dads ganess redit or God does is he He'll say like, okay,
you have an option all other well other slot you
get slaps or you get the police, right, And the
guy's not every time, but like not evencent the time
they asked for the slaps, like don't call the cops
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh that boy season up.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Hey, now who are you here to meet? Who are
you here to meet? Or you can call the cops
and we can we can figure it all out together,
and then I'll go to jail for smacking you, I'll
bound out. It's only gonna be like one hundred and
fifty dollars and you'll go to jail mister, for what
you've been doing.
Speaker 9 (19:28):
There are some streamers on Kick and them that we
talk about most in our reporting. In our article a
while ago was Vitali's drug Eski, who was a relatively
popular Kick streamer. I think he's like top twenty, top ten.
I don't know, he's fat Batali streamer. Read his Wikipedia.
It's wild. He's like streaked, like on like world cop.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Just ran on it.
Speaker 9 (19:52):
Has a whole weird history of like attacking on woman
when he was like a jogger. He's an attacked a woman.
He's like on drugs.
Speaker 8 (19:59):
He just came out for no reason. He just came
out and just whacked.
Speaker 10 (20:04):
Her in the face. Okay, this guy is This guy
has got this website battally uncensored.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He's had some issues before.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
He's a big muscle bound kid inside.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I don't know if he's rolled it up.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
I don't know if he's raised better.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
But he just cool cocked the manage the whole weird life.
Speaker 9 (20:20):
But his kind of new arc that he had was
he would do his pedophile catches on kick. What Vitali
does is he does like a game show is what
he calls. So like a first few streams he gets
like attack people, right, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna
start talking to because he dimensions a few times like
oh yeah, kicked told me I can't you know, it
can't be a violent or whatever. He would have the
(20:42):
electric predator and like you know an Airbnb or whatever
that he rented up and say, okay, we can either
call the cops or you could do our our game show.
And it's like five rounds of like humiliating them. So
the first round maybe like here's like a super duper
hot chip.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
There life, you're a choice.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I usually get people sixty seconds to decide.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's a fucking chip, but you're not gonna die.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
It's spicy. You eat or cops eat, or cops eat
I do.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 9 (21:15):
In the second round might be like, oh, we're gonna
shave your eyebrows. And the third round might be like
you have to call your mom or you call your
wife and tell him what you did.
Speaker 8 (21:22):
So and he's here and we caught him, what do
you think I should do to him?
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Or what do you think you have anything to say
to your son right now that he came here for us.
Speaker 8 (21:30):
No, hold on, hold on, hold on, Let you talk
to your ma and my husband.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Hold on.
Speaker 9 (21:35):
The fourth mound may be like we have a swimming
pool with like a plank over it, or like a
board that goes over with a bunch of mouse trafts.
You had to walk across the barefoot, right, So like
they have like a serious like escalating like more painful,
more humiliating things, and then after at the end of it,
they leave and you know, they may or may not
call cops and some people, you know, just like they
(21:56):
were told, well, this is the game show, We're gonna whatever.
They gets kept and leave immediately and then nothing happens.
I think got another person coming in soon, right, so
they don't want the cops show and break up their
next catch. But yeah, I me, it depends.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You know.
Speaker 9 (22:06):
He vtality has signed forty fifty to sixty of these,
so they kind of it changes, you know, stream to stream, So.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Believe it or not, we have actually talked about and
seen some of these vitality videos. M there's two that
he has with these, you know, to us famous musicians. Uh,
The first one I'm going to play features tie dollar
sign oh yeah, musician No Noah's day one dollar yeah,
(22:31):
trying to meet the fifteen year old you want to
meet on fiften ye old? Want fifteen year old?
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Why?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Why do you want to meet a fifty year old
fucking boy?
Speaker 8 (22:37):
For second?
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Are you a pedoph?
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh? No, one's gonna hurt you, bro.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Huh good personal, You're a good person.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Could you imagine?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Uh? You know, you're getting confronted on camera for your
you know, online activities whatever they are, and Ti Dolson
shows up to rub it in.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That'd be crazy.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I still know what he gets out of it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And then there's this other video which features everyone knows
who Acon is Akon singing his hit single locked Up
while an alleged pedophile is being arrested on camera. And
(23:21):
then the weird things Batali's wearing, some like Native American headdress.
I don't really know how that ties into what's happening.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
And it just goes to show you how so many people,
including celebrities, feel like this is a noble endeavor and
they're just happy to appear in these videos because they
feel like it makes them look good. It's like good
pr for them.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
In his investigation, Eric found that there have been more
than one hundred and seventy violent attack by pedophile hunters
since twenty twenty three. How did you go about like
tracking down all these videos?
Speaker 10 (24:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Because it is you know, you guys break down just
like how many violent attacks that you've seen across all
these platforms? Like how did you go about that? Like
quantifying it?
Speaker 9 (24:17):
I mean it was it was just just endless data
collection a right. I just had to spreadsheet. I still
have it. It just with hundreds of rows on Google
sheets of just listening every single group I could find.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Right.
Speaker 9 (24:27):
This is the thing that's kind of frustrating about this
is these groups kind of come and go, so they
aren't I mean, there will be a group that does
two or three catches and they kind of go away.
Some that were around forever but that we're there on
Facebook and Facebook deleted them because a lot of these
social platforms have like crackdown and you can't find traces
of it. And so I just went through and I
literally just went through Facebook and through Twitter and through
Rumble and kick and all these places. I just just
(24:49):
gathered as many as I could. The way these go
is a lot of times they are very locally driven,
so it's like there'll be a lot of especially on Facebook,
it'll be like the area code. So if it's like
New York, you know, like the two, you know the
two and two. You know predator catchers, right, those are
the ones that are kind of hard to find because
they're like very hyper local. But then you have the
big groups you know, like Dads Against Predators and Predator
(25:09):
a poachers that are national, They travel and make thousands
of dollars and all that.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So you mentioned some of the platforms, but can you
talk me through like where you're seeing most of this
stuff live.
Speaker 9 (25:26):
When it used to be back five plus years ago,
everything was on Facebook. All these plate people were on Facebook,
Slash YouTube. It's kind of like the dual places because
those are the biggest platforms the people were and YouTube
for a long time. YouTube and Facebook is to let
these people live and there's like some light moderation, but
there wasn't that much, right, So you see groups with
tens of thousands of members, local, national, whatever, who post
full videos. They would do Facebook live streams, doing their
(25:49):
live catches. This still happens, though not as much as
you used to, and they would go on YouTube and
they would they would be able to monetize and make some
pretty decent money monetizing their videos on YouTube, which is
why many of them are there. Around twenty twenty two,
YouTube had a pretty big suite and they like had
a kind of crack down on this.
Speaker 11 (26:05):
Our next witness is Neil Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I want to make clear that there's no place on
YouTube for violent extremist content.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
And many of the people that were around in twenty
twenty two, they were either demonetized or banned off the
platform entirely. Some people came back right, you know, you
find ways to dodge the band and kind of slip
under the radar. Other people just stop doing it all
together because once the money's gone, it's not worth doing.
Or they moved to other platforms, and many of them
moved to Twitter. Now, especially after Elon Too go over,
(26:35):
they can do whatever they want. There are some exceptions,
but there's much less moderation than when tracked to our
series in Charge. And the other place that's absorbed in
many of them is locals, which is a kind of
a right wing Patreon like free Speech no censorship whatever. Right,
So you can subscribe to somebody for ten dollars a
month or whatever on locals. And we know from talking
(26:55):
to a lot of these people that Locals that they
see this pedophile hunting thing as like a growth strategy.
Is how we came with from a reporting it's they
help them grow their brand, grow their videos or their audience,
because of course, the more subscribers will get, the more
fees Locals collects, and the bigger the platform gets.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I'm sorry, Locals sounds like like an obscure dating app.
That's like that. It's like kink forward.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, like you know when you get those pop ups,
is like the in your area?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Ye?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Who's the audience for this?
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Yeah? Uh, it's it depends. So for Vitally, he is
streaming on kick, so his audience is a bunch of
young men. Just imagine that an average person watching a
video game stream or like an Aiden Ross or whatever. Right,
So it's usually again I don't have like the demo information,
but if in my head, I imagine like a teenage
boy or like a guy in his young twenties, to me,
(27:52):
that's like his audience dad's and its predators is a
little different they have. Their audience is a bit more
diverse and that like I see like who's commenting on
this stuff, but it is definitely majority male. But like
they get more, get more girls in there, They get
older guys, you know, guys in their thirties and forties
of you know, carrying them on all that stuff. You
get some younger guys too, but their audience seem to
(28:13):
be a little bit older. A lot of the people
who do this stuff are explicitly right wing, you know,
hashtags of the children.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Q Andon, you know, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Yeah, yeah, but not everyone. Like I've talked a few
kind of left left wing democrat, you know, neutral slash
a political or even like you know, I got a
guy like in like the New York area who's like
pretty seems like he's pretty left wing and does this stuff.
He does he sees this as like an a political
like I'm stopping you know, child predators and.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
That sort of stuff.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
Right, So it's not Yeah, you definitely get more right
wing sentiment out of this stuff than you do left wing.
But I don't think it's exclusively of right wing conspiracy
and that thing, because often I talk to these people
and they're like they're a political.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Well, I'm always interested in like the political breakdown of
a given group. But it kind of tracks that this
would be, you know, kind of all over the place politically.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
And it's it's using now that this is coming up,
because we are seeing the left kind of hijacked the
Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Right. The Democrats tweeted from their official
count it's the Republican you know, elephant and it says
pedophile protectors on it, right, So it's like they're really
trying to take the Epstein list stuff and like trying
(29:21):
to mobilize that base to come vote for them. And
now we have these two parties being like, you like pedophiles, No,
you like pedophiles?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, And you know, it kind of speaks to the
same level of cynicism that we've been seeing from the
pedophile hunters themselves, Like obviously, I'm a liberal and I
would like to see more about these files or whatever
the hell. Yeah, but it's obviously that they're just doing
this now because it's gonna make Trump look bad and
it's like a strategic thing to capture some of his voters. Yeah,
(29:49):
they've I don't think I ever cared about this until
they realized it was like it.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Could be used a new issue.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
Yes appeared given you know this guy died her ago.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So you know, these people are getting policed online, right,
Like we see that YouTube and Facebook are saying, all right,
maybe we're not going to allow you to host videos,
or you're punching someone in a face. But spoilerler is
also illegal to just punch someone in a face in
real life too, even if they're an alleged pedophile. So
(30:22):
it's curious, like what are prosecutors and police doing about
the fact that these a lot of these guys are
hitting people.
Speaker 9 (30:30):
So like, imagine you're a sheriff in a small town
in Ohio, right or Indiana if you have to get reelected,
or if you're a juge or whatever, and do you
want to be the guy who was soft on pedophiles? Right?
Are you going to go and prosecute a violent pedophile catcher?
The violent catturers can sometimes get in trouble, but it's
not nearly two degree if it was again, they're assaulting
(30:54):
electric pedophiles right there, if there's like a racist thing
or like they're attacking someone because they're like or lesbian,
it would be a completely different situation because again they're pedophiles, right,
I mean you can it's kind of obvious, right, So
dazingest writers they have two guys, right, Jay and Josh.
They both of them have outstanding warrants in multiple states, right,
And they've they've said this on stream. They say, like
(31:15):
there a certain states we can't go to anymore because
of this. So often people do get charged and they
do have warrs put out them, but they're like, you're
not sending you know, bounty hunters to go grab them,
you know, the justice, right, And there are sometimes that
people have been prosecuted, but like it's usually the most
violent that the violent catches, like literal murder, Like this
(31:37):
guy in Texas who like shot and killed the guy
during one of this He's been tried for murder.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Tonight, a twenty four year old man is charged in
the murder of a thirty seven year old convicted sex offender.
Speaker 11 (31:47):
Some wonder if he was acting as a vigilante now.
Speaker 10 (31:50):
According to court documents, James Lewis Spencer the Third made
statements such as if the cops were not going to
do anything about pedophiles, maybe he should kill them. Himself.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Yeah, Like, no politician or sheriff or whoever wants to
be the one who's like, well, I'm going to stop
these illegal vigilantes and then be branded as like the
pro pedophile guy.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
It's it's just like the TSA stuff from a few
weeks ago we were talking about where it's like, yeah,
no politician wants to be like we're going to end
TSA and then nine to eleven happens again or whatever.
Even though the TSA is not actually helping.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's very similar connected as they look. Yeah, on the surface.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
And the last question I had for Eric was the
thing we've kind of been talking around this entire episode,
which is is any of this actually.
Speaker 9 (32:51):
Helping criminologist people look at this academically. They kind of
told me across the board, this is not helpful, this
is harmful. It actually like it these kind of videos
can do a net negative for the world, and that's it.
Like teaches predators slash want to be predators, like how
to avoid this stuff, like because a lot of times
(33:12):
police use very very similar techniques as the predator catchers, right,
and so like if they.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Are showing you on camera how to do.
Speaker 9 (33:21):
Exactly they show you the tools of the trade basically, right,
And so if people learn how to avoid this and
like go underground or hone their craft or you know
whatever disgusting thing you want to say, right, like that
could like help or theoretically increase the amount a harm
in the world right by this. But I talk to
other police and they would tell me, like, yeah, we
love what these guys are doing. Like what they're doing
(33:42):
is good. It reduces the number of creeps in the world.
But they can't go about the way they're doing it, right,
They can't be people up. They have to let us
know ahead of time, Like they have to know that
the evidence that they're collecting usually probably can't be used
in court. This may not be the thing that puts
these people behind bars.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
What's mind blowing about this is that I've seen some
of those game show formatted like to catch Preditor things,
and I always assumed that they were paying someone to
play the pedophile in some of those videos because of
how outlandish they are. But to learn that, like it's real,
(34:22):
so to speak, is it's just insane to me?
Speaker 9 (34:26):
Yeah, So Eric looked as often as I can, I
try to figure out who the people are like the
electric predators are, because we want to reach out to
as many people as we can and talk to these people, right,
and as you can imagine, we like no one responded,
so of all the dozens of people, I had to
reach out back out to me because sometimes they like
when they do the catchual, they like show like the
text messages of the incriminating messages and sunding like nasty stuff,
(34:48):
and they'll show the phone number on there so I
could figure who they are from that. Yeah, And usually yeah,
usually I search them and they have outstanding court cases
against them, or I search them when they're on their
registry right, or I see their face and like, oh,
they arrested five years ago for this or that charge, right,
I mean not always, but it does happen. So these
are not like they don't like hire a guy for
(35:09):
fifty dollars on Craigslist to pretend to be a pedophile.
I mean, maybe that happens once in a while, Like
I don't want saying one hundred.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Percents not skits.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
Yeah, maybe a few of them are fake. I mean
I don't know, because Vitality and his streaming stuff, I
don't it's a whole other world. But the vast majority
of the ones I have looked up are like these
are not like Craigslist actors, like they're legit people.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So after talking to Eric, it felt like we had
a pretty good understanding of the pedophile hunting landscape, but
a lot of these conversations still felt like they were
not centering survivors. So after their break, I will be
talking to someone who has quite a different approach to
protecting children from predators online. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
This is Devin. So I want to talk with someone
who has actually really been doing work in this field.
Speaker 11 (36:12):
I'm Stefan Turkhimer. I'm the vice president of Public Policy
for RAIN. You may know RAIN, but RAIN is the
largest anti sexual violence organization in the United States. We
run the National Sexual Salt Hotline. We provide feedback and
consulting to various media projects, movies, television shows.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
That sort of thing.
Speaker 11 (36:28):
And I lead the public policy department, which tries to
change laws to make them more survivor centered and to
help find a fender accountability but basically opening up more
pathways to justice for survivors.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So I'm just curious, like, what have the conversations been
at RAIN and survivors around pedophile hunting and is there
just like a general sentiment about this, sort of like
vigilante justice.
Speaker 9 (36:52):
That's a great question.
Speaker 11 (36:54):
I mean, the reality is, at Rain, I don't think
we've ever discussed the concept of pedalphile hunting. And I
think the reason why is because survivors are nowhere in
the conversation. Yeah, as in, they're not really a part
of this at all. It's to degree they're part of it,
it's just as an excuse for making the violence into
(37:18):
a righteous endeavor as opposed to violence in and of itself.
But I think that you know, sexual assault, sexual abuse
are violent acts and of themselves. In just deepening repeating
the violence or repeating more violence as an answer to
it doesn't really get to the underlying issue and doesn't
really act as a deterrent in my mind. But yeah,
(37:40):
but we don't discuss it because it's not really a
survivor related it's not survivor center. It's not survivor center.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah yeah, so what would you say? Right, So, one
of the big groups that does this is Dad's Against Predators,
and one of the main members of the group says
he was a survivor himself. Yeah, so for him, this
is like really personal, and this is a way for
him to take potential predators off of the street because
they're doing the work that the police are not doing.
(38:08):
And some would argued at the police don't have resources
to do it, and someone argue, that's just not higher
priority for police. So what would range response be to that,
as you know, someone who is a survivor doing.
Speaker 11 (38:18):
This, Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I mean everybody, every
survivor's journey is different, right, And I've talked to a
lot of survivors who do wish ill upon those that
hurt them, and so it's not entirely foreign concept to
think about that that way. And I do recognize there's
a lot of survivors also who feel that the criminal
(38:42):
justice system or the police let them down in the
moment and they no longer trust them to protect them
and to protect others, and so they end up in
this particular place. I would argue that that's actually not
helping the system at all, that's not actually helping other survivors.
I understand how that person can end up in this
position where he wants to exact justice in his name,
(39:08):
But I don't think it's actually practical for fixing a problem.
I don't think it's If the criminal justice system, which
is the primary means of trying to deal with the situation,
is not working, then our goal should be to fix
the criminal justice system so that it does work, so
that survivors are respected in the system, so that justice
(39:29):
can occur, and that this type of predation can stop.
Speaker 9 (39:33):
I mean, that's the end goal, right.
Speaker 11 (39:35):
A lot of survivors don't feel that they've been protected
by the criminal justice system, right, And I would argue
that the job here is to improve the criminal justice
system so the survivors can't find justice in it. But
there's really two parts of it, right, because one of
it is the criminal justice system isn't delivering on its
promises to some degree, right, whether that's because police aren't
trum informed or because juries aren't willing to listen to kids, whatever,
(39:58):
the situation is, right, And I think they're getting better
about that, and I think we have to have faith
in the system to improve it. But the other part
of that, of course, is like what are the platforms doing?
And the answer in most cases is not a lot, right,
So it's like, I mean, I can't think of how
many times we asked Meta to stop allowing adults to
message kids they didn't have any connections with on Instagram.
(40:19):
I mean, that seems common sense, right, that you shouldn't
allow that, And it took them I think eight years,
ten years to do it. And it's because they have
this real theory that they want to be sort of
agnostic about how people are using it and that any communication,
any connection that they can create is actually good.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Right.
Speaker 11 (40:40):
There are certainly guidelines and guardrails that need to be
present to protect people from this intrusion into their lives.
And kids aren't good at protecting themselves, you know, they
don't have good impulse control, they don't have a good
sense of what boundaries are. So it's like you've got
platforms and criminal justice system who are not doing an
amazing job here, so cases and so you can see
(41:02):
how someone can end up in this place. Again, I
don't think that this is what anyone should be doing,
but I do understand how a survivor can feel let
down by the systems that we're supposed to protect them.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I can't get past the fact that like these pedophile
hunter streamers are not really addressing kind of the larger
problem here. It feels like, you know, this like misguided
vigilante layer to this has been addressed before. Like this
(41:32):
sounds random, but like in like comic books, like you know,
how useful is Batman?
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Actually he's just he's just going.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
On beating up Jaywalker's And it's like, you know, this
is clear to me. It speaks to them clearly being
in this for the entertainment value, for potential to make
money off of it. Otherwise they would actually be kind
of I don't know, trying to get something on more
behind the scenes, are at precincts or trying to figure out,
(42:04):
you know, what are the flaws of the justice system
in their areas, because I'm sure it depends on where
you are in the country.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
So yeah, you feel like, you know, this is all
very cynical, even on the part of the people who
think they're doing something good.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, I'll give you know, like he says, I'll give
some grease to people who happen a victim of this stuff,
and this is their way of like feeling like they're
exacting some revenge. But like he said, it's like it's
still not productive, right, Right, We've all been in situations
where our anger is justified, but like how we channel
(42:40):
that anger really is where the focus should be. And
I feel like with so much of this stuff, to
your point, it doesn't feel solution oriented. It feels like
pure animalistic. This thing is happening, Let's go beat these
peopleeople up and we can make money doing it even better, right, Like,
(43:04):
it's not trying to solve the issue of why are
people who are posing as fourteen year olds allowed to
talk to adults online? Like how is this happening with
such ease? You know, It's like, if they're able to
catch all these people by doing it, imagine the amount
of real fourteen year olds who are actually talking to
adults online. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:23):
I also think it probably all feeds into this idea
that you see online. More and more, I feel like of,
you know, these kind of rings of pedophiles and they're
kind of these random predators out there versus like, I
think the reality is this stuff is more happening within
like networks of people who actually know each other. Yes,
you know, it's kind of the scarier thing and this
obviously kind of has nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
And to Noah's point, right, this is a rain stat.
The majority of children and teen victims know their perpetrator, right,
so they say ninety three percent of juvenile victims new
to perpetrator either an acquaintance or a family member. So
that you know, the majority of people who are victims
(44:03):
of sexual violence are not, you know, talking to strangers online,
even if that's a lot of what we're seeing in
a streaming world. So what does justice look like in
(44:25):
a perfect world?
Speaker 11 (44:29):
I think that's a great question, and I think it's
it's not really entirely for me to decide.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
I think a survivor.
Speaker 11 (44:39):
Should decide on some level what justice looks like within
the bounds of what's good for them and good for society,
like actually good, And so for a lot of people
that's wanting to see that person punished through the criminal
justice system, a lot of times when we talked to survivors,
it actually isn't about punishment for the thing that they experienced.
(45:01):
They really want the opportunity to be heard in a
court and ideally for others not to be affected by
the same person.
Speaker 9 (45:12):
So that kind of redress.
Speaker 11 (45:15):
Isn't as important as protecting others, and for a lot
of survivors and for other survivors, it's like this damage
has been done to me, and I want to get
back to where I was. I want to be made
whole in some ways. And sometimes that's like a civil
suit against like a school or against an employing entity.
So I think it really depends on what the survivor
(45:35):
wants in that moment and how they can feel that
justice best affects their recovery, and so their sort of
journey is kind of what's most important in that place
and how that will be affected. But I do think
like for that to be effectuated, those systems have to
(45:55):
actually work. So it's like, can you achieve justice within
the systems that you already have? And the answer to that,
I think is you got to try.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault,
you are not alone. RAIN offers a national sexual assault
hotline with free confidential twenty four to seven support. That
number is eight hundred six five six hope. We're also
going to put some links for additional RAIN resources in
(46:25):
our show notes.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Those those those those a sexual.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Please please please, I'm sorry if this rate us five stars,
especially if you are on Apple or Spotify. It really
makes the difference and write a nice little review. No
such thing as a production of kaleidoscope content. Our executive
producers were Kate Osbourne and Mangest How to Cutter. The
show was created by Many, Fidel mill Freeman and me
(46:56):
Devin Joseph. The theme in credit song is by Manny
for this episode by Steve Bone. Additional music for this
episode by Zeno Hiarelli, who just put out an incredible
project under his Moniker certain self. I'm going to link
to that in our show notes. Our guest this week
was Eric Tohler from The New York Times please please
check out their visual investigations and Stefan Turkheimer from Rain.
(47:19):
They were really really helpful and making sure that we
were recording on this in the right way. Visit No
Such Thing Not Show to subscribe to our newsletter where
we put some bonus content. Also follow us on Instagram.
No Such Thing that show as well. If you had
feedback or questions, email us at main Email Ademit at
gmail dot com. We also have a number that you
(47:40):
can call and leave us a voicemail that's in our
show notes. If you've made it this far, thank you
for listening. We will see you all Thanks Days.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
He's no such thing.
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