On Mar 22, 8:01?am, "bobandcarole~" <bobandcarole...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> Anti-Pedophile Site Grows Into Neighborhood Watch Of The Net
> By Allen Salkin
> The New York Times
> Published: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
>
> Last month, the Web site Perverted-Justice.com posted news of the
> conviction of Sean Young, a Wisconsin man sentenced to 10 years in
> state prison for soliciting sex online from a 14-year-old girl.
>
> According to a transcript of an online chat posted on the site, at
> one
> point Young had asked the girl, identified only as "Billie," what she
> was wearing. When she answered "sweats," Young typed back that if she
> were his daughter, "i'd make u wear sexy clthes."
>
> Billie turned out to be an adult volunteer for Perverted Justice, an
> anti-pedophile group, and when Young drove to a house where he
> expected
> to meet the teenager for sex, he was arrested by sheriff's deputies.
>
> The conviction was logged as the 104th that Perverted Justice says it
> has been responsible for since 2003, a tally that reached 113 on
> Tuesday.
>
> advertisement What started as a quest by Xavier Von Erck, a former
> tech-support worker who lives in Portland, to rid his regional Yahoo
> chat room of lewd adults has grown into a nationwide force of
> cyberspace vigilantes, financed by a network television program
> hungry
> for ratings.
>
> Perverted Justice is best known for putting its online volunteers at
> the disposal of the television newsmagazine "Dateline NBC," which has
> broadcast 11 highly rated shows in which would-be pedophiles are lured
> to "sting houses," only to be surprised by a camera crew and, usually,
> the police.
>
> Despite that publicity, the inner workings of Perverted Justice and
> its reclusive founder remain largely a mystery, even as the group has
> emerged as one of the most effective unofficial law enforcement groups
> in the country, a kind of Neighborhood Watch of the Net.
>
> But the group also is criticized by some legal and law enforcement
> experts, who accuse it of entrapment, making mistakes that ruin
> innocent lives and, paradoxically, disseminating its own brand of
> child
> pornography.
>
> Peter Greenspun, an attorney who defended a rabbi from Rockville,
> Md.,
> caught in a "Dateline" sting arranged by Perverted Justice, said that
> by posting online transcripts of conversations between would-be child
> molesters and volunteers posing as 12- and 13-year-olds, Perverted
> Justice is encouraging, rather than deterring pedophiles.
>
> "They are putting out for unfiltered, unrestricted public consumption
> the most graphic sexual material that they themselves say is of a
> perverted nature," Greenspun said.
>
> Von Erck, 27, has a dedication to the cause bordering on obsession,
> according to his mother and associates. He lives in an apartment in
> Portland, but rarely gives out his address. He would not allow a
> reporter to visit because he fears retribution from men exposed by
> his
> group.
>
> In a telephone interview, Von Erck said he works for his group seven
> days a week, mostly from a laptop in his bedroom.
>
> Perverted Justice has 41,000 registered users of its online forums
> dedicated to the cause of stopping predators, 65 volunteers trained
> as
> chat room decoys and three salaried leaders: Von Erck, a woman who is
> a
> liaison with law enforcement and a business manager.
>
> Typically, a Perverted Justice volunteer creates a false online
> profile, posing as, say, a 13-year-old girl on MySpace. The volunteer
> will wait to receive e-mail messages or will enter a chat room. If an
> adult contacts the volunteer, the decoy responds and sees if the
> conversation becomes sexual.
>
> The group's collaboration with "Dateline" since 2004 has been
> lucrative. A person familiar with Perverted Justice's finances said
> NBC
> is paying the group about $70,000 for each hour of television
> produced.
>
> "They do a lot a work for us, and they deserve to be reimbursed for
> that work," said David Corvo, the executive producer of "Dateline,"
> who
> met with Von Erck earlier this year in New York to discuss their
> collaboration.
>
> advertisement Von Erck said the NBC money has been used in part to
> buy
> computer servers that won't be overwhelmed every time the group is
> mentioned on television.
>
> Ratings for the "Dateline" broadcasts, a series called "To Catch a
> Predator" that has become a network franchise, have averaged 9.1
> million viewers, compared with 7 million viewers for other "Dateline"
> episodes, according to Nielsen Media Research.
>
> Six new episodes are planned for the first half of 2007.
>
> One concern about Perverted Justice's nonprofessional force of
> vigilantes, raised by Lt. Joseph Donohue, head of the New York state
> Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, is that decoys
> impersonating teenagers may be too aggressive, not understanding the
> need to let predators initiate the sexual chat, and therefore not
> gathering chat-log evidence that will stand up in court.
>
> Von Erck responded that so far prosecutors have not dropped charges
> against any man arrested in an investigation begun by Perverted
> Justice.
>
> Of the 113 convictions Von Erck's group claims, some have been for
> misdemeanors resulting in no jail time and others have brought stiff
> sentences, such as the one of a Maryland rabbi, David A. Kaye, who on
> Dec. 1 was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on federal charges of
> enticement and traveling to meet a minor for illicit sexual contact.
>
> "We are now a conviction machine," Von Erck said.
>
> Thank God for that!!
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