37-Year-Old Mom Finds Instagram's Sex Predators By Pretending To Be 11 (medium.com) 123
Sloane Ryan is a 37-year-old woman who runs the Special Projects Team at Bark, a child-safety tech company selling a $9-a-month software that monitors text messages for bullying, threats of violence, depression, and sexual predators. "In 2018 alone, Bark alerted the FBI to 99 child predators. In 2019? That number is more than 300 -- and counting."
Bark had wanted a way to depict the problem to the public without using actual conversations -- so Ryan began posing as an underage minor on Instagram. Over the past nine months, I've been 15-year-old Libby and 16-year-old Kait and 14-year-old Ava. I've been a studious sophomore contemplating bangs and a lacrosse player being raised by her aunt and an excitable junior eager for prom....
At the beginning of the week, on the very first night as [11-year-old] "Bailey" two new messages came in within 52 seconds of publishing a photo. We sat mouths agape as the numbers pinged up on the screen -- 2, 3, 7, 15 messages from adult men over the course of two hours. Half of them could be charged with transfer of obscene content to a minor. That night, I had taken a breather and sat with my head in my hands.
The second half of the article includes examples of particularly graphic conversations with what the perpetrators think are an 11-year-old girl instead of the 37-year-old woman who's investigating them. "I exit the conversation with @ XXXastrolifer to see another nine requests pending... Over the course of one week, over 52 men reached out to an 11-year-old girl."
Ryan also says they've formed "continuous working relationships" with law enforcement agencies, and "We've seen arrests and sentencings. We've provided testimony in court and invaluable information to investigations."
Now they're using the conversations they've collected to train artificial intelligence algorithms to better detect sexual predators automatically.
Bark had wanted a way to depict the problem to the public without using actual conversations -- so Ryan began posing as an underage minor on Instagram. Over the past nine months, I've been 15-year-old Libby and 16-year-old Kait and 14-year-old Ava. I've been a studious sophomore contemplating bangs and a lacrosse player being raised by her aunt and an excitable junior eager for prom....
At the beginning of the week, on the very first night as [11-year-old] "Bailey" two new messages came in within 52 seconds of publishing a photo. We sat mouths agape as the numbers pinged up on the screen -- 2, 3, 7, 15 messages from adult men over the course of two hours. Half of them could be charged with transfer of obscene content to a minor. That night, I had taken a breather and sat with my head in my hands.
The second half of the article includes examples of particularly graphic conversations with what the perpetrators think are an 11-year-old girl instead of the 37-year-old woman who's investigating them. "I exit the conversation with @ XXXastrolifer to see another nine requests pending... Over the course of one week, over 52 men reached out to an 11-year-old girl."
Ryan also says they've formed "continuous working relationships" with law enforcement agencies, and "We've seen arrests and sentencings. We've provided testimony in court and invaluable information to investigations."
Now they're using the conversations they've collected to train artificial intelligence algorithms to better detect sexual predators automatically.
Soooooo (Score:2)
So you're saying I shouldn't contact her using my new pseudonym, "Epstein's_Protege"?
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So you're saying I shouldn't contact her using my new pseudonym, "Epstein's_Protege"?
No. Try David Dennison instead.
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Sorry, Epstein is feeling dead today and won't be able to attend school.
Signed,
Epstein's_Mother
Here is my 8 year old daughter modeling swimwear (Score:1)
You may want to read the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
> vigilantes." None of these reports will lead to an arrest and just serve alert the perpetrators that their cover has been blown
You might find it interesting to read the summary, if not the article.
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How is that? By law they can't just arrest you willy nilly, but realistically police can arrest you for whatever they want on trumped up charges. Receiving a report of harassing minors may actually be enough reason for an arrest.
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https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/lo... [nbcdfw.com]
The arrest these pervs all the time.
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Deterrence is better than prosecution.
The goal should be to protect the innocent, not fill up our prisons.
Re:More Harm than Good? (Score:5, Informative)
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Arresting pedos *is* protecting the innocent.
Deterring them is also protecting the innocent, and is far more cost-effective.
Most pedos never act on their predilections.
It is difficult to compare child molestation rates between countries, but there is little reason to believe that America does better despite having far harsher punishments.
Outrage and moral hysteria rarely lead to good outcomes. No district attorney is going to be re-elected by preventing child abuse. Their motivation is to fill prison cells instead. But that is not a wise policy.
If t
Re:More Harm than Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Most pedos never act on their predilections.
OK, but this article is about pervs who send kids dick picks in 4-minutes flat. They are acting.
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OK, but this article is about pervs who send kids dick picks in 4-minutes flat. They are acting.
The point of TFA is that NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT.
The reason that very little is being done is that we expend our law enforcement resources on a few high-profile convictions.
So should we continue the current policy of a negligible number of pedos being caught, tried, and convicted, or should we try a broad policy of deterrence?
Police and prosecutors benefit from a high number of offenders. This provides them a rich pool of high profile defendants to choose from to build their careers. They focus on
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Only if we assume that they actually believe that the person is an 11-year-old. Particularly if they believe that they are anonymous, they could easily just be trolling her. :-)
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You missed some of the undertone in my comment, so I'll make myself a little more clear. It doesn't necessarily require an ill or criminal individual to troll someone who they believe is an adult pretending to be an 11-year-old.
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If I see a post on the 'Net from someone claiming to be an 11 year old girl, I don't have the right to send her a dick pick because I suspect that she's a 50 year old woman looking for sex.
In both cases the term "have the right" refers to both moral and legal domains.
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Oh, I'm not saying that people who do that aren't a**holes, just that they aren't necessarily criminal. :-D
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In many countries, including my own and the US, it actually *is* a crime. Rather awkwardly, it's doubly so if the sender is also a minor - putting prosecutors in a very awkward position when they catch a fifteen-year-old sending naked pics to their fifteen-year-old partner. That's a charge of distribution child pornography and of distributing pornography to a minor - should they be prosecuted for it, or should the prosecutor decide not to bring charges on the grounds that the law is stupid and not in the pu
Re:More Harm than Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
An argument that would stand up better if there was any public support for rehabilitation. Instead they serve as a morally acceptable target for people's most sadistic vengeance fantasies.
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I question tactics like this by "vigilantes." None of these reports will lead to an arrest and just serve alert the perpetrators that their cover has been blown. This will make them abandoned that account and move on. Any investigation that was currently in progress will be compromised now.
Any logs she presents as evidence is useless because the origin of can't be verified. To law enforcement its hearsay(sp) and can't even be used to obtain a search warrant.
Seems to me, she does more harm than good.
Since the mod trolls are in force today. I'm going to go ahead and correct the issue here, since I doubt Slashdot will bother.
Nothing in the quoted post is a troll in any way. It is me simply asking about this tactic. Seems to me that she does more harm than good. Possibly even compromising criminal investigations themselves. Human nature even dictates that receiving so many reports from one person such reports tend to get disregarded.
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Nothing in the quoted post is a troll in any way. It is me simply asking about this tactic. Seems to me that she does more harm than good. Possibly even compromising criminal investigations themselves. Human nature even dictates that receiving so many reports from one person such reports tend to get disregarded.
Gotta post as AC here. Here's the thing about people that troll for something. She has just become very interesting. I'd certainly look into her background.
This is related to how so many conservative, family values, preachers and/or politicians are found getting it on with someone of the same sex or kids..
We're talking to you http://www.newnownext.com/19-r... [newnownext.com]
And let us not forget Dennis Hastert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] And let us not forget Jerry Sandusky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:More Harm than Good? (Score:5, Informative)
"Nothing in the quoted post is a troll in any way. "
There is not a more specific moderation for "Deliberately making factually incorrect statements" or "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt".
"None of these reports will lead to an arrest "
They have already led to not only arrests but sentencings, as stated in the article.
"its hearsay(sp) and can't even be used to obtain a search warrant. "
Why do you claim that it's hearsay and can't be used for a search warrant? A) Hearsay is about rules of evidence in court. It is perfectly legitimate ask for a warrant on the basis that a 3rd party claims that someone said X pertaining to a crime so a search for records Y at premises Z to substantiate those claims is requested. This is a properly constrained investigative act. B) More importantly, it's not even hearsay. "Sloane Ryan" is the actual witness.
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"Seems to me, she does more harm than good."
If one of the predators turns out to be 17, she might go to jail for that stunt with the stupidity of the current laws.
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Even when the intentions are good, vigilante trolling comes with risks of committing crimes yourself
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Sounds like you have experience in this matter.
This isn't exactly new (Score:1, Redundant)
This sort of thing has been going on for quite a while. For some years before that guy Hanson did a reality show over it.
Yeah, there are a lot of guys over 18 who will go for girls 11 and younger. And by 18 I mean 18-to-80 or so. The Internet makes it appear to them that they have access so they go for it.
Why? I'm not getting into that because it has been done like 10,000,000 times in Internet posting threads already. I could add nothing.
All I am saying is this isn't news. What will be news if
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yeah, totally not news (Score:2)
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What will be news if we get a story about how to deal with this problem without resorting to ruinous criminal process that simply drives the perpetrators further underground.
That's kind of a null statement: any criminal prosecution can drive perpetrators of the crimes further underground. If that's bad we should never prosecute anyone for anything.
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It amazes me how easy parenting is for non-parents who have no idea what they're talking about and blow their advice out their assholes.
i know rite? (Score:1)
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Then they were bad parents all along and get what they deserve, I guess, having done things that made their kids distrust them and want to hide things from them.
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Better not to give them the access in the first place. Especially not on a phone.
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It's amazing how my ideas changed (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how much my ideas about parenting changed after I had a kid.
One shocking discovery, for me, is that after you have kids you still have to poop. And do dishes. And fix the car, take out the trash, etc - you actually can't stare at your kids 24/7. So a lot of my ideas about "you should watch what your kids are doing" turned out to be unrealistic.
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Kids will always be smarter than their parents. My dad used to boast he knew every trick in the book, because he wrote the book. He was too dumb to recognize that there'd been a lot of added chapters between his youthful's days and mine.
Kids are born immersed in these technologies. Schools just don't teach reading writing, and 'rithmetic. Peers swap methods for evading controls at the lunch table. Just like criminal techniques get swapped in prisons.
Secretly, I was proud of my kids for trying. They were sho
Unlucky for my daughter, I catch cybercriminials (Score:2)
> Peers swap methods for evading controls at the lunch table. Just like criminal techniques get swapped in prisons.
Absolutely. Unfortunately for my daughter, I've spent the last 20 years in cybersecurity. I spend my days reading and occasionally writing research papers on the most advanced counter-measures. Sucks to be her. :)
Hopefully in ten years her boyfriend won't know I'm quoting a movie when I point out that his phone just connected to MY WiFi and - What I do have I a very particular set of skill
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Absolutely. Unfortunately for my daughter, I've spent the last 20 years in cybersecurity. I spend my days reading and occasionally writing research papers on the most advanced counter-measures. Sucks to be her. :)
Yikes. lol my kid's life sucks! lol
That's going to be a healthy relationship. As someone else mentioned once she loses trust in you it's going to get harder because none of your fancy advanced counter measures will work outside your wifi network on someone else's phone.
I'm pretty sure the methods t
Re: It's amazing how my ideas changed (Score:2)
With all due respect, I have three kids ages 4 ,8, and 12.
None of them have smartphones or fell phones. If they want to talk with their friends, they have social media over a computer.
If they want to use Instagram on someone else's phone, go for it. The trick here is, is that someone else knows about it. So if one of them wants to go meet a stranger, there will be someone who knows.
The best part is, the wife and I don't have to worry about that. They live their lives just fine, get good grades, and have goo
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I'm curious how you got from "I discovered that you can't physically watch your kids 24/7" to "it's okay for 13 year-olds to post half naked pics on Instagram".
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Good parents only let their kids use the Internet over a public family computer that they can't use in the privacy of their own room. It can sometimes be better not to use monitoring software or other "net nannies" since that does actually create an atmosphere of mistrust. You can't ding a good parent for following this policy on the grounds that their offspring will borrow smartphones from friends at school who have bad parents.
There's nothing about this policy that fosters mistrust between parents and c
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Fixed that for you.
If parents just want to be able to call their kid whenever and wherever they are, then get them a cheap plastic clamshell dumbphone instead, that can do only voice and text. No dataplan, no internet access. If they want to be extra-safe about what they're doing with that, even, then break the camera in it, too, so they can't take inapproprite pictures to send to anyone.
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If parents just want to be able to call their kid whenever and wherever they are, then get them a cheap plastic clamshell dumbphone instead, that can do only voice and text. No dataplan, no internet access. If they want to be extra-safe about what they're doing with that, even, then break the camera in it, too, so they can't take inapproprite pictures to send to anyone.
And then institute regular searches of their room to make sure they don't get one of their own. Seriously a brand new, perfectly serviceable
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Wait, what? Who said anything about scandalous photographs? The article doesn't. The pictures they created seem to be what you'd expect from a per-pubescent, pre-teen child. The messages from these men are designed to manipulate and groom for purposes other than anything appropriate. You can cannot blame that on parenting or kids themselves, other than to suggest that parents not allow their kids to use any social media at all which is a good, but unworkable suggestion.
It's based on the law (Score:2)
> The official minimum age to have an account is 13, what is that number based on
It's based on the law. That's why it's the same age on almost every site. Under a law called COPPA, sites can't allow people under 13 to register for an account without parental permission, and other requirements apply.
Why does the law say 13? They were trying to make a law to protect "kids". Thr law is how how sites can interact with "kids", but kid is hard to define. A six year old is different from a seventeen years o
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Because 13-and-up is a very lucrative age range for advertising, I imagine.
Re:Isn't she (Score:5, Informative)
[Isn't she]...pretending to be a 15 year old and wanting to have sex...
No, she isn't doing that at all. RTFA. Adult men send unsolicited photos and videos of themselves masturbating--ask her if she likes that, ask her to reciprocate. Adult men actively try to coax her to send photos of her (faux 11 year-old) self naked. It is blindingly clear that these men are preying on underage girls, not being seduced by them.
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Or they're undercover cops trying to bust someone pretending to be an 11-year-old.
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Is pretending to be an 11 year old girl illegal? I'm pretty sure it's not.
you're a conservative (Score:1)
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Kinda shoots that theory in the ass.
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No it doesn't disprove anything, depends what kind of "bait" she uses. In the law there is such a thing as incitement. She needs to be careful she doesn't run afoul of it or she'll be the one doing time while the pedos go free.
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Read the article. She posts a digitally altered picture of herself that appears to be an 11 year old. The opening post her alto ego makes mentions going to a friend's party or something along those lines. In short order, creeps are contacting her and starting the grooming process. This very quickly turns into them sending dirty pics to a "little girl" that in their conversations admits to not having boobs or knowing what a BJ is. If this counts as enticement, every child should be locked in a secure room, n
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The law doesn't work the way you or I wish it did. Mark my words and wait and see. Those "authorities" aren't the ones that will be running the courts.
I can see court defense already of incitement and luring
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you are the ignorant one, a cop can tell you to do things a court may find gets you in trouble. you must be young, not been around the block a couple of times.
wise up.
Re: Isn't she (Score:1)
Welcome to the Internet! (Score:5, Funny)
... where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are federal agents.
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Exactly. I thought everyone always assumed that any internet entity who claims to be both female and under 18 is some variant of this middle aged lunatic woman or in law enforcement. If anyone I am arguing with on the internet claims to be an 11 year old girl I would want to see live video before believing her. Obviously pics mean nothing. Only live video matters on the internet.
I would assume 100% that the entity was a male FBI agent in his 40s until proven otherwise. And although some 11 year old girls ca
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Exactly. I thought everyone always assumed that any internet entity who claims to be both female and under 18 is some variant of this middle aged lunatic woman or in law enforcement. If anyone I am arguing with on the internet claims to be an 11 year old girl I would want to see live video before believing her.
Well, next time you suspect, go ahead and ask. And see you in 15 years!
Obviously pics mean nothing. Only live video matters on the internet.
You know they actually did videos in TFA. They're very good
to catch (Score:2)
Why don't you have a seat?
Not entirely impartial (Score:2)
"Bark uses AI to alert parents and schools when..."
First, if they aren't using ML and blockchain along with AI, they're doing it wrong. :-)
Second, this isn't some lone vigilante mom hunting for perverts...it's an ad for this Bark company. There's a lot of money to be made convincing parents that their children are in danger. I'm convinced this is not really the problem people make it out to be, but it does get reported on a lot, so parents get scared. Basically, every time one of the very few predators out
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Don't forget they're also selling fluff. Censor/snitch systems work essentially like overgrown anti spam filters. It works a lot of time, but isn't terribly reliable as you run into problems such as the one recently seen of twitter trying to detect racism. You can't just ban accounts because it drops N-words - because the
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Ahh but what can you actually snitch on. Pretending to be an 11 year old girl on the internet does not make you one and you are just a 37 year old women pretending to be a young girl, now if a bloke pretended to be an 11 year old girl, women would consider the bloke a perve. Regardless of the modern corporate main stream media bullshit, pretending to be something, does not make you that something.
So whilst pretending did she purposefully elicit those responses mind you not as an 11 year old girl but as she
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Sadly, the ones most likely to molest your children are the ones they've personally known for a long time. Uncles, friends of the family, even parents . . . people like that. Bark doesn't protect your children from people they know off the Internet.
OMG! (Score:2)
If only there was a company offering a service that we could buy to protect our kids from these dangers
Good Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Catching scum who attempt to prey on prepubescent children is clearly a good thing. I'm conflicted on the issue of postpubescent minors, because I was having sex with adults when I was fifteen, and nobody was taking advantage of me. Nobody my own age wanted to fuck me until I was 18, and at 15 I was a big guy (over 6' and 250lb) and DTF. Not only did nobody force me to have sex with them, but nobody even seduced me. It was the opposite.
But those of you who are claiming that this is somehow unfair clearly haven't even RTFS. She's posing as what would unarguably be a child, and she's not doing anything to entice anyone.
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But her 'victims' didn't do anything either ... except chatting with her.
Hint: provoking someone to commit a crime, or attempting to commit/prepare a crime is illegal nearly all over the world - except in the US of Awesomness.
and she's not doing anything to entice anyone. Obviously she did, or why the funk do you think she got messages from "perverts"?
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Entrapment works very differently. It would have likely been entrapment if the fake girl account on Twitter messaged dudes and propositioned them. But they did not do anything like that - they merely created a profile that looks like it's an 11 year girl. If you read the chat logs, the "girl" even specifically rebukes advances more than once, and also makes her age clear. If somebody decides to go ahead anyway, they are in no sense being entrapped in committing a crime... they were looking for a victim alre
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Yea she showed her face. It's sickening people like you exist that actually believe women, and 11 year old girls, should be prevented by law from showing their face, because that is all that's required in your mind to "provoke" sexual advances and receive dick pictures.
Actually that's what most Muslims DO think. They believe if they do show themselves men are likely to loose all self control and sexually assault them. As a man I find this highly insulting and offensive. But then I have no problem calling the Prophet Mohammed a slave owning pedophile and consequently a nasty piece of work.
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Nobody my own age wanted to fuck me ...
There's the sexism: No-one cares how cheap and desperate a male is, how physically or emotionally vulnerable he is. Plus, he has to earn a fuck.
Seriously, who are these people? (Score:1, Troll)
The concept of "picking up" an underage girl (so before sexual maturity) is so absurd to me ... They aren't visually attractive or anything... They are children and childish... It just sounds like it is a pure rape thing (So not about the sex, but about the *power* [Source: several real rape victims])... Because they are easily manipulable and controllable...
I have not ever met a guy who showed any sign of being like this ... Not even suspected. I want some verifiability! Not having to decide between trusti
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They are paedophiles (a mental disorder) which have sucumbed to the temptation and become child abusers (a criminal act), or people seeking power/control over somebody else (so not all child abusers are paedophiles).
There are online communities of paedophiles in which they support each other to not become child abusers.
There are online communities of paedophiles in which they justify abusing children. They rationalize it, making other paedophiles become child abusers.
Paedophiles demonisation by the general
Please don't say "paedophile". (Score:1)
It means "children-loving".
Say "paedosexual rapist", or whatever fits better.
It is bad enough already, that people think of child rape first when somebody says he loves children.
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The concept of "picking up" an underage girl (so before sexual maturity) is so absurd to me ... They aren't visually attractive or anything...
Pedophilia is recognized as a mental illness in the DSM V. It's a sexual attraction to something that shouldn't normally be sexually attractive (a paraphilia).
It just sounds like it is a pure rape thing (So not about the sex, but about the *power* [Source: several real rape victims])... Because they are easily manipulable and controllable...
No.
What happened to those guys when they were children? Because something definitely happened.
Yes.
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What happened to those guys when they were children?
Maybe someting, maybe nothing. Not every abuser was a victim. And not every victim becomes an abuser.
Because something definitely happened.
It didn't definitely happen and it doesn't absolve them. There are plenty of abuse victims out there who don't flip it round and pass it on.
And punishing rapists does not fix a single raped child.
So what do you propose? I mean many countries have a good record on justice and rehabilitation, but they still imprison rap
How the hell do you think thiss is trolling? (Score:2)
Whoever voted this (0, Troll) ... please explain yourself.
Did something trigger you, or are pro-child-rape, or what? ^^
Serously, can I not just say what's on my mind, without somebody flipping out with a prejudice?
Have any of you known any pedophiles? (Score:1)
The Internet is an open sewer (Score:1)
Do you let your kids play in the sewer?
She's wasting her time, and the police know it (Score:2)
The problem with doing so is that local police get a local tax budget of money to prevent local crime, and internet traps attract responses from all over the country and beyond.
So invariably, these traps get abandoned when the city council points out that "yea, it works and all but we have crime on our own streets here-today-now, so turn the computer off and go outside and arrest
Something I don't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
This trawling operation used instagram. They report being flooded with inappropriate contacts within sixty seconds of creating the account. So... how is anyone finding this account? It's newly created. No contacts, no follows, no comments, no posts. I've never actually used instagram, but I know it doesn't have a 'view all accounts made in the last minute' page.
Worldwide issue (Score:1)
Re: obviously a political hit job... (Score:2)
i guess people don't like christmas jokes anymore! (Score:2, Funny)
ok (Score:2)
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They wish!
The average pig ejaculates for between 6 and 31 minutes using the "gloved hand" method, or have real sex between 4 and 20 minutes, during which they produce sperm continuously.
So there you go.