Perverted Justice
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Perverted Justice is a California-based borderline-illegal vigilante organization.[1] Possibly because of the word "justice" in their name, they confuse themselves with actual law enforcement. They really, really don't like pedophiles.
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[edit] Methods
Perverted Justice's primary method of seeking out and exposing "pedophiles" is to spend time in online chat rooms lying pretending to be children or teenagers. Their volunteers assume personalities, and make themselves available for chatting, while trolling for interested individuals. Inevitably, talk about sex begins and often moves to a private chat between the operative and the "pedophile." In some cases, this is as far as it goes: the chatlog and whatever information they can find on the "criminal" is made publicly available for severe castigation or given to law enforcement. At other times, as on the To Catch a Predator MSNBC specials, the objective is for the operative to get the "predator" to come visit him or her, and to bring with them some indicator of sexual intent such as condoms. Once the "predator" arrives, they are seized by law enforcement and arrested. They are generally charged with violating some form of local online solicitation laws.
[edit] Philosophy
Perverted Justice generally runs under the assumption that anyone who expresses the slightest interest in meeting a minor for sexual relations is the spawn of Satan and must be treated accordingly. While most people would agree that molesting children is not a good thing to do, Perverted Justice tends to jump at any opportunity to make their targets out to be as horrible as possible. This is especially evident from their commentary on a series of discussions with pedophile Paul Short, in which they constantly bring up the loneliness of their fictional 13-year-old girl persona to make his comments appear even more exploitative than they most likely actually were, and at one point accuse him of objectifying her because he happened to fail to capitalize her name.[2] Considering the individual in question already requested using the girl for the purposes of sexual slavery and topped the website's list of the "Top 10 Most Slimy" pedophiles captured (displayed proudly at the top of every page), it raises the question if he really needed the help.
Perverted Justice is also incredibly self-aggrandizing and displays little in the way of modesty, declaring themselves "the largest and best anti-predator organization online", and in their frequently-asked questions page, they take every opportunity to emphasize the legality of their actions by virtue of the fact they collaborate with the police. When discussing the allegations of vigilantism leveled at them, they go on about how "unfortunate" it is that some police officers might not actually want to work with batshit insane witch hunters have the nerve to disagree with the good work they're doing and proclaim that "you should pity any rare officer that speaks out against us, the guy is missing out on some great arrest opportunities."[3] Furthermore, in response to the allegation that the pedophiles Perverted Justice targets are not committing crimes because there is no actual minor present, the FAQ refers to the questioner as an idiot and tells them to go fuck themselves, relying on a deeply flawed legal analogy. This description is only slightly exaggerated.[4] They also explicitly refer to critics of the website as "dumb".[4]
Perverted Justice claims to have no political or religious agenda and asserts that it is not opposed to homosexuality or pornography.[5] On the other hand, in response to the age of consent being lower in some non-western countries, Perverted Justice describes third-world and non-western countries as "psychologically backwater and behind the times". Shortly after this, they claim that child labor is "a staple of any country that has such irresponsible underage sex laws" (mostly to further belittle their critics).[4] Remember, kids - pedophilia (and disagreeing with your Glorious Perverted Justice Overlords) is bad, but racism is just fine and dandy!
[edit] Critics
Some critics find it uncomfortable to reflect how much these activities by Perverted Justice smack of entrapment, although most legal authorities have found it to be well within the bounds of acceptability.
They maintain a list of websites that refuse to be as batshit-crazy as they are in their witch hunt for pedophiles. This list includes such notorious havens for pedophiles as YouTube and Wikipedia (from which the founder has been pretty much banned until the end of time).[citation needed]
The name Perverted Justice is quite ironic, seeing as it is, in fact, a perversion of justice even if it deters people from using the Internet to look for underage sex. And it is doubly ironic, considering that in 2007 several PJ employees were outed as possessors and disseminators of kiddie porn.[6]
Rick Ross's Cult Education Institute lists PJ as a cult on its website.[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Not to be confused with a border fence vigilante organization.
- ↑ Chat log with Paul Short, aka fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe
- ↑ Frequently Asked Questions, "Our efforts with law enforcement" section
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Frequently Asked Questions, "Answering criticisms and qualms" section
- ↑ Frequently Asked Questions, "Information about Perverted-Justice.com" section
- ↑ Operation Awareness blog article: "PERVERTED JUSTICE MEMBERS IMPLICATED IN ONLINE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY"
- ↑ Perverted-Justice.com at the Cult Education Institute