For the past ten years, online gangs of vigilante ‘paedophile hunters’ have been causing chaos on UK streets, operating outside of the law with mob-style ‘stings’ that see suspects confronted, interrogated and livestreamed on social media.
They typically operate by pretending to be a child and messaging suspected paedophiles on social media – relying on tip offs and online rumours to identify them.
After establishing their interest, they then arrange to meet them in person – only for two or more of the hunters to turn up instead with cameras and interrogation techniques at the ready.
But while thousands of fans praise the gangs for alerting police to alleged paedophiles, sometimes leading to trials and convictions, there is a deeply dark side to their activities which has led to arrests, angry mobs and even death.
From driving men not charged with any crime to suicide, to upending completely innocent people’s lives and harassing journalists, these self-styled hunters have been beleaguered with high profile missteps in recent years.
Not to mention the many hunters who have been charged with crimes themselves and even jailed – for everything from false imprisonment to possessing or sharing indecent images of children themselves.
Here MailOnline takes a look at the dark underbelly of the so-called ‘paedophile hunters’ – and the damage their crusade can really do.
Driving men to suicide
Father-of-four Adrian Smith, 48, died in February just hours after being accused of sending sexually explicit messages to someone he was said to believe was a 14-year-old girl
Mr Smith was released on bail hours after the sting by paedophile hunters and died on the M4 on the same day
The hunters claimed they had ‘no control’ over Mr Smith’s choices, and allowed hundreds of sick comments to be posted celebrating his death – he had not been charged with any crime
Father-of-four Adrian Smith, 48, died in February just hours after being accused of sending sexually explicit messages to someone he was said to believe was a 14-year-old girl.
He was filmed by vigilante so-called paedophile hunters being confronted and later arrested by police. The video was uploaded to social media.
After being interviewed he was released on bail by Avon and Somerset Police. Hours later, he was dead – having thrown himself off an M4 bridge onto the busy motorway below.
The hunters, who had streamed the ‘sting’ on Facebook, took down the video after hearing of his death to ‘allow his family to grieve’ but did not apologise.
‘We exposed a paedophile and handed him to the police,’ the group said. ‘We have no control over the choices made by him.’
Replying to the post, fans of the group posted hundreds of sick comments appearing to celebrate the incident.
‘One down, one million to go,’ said one user, while another added: ‘Fantastic’. Others said they hoped his death ‘starts a trend’, and the news was ‘a brilliant way [to start] a Monday morning’.
One woman wrote: ‘Some see it as cowards way out, I see it as the trash dumping itself. Best for everyone, doesn’t waste taxpayers money by going to court and jail.’
Mr Smith had not been charged with any offence at the time of his death.
David Baker, 43, barricaded himself in and took a fatal overdose three days after being accused of being a paedophile
It follows the case of David Baker, 43, who killed himself after being confronted by vigilante hunters in 2017.
Baker, who was accused of arranging to meet a 14-year-old boy for sex, was filmed being confronted by hunter Steven Dure on October 4, 2017.
After being arrested by police officers and released under investigation, he died just three days later – having barricaded himself in and taken a large overdose of prescription medication.
A coroner ruled that online posts by the group and others following his arrest was a direct cause of his death.
‘I believe in this particular case the postings on social media after his arrest contributed to the stress on David and to him being alone and isolated in his own home where he made his decision to end his own life.
‘This was therefore a causative factor to what led to his death, at least in part.’
Mr Dure told the Sun at the time he had ‘no regrets’.
‘The only tragedy here is that justice could not be done before he took his life. At the end of the day, he travelled 20 miles to meet a 14-year-old child. It is what it is,’ he said.
Hunters arrested
Some of the first arrests of so-called paedophile hunters occurred in 2017, when two men were detained by Kent Police for impersonating a police officer.
A 43-year-old man from Blackheath and a 34-year-old man from Maidstone were arrested just a week after senior police officers in the country had issued a warning against such practices.
Around the same time, another two men were arrested on suspicion of affray after a viral video appeared to show them attacking a suspected paedophile in a violent confrontation at Bluewater shopping centre that prompted onlookers to join in.
Sam Miller became one of the first hunters in the UK to be jailed for false imprisonment after confronting an innocent man, and has previous convictions for assault and impersonating a police officer
James Moss was convicted over the same incident as Miller, but was handed a suspended sentence
Another five hunters from Leeds were subject to a lengthy criminal trial in 2019 after being accused of assault, false imprisonment and public order offences.
They were eventually cleared by a jury, but police again warned vigilante groups not to confront suspected paedophiles, and not to post footage online.
But little changed and in 2022 in Norwich, a 49-year-old man, a 56-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman were arrested on similar charges.
And a year later self-styled justice seeker Sam Miller became one of the first hunters in the UK to be jailed.
Miller, then 29, was sentenced to eight months behind bars after confronting an innocent man, forcing him to the ground and accusing him of being a convicted rapist and paedophile.
He also had previous convictions for impersonating a police officer and assault.
A second man involved in the sting, James Moss, 58, was also convicted and handed a suspended sentence.
A judge said: ‘You wrongly said he had been convicted of rape.
‘Your actions made towards him were clearly designed to cause maximum humiliation and distress. He had no rights at all, as far as you were concerned.’
Hunters convicted of child sex offences
Tim Heron, 35, has a string of offences to his name and is a convicted child sex offender, having been found guilty of making a Category B image
Tim Heron, 35, has a string of convictions for his involvement in vigilante groups in Northern Ireland.
Heron joined a group in 2016 and was convicted three years later of intimidating a former BBC journalist who was reporting on the group’s controversial tactics.
He was also convicted in the same year of assault alongside fellow hunter Richard Curtis, after the pair were among a group who attended an alleged paedophile’s address.
At the scene, the man was assaulted and his wife verbally abused, with Curtis and Heron both found guilty over the incident.
The actions of the men were so disgraceful that a judge ‘stayed’ a charge of sexual communication with a child against the suspect they confronted due to their behaviour.
In 2022, Heron was back in court again accused of himself owning indecent images of children.
He was charged with one count of making a Category B indecent photo of a child and five of possession of extreme pornography.
Heron – who claimed another member of the paedophile hunter gang must have put the images on his device without him knowing – was convicted of all charges by a judge.
‘Destroying innocent people’s lives’
Shiz Hussain’s whole family shunned him after he was livestreamed being confronted by vigilante hunters over alleged offences that never took place
It was months before he was exonerated and he even hid in a bathroom for four days out of fear – it turned out a man with a grudge against him had knowingly passed the group falso information
Since the rise of online hunter gangs, an alarming number of men have told how their lives have been totally ruined after being wrongly accused, filmed and even assaulted by vigilantes, before being arrested by police.
Multiple men have spoken out about almost being driven to suicide after being wrongly accosted in the street or outside their homes and publically humiliated online.
Many of the cases of mistaken identity have involved paedophiles hijacking an innocent person’s photos in a fake profile in order to avoid detection.
Others have involved people with grudges getting in touch with the online gangs and knowingly accusing innocent people of child sex offences.
A Lancashire barber recently told how he almost killed himself after a man with a grudge against him told a local gang he was a paedophile.
Shiz Hussain’s whole family shunned him after he was livestreamed being confronted by vigilante hunters over alleged offences that never took place.
He described being pulled out of his car and thrown up against a brick wall, being accused of ‘being interested in little girls’ and of being a ‘dirty paedo’.
It took months until the gang admitted online that he was entirely innocent, and they had been given false information.
After the confrontation, Mr Hussain said he was so terrified he hid in the toilet in his barber shop for four days.
Darrell Edmondson, from Tunbridge Wells, was also driven to considering suicide after being wrongly accused over a fake Facebook profle
And Darrell Edmondson, from Tunbridge Wells, told how he was the victim of a sting in 2021 that led to him losing his job, friends and reputation.
He had been messaging an adult woman, who was actually a paedophile hunter, online when she suddenly pushed to meet up with him one evening – telling him she had dropped her children at her mother’s.
But when he turned up there was a whole vigilante gang of hunters who ‘interrogated’ him in the back of a van for two-and-a-half hours before police arrived.
The former van driver said that, three days after the livestream, he lost his job of 17 years in Tunbridge Wells.
He has been shunned by friends and family members as well as being shouted at in the street, which left him contemplating suicide at a local beach.
Mr Edmondson said the gang had a large A4 ring binder file full of photocopies of messages between a young girl and another account which had his profile picture.
But the picture belonged to a different Facebook account, in which a paedophile had picked his photos at random from the internet to use as a fake profile.
The group later apologised and admitted Mr Edmondson was entirely innocent.
Harassing journalists
George Keenan was one of three men convicted over the ugly footage of a gang of paedophile hunters harassing a BBC journalist in Belfast
Richard Curtis (left) and Tim Heron (right) were among those who surrounded reporter Kevin Magee – who required security guards to escort him to his car
Many of the online gangs have reputations for hitting back hard at any criticism of their activities.
Several have posted photographs of journalists who have questioned their tactics online to their thousands of followers.
In one particular case in Belfast, BBC journalist Kevin Magee encountered a group of hunters at a coffee shop on Botanic Avenue while making a report into hunters’ activities.
Footage showed how he was surrounded and confronted by a gang of hunters before having to be escorted to his car by a security guard.
During the ugly confrontation, one of the hunters holds his phone up to Mr Magee’s face and says: ‘This is the closest you will get to any of these groups, do you understand?
‘You came here tonight thinking you were gonna get stuff on me. You better watch your f****** self.’
George Keenan, Richard Curtis and Tim Heron were all found guilty of attempting to intimidate the reporter, disorderly behaviour and obstructing a road.
They were each given a three-month suspended prison sentence.
Paedophiles posing as hunters
Lee Philip Rees ran a major blackmail operation which saw him make £40,000 by posing as a teenage girl online – the court was told he is a paedophile himself, despite claiming to be a hunter
A man who claimed to be an online paedophile hunter was actually a paedophile himself, a judge ruled, in a concerning sign of how the very offenders vigilantes are out to catch could be hiding in their ranks.
Lee Philip Rees ran a major blackmail operation which saw him make £40,000 by posing as a teenage girl online.
He would message men and send them computer viruses in hidden indecent images he send in return for images from the men he was targeting.
Rees would then begin blackmailing the men who sent the ‘teenage girl’ pictures, threatening to expose them as paedophiles if they didn’t pay up.
At Cardiff Crown Court, Rees was sentenced to nine years in prison for 31 offences including computer misuse, hacking and blackmail as a judge told him the ‘moral crusade’ of paedophile hunting did not excuse his behaviour.
The court heard he had a previous conviction in 1989 for possession of indecent photographs of children and had again distributed category C images in a bid to entrap paedophiles.
The judge also referred to a psychiatric report which found Rees ‘suffers from paedophilia’ himself.
‘I have reached the conclusion that you derived much enjoyment and satisfaction in controlling and manipulating these individuals, preying on their fears and extracting for yourself significant financial gain.
‘The money was spent on holidays abroad, buying expensive computer equipment and sending money to persons in Thailand.
‘This was a cynical exercise and you even encouraged others to carry out similar offending.’
Gangs passed illegal information
Customer Services Assistant Chloe Carr from Hull City Council shared the name and address of a convicted sex offender with a paedophile gang – information she accessed through work
Because of Carr’s actions, a mob of 30 people turned up to the man’s address and threatened to kill him and burn his house down
Some paedophile gangs operating outside the legal system have been found to have been passed information illegally.
In April 2022, a Hull city council worker admitted to unlawfully disclosing private data to an online website without consent in court after passing on an address of a sex offender.
Customer Services Assistant Chloe Carr sent the highly sensitive information to paedophile hunters, telling them that the sex offender ‘deserves all he gets’ and was ‘disgusting’.
The anti-paedophile gang whipped up a mob of 30 who turned up at the offender’s house, threatening to kill him and burn down the property.
The sex offender was moved to a new address, as the court heard that Carr’s actions helped to ‘whip up a frenzy’ and were ‘not a public service at all’ as they ‘destabilised’ convicted criminals and risked making them ‘unpredictable.’
By definition, the gangs rely on anonymous tip-offs to identify many alleged paedophiles – but this information can be shared illegally, such as in breach of data protection law, or be highly unreliable.
