The paedophile hunter: Vigilante's success adds to pressure for greater police resources in child sex crackdown

Fly-on-the-wall footage of a self-styled “paedophile hunter”, whose evidence has convicted ten sex offenders for grooming children online, will increase pressure on police to devote more resources to such covert operations.

Legal experts said there were “risks” that the Channel 4 film, on the controversial activities of Stinson Hunter, an unemployed former drug addict who served a long jail sentence for arson, acknowledged the “risks” that it might encourage copycat vigilantism.

In The Paedophile Hunter, broadcast on Wednesday evening, Hunter, 31, is seen sending messages purporting to come from a young girl to men on adult websites. A succession of men are “captured” and lured to a “decoy house” on a housing estate in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, where they are confronted by Hunter and his colleagues “Stubbs” and “Grime”, who film the men’s responses and post them on Facebook. One man is seen arriving with a bottle of wine to meet what he believes to be a child.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-paedophile-hunter-vigilantes-success-adds-to-pressure-for-greater-police-resources-in-child-sex-crackdown-9763501.html