Over the years, things change, things evolve and information gets scattered. We've decided to educate newcomers to some of the more historical and lesser-known aspects of what we do by highlighting ten things that might not be readily apparent about our organization at first glance. Sure, everyone knows To Catch a Predator and most people know we work with police on a daily basis to get predators arrested, media involved or not... but how much else do people really know?
These ten categories should help you, the reader, get to know us a little better.
What you see on our main page and on Dateline NBC is half the story. We work behind the scenes on a daily basis in other related areas not associated with getting predators arrested. When approached by parents in need, we respond. The one example we can make public is found here: "Internet Sleuth finds kidnapped teen"
However, that's just one example and the most public example of our work. We have been requested and come to the aid of other guardians of abducted kids. You don't hear of every case because most victims and families don't wish to have the victimization that internet predators bring to bear publicized. It's a wish and request we always respect. We have contacts with law enforcement and online corporations that have come in handy when it comes to trying to help aid law enforcement to find missing kids. There's much that goes on that unless you're at the very top of the organization, you won't hear about.
It goes beyond requests from parents. Behind the scenes, families of predators too obtain aid. Those wishing to seek divorces receive information and our help to extricate themselves from their marriage to an internet predator. We have been the subject of requests from college students and professors wishing to use our transcripts to aid research projects, these are always approved. Fact is, we're always working and often we simply don't have the ability to talk about everything we do on our main page. We're not "just" the organization that works with Dateline NBC to bring awareness to parents and society regarding internet predators, anyone assuming that illustrates how little they know about what we do.
One of the most interesting claims we've seen lately is that Perverted-Justice and Dateline blow into town and that's all they do, they blow into town and then they leave! Fact is, whether Dateline NBC is going to chronicle a sting operation, it's going to happen regardless. Good example is our recent Flagler Beach sting operation. We had already planned and slotted Flagler Beach for a December sting operation with just ourselves and police. Dateline NBC decided later that they wanted to document this sting operation to show the nation the problem in Northern Florida. Had they not decided that, the sting would have gone ahead regardless.
The idea that these sting operations only take place due to Dateline NBC is quite an ignorant idea, indeed. We have done thirteen stings with law enforcement this year. Yes, eight of them were filmed by Dateline NBC. Five were not. If Dateline NBC didn't wish to film eight stings this year, how many large-scale police stings would Perverted-Justice.com have done? Thirteen.
We show up regardless. Someday, whether sooner or later, this story won't be compelling and of interest to Dateline and the American public. Will we fold up and blow away? No. We will show up regardless. We will be doing large-scale police stings until there are no predators to sting. Hopefully Dateline NBC wishes to document these stings as their surveillance capability is invaluable to have around... but Perverted-Justice.com is going to show up regardless.
Our organization is not some huge corporation, it wasn't pre-planned by a committee of businessmen... hell, it was the idea of a few Portland, Oregon Yahoo chatters who decided to make a small poorly-coded addition to a rarely visited blog. A year later, the idea that was hatched on that subsite of a blog became Perverted-Justice.com when the domain itself was obtained and the organization created. Still, when Perverted-Justice.com launched in July of 2003, it had literally about a 100 hits a day. If you know anything about web traffic, that's nothing.
From those small roots, the organization grew because people knew of the problem of predators and wanted to help create and evolve a solution. We started off with one single solitary forum called "PeeJ General Discussions." That forum still exists, but it has been joined by dozens upon dozens more... all dealing with various volunteer positions and topics never imagined by the small cadre of people who created the website.
Since late 2003, the organization has worked to become a conviction machine. It's been a long road, it's taken a lot of work and a lot of fresh ideas brought forth by new volunteers... but it has happened. We are a conviction machine. We are the foremost anti-predator organization on the planet. It has happened because we're the very definition of a grass-roots movement, something we've never forgotten. We're not corporate suits nor are we going to become what we like to term "Grandpa." People responded to our aggressive anti-predator and anti-pedophile stance, a stance we will always maintain no matter who winces.
Really, where to start? Our organization has since it's inception been the target of harassment, attacks, libel and other people's agendas. From the beginning, prior to the first media piece done about us... we've been attacked. When we had 100 hits and few knew who we were... pedophiles knew. The organization "Danpedo" tried to troll, attack and undermine us prior to our ever becoming truly "known" by the public at large. These pedophiles saw our aggressive attitude and feared it.
Since then, websites have sprung up to libel and harass us. Haters of what we do have never ceased to stoop to new lows to try to intimidate our volunteers. One such individual tried to pose as a member in chat-rooms in order to attempt to get that person assaulted by strangers. Another member received death threats and warnings that they will be beaten with a baseball bat. Daily, pedophiles and their sympathizers try to comb our forums and volunteer base in hopes of trying to find some new volunteer's phone number to threaten and harass via the phone or via instant messenger.
We've had to take on members of the press with their own attempts to "shut us down" that we've documented on the website. We've had to deal with self-serving so-called "child activists" who don't approve of our "aggressive" attitude against internet predators. We've had individuals try to force us offline by using distributed denial of service attacks, bandwidth leechers and hacks against our website. Fortunately, we've had a thick skin and a deep commitment to our goals. We've overcome these attempts, but they continue and will continue as long as we exist. Few organizations have been more libeled than ourselves and fewer still would have the integrity and strength to continue on despite this. As soon as we knock one libelous allegation against us down, another will pop-up. It's the nature of being in the public eye. Despite all this, we have carried on over the years to achieve our goals.
At Perverted-Justice.com, there are no "The" when it comes to "cyber crime fighter." We are a team. Most people don't know that we're not just "one person" or "a few people." We continue to have the public register for our boards and volunteer, working their way up in hopes of being selected to be trained as a site contributor. We're not five people, hiding in a corner... we're not a nepotistic website of family and friends shunning outsiders. We are grassroots, nearly every top-level member of the website started at the same location: Forum registration.
Out of random strangers friendships have grown and will continue to grow. Our site administration, yes, plural... not just one person, works hand-in-hand on a daily basis. Our administrators didn't know each other prior to joining the website. We have gone from being strangers to being a well-working team. Each decision is agreed on jointly, there are no dictators here when it comes to administration.
Each volunteer to the website should know that they have the chance of becoming a contributor and becoming part of the team that works chat-rooms daily. Even you, the person reading this, could one day become even an administrator here, if you chose to work at it and do so. No good ol' boys network, just strangers who have become a team.
Sure, you know that we get predators and pedophiles arrested. But we wear many hats. While some in the print media like to be lazy and just call us vigilantes, the truth is far more complex and dare we say, interesting.
Training: did you know that we have trained police to do what we do at their request? And that we're going to only do more of this in the future as we develop various official training programs as part of becoming a non-profit? Probably not, but check the website. We post pictures from our training sessions with law enforcement. As well, we have cultivated volunteers that law enforcement has taken an interest in using. When law enforcement needs a phone verifier that sounds young... they know who to turn to.
Software Development: We don't just call up other companies and say "We need X, Y, Z and we need it by next month!" Over the years, we've attracted a few very talented coders who have worked with us on creating new software and applications to manage and organize the work we do. Some of these technologies have been shared with law enforcement, such as our Proxy Server, a cornerstone of our work that records conversations in real-time on a secure server not accessible to our volunteer. Beyond that, we have created many other applications and programs whole-cloth that make catching predators easier. Without these custom-made and designed applications, who knows if we'd be half as successful as we are.
Media: No, not working with the media, but being media ourselves. We've broken a few stories ourselves, most notably the work we do in our Corporate Sex Offenders wing of the website. How many people prior to our breaking the story knew of the organized and dedicated attempts by pedophiles to undermine Wikipedia from the inside in order to try to push through acceptance of their dangerous fetish? How many people knew the disturbing sinister nature of Canadian ISP Epifora before we broke the news that it was nothing more than a large-scale front for pedophiles? If you're looking for a media resource that is on the front lines reporting on the pedophile community, we've found it here.
While some would scoff and say we're confusing media and activism, anyone who pays even scant attention to the mainstream media, especially Cable News, knows that media is often activism. From a guy like Bill O'Reilly uncovering and castigating judges for inappropriate sentences to a man like Ed Murrow leading the fight against McCarthyism by uncovering it's insidious nature... some of the best media in United States history is often social activism brought to the masses.
Hey, we're not saying we're Edward R. Murrow or that we're even Bill O'Reilly, but we are pretty much your only credible outlet for digging into and exposing pedophile and child-rape activism for the ugly beast it is.
Healing Community: Most people don't know it, but we've created a Survivor's Discussion area for the survivors of internet predators and sexual abusers in general. Our protected community allows those who have survived sexual assault to come together, privately, in order to promote healing and a helpful community to deal with the trauma leftover from such criminality. Our community of sex abuse survivors has been active for years, we didn't have to create it... it was just the right thing to do.
These are just some of the hats we juggle, others are more obvious. Our efforts to educate parents, our history of providing speakers to events in order to get the word out, our material being supplied gratis to educators and education developers so they can create better programs warning kids, our work against organized pedophiles online, the watchdog aspects of the Corporate Sex Offender area, the testing out of parental software by our software challenge team... hell, you name it, we're working on it.
Sounds pretty heady, doesn't it? Keep an open mind and let's explain what we mean. By glory we mean fame or riches. So on face, it might sound weird since we do the To Catch a Predator show with Dateline NBC and receive a consulting fee for doing so. Still, you likely don't know our history or rules.
First, let's deal with fame. Our organization has had, since day one, a no-first contact rule with the media. We never contact the media first. We haven't even yet sent out press releases of any sort in our history, though that may change in the future. Of course we'll listen when the media has an idea, or when the press wants an interview. Still, we've never initiated any interview or any appearance on television, the radio or in print. Media approaches us, we listen and respond if we're interested in their idea. Over the years, we've turned down far more media than we've actually done.
Second, let's deal with money. Yes, we get paid a consulting fee for the work we do with Dateline NBC. However, in the first three years of the website, we didn't get paid a dime. The first three episodes of To Catch a Predator we did... didn't get paid a dime. So now we get a well-earned consulting fee for our work with them. However, the idea that this started out as a moneymaking venture is utterly false. Nobody involved with the website ever thought there would be any money involved with what we do. We're glad to have it though, as it will help us sustain our growth and arrest rates. Currently we're in the midst of filing to become a non-profit organization which have rules about where money can go and how it's used. We don't HAVE to do that, it's just a step we wish to take.
As well, we are constantly planning and performing more large-scale police stings without media or monetary involvement. We don't have to do that, we do it because we're in it for the arrests, not the dimes.
Wait, we're a team and we encourage people to feel free to volunteer... but we're picky? We're a picky team? Hmm. Yet, it's true. We're quite picky. Over the years, over 45,000 people have signed up for our volunteer forums. Currently, we have around 70 people who have been trained to become contributors or are in our contributor training program. 70 out of 45,000 means that we're very picky indeed.
Nobody becomes trained to do what we do and involved in the highest levels of the website without proving themselves first. This process takes months and months. You can't even send in an application to be trained as a volunteer unless you have four months on the forums and 200 posts under your belt... and that's just sending the application. Some people are on the forums for years before they're brought into our Junior Contributor training program. Why does it take so long?
Because we wish to have the best volunteers possible who have shown a combination of patience, intelligence and a pro-active nature. We're looking for people who exhibit these qualities to an extent where we can look at them and say "Yes, that person would do a great job on the stand." If we wanted to, we could just bring on people willy-nilly but that would harm the quality of our work. We're definitely not randomly picking staff... our people have to go through a testing and training period that exceeds the training that the government gives for military soldiers and exceeds the training time required for most police officers. That's how serious we are about what we do.
When we started out, we had zero contacts with police and no arrests. Obviously, when you're a group of citizens wishing to present evidence against a person in order to have him arrested by law enforcement, you're going to deal with some extreme skepticism from police. In late 2003 we developed the Information First program for police to contact requesting the information first. Then we set about on a upper-level staff basis to cultivate strong relationships with police departments across the country while making sure that random members of the website didn't bombard the police with contact that would make us look bad.
The process has worked to a fantastic extent. Previously, those who hate the website and the work we do would scream "They'll never get an arrest! Police will never take them seriously!" Anyone who even casually follows the website knows how wrong those sentiments turned out to be. Why? Because we fought to get police involved. At the start of each year, site founder Xavier Von Erck puts out his "predictions" for the year for Perverted-Justice.com. These predictions are more like site goals that we want to hit for the year. Each year, one of those predictions was always "This year we will do the first group media-law enforcement sting in site history." We worked towards it for years, even prior to partnering up with Dateline.
Problem is that in any sector, nobody wants to be first. But we kept fighting for it, we'd come close here but then a prosecutor would kill it... we'd come close there, but then a Chief would get nervous because it had never been done before. Finally, we racked up a litany of arrests in Riverside County, California and found the law enforcement that would be brave enough to say "We'll be first, sure, let's do this." We worked for years to get that first large scale law enforcement sting and the payoff of 51 predators over three days astounded everyone, including the police who had no idea of what kind of results they might see from this inventive venture.
Since we've fought and succeeded to illustrate the "proof of concept" that working with us on large scale stings are beneficial, we've been inundated with requests to do additional stings with law enforcement. In 2006, we did 13... more than one a month, for the entire year. These stings took place around the country and resulted in the arrests of more than 250 men from large-scale stings alone. We fought for this result, it was our goal for many years and to finally achieve this level of success is a testament to the dedication of our contributors who dreamt of these stings becoming a reality.
Lastly, we'll end with something that most people likely don't know. The idea has been thrown around that we're an unaccountable crew of lawless vigilante wild west outlaws! Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. We have layers of accountability that you won't find in traditional law enforcement agencies. With traditional law enforcement, there are shields in place to protect and hold harmless from lawsuits in many, many states. If a law enforcement official violates your rights, typically, it's your word against his.
With ourselves, everything we do is documented. If we violate the law, it's on paper. Law enforcement can be contacted. Because we work in every state, that means we need to be legally responsible for not just the laws of one state... or one county, or one city. We need to be above-board on a scale unimaginable to the general public. Not just criminally, but also civilly. We work the entire country, each state has different civil torts just as they have different criminal statutes. In order to exist and survive, we have to be above board in again, not just one state, but all states.
Let's not even focus just on criminal and civil statutes, we also have relationships with the media and law enforcement. If we go "outside the bounds" legally, we would put at risk our relationships with media and law enforcement in general. The idea that we have the ability to run amuck and do whatever we want is foolish. Each individual that gets arrested is reviewed prior by a law enforcement official who determines whether the chat is held in line with law enforcement standards. Our evidence passes through a litany of scrutiny higher than most traditional forms of evidence. It's a good thing, it ensures that each case our evidence brings is a solid case that will withstand legal motions against it.
To date, each case brought by our evidence has withstood defense attorney motions. To date, we've never had any of our volunteers charged with a crime, or even investigated for one. To date, we've not been sued in a court of law. The various levels of oversight will soon be expanded to include federal standards for a non-profit organization. We have a board of directors already selected and who will soon be in place. These people will run the gamut from educators to law enforcement to lawyers. The amount of oversight and care that goes into the site dwarfs any comparable entity.
At the end of the day, we're a very large organization. It can be intimidating. We're also quite aggressive, it's a trademark of how we operate. Some people are put off by that, they think pedophiles and predators should be handled with kid gloves... that's their opinion and they're entitled to it. Most people who come to the site and certainly those who dislike it have no idea of just these ten things, but the other one hundred things that you won't know about until you become a top level volunteer trained contributor. There's much that goes on behind the scenes that we simply can't show the general public because they're organizational and operational security measures.
Feel free to discuss this Opinions piece on our forums in the General Discussion area, and if there's anything else not covered by the FAQ's or this Opinions piece, hit up our "Ask the Administration" area of the forums to get an answer. Thanks for reading.