The violent turn 'pedophile hunters' have taken in the US

While it is no longer on the air, Chris Hansen's "Dateline" segment "To Catch a Predator" has inspired a legion of vigilantes over the years. These people will create content posing as minors on dating apps or social media websites to target the people who message them. But according to a new analysis from The New York Times, a growing number have taken it to the extreme and begun violently attacking their targets on livestreams.

Forget arrests, 'we count bodies'

Since 2023, there have been over 170 violent vigilante attacks by so-called pedophile hunters, according to the Times' analysis of hundreds of videos and social media posts. Footage of the hunters shows them "chasing their targets through retail stores, beating people bloody on public streets and shaving the heads of their targets." In more severe cases, "people have been hospitalized with serious injuries."

The Times identified at least 22 individuals and groups who "inflicted violence in the name of pedophile hunting in the last two years," while 40 others made similar content without violence. Most of the violent actions started within the past year. There has been a "notable increase in overt physical violence within these groups," said Emma Hussey, an Australian criminologist who studied American pedophile hunters at Queensland University of Technology, to the Times. Of the 22 violent parties identified, only seven appeared to have been criminally charged for their actions, according to police and court records.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The violent content that comes from these interactions is "popular in online circles that feature crude and hypermasculine material intended to cater to young men," the Times said. It has also been lucrative for hunters, who have gained hundreds of thousands of followers. With the "growth of internet platforms that claim to embrace free speech," the pedophile hunters have been "buoyed by the ability to publish their videos with few restrictions."

In some cases, the hunters have worked with local law enforcement to arrest and prosecute the predators they targeted. But the violent groups are often less concerned about working within the criminal justice system. "We don't count arrests and catches," said Joshua Mundy, a co-founder of popular hunter group Dads Against Predators, in an Instagram post claiming that DAP had caused more suicides among its targets than any other group. "We count bodies."

'People don't get to be Batman'

Despite their growing popularity in some online circles, these groups put innocent bystanders in danger when they attack people and jeopardize criminal cases, law enforcement experts said to the Times. Attacking someone so you can "make money on social media is a crime," said District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Real life is "not a comic book — people don't get to be Batman." Police officers are responsible for investigating and enforcing the law because "they have the tools to get the facts right and stand these cases up in a court of law."

Vigilantism is "almost by definition spectacular," as it is a "punishment show," said Laurent Gayer, a senior research professor at the Center for International Studies in Paris, to the Times. Throughout history, vigilantes have relied on theatrics to build an audience of supporters for their controversial actions. Pedophile hunters are "violent entrepreneurs in the most literal kind of way," Gayer said. "They have their little enterprise with its own logo, its own style."

The original predator catcher, Chris Hansen, has continued to catch predators on his streaming network, but he has doubts about this new class of copycats. In these vigilante cases, it is "true that some bad guys are exposed," but because of "their methodology and how they often make such a show of it, they are tainted cases," he said to the New York Post. They mainly "act clownish or they assault people," and "regardless of what they might say, their cases rarely get prosecuted."