'Paedo hunter' who made £40,000 from blackmail jailed for 9 years A 47-year-old who posed as a 13-year-old girl in order to extort more than £40,000 from paedophiles was sentenced to nine years in prison earlier this year. Lee Philip Rees, of Marlborough Road in Roath, Cardiff, was found guilty at Cardiff Crown Court of 31 counts of computer hacking, distributing indecent photographs of …
Interesting point actually, he could have been done on an additional count of perverting the course of justice if any of his marks were under investigation by the police already.
Watched a documentary on Channel 4 a few years ago that was similar, a load of young lads pretending to be teenage girls on the internet, getting the marks to come over to their house where they confronted them on camera and (I think, memory is hazy) put their names and pictures on a "paedo hunter" website. They got into trouble as a few were already under investigation and one guy (I think he was married with kids) actually committed suicide right after being confronted.
Not the lads fault on that score. He chose to take his own life fully understanding the implications of what he planned to do.
That, right there, shows an utter lack of understanding regarding the mind of a suicidal person. Most people who commit suicide don't see any other choice they can possibly make. Suicide is an act of desperation, not a choice someone makes lightly. The person who drove them to that desperation is indeed partially at fault when there is such a person involved.
Regards the guy who topped himself, can't say I have a lot of sympathy for him either but I do have a great deal for his family and kids.
I've an 11 year old daughter and these are the things you try and keep at the back of your mind lest they drive you insane through paranoia which isn't helped by the media trying to sell copy by playing on your fears, Chris Morris nailed that one brilliantly.
It's impossible to tell someone just how much of a primaeval feeling it is to protect your child unless they have children as well, there is literally nothing you would not do to protect them.
And of course....
...by planting pictures on the "victims" machines, made the chances of conviction of the person he was targeting nigh on impossible.
Nope. The police and CPS *never* ask how the pictures got there, or they would disturb a carefully constructed entrapment mechanism. I have seen all of that in action in the UK, and I was appalled at how even the most basic questions were carefully avoided to ensure they got a conviction. If I find a bit more time I may even write a public report about it to expose these fools.
That was the point where I stopped all collaboration with the police. Incompetence is no excuse for unsafe convictions and abuse of law, and if the aim becomes securing a conviction rather than catching the real perpetrators (and thus locking up the exact people that can help chase such) I am no longer prepared to render any assistance. I don't deal with that area, but it's one of the reasons I don't carry USB sticks and have a fully encrypted machine.
Beware of panic and knee jerk driven laws, because it takes *ages* to get the deficiencies cleaned up, and you can be certain those will be enthusiastically abused in the meantime. Next time it may be you.
Yeah, but any defense counsel certainly would (and is legally required to do so). There are countless times when a case gets thrown out because the defense simply asks "How did you get that piece of evidence?". Even the most innocent and trivial violation of the chain-of-custody can cause evidence to be thrown out. In this case, the defense could simply argue that the police planted that evidence, and without evidence proving that they didn't, the evidence can be thrown right out the window before making it to trial (This 'paedo hunter' could have been working for the police).
At least this is how it works in the United States (Or at least supposed to if the prosecutors didn't abuse the whole plea-bargaining system and public defenders weren't screwed over so badly).
Yeah, but any defense counsel certainly would (and is legally required to do so). There are countless times when a case gets thrown out because the defense simply asks "How did you get that piece of evidence?".
Does not apply in the UK - all they need to prove is possession, so all you need to do to entrap someone is to get the images on their computer. You could do that in just about a hundred ways electronically, even easier if you have physical access.
The issue I have is that I would not have believed it myself if I had not seen it done to someone recently. The individual involved got in the way of a foreign government, so they did this. The result was loss of reputation, business and access to his children (has to be accompanied at all times), and police, CPS and judge did not even *bother* to ask questions (and there were many).
This is one of the reasons I keep tight control over systems and removable media. It's a sackable offence to use unencrypted USB sticks and external storage, for instance. That still doesn't stop anyone slipping in a USB stick in a bag (remember, possession is enough) or lifting your phone to make a dodgy picture (as most phones give you camera access without password).
By the way, if you play this one someone, stick it in a system directory like \windows\system or any of the numerous Windows update directories. The victim will never spot it, and the CPS will claim the victim placed it there to hide it. You don't need to worry about anyone trying to find you - all the CPS is interested in is turning your victim into yet another statistic.
Yes - it IS that dangerous if you do high level work.
Well, that certainly explains why the US created the Bill of Rights and put in some bits to prevent that when splitting away from British rule. Although I would've assumed that something would have been enacted in the last 250 years to cover that gap... The concept that the police can dump incriminating evidence on you, then arrest you for it is a grave miscarriage of justice...
"The concept that the police can dump incriminating evidence on you, then arrest you for it is a grave miscarriage of justice..."
It's been done a number of times. A good number of convictions in the 1970s were the result of simply being irish in the wrong place at the wrong time.
> Judge Eleri Rees – who is not related to the convict
We are all related to the convict. And as a Rees in Wales, Judge Eleri is almost certainly more closely related to him than the rest of us. (Although, I admit, she might have been a non-Welsh non-Rees in her younger days, and then made a couple of mistakes later in life.)
My first, immature, reaction was 'glad someone was making them pay', but even without putting images onto their machines, he was still allowing these guys to do what they did, as long s he could get a cut. So he was merely the, as it were, yeast infection on top of the prurient knob.
Indeed, but I suppose that would be where he got the photos and the videos. From my experience dealing with fraud, I would imagine that the targets would want verification photos/video to prevent this exact thing from happening (EG have the child write a specific phrase on their arm and show it on video).
I have never been so internally conflicted. On the one hand, he's fucking over kiddie-fiddlers, which while not the best outcome, is great, but on the other, he's most probably one himself.
When the fiddlers start diddling, who diddles the fiddle-diddlers ?! (That's the worst paraphrasing of "who polices the police" ever, but I'm gonna stick with it)
"I have never been so internally conflicted. On the one hand, he's fucking over kiddie-fiddlers, which while not the best outcome, is great"
There is evidence that paedophilia is the result of a failure of, or abnormal, brain development. We may find it distasteful but it is very possible that many of those involved got their kicks by electronic means only - and that may well have prevented them from turning their feelings into action.
Let's take a real world example - Benjamin Britten. Great composer, ephebophile (i.e. very keen on adolescent boys.) People around him know he had to be protected from himself and not left on his own with boys he found attractive, but he got amazing performances out of choristers most of whom thought very highly of him. So: what would you do about him?
There is a big difference between people like him and psychopaths who want to terrify and then kill children to demonstrate their power, like Ian Huntley, and conflating them all as "kiddie-fiddlers" is not helpful.
This guy got his kicks out of blackmail and it isn't hard to guess where he falls on the spectrum.
Then there are the legions of folks that have urges to do such thing but are prevented from seeking treatment because psychiatrists are legally obligated to inform the police even if there is no evidence that they have, or ever will, abuse children. So if you ever even suggest that you had sexual thoughts about a minor to a doctor, even in private and protected sessions, welcome to the Sex Offender registry and a life of everyone avoiding you and thinking that you lure kids to your sex dungeon with candy and a windowless van. But you can tell your psychiatrist that you have these urges to kill people in horrible and disgusting ways, but they legally cannot say a thing unless they fully believe that someone's life is in danger.
I know this because I work for an organization that works to prevent child abuse and to help victims. We've interviewed several abusers (Studying methods that can be used to prevent people from becoming abusers in the first place) and found that they ran into that exact problem and while attempting to find a support group, they found chat rooms full of people telling them how to get away with it and encouraged them to go through with their sick desires (or at least didn't discourage them).
This will never change because who would want to be known as the defender of child molesters?
Yup burn them at the stake, drive them underground, give a fiver to the NSPCC and then it all Stop.
Or you could take a more enlightend aproach and actually get results?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/in-germany-they-treat-paedophiles-as-victims-not-offenders-10387468.html
Anonymous as this relates to real people that I know. A little known fact of child abuse is that many abusers were themselves abused as a child. I had a neighbour many years ago who was seen as the local paedo. He came across as having an unhealthy interest in boys and was assumed to be gay (an assumption reinforced by his collection of gay magazines). He did have a lot of male teenage friends but from my understanding nothing that wasn't platonic, being fully self aware that his "interests" weren't what could be described as normal.
It took a chance conversation with my mother (who at that time was doing a psychology degree) to point out to him that he was a victim himself and his sexual outlook was a result of himself being abused as a young boy. He had what could best be described as a light-bulb moment and several months later married a woman who was fully aware of his past.
As my wife is a foresnsic mental health nurse, without giving away personal information she has talked about the sorts of things her patients have done and gone through. I assume it helps her deal with the reality of it being able to talk to someone. I've heard a number of times that a patient was abused, and went on to abuse. As a child they receive help, but as they stray into adulthood suddenly the doctors and nurses who used to help them now have to report them should they dsplay the characteristic cycle of abused turning to abuser. They drop off the radar, not telling anyone about what's going on in their head until with almost painful certainty they return to the system having gone full circle.
I'm not the most progressive thinking person, but even I can see we're doing nothing to stop the cycle by locking up after they've abused. But somehow the media and/or government have whipped the populance into a frenzy on the subject totally killing any sort of informed inteligent debate on the subject. For even suggesting this could be a mental illness that requires treatment is enough to get death threats.
anonymous because I don't want to be labelled thanks!
Abused becoming the abusers isn't all that true. The studies that showed that were flawed in their selection of study participants. Furthers studies have shown that there isn't a statistically significant increase in the percentage of child abusers in the formerly abused community vs the community at large. Those with the inclination to abuse children come from every walk of life imaginable, which makes it very hard to actually find the abusers and get proper justice (since the police, and the justice system, are operating on a lot of stereotypes). The organization I volunteer with supports abuse victims and we'll do a quick survey of their situation to figure the best course of action, and we've gotten reports of abuse by the rich and poor, men and women, unemployed and professionals, and from every race. Hell, we had one case where it is was a housewife sexually humiliating their teenage son, she was later caught and interviewed, which produced no evidence that she was ever abused in anyway and grew up in a very healthy and supportive household.
"That's the worst paraphrasing of "who polices the police" ever, but I'm gonna stick with it"
Bearing in mind that several policemen, including some in specialist child abuse units, have been convicted for similar offences. One has to wonder if those who are most zealous in any "moral" campaign are possibly trying to hide/deny their own darkest desires. You only have think about J. Edgar Hoover's persecution of "deviants" - and his apparently repressed sexuality.
A psychological study suggested that people who have an overwhelming need to impose control on others over "moral" issues - are indirectly trying to control themselves.
With reference only to the immediately previous post: http://gayhomophobe.com
But yes it does make you wonder about a lot of moralist demographics.
A psychological study suggested that people who have an overwhelming need to impose control on others over "moral" issues - are indirectly trying to control themselves.
I would be EXTREMELY grateful if you could somehow dig up a link to that study because it would be handy in so many areas. Surveillance and privacy violations, for instance.
"[...] grateful if you could somehow dig up a link to that study [...]"
Hmm - not sure where that nugget came from. It was a few years ago - it could have been online, a documentary, or a book - or just my own conclusion after absorbing those sources. You will have to assume it is apocryphal.
The following Googled and skimmed papers cover the topic of people condemning the moral transgressions of others - while transgressing themselves.
The terms "ethical dissonance" and "moral licensing" seem to cover the ground. The latter appears to suggest that if a person believes they have acquired a lot of moral "capital" in their condemnation of others - then their own transgressions are excusable.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20483854
http://portal.idc.ac.il/FacultyPublication.Publication?PublicationID=264&FacultyUserName=cy5heWFs
http://psych.stanford.edu/~monin/papers/Monin%20&%20Merritt%20Hypocrisy%20chapter.pdf
The victims of this scum may just have like a woman who looked a little more youthful -- but the shild abuse images would have been sent to them anyhow.
Without actual evidence even suggesting that the victims of this fan of child abuse images are guilty of anything looks like slander to me.
And I am proud to say that I am the guy who found this stuff on a dead laptop in the first place!!
Unluckily for Lee Rees, I am expert in computer forensics, and when he threw and broke a laptop in a rage, he should have binned it.
He has previous convictions for kiddy porn and is a complete con-man, his wife (at that time) had no idea what he was up to, but as an old friend of mine, and knowing my field of expertise, she asked me for help when she became suspicious.
There is a lot missing from the story, especially regarding the 'family in thailand'
Anyway,
glad my skills weren't wasted - Now I head up the Badbitcoin.org team, using those same skills to trace even more bad guys, their crimes are petty by comparison, but much less offensive to the senses.
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