The subject of online vigilante groups is in the news this week in Sheffield. In an incident on Monday, residents of a flat block were terrified when five men entered the building and roamed the corridors, banging on doors and claiming they were from a hunter group looking for a target. They left empty handed after menacing residents for 90 minutes.
These groups typically operate by using decoy profiles online to pose as underage children, then trapping offenders who send them lurid, sexually explicit texts. They sometimes pass this evidence on to the police first – but more often, it results in them luring the offender to a location and apprehending them. Or, they simply go to their house and often live stream the confrontation.
There is no law against entrapping paedophiles this way. However, the groups toe a line as they can slip into other illegal acts, such as of violence, extortion and blackmail. Or, they can end up publicly accusing the wrong person or confronting them with insufficient evidence.
As our gallery below shows, despite these methods, they do get results. These are just nine of dozens of cases seen in Sheffield Crown Court in the past two years where they were first arrested due to paedophile hunter groups.
1. Cases brought to court by paedophile hunter groups
Dozens of cases in the past few years have been brought to Sheffield Crown Court by online 'paedophile hunter' groups. Photo: Alastair Ulke
2. Luke Pryor - arranged a meet up near his home
Luke Pryor, formerly of Deerlands Avenue, Parson Cross, Sheffield, was originally convicted in 2020 for three counts of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and for three counts of attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act. However, in 2022, he went on to message the decoy profile of a 13-year-old girl which had been set up by a paedophile hunter group called Defending the Innocent and arranged a meet up on Deerlands Avenue. He was jailed for two years. - https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/sheffield-predator-jailed-after-he-is-snared-by-paedophile-hunter-group-3834725 Photo: SYP
3. William Grassby - court has "no confidence" they could be rehabilitated
William Grassby, aged 49, remained silent as Recorder Ian Mullarkey sent him to begin a two-year prison sentence, during a hearing held at Sheffield Crown Court on March 9, 2023. Recorder Mullarkey told the court he had ‘no confidence’ that Grassby, of Spring Close View, Gleadless Valley, had a ‘realistic prospect of rehabilitation,’ after he committed a second lot of offences while under investigation for the first. Summarising the circumstances surrounding Grassby’s latest sex offences, Recorder Mullarkey described how Grassby had entered into online communication with a boy he believed to be 14 years old, but was in fact, an adult posing as a child. In his first offence, he was detained by a hunter group at Meadowhall Interchange. After this, he was caught by an undercover officer posing as a 12-year-old boy online. When he was arrested, Grassby’s electronic devices were seized which divulged his engagement in multiple sexual communications with suspected children. He was jailed for two years. The court said he had no realistic prospect of being rehabilitated from his sexual desires. Photo: SYP
4. Mark Best - tried to arrange meet up at McDonald's
Mark Best, 57, of Baslow Road, at Totley, Sheffield, who has previous convictions for sex offences, struck up a conversation with several decoy online profiles, one of which claimed to be a 13-year-old girl. While sending explicit messages he said he could "go to prison" for what he was doing. The vigilante group eventually set him up to meet with an adult decoy and apprehended him. He was jailed for 48 months and deemed to be 'dangerous'. - https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/sheffield-sex-offender-trapped-by-paedophile-hunters-said-he-was-glad-to-get-caught-4002272 Photo: SYP