A blogger called "chainsawzombie" also wrote about Perverted Justice this week.

http://chainsawzombie.blogspot.com/2006/06/long-awaited-second-paedophile-post.html

Tags: dateline, nbc, perverted justice

At least one person who responded to an earlier post seemed to feel that I'd been unfair. To address this, I'm willing to give each side of the CJ/PJ controversy one blog entry if they so desire. Here's how it works.

* This is intended to provide a forum for debate about issues. Therefore, no personal attacks on individual members are allowed. This includes posted links and "outing" people who wish to remain anonymous.

* It needs to fit into the space allocated for LJ entries. If it's longer than a few paragraphs, I'll still post it, but it will be behind an LJ-cut tag.

* I don't know any of you personally, and I'm not interested in playing Barney Fife and trying to find out your names. That said, we need to prevent fraud and sock-puppetry. To do this, I propose that the entry be posted on one of your websites by an established member (preferably an admin). Please leave a comment when it's ready.

* When I post it, I'll include a very brief introduction attributing it to the author(s). If there are any personal attacks, those will be removed. Beyond that, I won't change anything. Once posted, comments will be allowed.

* Sources/citations to back up assertions are encouraged, but not required.

If you have any objections to these rules, please comment. Otherwise, you're free to participate or not.

Update: I created a new blog for the discussion of PJ/CJ.com issues at http://pjcivil.blogspot.com/ . (There was an announcement posted on CJ.com. I also tried to post to CJ.net, but got an error message when I clicked on the validation link; therefore, I wasn't able to post anything to the board.) The site http://pjcivil.blogspot.com/ now has anonymous commenting enabled - sorry about the earlier oversight.

Tags: dateline, nbc, perverted justice

My previous post about Perverted Justice, Corrupted-Justice.com, and Corrupted-Justice.net attracted a lot of responses today. It turned out that a poster at Corrupted-Justice.com had linked to it, and Corrupted-Justice.net had picked that link up. Some of the responses were ... interesting. I got a couple from an anonymous user who claimed to be an administrator at CJ.com and made some comments about how 13-year-olds should be allowed to have sex with adults if they so chose. Sounds like the usual pedophile rationalization, right? Coincidentally, these posts dovetailed perfectly with CJ.net's claims that PJ's critics were just a bunch of pedophiles.

But I noticed another coincidence. There was a later post defending PJ and insisting that some of the criticisms had been blown out of proportion. And this post and the other three that claimed to be from a pedophile CJ.com member HAD THE SAME IP ADDRESS. At this point, it looks like some very slimy sockpuppetry, though I'm willing to consider other explanations.


Note: the specific information about the offending IP has been removed and saved to a private entry.

Update: Looks like I may have just gotten a second one. Unbelievable.
http://mrscake.livejournal.com/164648.html?thread=323112#t323112

Update II: The person responsible for the first one apologized, which I appreciate.
http://mrscake.livejournal.com/164648.html?thread=329768#t329768
At this point, I'm willing to drop the matter, and am not interested in seeing any action taken against this person.

Tags: dateline, nbc, perverted justice

WaPo had an article about Perverted Justice earlier this year, and Rick Ross has a collection at http://www.rickross.com/groups/perverted_justice.html . Perverted Justice responded to a watchdog group, Corrupted-Justice.com, by setting up another site, http://www.corrupted-justice.net .

Corrupted-Justice.net makes a powerful statement about Perverted Justice. They have an entire forum dedicated to revealing personal information about members of Corrupted-Justice.com at http://www.corrupted-justice.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 . We're not even talking about sex offenders here - this would just be the people who disagree with them. When the Perverted Justice group makes a "bust", they often make a point of posting information not only about the accused, but about his family members too.

This reminds me a little of "Sophie Scholl" (earlier entry), where students were executed for passing out leaflets that criticized the Nazi government. Ironically, one of the leaders of Perverted Justice has a personal website called AngryGerman.com . It made me think of Roland Freisler, the judge who made a point of screaming at the White Rose defendants before handing down a death sentence.

Tags: dateline, nbc, perverted justice

Recently, I considered volunteering for Perverted Justice (http://www.perverted-justice.com), a group of people who work to catch online predators. They're apparently shown on Dateline occasionally. But when I took a closer look, some things seemed strange. For example, there were these conspicuous but ineffectual attempts at secrecy. Some of the members may be abuse survivors trying to work through their own issues, and there was a lot of emotion. It wasn't that the people weren't well-intentioned; most of them seemed to be. But there have already been some problems, and it's quite possible that there will be more in the future.

A group called Corrupted Justice (http://www.corrupted-justice.com) is critical of Perverted Justice. A few of the comments were typical complaints - the organization is too cliquish/secretive/intolerant of dissent. But other things were a little more worrisome.
http://www.corrupted-justice.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=43
One poster referred to using an employer's databases to get personal information about suspected predators. (And AFAIK, misusing DoD data is a pretty serious matter.)
http://www.corrupted-justice.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2402
They may also have gotten ahold of some SSNs.
http://www.corrupted-justice.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3772

The idea of this being done in the name of child protection is especially disturbing. It seems like an insidious attempt to silence critics. "What? You think we should obey the law? I bet you must be a perv too." OK, the term for people who question them is apparently "enabler." Does anyone remember the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Anakin says, "If you're not with me, then you are my enemy." and Kenobi says, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes?"

Tags: dateline, nbc, perverted justice