Perverting Justice

For those who play the game of catching online perverts, Raymond Dooley was the perfect villain. That is, exactly the type of guy the cyber-vigilantes at Perverted-Justice.com were looking for.

Perverted-Justice found Dooley in late January in an online chat room -- where the 23-year-old Michigan man entered into a conversation with a guy supposedly named Jason Delaney.

The banter got graphic. Dooley made plans to meet Delaney for sex.

Only he thought Delaney was a girl named Rachel. It was all a setup.

When Dooley showed up the next day at the appointed time and place, he was met with a television camera. Police later arrested him for "use of computer/Internet to communicate with another to attempt to commit criminal sexual conduct," and he was convicted last month. Dooley is awaiting sentencing and could face 20 years in prison.

Although there's nothing criminal about discussing sex with another adult, apparently there is if the adult on the other end of the computer is pretending to be a 14-year-old girl.

Here's a portion of the chat log -- posted on the Perverted-Justice Web site -- between Dooley and Delaney (as Rachel):

Dooley: I'm going to make you come all day long.

Delaney: Kewl.

Dooley: Better not let your mom get a hold of those panties. She'll probably be able to smell cum all over 'em and think something's up.

Rachel: lol

Dooley: In fact, just don't wear any. lol.

Rachel: OK, lol.

Dooley: So could I ask a favor of you tomorrow?

Rachel: Sure.

Dooley: Do you have any really short skirts and really small tops?

It was a trap that Perverted-Justice has set more than 690 times since the organization began going after what it calls "wannabe pedophiles" in July 2002.

The wannabes, PJ is careful to clarify, are "not pedophiles in the sense that they have necessarily committed the act of pedophilia -- however, if you look at the chat logs we post, you should be able to see that they have all clearly demonstrated interest in performing pedophilia."

What makes a situation like Dooley's ideal for PJ is that, not only did he say nasty things online, he showed up at a house hoping to do nasty things with a young girl.

That TV cameras were waiting and Perverted-Justice got great press were secondary to the fact that local police were able to make a prosecutable case out of the transcript of PJ's chat with him.

This rarely happens. Although the Web site claims to be responsible for 23 arrests, exactly three cases have resulted in guilty verdicts from PJ's sting operations.

Another glowing success is the case of Ryan Hogan, a 24-year-old New York fireman who allegedly tried to seduce who he thought was an adolescent girl while NBC's Dateline was filming a segment on Perverted-Justice that has yet to air.

PJ nabbed him on March 8, when a member posed as a 14-year-old with the computer-chat room moniker of "cuteashley."

According to PJ and court papers, Hogan said he was looking for a good-looking girl to have fun with. Here's an excerpt from their conversation, taken from PJ's Web site:

Hogan: what are you doing tonight?

cuteashley4u1990: nothin. bored. u?

Hogan: hoping to get some. lol.

cuteashley4u1990: lol thats kewl.

cuteashley4u1990: ur hot.

cuteashley4u1990: can u bring condoms?

cuteashley4u1990: >?

cuteashley4u1990: i dont wanna get preggers.

Hogan: i understand that.

cuteashley4u1990: kewl.

Court records say Hogan then talked about "doggie style" and oral sex, and he said he loves "going down on a woman . . . You need a guy to go down on you." Then he asked cuteashley: "Ever think about anal?" Ashley responded with: "Does it hurt?" Hogan said: "At first, but then I think you would like it."

The conversation continued over the course of a couple of days, with Hogan wavering between his desire to "pound " cuteashley and worrying about the immorality of the actions he was proposing. At one point, he sent Ashley a live feed of him masturbating in an Engine 237 sweatshirt.

And Hogan got his.

Later, a Dateline camera crew confronted him outside the Brooklyn firehouse. Hogan has been indicted and is awaiting trial.

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People who take it upon themselves to put a stop to predators like these look like heroes.

After all, they're fighting sexual deviants across the country, using Internet chat rooms. They seem to be exposing the very perverts who parents worry will take advantage of their impressionable kids. And they're doing it in grand style.

But critics argue that many of the men PJ meets and subsequently lures in for humiliation are certainly sleazy, but hardly guilty of a crime. That is, authorities don't often agree with the organization's tactics, and the overwhelming majority of the nearly 700 "busts" on the PJ Web site are never prosecuted.

PJ uses profiles of mostly adolescent girls, complete with sassy screen names and photos.

Its operatives plop themselves into regional chat rooms and enter into conversations, offering their fictitious personae as bait for the sea of pedophiles they claim are hunting victims in cyberspace.

PJ calls its operatives "contributors." These baiters pose as young girls and are typically flirtatious, and it's not long before the conversations turn to sex. She will say she's not a virgin, that she likes older guys. She'll ask for a picture, and tell him he's "hot." She'll extract as much information about her mark as she can: what part of town he lives in, what he does for a living and, above all, his telephone number.

An additional operative, called a "phone verifier," sets the hook by giving him a quick call, pretending to be a young, horny teenager. Sometime thereafter -- when the PJ contributor feels he or she has gotten enough perversion on a chat log -- the conversation will be terminated. The confused, usually young, man on the other end of the keyboard will be directed to a Web page with an ominous warning of what is to come:

So, you're looking at this page. Most likely, your day just changed for the worse. From here, you can either help your days get better, or you will cause them to become even worse yet. The website your perverted chat-log has been posted on gets anywhere from two to thirty thousand hits a day. Our forums have over ten thousand members who are, at this second, finding out exactly who you are. Don't believe us? You will.

Next, the man is tried, convicted and effectively sentenced by a mob of devoted, self-righteous, cyber-vigilantes.

In the past year, 21 Arizona men have found themselves looking at this message on their computer screens after what they thought had been a conversation with a teenage girl.

Typically within a few minutes, the phone rings, and it doesn't stop ringing for weeks. Hang-up calls, threats and anonymous messages abound. The circle expands, the mens' bosses are called, colleagues are e-mailed. Parents, family and friends are similarly contacted. Repeatedly. Anonymously.

The PJ victim's home address, phone number, photo and other personal information, sometimes even the license plate number of his car, are posted on the Internet.

Suddenly, a Web site full of people who delight in the public humiliation of such men get in on the game. Harassment is coming from everywhere.

And the media -- such as Phoenix television station KPHO, which did a gushing story on PJ in March -- is often right behind.

Critics say the title "Perverted-Justice" is perfect for what the organization manages to level against its victims.

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PJ is the brainchild of a shadowy figure who zealously guards his anonymity (what he calls his "government name") and who goes by the handle "Xavier Von Erck." At 24, Von Erck's been on the 'net for nearly a decade, describing himself as a libertarian, an atheist and a resident of Portland, Oregon.

He also is an avid gamer; his favorites include "Madden 2004" and "Battlefield 1942." He really likes "Civilization III," where the ultimate goal, according to Computer Games Magazine is "staking your place in the grand pantheon of world leaders" by waging war against civilizations and building empires.

And Von Erck has built quite an empire in Perverted-Justice.

Only this is a game he has managed to play both in and out of cyberspace -- one replete with a Perverted-Justice product line that includes women's thong underwear with the inscription "CONTENTS AGED AT LEAST 18 YEARS" and baseball caps, coffee mugs, sweatshirts and boxer shorts with the organization's insignia on them.

The concept is nothing new. Baiting.org was doing a similar thing, sans the merchandising, in 2000. Pranks, really, in which a baiter would slip into a chat room, pretend to be a young girl and, once he had a man thoroughly hooked, mention that the operative had a penis he would like to use on him in a particularly painful way. It was designed to amuse everyone other than the mark.