Perverting Justice

"If you meet someone who tries to say it is, promptly laugh at them," Von Erck instructs his contributors on the PJ site. "One infamous example in site history was an older teacher who went online into a regional room and hit on an underage female. He represented himself as a math teacher, in his thirties, with a first name, and gave his actual phone number. Then he tried to say he was 'role-playing.'

"Sure he was. He was role-playing as a male with his actual name, profession, age, location and number, who talked about meeting an underage female for sex and tutoring."

As for Brian, he says he was finally won over because the baiter was so incredibly persistent.

"I wasn't planning on doing anything, but she kept bugging me for my phone number," he continues. "She kept pursuing me and trying to coerce me into it."

Von Erck scoffs at victims' claims of entrapment. To begin with, PJ baiters are not police officers, and the rules of entrapment don't apply to them, he explains smugly.

To further drive home his point, Von Erck offers this analogy: "Pretend that there is a 12-year-old sitting in a park dancing around and asking older males for sex. What should the male say? Yes or no?"

Brian said yes, and it's a decision he regrets deeply.

It took about an hour after the PJ bust for the harassment to begin. He says he was besieged with phone calls and e-mails, like "Fuck you, perv!"

Calls would come at all hours of the night, he says, often waking his family at three and four in the morning. He says he was upfront with his family about what had transpired, and most of them continue to support him. He says one phone call particularly sticks in his memory: "I remember one person said that I should commit suicide."

Brian tried to make it right, he says, doing everything the callers and e-mailers demanded of him. He put himself in counseling, but the calls kept coming. He sent "proof" to Perverted-Justice that he was getting treatment, but the harassment persisted.

Part of the proof, he says, was in the form of a "Right of Reply" -- basically an apology letter including evidence of psychological help.

"They told me if I would write a Right of Reply, my information would be removed, and I did that. That wasn't the case. Very soon after my bust, I was in counseling, and I provided them with proof. Still nothing happened."

PJ says the only way to be removed from the Web site is by entering counseling and establishing that you have done so by providing the therapist's name, phone number and a release from the therapist allowing PJ to discuss the case. PJ also says it must truly believe that any man who's demonstrated very bad thoughts is sorry and is attempting to change his life.

Perverted-Justice must almost never believe that such change is possible, since it has removed the information about only two men in the site's history.

Critics of the site say Von Erck and his cronies are playing God and hiding like cowards behind the anonymity of the Internet.

If they believe so much in holding their victims' names, ranks and serial numbers to the fire, why don't they disclose theirs?

What that caller had jarringly suggested that Brian do began to intrude into his thoughts. He became suicidal and says he was hospitalized for five days.

"I still am [suicidal]," he says. "Every day I think about suicide. When I got out of the hospital, things didn't change."

Brian's major at ASU was posted in the PJ forums, as well as the address of the professor in charge of his program. Brian had to drop out of school.

His home address was posted, and he says he was afraid to go outside for weeks.

He lost friends and alienated certain members of his family, but still Brian considers himself lucky. "I didn't have a job, wife or kids. Those are the people I really feel sorry for when they fall into this trap."

Brian continues to receive treatment. His problem, he says, had been sex addiction, not pedophilia. He's never touched an underage girl, he swears, and never will. The therapy has been good for him, he admits.

But, he asks, does PJ have to destroy its victims?

"PJ says they want to help, but they're not about helping children. They really want to ruin lives. That's what they get their jollies from. It has nothing to do with protecting children."

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Canadian Scott Morrow is the spokesman for a growing online community opposed to Perverted-Justice and its techniques. Morrow calls his site, which he started at the end of April, Corrupted Justice. PJers refer to him and his crew as "baby fuckers" and "pedophile enablers."

Anti-PJ sites such as Morrow's, the anonymous Von Erck says, are typically "organized by individuals who do not believe in our Age of Consent laws, who don't believe there is anything wrong with soliciting minors for sex."

Morrow (his real name, by the way) vigorously denies Von Erck's assertion.