Vigilante groups discouraged from confronting and exposing paedophiles

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has discouraged vigilantes from confronting and exposing alleged paedophiles.

Det Ch Supt George Clarke, the PSNI’s head of public protection, spoke to BBC News following two recent confrontations by a group called Silent Justice, after which one of the confronted men took his own life.

Police are presently investigating seven people based on information from Silent Justice, which is active in England and Northern Ireland.

But Mr Clarke said the group’s methods - which include livestreaming confrontations with alleged abusers - could jeopardise prosecutions in the Northern Ireland courts and endanger innocent people’s lives.

Mr Clarke said: “We could see a circumstance where an individual who has done nothing wrong is wrongly identified and is placed across social media as being someone who is a child sexual abuse offender.

“Vigilante identification could lead to vigilante action and could lead to violence being meted out to a person without any thought or legitimacy behind that.”

Mr Clarke warned vigilante groups did not have “the legitimacy, or the transparency, or the structures that underpin the police service”.

He added: “I don’t understand the motivation for the livestreaming of a confrontation.

“I’m conscious that the live-streaming of the confrontation might have a further impact on down the criminal justice line in terms of trial issues.

“The desire to put this out in the public domain may suggests to me there may be almost a desire to expose and almost sensationalise some of this activity.

“If they are motivated to give us evidence and help us develop prosecution cases, they don’t need to do the exposé piece.”