Law enforcement internet “stings” — do they help protect children?

By Steve Yoder . . . On July 8, 2018, Norman Achin, then a 50 year-old public school teacher living in Northern Virginia, signed up for the adults-only dating app Grindr. Two days later, he was contacted by someone calling himself AlexVA. Soon after they started talking, AlexVA told Achin that he was 14 years old. “I was looking for adult…

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Entrapment and ineffective assistance of counsel win the day — Illinois Supreme Court vacates conviction

By Larry . . . The People of the State of Illinois v. Shane Lewis (Docket No. 126705) decided June 24, 2022, deals with an egregious abuse by law enforcement and was clearly entrapment by any objective standard. Shane Lewis was charged with involuntary sexual servitude of a minor, traveling to meet a minor, and grooming. At trial, he asserted…

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FBI commits crime to entrap American citizens; Operates half of child porn websites

By Bryan Clark . . . Earlier this year we brought you an in-depth exposé of how, for 12 days in February and March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran the world’s largest child porn site, Playpen. According to newly unsealed documents, Playpen wasn’t the only site containing child pornography on FBI servers. The piece above can handle the…

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To catch a predator–oops–make that non-predator

How can you turn a lonely guy looking for a date into a predator looking for a victim? All you need is a computer and a cop. Thus we must hail Noah Pransky, an investigative reporter for WTSP in Tampa Bay, Florida, for exposing the way cops fish for men on adults-only dating sites and then arrest them for being child predators. When…

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