Do-it-yourself sleuthing discouraged in Canada

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There was the online chat between an older man and someone purporting to be a teenaged girl. A rendezvous was set up. Then a meeting with the nervous-looking man, videotaped and posted on YouTube.

Is it evidence that a court of law could use?

Four young men in Chilliwack, B.C., are being investigated by the RCMP for posing as minors so they could uncover alleged pedophiles and confront them publicly while wearing superheroes' outfits, a prank that mirrors other cases of cyber vigilantes unmasking sex predators.

In the United States, volunteers with the group Perverted-Justice have done the same undercover work since 2004, sometimes in co-operation with police agencies. The group says it has helped put 549 predators behind bars.

In the United Kingdom, a woman posing as a schoolgirl ensnared her husband and reported him to authorities. A father caught a man who had tried to kidnap his son and frog-marched the suspect to the police station.

Canadian law, however, is different and police here have repeatedly tried to discourage do-it-yourself sleuthing.

One Canadian defence lawyer said the information collected by the Chilliwack foursome is unlikely to become evidence in a trial but could be used by police to initiate an investigation.

"There's no reason they couldn't rely on it to obtain a search warrant or a wiretap," said Frank Addario, past President of the Criminal Lawyers' Association.

The legal threshold to obtain a warrant is lower than that to convict someone of a criminal offence.

In a trial, however, the burden of proof is high so defence lawyers would likely challenge the authenticity of the online conversations or the videotapes that the Chilliwack young men collected.

Police and prosecutors wouldn't want to be in the awkward position of having the young men placed under cross-examination, Mr. Addario said.

In at least one Canadian case, a hackers' group known as Anonymous is credited with publicizing the activities of a Toronto resident, Chris Forcand, who was eventually charged with trying to lure a minor.

Toronto police, however, said it set up its own sting operation after it was alerted about Mr. Forcand.

Well-meaning amateurs put themselves in danger, risk interfering with ongoing investigations and may engage in illegal entrapment, said one investigator who deals with Internet sex predators.

"It's a very, very, very bad idea," said Detective Staff Sergeant Frank Goldschmidt, co-ordinator of the Ontario Provincial Police's strategy against child exploitation.

"No. 1, you never know who's going to show up. People put themselves at high risk."

In addition, officers who pose as minors on the Internet have to be trained so they don't illegally induce people to commit offences, Det. Staff Sgt. Goldschmidt said. "You cannot make people do what they wouldn't normally do."

Still, there is a perception that the authorities are too slow to act or has its hands tied by the legal system.

In 2009 in a village in Derbyshire, a pedophile chatted online with a 15-year-old schoolboy and almost convinced him to get inside his car. The boy ran away and alerted a teacher. The police was called but the boy's father took matters in his own hands.

Within hours, the father went online, reconnected with the suspect, initiated another meeting, then called police. When the father arrived at the meeting, police hadn't showed up yet so he grabbed the man and took him to the nearest station.

"I only trusted myself to catch him," the father told the BBC. "If I do it I know it's going to get done. The police are tied – they can't do this, they can't do that, they can't do the other. I can."

In another UK case, a 61-year-old woman in South Wales, Cheryl Roberts, suspected that her husband, David, was luring girls into sex.

She posed as 14-year-old in a chat room and conversed with him to confirm her doubts, then reported him. Police bolstered their case against Mr. Roberts by seizing his computer and finding child pornography in it.

The inspiration for the Chilliwack foursome appears to be the controversial NBC television show Dateline: To Catch a Predator, which lures men online with the promise of a sexual encounter with minors.

Perverted-Justice has co-operated with the show, reportedly receiving $70,000 for each hour of television produced. Critics have raised concerns about the group's lack of accountability and the death of Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr., a Texas district attorney who committed suicide after he was ensnared.