A 12-year-old boy escaped from the car of an alleged abductor that he and a group of other children arranged to meet as part of a “catch a predator scheme” they had devised on the Snapchat app, according to Alberta RCMP, who are strongly discouraging this type of vigilante activity.
The boy was allegedly abducted on Monday evening after getting into the suspect’s vehicle in the Coopers Crossing neighbourhood of Airdrie, just north of Calgary.
Police said he and a group of at least six other children in the same age range, possibly as many as 10 in total, started a conversation with the suspect and arranged to meet him via Snapchat, without the knowledge of any parents, in an attempt to expose the man as a child predator.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned,” said RCMP Cpl. Gina Slaney.
The 12-year-old boy voluntarily entered the suspect’s vehicle so the other youth could record the interaction on video, police said, and the suspect then drove away. The boy later escaped from the vehicle while it was stopped at a red light and called 911.
The suspect fled in the vehicle, southbound on Highway 2 toward Calgary. With help from a Calgary police helicopter, he was later located at a home in the city’s northeast.
Airdrie RCMP have now charged a 37-year-old Calgary man, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, with numerous offences including abduction of a person under the age of 14, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, kidnapping and forcible confinement, and three counts of breaching a prohibition order.
Cpl. Christopher Hrynyk with the Airdrie RCMP’s specialized investigation unit said the suspect has “a history with police” and the breach charges relate to “previous investigations which did encapsulate minors being involved.”
“We’ve had more than one investigation and file with this offender,” added Staff Sgt. Mark Auger with the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team’s internet child exploitation unit.
Auger said the children’s attempt at vigilante justice is part of a “growing trend” on social media that began in the United States and has migrated to Canada.
“In my opinion, this all came from the television program To Catch a Predator,” he said.
Auger said the difference between that long-running American reality show and what people have been doing on social media is that the show involved police officers from the get-go, whereas the social media versions are typically amateur operations that put people at significant risk of harm.
“A lot of these setups and these stings will end in violence, in suicide, in sexual assault,” he said.
The evidence gathered by vigilantes “ad-libbing” their way through online conversations with potential predators also presents “horrendous” challenges for actually prosecuting any alleged crimes, Auger said.
“A lot of that will be what we consider tainted evidence because we don’t how the script went, how the conversation went. Was it entrapment? Who started the conversation down that road?”
Police also urged parents to have conversations with their kids about online behaviour like this.
“It’s amazingly dangerous what happened with this incident,” Auger said.
