February/2008: People often ask me how I deal with all the pedophiles and predators we come across. Truly, we delve into the depths of depravity to expose pedophiles and get internet predators arrested. It's a question that I don't like to answer, because the answer usually startles people. Not only does it startle people, I think it also puts people off a bit. The answer is that it's not nearly the most disturbing part of the job. Compared to some things, it's downright easy.

You read right, the worst part of the job isn't dealing with predators or pedophiles, it isn't reading their writing in order to expose them, it isn't interacting with them via Perverted-Justice.com to get them arrested. The worst part of doing what I do as the Director of Operations of Perverted-Justice.com and Wikisposure.com is navigating stupidity. I blog a lot about stupidity, my last blog was about the top five most ridiculous media experiences we've had, for example. Most of them were stupid pitches. Still, it's not even that sort of stupidity that is the most difficult to deal with.

The worst sort of stupidity to deal with, what makes this job very ponderous, is dealing with people who want to be your "allies" or who want to exploit going after pedophiles and predators for a personal profit. This is something I receive a lot of emails for. Anyone who is familiar with Perverted-Justice.com knows that we don't make many friends. There's only a couple organizations we tolerate in general, and when it comes to people outside of the organization, we don't often bother to build bridges. Most of the time when I get an email of support from someone who thinks we should partner with them, I don't bother replying.

That might seem fucked up and callous, but it is the way I prefer things.

Now, obviously, if you're interested at all in this topic, you're wondering... "Why?" Easy question to answer, and it can be done in one lone example of a self-styled activist that basically begged for our attention and that of everyone else in the world. When he didn't get it? He begged for the attention of the pedophile community and kissed their ass. Stupidity.

The example of Ron Tebo
I don't wish to pick on this guy Ron Tebo too much. He's just one example. Instead of this guy, I could have picked out a number of individuals and organizations over the years who have tried to coddle up to us. What Tebo is, however, is a succinct illustration of why I've always navigated us to stay mostly insular.

For those who don't know, Ron Tebo is a guy who saw Jack McClellan on TV. He didn't like what McClellan was saying, presumably, and registered the domain jackmcclellan.com. He's done a crapload of interviews about McClellan since then. CBS news, Larry King, ABC News, and dozens of other publications. But the guy has always been kind of a putz. First, his website didn't actually DO anything. One of our criteria for even listening to a person or even communicating with them is that they should at least DO something, anything. Back in the day when Tebo emailed me, I checked into him.

This is a guy that goes around making websites and trying to promote himself. He tried to make a site called ipranked.com and have users upload videos to it using a YouTube.com-like interface. When that didn't really take off, he writes strange and bizarre press releases talking about how he has refused to sell the domain and speaks in the third person as though he has interviewed himself. Seriously, take a second and click that link. Give it a read. Bizarre. Want more? More strangeness. After creating his "anti-McClellan" website, he then wrote the following weird press release. Social networking website and using McClellan's infamy to promote it? Yeeeeaaaahhhhh... okay.

So Tebo is a strange cat, and out of the blue wants to try to "take the banner" against Jack McClellan and online pedophiles. Of course, he slathers his slapped together website with donation buttons, his unhinged press releases beg for funding for his many projects and the guy goes around and acts the clown. Of course, because apparently it's the hip thing for every weirdo to do, he wasted his time emailing our administration address for Perverted-Justice.com.

Email from Ron Tebo - July 20th, 2007

I didn't bother replying.

There's plenty of people online who don't like me, and I'm cool with that. Being disliked and/or hated by people isn't a very big deal in the big picture. Fact is, I don't like many people and I'm fine with people not liking me personally. But where I demand respect is in my motivations and intentions. You've never seen me or anyone in the organizations I have a part in release weird ass press releases touting themselves and other non-related side projects. It simply will not be done. You've never seen our organizations go beg for money. Sure, we've established a non-profit website, but do you see big blinking f'n donation buttons all over PeeJ, Wikisposure and other websites? Do you see advertisements? No, and no.

End of the day, I started Perverted-Justice.com in the summer of 2003 and it had 100 hits a day. All we did was work on the site and it gained popularity, volunteers, and eventually tons of arrests. I didn't receive any income from Perverted-Justice.com until three years after it was founded and that income was a huge surprise. Couldn't really plan for it, couldn't anticipate it. Who would have predicted back in 2003 that we would hook up with Dateline to do a series of successful and popular sting operations? Who would have predicted all the arrests? Nobody. It was worked on and it was established without pandering or expectation. Definition of grass-roots, the entire damn project was an accident that went very well.

So one has to excuse me when I get a little annoyed at people like Ron Tebo. And there's a lot of them out there, over the years that has been illustrated. This goof really had no impact in "fighting pedophiles" or even "fighting Jack McClellan." Most of the successes against McClellan can be traced to legal actions taken against him in California or widespread media coverage due to his ridiculousness. One of those first reports was in the Bellingham Herald up in Washington State, I spoke with the reporter about the story. It ran, and it turned into a larger story. Large stories attract goofs like this. It's a fact of life, and one you learn to live with.

So what's the problem?
If it were just goofs like this getting "involved" and then fading away as they seem to do within a year, there wouldn't be a problem. I can't even recall the number of anti-pedophile or anti-predator sites I've seen come and go. They give it a shot, they find it's harder than it looks and they go away. Big whoop, that's not damaging to the overall goals that our organization and I have.

However, Tebo is a good example of the kinds of damage these n00bs (Excuse the net-speak, but there's no better term for it) can do. These guys getting involved have no idea what they're getting into. They have no idea of the kinds of virulent attacks pedophiles will try to wage upon them verbally, the kinds of bullshit that will be written about them personally. Tebo for example, had a picture of his son posted on a pedophile website and went kind of bonkers when the pedophiles (oh-so-predictably) started making sexual comments about his son. Recently, McClellan used a pedophile website to ponder suing ol' Tebo for using a domain that has his name and attempting to profit off his name in that manner.

End of the day, ol' Tebo poked a hornet's nest and didn't have a clue of what he was getting into. Now, had Tebo done this and just walked away, I wouldn't have much of a bitch with Ron Tebo. He wouldn't have become this strident example and would have faded into memory like all the other goofs I've seen come and go over the years.

The problem? Tebo is now encouraging the pedophiles with verbiage that has to be read to be believed. See, Tebo hasn't the stones to actually deal with pedophile activists, he didn't quite realize how many of them are out there. So now, he has panicked and ran into their arms.

Big, bad quoting spree of Ron Tebo on Annabelleigh.net:





I could go on for days quoting the ridiculous statements that this goof has laid out there. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem with people like Ron Tebo and the thing that drives me nuts about guys like this is that the only thing he's likely to accomplish? Unintentionally getting more kids molested by pedophiles. Pedophiles seek acceptance, they crave it. They come up with their arguments and their justifications, they try to convince people to accept them. It's their big goal, to promote the acceptance of their "lifestyle." Of course, they never throw in the extra sentence that their lifestyle consists solely of attempting to fuck children. That part is a bit too unsanitary, I guess.

Guys like Tebo, people without any chutzpah, balls, cajones, or backbone just play right into their hands. Rather than walk away silently from the verbal attacks he received, he chose to try to "build an alliance" by kissing the asses of hardcore pedophile activists. He chose to tell them everything they want to hear, that they're just misunderstood and they'd NEVER hurt children, that they just LOVE them. In short, he's gone on a pedophile message board and encouraged pedophiles to keep being pedophiles. He has sympathized with them.

He has sympathized with a crowd that houses and supports this oh-so-delightful group of people and worse? He has encouraged them.

That, as we've seen, is a very bad thing.

So if you ever wonder how hardcore PJFI volunteers deal with pedophiles and their ilk, remember that dealing with pedophiles and predators is far easier than dealing with random stupid non-pedophiles who stumble in the way like drunkards, wasting your time and making asses out of themselves pointlessly. After all, you can always get pedophiles and internet predators arrested...

...but you can't put stupid in jail.