Ivor gifford, do you wanna come and sit down . All youve done for a month to two children is talk to them about having sex. Hunters told us they dont believe the police have the time or the resources to deal with the threat of online grooming. Around a dozen groups have sprung up around britain in the last two years helping to convict around 100 online predators. P0p p0p a new undercover group, petronus, has set up in south wales. Theyre uncovering new targets every day. This mum from newport is one of its decoys. He lives in leeds and is a bus driver and hes very keen on the 1a year old. Online shes jo. Shes speaking to dozens of Suspected Paedophiles who think shes1li. Ok, so hes just told me what hes having for tea, hes asked me if i got homework to be done. I replied loads. Now hes asking me for another picture of myself, so im going to send him a picture. Oh, hes just sent me a picture of him in the shower. Its the normal being friendly tactic then it will get to the stage he will send a picture of his penis as well. Sincejo and a small team of decoys began hunting in may, they say eight men, including a teacher, have been arrested three have already been convicted. Shes asked us not to identify her. I started off because i was a victim of grooming myself when i was 15 and id seen quite a lot of stings on the internet. People in my workplace dont know i do this, ive got family and friends dont know i do this and id prefer it that they didnt because people dont understand what we are doing. Its a bit surreal really, i will be cooking tea, my phone will ding and i have to talk to one of these men i got running round, then i go back to cooking tea and its kind of flipping between lives. To catch online predators, the Group Creates fake profiles with backstories and photos before entering adult chat rooms and waiting to be approached. I can be on some chat sites for three minutes and i got 70 hits off men trying to approach me. Its horrific to be honest. This is the man who set up and leads petronus. Online hes known as will hunting. Hes also asked us not to identify him. Im an ex Police Officer and a survivor of child sexual abuse. Fora number of years ive been round hunting groups, helped them start up. Ive also done my own decoy work anonymously. My aim is to make it much, much harder for these men to feel comfortable on the internet petronus caught this man alan mullen, a 67 year old architect who is married and lives in cwmbran. Hes arriving at court to be sentenced after he admitted sexual grooming online and attempting to meet a child. He was effectively into two of our decoys he thought they were 14. The group which doesnt broadcast its stings live recorded hundreds of pages of chat between them and mullen. He rang one of the decoys who was posing as a child during what mullen thought was her school lunch break. Hello, how are you . Im ok, thanks. No, im having it in a minute with my friends. I just got off to talk to you. Ok, i will text you later. 0k. He professed to be this father figure, it was classic grooming, but underlying all that was this horrible sexual deviancy. On the day he thought hed be meeting the girl in a newport park, petronus were waiting. You were going to meet sam today, werent you . For lunch. It was a bit more than that, wasnt it . The police are quickly on the scene to arrest mullen. Jim gamble used to head ceop the Child Exploitation and online protection centre. I think its fair to say its a tsunami, its almost in fact overwhelming. There could be over 100,000 people at any given moment in time in uk downloading indecent images of children. I refuse to believe that the interest is not played out in other aspects of their lives, including the potential for contact abuse. Are they more confident now that they perhaps wont get caught now as they were in the past . Of course they would because they dont see the resources being invested, they dont see self minded predators being arrested and brought before the courts day in day out, so when they go online its a lottery as to whether they get caught and they have to be extremely unlucky to be caught. In some instances, we do need to turn the tables. Mullen was prosecuted because of petronus. The court heard how hed been at a low point lonely and was physically incapable of sexual intercourse. He was given a 1li month jail sentence, suspended for two years. And hell be on the Sex Offenders register for ten. Nr mullen, were from bbc wales. How do you feel about today . Ashamed and deeply regret the situation. Why did you do it . Moment of madness. How do you feel about the hunter group . No comment. You are now a registered sex offender how do you feel about that . Terrified. Is this something you are going to be doing again in the future . Oh, god, no. This hunter group says it cant keep up with the sheer numbers of predators attempting to groom their online decoys. Ive got another 1a people who are actively talking to me. And i have another a 91 people lined up now. Theyve all shown interest in my decoy. Thats a hell of a caseload. Yeah, that gets added to daily. The police insist they will always respond to concerns about Child Sexual Exploitation. And they warn that, however well meaning, hunters could compromise investigations and should leave it to them. Jonanthan drake is the lead officer in Operation Netsafe, which combats Child Sexual Exploitation across wales. They shouldnt be undertaking that activity in the first place, thats my message, ok . Under cover policing of that nature should not be for members of the public to be undertaking. How else are we going to catch these people . Theres men injail so far this year in wales, several of them as a result of this type of intelligence. Weve invested significantly in dedicating resourcing to tackle online cse across wales. We work with Law Enforcement agencies globally, we work with National Crime agency, use Cutting Edge Technology as well to root out offending in all its forms, including cse, and well continue to do that until were sure children are safe online. Police told us 179 people were arrested in the first nine months of Operation Netsafe and that has safeguarded 125 children. Its not clear how many of the cases involved catching people grooming children online. Hunter groups say whatever is being done, its not enough and, whats more, theres public support for them. The home office says its given the National Crime agency an extra £10 million to nearly double its capacity to investigate Child Sexual Exploitation. Another £20 million is earmarked for the next three years. But according tojim gamble, its still not enough. As we sit here today, i doubt there are more than 30 officers across the uk who are actually online, at this very moment in time masquerading undercover to engage that low hanging fruit which is out there looking for the jessica 13 on a modelling site. How do you know that . Where do you get those figures from . From talking to Police Officers round the uk from the role i have in safeguarding, the role that im involved in in training. They simply havent got the resource to meet this head on or to even create an active and meaningful deterrent. The National PoliceChiefs Council insists there are more than 30 but they wouldnt tell us how many more. So whats the picture in wales . Im not going to give you details around the Police Tactics that are used, but what i can say is that we use a mixture of all different types of tactics, both undercover policing, Technical Solutions and we work importantly with Law Enforcement agencies across the globe as well. Just roughly, though, are we talking dozens, hundreds in wales of officers working to try to protect children . Specifically around online policing, if you like, and undercover policing, im not prepared to give you those details. The internet was used in more than 1,500 child Sexual Offences recorded in wales in the last year. Police are catching predators, but unlike hunters, they dont put their stings online. Police arrested Christopher Lane and he was remanded in custody after a hunters sting at his home near blackwood. A few days later, we visited and discovered it was his parents who were suffering the backlash. Thats the stone we had at the window this morning we had bigger ones out the back. Thats one of the reasons im too scared to go out. Because i dont know what is going to happen to me. The man had no right to actually video it off his phone without asking us first. And now our lives are wrecked. Lanes mother, ann, who is disabled by cancer and is bedridden, had barely slept following threats. We had stones lobbed at the back window, bits of breezeblocks, but they missed the back windows. Two blokes come around and said to him, they knocked the door. They asked if he was here. I said, no, he is not here. And thats when they said, youll need to watch your back. You want to watch your back an all. Theres been verbal abuse too. Nonces, paedophiles, stuff like that, then the first brick hit the window. Ive been told anyone shouting abuse, ive been told i got to log it, what they say, time it, i got to report it to the police. What are you afraid of, ann . Every bloody thing. Lanes ex fiancee jessica immediately ended their relationship and moved out with their baby daughter. It felt like i was in a nightmare. Every page i looked through, i was getting sicker by the minute, my stomach was turning and the fact he was doing it while being with me just hurts even more, like. Hes done it behind my back. The long term consequences that hes not gonna deal with is the fact that when our daughter gets older and she finds out about this i will have to deal with all the questions shes gonna give me, like, why did my daddy do this . Whys my daddy not been around . He didnt love her enough to be able to stop them friggin urges that he had to go talk to underage children who are just as vulnerable as my baby girl is. The lanes can make no sense of what their son did or whats happened to them since. I just dont know what went wrong with him. Or what weve done wrong as parents. I would hammer him my bloody self. Yknow . I would just beat the shit into him. A mother should protect their children. But what hes done. Its absolutely terrible. You know, its terrible. I just dont want to know him as a son. Jessica says their ordeal has been made worse by the hunter featuring her and lanes father in the sting. He didnt even say he was gonna do it. I think it was wrong. No one should have put the videos on that quick on facebook or youtube. Me or his family didnt have a clue what was going on. Think about the family and the aftermath, what they have to deal with. They have been basically bullied because of it all. Im meeting jeff cuthbert, gwents police and crime commissioner. He sets priorities for the force. Hunters have done more stings in his patch than in any other part of wales. I understand in this and many other aspects of crime or Antisocial Behaviour that there is often an impatience and i can understand that when people want to get on with things. There are now several dangerous individuals in jail because of these groups in the last few months. Yeah, and thats good when the evidence is presented to us and we can take it to court. What we dont know, of course, is how many potential perpetrators have got away with it because its not been done properly or walked away cos its not stood up in court, so it is an issue of balance. At Cardiff Crown court, Christopher Lane is about to be sentenced. His parents have no sympathy for him. He will go down. Helljust have to [earn his lesson the hard way. Hes just bloody stupid. He should have realised in what he was doing. Lane was jailed for two years and eight months and is now a registered sex offender. He made his bed, hes got to lie in it. End of story. He will have abuse inside. But they are now suffering on the outside. A day after we filmed michael and ann, police and the council moved them to a secret address for their own safety. This is whats happened to the house they called home for 26 years. I get what Paedophile Hunters do, but theres families who have to deal with the aftermath. It could put his mam in an early grave. Its not right. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to take my own life because i couldnt take the stress. If i didnt have my daughter, i wouldnt have anything to live for cos of what hes done to me hes really destroyed my life right now. I sympathise with that mans family. If hes a paedophile, i dont sympathise with him at all. How could i . But the fact is theres processes in place for a reason. When you carry out an investigation, people are innocent up to and until proven guilty. Streaming it live is about sensation. Is largely about self promotion, in my opinion. Live streaming before someones been through the process, you are then acting as judge, jury. The man who confronted lane is rob hunter. His real name is darren minto. Hes repeatedly refused to talk to us about the sting but im going to try again. Hello. Is that darren minto . Its paul heaney here from bbc wales. Im recording this call for oui programme. I am not interested, mate. Go away. Im going to try him one more time. Im not sure if we were cut off then. Id like to talk to you about the effect you have had on Christopher Lanes family. Listen to me, i told you and colleague if you continue to contact me, im going to the police for harassment. I told you, ive nothing to say. Wed be happy to speak to the police, mr minto. Why didnt you call the police instead of filming a family, putting them in danger . Dont try bullying me, mate. Im not bullying anyone. They had to leave the home theyve lived in for over 20 years cos of the video you posted online. We went out to do what we set out to do. We have exposed a paedophile, you are not happy with it, they are not happy with it, they have moved for their own accord, thats nothing to do with me. The problem is, mr minto, you filmed his family as well. They didnt have anything to do with it. His family decided to come into the video, mate. They dont get edited out. Why are you happy to film other people, mr minto, but you are not happy to speak to us . He hangs up. He seems to have hung up again. He clearly doesnt want to answer any more questions about what hes been doing or how hes been doing it. Its because of the unintended harm that some hunters can cause that jim gamble wants police to recruit and train an army of 1,500 volunteers. Id like to see the government engage in a sensible conversation about how we can educate and empower ordinary citizens across the uk by giving them the opportunity to sign up to a special digital detectives programme. And we could bring in volunteers into Police Stations across the country and we turn the tables on the predator. This is a tactic thats going to be low cost, high impact and it would be engage local communities in doing what most of us want, which is to keep our children safer. The policing minister nick hurd declined to be interviewed but says people should allow the police and Law Enforcement agencies to do their vital work by not taking the law into their own hands. The home office wouldnt comment on jim gambles idea. Petronus say they would welcome regulation for Hunter Groups. Tonight, will and jo are about to sting the man who wants to meet the decoy at newport Train Station. Hes basically communicating with one 14 Year Old Girl and getting her to speak to herfriend and persuading the girl into a sexual liaison with him and the first girl. They say hes on a two hour journey from his home because he thinks the girls will be home alone tonight. Hes sent instructions to both children on how do different sex positions. They dont know anything about the targets background, whether hes violent, or whether theyll be able to detain him. So why not call in gwent police sooner . I just dont think if we put this file to them midweek that they would have done this as quickly cos of resource issues. And this needs doing quickly. If they dont respond immediately and we stop the conversation, he now has no child to talk to. He will go back into chat rooms looking for real children. I cant afford to let that happen. I take responsibility for that i will not hand it over to the police. The train arrives and they spot the target. Hes straight on his phone. She aint coming. The man realises somethings wrong. Dont, dont be silly. You are absolutely surrounded in that corner now. You know it makes sense. Jo dials 999. Hi, id like to make a call through. Im outside newport Train Station on queensway on the pavement. The suspect is shown the graphic chat log. You didnt come here for a fantasy, did you, you didnt come here to stand here talking to me. Do you realise how serious the situation is . We are done the rest of it is interview in the police station. The Police Arrive within minutes. The man was charged with online grooming offences and remanded in custody. Hes the eighth man in gwent alone to be arrested because of hunters since last december. The National PoliceChiefs Council may not want hunters to continue doing this but the police and crime commissioner for gwent says its time Senior Officers and hunters got around the table. The message is, lets work together. I am very prepared to raise these matters now and its growing Public Awareness and public concern. To look at the operational on both occasions with the chief constable. Bringing them in as a Special Constable or volunteer and giving