‘The wife was screaming’: Glasgow paedophile hunter reveals hardest child grooming bust she’s taken part in

She has also vowed she won’t stop until the laws are toughened up in Scotland.

*Paula* is a decoy hunter in Glasgow, which means she messages men online and then fronts them up, at their homes or in a public place and tips off police.

She works seven days a week for the group, Child Protectors Scotland, even on Christmas Day.

Her work is not without risk. One man threatened to kill her and members will not meet anyone without a security presence.

Her actions, she says, have led to eight or nine arrests, the most recent last weekend, in Glasgow’s south side outside a McDonald's restaurant.

In the space of our interview (little over an hour) Paula, a warm and friendly former hotel housekeeper with two grandchildren and a couple of cats, has received more than 200 messages from men.

READ MORE: Depraved paedo kept more than 20,000 images of children at Bearsden home

Contact from women is rare, she says, but she has been approached by females asking her if she will have sex with men for cash.

Her last ‘front up’ involved a newly married man, with a two-year-old daughter.

She said: “We ask them if that’s them in the picture and then call the police.

“That one we did two weeks ago, there was a 13-year-old child in the house and it was one of the hardest things I’ve done, seeing that kid crying. It was heartbreaking to see the wife screaming.

“I don’t like doing a knock on the door because you don’t know what you are going to get. He has now been arrested.

“The men are suspicious sometimes. Sometimes when we turn up, they say, ‘I knew.’ But the urge is too strong.”

In Scotland, current legislation is such that officers conducting covert operations posing as children online are unable to prosecute abusers who engage in sexual conversation or indecent behaviour unless there is an intention to meet. In England and Wales, police can charge adults who send a sexual message to children.

Police say that while groups such as Paula’s may be well intentioned, they hamper possible prosecutions because they publish images and sometimes video of the ‘sting’ on social media. In England, there are plans to charge activists.

Paula says 99% of those who get involved are survivors of child sexual abuse or work in child protection. She suffered a single attack as a five-year-old and says this is the motivation.

There are five groups in Scotland, she says, with about 20 members in Glasgow.

She said: “It was my best friend’s dad. It went to court but he got away with it on a technicality.

“I started following the hunting community for about two years then a Scottish team opened up and I joined as a decoy.

“They give you a list of sites you can go on and you just sit on the page until they message you.

READ MORE: East Kilbride paedo jailed after engaging in sexual activity with 13-year-old boy

“I’m a 13-year-old female and I also have a 14-year-old. I have two decoys. We like to have (the contact) for at least two weeks. I’ve had one on my books for five months.

“I’m interacting with them daily and they have to lead the conversation.

“A typical scenario is, they will ask how I got on at school. They might tell me about their car, they will give me the registration. They give you quite a bit of information.

“I probably speak to about eight or nine men at a time. Usually I work off two phones and an tablet. My husband worries more about me speaking to them online than going out to meet them.

“A first I found it very hard to engage in sexual talk but now I’m used to it. "When I go to work, I’m 13.

“It's disturbing though. There have been times when I’ve gone without sleep.

“We like to move them onto Whatsapp and that gets sent across to police.

“I’ve gone out and met four men myself, with a disguise. We have two decoys and security. It’s like a proper run business.

“There will usually be two hunters and security. We prefer them to have their badges. There was one in Ibrox that could have gone really badly.

"He was going to travel down to Blackpool to meet a girl for sex.”

Paula uses a teenage picture of a relative, with her permission, and says: “She’s delighted she’s helped me take eight or nine men off the streets.

 “Every one of them is grim.They start off nice at first.

"You have got your fast groomers, your slow groomers and the ones that just want pictures. The ones who just want pictures, we would just ignore them and report them to the police.

READ MORE: Lollipop man caged after abducting and taking naked pictures of six-year-old girl

“One of them just wanted pictures of my private parts and said he would be able to tell how old I was.

In another message thread she shows me, she is asked to send some, “sexy pix."

When Paula declines, the messages get more unpleasant: ‘Topless, naked, no excuses now' and progress to calling her a liar and asking her to ‘s**** my c***.’

She said: “Most of the police, when we go to give our statements, they are fantastic. They say, ‘well done’. But as soon as it moves on, that’s it. They never tell us what happens.

“We are not vigilantes, we don’t harm anyone. As soon as we meet them we pass them over to the police.

“We only opened this group, two months before Christmas and now we have got 17,000 followers.

“It’s all about awareness for us. Police say, we are doing it the wrong way because we put their faces out there. But they arrest them, take them in, charge them and then let them go.

“We can’t call them paedophiles because they haven’t been charged, they are online child groomers.

“There hasn’t been any convictions yet in the eight months the group has been set up but I’m told some are coming to trial.”

Any webpage which allows young people to ‘chat’ is a risk, she says. Some groomers now use quizzes on social media to obtain sexually motivated information about children.

She said: “Anything you can chat on, they will get to you. They are clever.

“I would say to parents, monitor, monitor, monitor their pages.”

If they are sent any pictures of child pornography, Paula says the group contact police immediately.

READ MORE: Paedophile turned fake football agent found dead in Glasgow flat

Paula says she will continue to work with the group until Scotland’s laws are brought into line with England and Wales.

She said: “I will not stop doing this until parliament changes the laws on grooming.

“They should be sentenced for it. Most of these people get away with a slap on the wrist.

“In England, they are quite tough compared to us. As soon as you send three messages in England to a child, that’s a crime but not in Scotland. There has to be an intention to meet.

“I had to give up my job as a house keeping manager because of ill health but I couldn’t give this up.

“Once you are in, you are in. It’s hard to walk away.”

CURIOSITY GOT THE BETTER OF ME
By Caroline Wilson

WHEN I contact Police Scotland, I’m told an interview like this is simply giving oxygen to the publicity, groups like Child Protectors Scotland inevitably generate. But I’m curious to find out what motivates people like Paula, a seemingly pleasant grandmother of two, to get involved in something like this.

While the police force are unlikely to support such activity in the main, Paula maintains she has had positive feedback from individual officers and firmly believes there is a place for groups like hers.

It’s disturbing enough being aware that grooming takes place, reading about it, watching TV programmes, but to be in the room where it’s happening, over the course of our chat, is stomach-churning.

I’m horrified when she tells me she has received 200 text messages from potential groomers during our hour-long interview.

Whether you agree with her actions or not, in her mind, she has put eight or nine men with the potential to harm children under closer scrutiny.

PLEDGE FROM DETECTIVES

Detective Superintendent Elaine Galbraith, of Police Scotland, said: “Child Protection is a priority for Police Scotland and we will robustly investigate child abuse in all its forms, which increasingly includes online offending.

Police Scotland will always respond when information is received that a child or young person may be at risk of harm with a focus on identifying and mitigating any risk posed.

“It’s understandable that people want to protect children from harm but we would ask them not to take the law into their own hands.

"Revealing the identity of suspected offenders can jeopardise on-going investigations and it can give suspects the opportunity to destroy evidence.

"It can also put children at risk by making it difficult to identify victims or potential victims.

“We want to reassure communities Police Scotland is fully committed to the investigation of child abuse using our resources locally and nationally to protect Scotland's children.

“If you suspect someone may be abusing children online or offline then please contact the Police on 999 if you think there is immediate risk of harm, or 101."