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'Vigilante? I'm a normal guy...' Meet Stinson, the Paedophile Hunter

When we met Stinson Hunter, it was clear that he was no more than a normal man. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, he was carrying his belongings in a rucksack and wore a cap to cover a scar on his head.

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The scar, he tells us, was sustained in a hit-and-run attack during a sting on a suspected offender in Lye.

The 33-year-old, who began his hunting operations in a Stourbridge flat, is no obvious super hero.

Over the last two years, Stinson has posted conversations and videos of men from Wolverhampton, Telford, Stafford and beyond on the web, all of whom exchanged messages with him on the understanding he was a child under 16.

Despite fearlessly coming face-to-face with these people, there is nothing immediately extraordinary about Stinson.

Stinson Hunter in Nuneaton.

But as we walked through the town where his controversial documentary, The Paedophile Hunter, was filmed, the reaction from the Nuneaton public would indicate otherwise.

Grown men approached him, clearly touched by his work uncovering some of the most predatory individuals on the internet, to share handshakes and offer embraces. Horns honked their approval and schoolchildren waved their acknowledgement.

Adjusting to life in the public eye well, Stinson welcomed them as warmly as he'd welcomed us, thanking them for their support as they told him how highly thought of he was. It was clear from the way that he articulated himself that he was an intelligent man, talking quickly and succinctly, mixing legal lingo with the occasional profanity.

Lighting a cigarette with tattooed hands that displayed a colourful mix of professional artwork and 'prison ink', Stinson explains openly how he'd reached the point in his life where hundreds of thousands of Brits looked to him to catch child abusers online.

From being exposed to child prostitution rings when growing up in a children's home to the 10-year prison sentence that absorbed the first six-and-a-half years of his adult life, Stinson told the tale of his life candidly, pulling no punches and never censoring himself. He started by telling us his real name.

"I was born Kieren Parsons but changed it legally by deed poll to defy Facebook, who kept deleting my accounts on the grounds of having a 'fake name'," he tells us in a Nuneaton restaurant. At this point Stinson wasn't even sure where he was sleeping that night, something which didn't appear to bother him in the slightest.

Getting to know him better explained why the idea of having to sleep rough didn't perturb him. "I moved to Tamworth from Nuneaton when I was eight with my mum and stepdad," he explains. "We weren't bad off, I had clothes and money and food – I'd never bad-mouth my parents for my upbringing."

It was Stinson's own self-confessed 'little s**t behaviour' that led to him going into care when he was just 13.

He explains: "When I was 12 I was at a friend's house watching MTV and just did a line of speed. I don't regret it – whatever I've done and been through was all part of the journey and path that led to now. I did drugs because I wanted to.

"I was kicked out of three high schools and I was just a nightmare, basically. My behaviour was awful."

Moving to a children's home didn't result in Stinson turning over a new leaf. He explains: "There were grooming gangs operating from the children's home – not the staff but guys from Birmingham coming over to get young girls.

"My friend was gang raped when we were both 14. Another girl in the home was in with the gang and would tell others that if they went along with her to 'work' they'd get clothes and money and phones – this was a time when no one really had phones, so for kids that had never had anything in their lives it was a really big deal.

Stinson talks to his friend Grimes

"They'd go along and the gang would put them into prostitution."

Stinson tells us about this as though he's discussing something as conversational as the weather. For someone that's been working for the last few years dealing with the horrors of online sexual predator behaviour, he seemed desensitised to the abuse he was describing without being flippant about the seriousness of the situation. It's a harrowing tale to hear.

At 16, Stinson met his biological father for the first time and was signed out of care to move in to his dad's home in Birmingham. The relationship quickly broke down, by which point Stinson's involvement in drugs had graduated to heroin, something which he chose to do after seeing gritty movie Trainspotting.

"I was a functioning addict, and did heroin whilst I was working in telesales. Me and my dad didn't get on and he moved away, so I was doing what I wanted."

It was when he turned 17 that Stinson made the decision to do something that changed the course of his life. He set fire to the cloakroom of a school, causing £250,000 of damage and resulting in a 10-year prison sentence.

He says: "I was on the war path; I knew I was going the wrong way and I just wasn't well as a person. I was broken and no one wanted to fix me. I was ruthless. Before my sentence I'd just mouth off.

"At one point a fellow prisoner threw food at me through the bars of my cell so I sharpened a plastic knife and cut his face. I served six years and eight months in the end, and was refused parole."

It struck us that Stinson's candid and open descriptions of his past were a means by which to protect him from criticism that detracts from the job at hand. Labels such as 'ex-con' and 'ex-drug addict' obviously exhaust him, and he feels his past is irrelevant to his current work to expose paedophiles.

Stinson's life wasn't all years of negativity. During his time in prison, he studied with the hope of going to university on his release. When he moved to an open prison in Sudbury aged 24 he worked at a stable and in a number of charity shops.

On his release he began a social sciences degree at Derby University, working three jobs to make ends meet. When he began his second year however, his outlook changed. He says: "I dropped out of uni because I knew I couldn't be what I wanted. I wanted to help people, maybe be a shrink or something, but I knew with my criminal background I'd never be able to work with people in that way."

From there Stinson began 'partying hard', drinking heavily and spending time with friends.

"In 2008 I met a girl and we broke up 18 months later. I was devastated. A friend came to see if I was OK and brought booze, mentioning she'd been IDed to get the beer. I've got an inquisitive mind so I wondered what would happen if we put her picture up online – it was just an idea at that time.

"That's when we made our first sting. Well, we didn't film him, we just watched him arrive out of the window."

It wasn't until 2012 that Stinson decided to make it an operation, based at his home in Stourbridge.

"It started with a profile on a dating site and a guy contacted us, telling us he was a 47-year-old mental health nurse. We got him in a Birmingham hotel under the pretence of a 14-year-old virgin and we videoed it.

"We wanted to raise awareness for public safety on Facebook so we put it up online and have done it ever since, honing our technique."

The Paedophile Hunter: Stinson

Since then, Stinson has attracted more than 450,000 people to his Facebook page where he posts the videos, along with in excess of 64,000 followers on Twitter. The operation caught the attention of Channel 4 and became one of the most challenging documentaries in the broadcaster's recent history.

BAFTA award-winning director Dan Reed approached Stinson a number of times before he agreed to do the documentary.

Stinson said: "Dan kept mithering me but I didn't want to do it. I just didn't feel confident enough. After he sent me a number of emails I got in touch and agreed to it because people do need a human connection. If you can't see my face are you going to trust what I'm doing?"

When the documentary aired, Stinson became a recognisable figure – quite a leap from his previously undercover operation.

"I expected a bit of attention, particularly after the documentary aired, but not this much. It's nice to be thanked by strangers but I'm not that guy at all, I'm just a hat down and head down kind of person."

For Stinson this has meant changing the way in which he catches predators online.

"Now the documentary has been seen by so many people, paedophiles know the technique I'm using so it's just not going to work. I'm working on a new method to catch them."

To do this, The Paedophile Hunter launched a Kickstarter campaign, a crowd-funding website where the public pledge money to help Stinson and partner Grime in their future projects.

In the days following the documentary's airing, the public pledged over £30,000 to the cause, sharing comments and posts online praising The Paedophile Hunter's work.

Stinson outside the Warwickshire Justice Centre.

Along with the praise, Stinson has become the subject of criticism, from other support groups and from viewers of the documentary who disagree with his technique. He says: "People are annoyed at the level of success and attention we've had. Other support groups don't get that it's not an 'us and them' situation. We all do our own things but we all want the same thing, and can do that without being all over each other.

"People say I'm in it for myself, but everything we've done has been at the detriment of my health, my pocket and my social life. People are so quick to judge, but most of them need to take a look at themselves. It's often a case of them wishing they had thought of it first.

"Yes, I love the attention. Because the more attention we get, the more people are looking and opening their eyes to what's happening online, checking their kids computers and paying more attention to what their children are doing.

"I have been offered thousands of pounds to do documentaries, newspaper stories and more and I've turned it down. It's just not appropriate and it depresses me that people think I'm in it for selfish reasons. I put publicity over money and my integrity over money. I've never had anything nice in my life, so I don't miss it."

Stinson was claiming jobseeker's allowance until two months ago when he signed off.

He says: "I don't want to sign on – there's a real stigma attached to it. I was on the sick after my accident but signed off completely shortly before the film came out.

"I have £200 to my name and that's it. I live in a mate's spare bedroom in Preston and don't get money for anything. I don't want to give people ammunition to use against me.

"I don't care about money. My focus is on this, it's my priority. I'm in the position to change something and make things better. Not for me, but for everyone.

"I'm the happiest I've ever been. I don't need money, I'm doing what I do well and it's amazing. I don't feel I'm an amazing person but I have found something I'm good at."

As our interview comes to a close, Stinson walks us through a dark and rainy Nuneaton to ensure we're safely on a train. With still no idea where he was sleeping that evening, he waved us away and disappeared into the night, texting a couple of hours later to check we were home safe and had everything we needed.

Critics would say he's out for himself, exposing criminals for his own five minutes of fame. Others, like the people we saw around town, shake his hand for the convictions he's successfully secured and donate thousands of pounds online to maintain his cause.

Either way, when it comes down to it, the numbers speak for themselves. Whether Stinson is doing the right thing or not, he's insistent that he won't stop working at what he believes is the right thing to do.

With no super powers to speak of, and only a phone and a laptop as his weapons, his fight against online crime is far from over – cape or no cape.

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