Pedophile Wins: Facebook Forced To Remove Sex Offender Monitoring Page

A convicted sex offender was offended when he saw his picture and criminal history posted on Facebook.

The page on which his information was posted was titled “Keeping Our Kids Safe From Predators” and was purposed monitor pedophiles and to notify locals of sex offenders in Northern Ireland communities.

But the sex offender, known only as XY, claimed that the page aimed to “vilify” him.

On Friday, Facebook was ordered to remove the page after XY took his case to court — and won.

The case was brought in Belfast, Ireland by XY, who had been sentenced to six years in prison for a collection of crimes against children more that two decades ago.

XY’s offenses against children began when he was still a juvenile.

The offender claimed that he feared being attacked or “burned out of his rented accommodation” after his photograph was posted along with threatening comments on the social networking site.

A Belfast High Court judge Friday ruled that some of the contents on the Facebook page — ‘Keeping Our Kids Safe From Predators’ — amounted to” harassment” of the man and “risked infringing on his human rights.”

The judge said the man — who can’t be identified due to the nature of his crimes — had already been punished for his sex offenses “in accordance with the rule of law,” although he was released early from his prison sentence.

The judge added: “He has been punished by incarceration and he is subject to substantial daily restrictions on his lifestyle.”

While Facebook removed the man’s photograph and related comments, company lawyers maintain that was unnecessary to remove a page used by 4,000 people. While Facebook lawyers fought to keep the page open, the sex offender continued to seek the closing of the page and the disclosure of the identity or identities of those who set up and ran it.

Facebook was given 72 hours to remove the page. It was taken down on Friday.

A new page with a similar title has already appeared on the site.

Do you think that pages like “Keeping Our Kids Safe” should be removed?