I would also like to add...

...that like Henny said, if the child or teen reported the incident, I would want to see evidence that it really happened, or more importantly, that the evidence led to the person they claimed committed the act in question. If we as a society stop asking for evidence before we run out and hang someone, we get something like the AoC laws...or worse. We need to be mindful of this, and we need to control our emotions. I know it can be very hard to do this sometimes, but we have to act like civilized human beings and we cannot let a desire for vengeance rule our minds. Before someone says, "You obviously don't have kids if you think this way," then please consider that the point of whether or not I have kids is totally beside the point, because even if I did, and I went after and beat some guy down after my kid accused him of something, that would still be wrong. Just because a certain action is understandable doesn't make it right.

This is why I said in my above post that if you actually caught the guy in the act, that would be a different story; I would attack the man and do him serious harm also. But that is not the same type of situation as actually going out and hunting the man down in place of the police after the act was committed.

This whole thread is quite interesting, because it makes two things clear:

1) Pedos love children very much, and as such they get extremely enraged, even to the point of throwing aside any pacifist leanings they may have, every time they learn that a child was harmed in a demonstrable sense by someone. This is, of course, very understandable; love makes us capable of very strong emotional reactions.

2) Because of the love we have for children, sometimes we let our emotions overcome our reasoning faculties, much as we often (rightfully) accuse parents of doing, and when a child is harmed, we run out looking for blood without even asking for evidence first, or an investigation being conducted to see if the report was true. We "instinctually" want to believe anything a child (or sometimes a teen) says, because when we get overcome by emotion, we cannot imagine they could possibly be mistaken or even lying for any reason. In essence, we become no better--or no different then--the parents and lawmakers that we routinely decry as being overly emotionalistic and deficient in using reason. We become as uncivilized as any of them, thus showing that, when it comes down to it, we potentially have the exact same foibles that they have.

I hope the lesson in this thread is quite clear. I have no sympathy for anyone who would hurt a child or a teen, but I want to be certain of the facts before I lift a baseball bat to any guy, and I want to give the law a chance to handle the situation before I resort to doing so myself. I can be very nasty when my temper is lost, which is why I try to keep it under control as often as possible, and why I place so much emphasis on civil rights and reason. Even the lowest criminals in the world have the right to be tried in court, and to demand evidence be presented before they are convicted and punished, and we throw this aside at our peril. Just keep in mind how this type of mindset can--and all too often is--used against our community. Sex offender registries, civil commitment, and any law that doesn't demand evidence but is based on assumptions and emotionalism is what happens when justice disappears and this type of mindset is directed at any class of people. As understandable as these reactions are for people in our community, I would like to remind all of us that we are better than that, and if we truly believe we have the right to complain when justice is dispensed in place of laws that are based on vengeance and appeals to emotion over reason, we need to be careful of engaging in the same type of behavior as our opponents.