He defines himself as a pedophile hunter who uses the anonymity of the Internet to catch sex offenders. Behind him are hundreds of complaints that he filed following chats in which he impersonated a 14-year-old girl, some of which helped in filing charges. Although the police claim that in most cases the evidentiary value of his findings is weak, Avi Dubitzky refuses to let go
What do the Kameri actor who was arrested last weekend on suspicion of pedophilia have in common, Gabriel Farage from Ashkelon who was accused of sexually harassing a minor, and Elad Zavari from Gedera, who was accused of a series of sexual offenses against minors?
Behind the complaints filed with the police against all three is one man, Avi Dubitzky, who zealously pursues sex offenders online. At the end of every online chat sit two people, who usually don’t know each other. Every parent’s nightmare is that the person corresponding with their child will try to sexually harass them or worse, meet them and hurt them. But the anonymity behind the chat also has another side.
The writer who presents herself in the chat as a 14-year-old girl may be a forty-year-old man, who records the conversation and submits it to the police as evidence of pedophilic activity. This is what Dubitzky has been doing for the past year. He enters chats and impersonates minors, and when he is approached with obscene offers and sexual harassment, he develops the conversation and “catchs” the criminals on the other side.
In the last year Dubitzky filed over two hundred complaints. So far, about twenty of them have been dealt with, some of them have reached an indictment. Is this the Batman of the cyber world? “Wherever I see that I can bring about a change, I do it,” says Dubitzky. “I’m not trying to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians because I can’t. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to turn a blind eye to the phenomenon of sex offenders online.”
Dubitzky is a person who is used to “crazy” the system. Following the “Clean Air Act” he filed at least four lawsuits for smoking in public places in violation of the law. According to him, he knows the government bureaucracy very well and he helps people submit government forms, collect debts through enforcement and generally deal with “the system”. He previously published columns in which he advised people how to avoid sting exercises and described cases that he defines as “government incompetence.”
When asked about his motivation to pursue pedophiles online, he grins. “Perhaps this is a knock on the genes. I don’t know many people like me. I don’t know anyone who has been harmed by the Internet, but when I read the things and feel them in my flesh, I feel the need to act.”
He came to deal with the topic of chats with minors on the Internet after being questioned on suspicion of involvement in a murder in a youth bar. “Over the years, I have learned all kinds of ways to locate people and use the Internet. In this framework, I have made several enemies,” he explains the investigation against him. “After Shaul Gannon’s transcripts were published, I noticed that the guys knew each other on the Atref site. I saw that many people fell victim to robbery through chats on dating sites and I became interested.”
Dubitzky entered the site and introduced himself as a little girl, and was immediately flooded with many inquiries. “One of the first inquiries was from a police officer, who sent photos of his gun, lanyard and uniform. People I shared the story with said it was not interesting, but recommended filing a complaint with the police investigation department. The police concluded that there really is no criminal offense here, but there is a disciplinary offense – this It doesn’t look good for a police officer to ask a 14-year-old girl to open the webcam. I said to myself, ‘Let’s see where else we can go.'”
Together with two other accomplices, a guy and a girl who help him, they enter the websites, conduct conversations, record and film them “in a legal way” as Dubitzky takes pains to emphasize, after which he files a complaint with the police. “I reached out to people who were released a few months ago and are not supposed to have contact with teenagers. I reached out to teachers, shuttle drivers, security guards,” Dubitzky testifies.
According to Dubitzky, there are many cases of abusive chats with minors online, but most of them do not mature into indictments, both because of the difficulty of the evidence and because of the difficulty of the victims going through a tedious legal process. “As a person who was not harmed, I have no problem complaining. I have no interest, I do not receive money and I am not a police agent. Just as if I saw someone trying to break into a car I would report him to the police, so I complain about people who sexually harass in chats.”
But you don’t just report what you see, you ambush them. It’s like leaving a car unlocked and seeing if someone breaks in and steals it and only then complain.
Right. In the USA, they put cars with GPS in certain neighborhoods, and then catch thieves based on the location. This is acceptable.
“You can say it’s an ambush, but in the end I find out when I submit the complaints that out of ten complaints, two or three are from people who have a criminal record, and out of the twenty cases that have been handled so far, three or four people are convicted sex offenders. I saw that someone was needed, a bulldozer Let him push things forward.”
He cites as an example the case of Elad Sabari Magdera, who last November was presented with a serious indictment that attributes to him 11 counts that include the offenses of consensual sexual assault, consensual sodomy, indecent acts, sexual harassment, possession and distribution of pedophile material as well as extortion by threats.
During a conversation with Dubitzky, who pretended to be a 13-year-old girl, Sabri sent him pictures of his genitals. “It wouldn’t have reached the police without my complaint. After they took his computers, they discovered that there was an indictment against him for a long time, dating back to 2004, which had been lying in the prosecutor’s office for years.”
Dubitzky gives another example of another sex offender who, after Dubitzky complained about him, it turned out that he had recently been released for a similar case. “I realized that the unit that is supposed to follow them isn’t doing the job. They want to preserve their privacy, so they don’t put electronic handcuffs on them. They keep the pedophile’s dignity and release them again and again.”
What the police want to do with fifty people, I do alone and for free,” Dubitzky brags. “At first, they were not enthusiastic about the idea that I submit 15 complaints in one day, and I wandered from station to station like a Jew in the desert. So a serious problem here needs to be addressed and ignored.”
The legal system is subject to legal restrictions that Dubitzky as a private citizen, is not bound by, and the material he submits is only sometimes admissible in court. However, some of his complaints led to investigations that were published recently, such as an investigation against a gym teacher that opened two months ago and the investigation against the Kameri player who later got fired and now is virtually unemployed. Dubitzky and his cause received a lot of media attention around these affairs.
Since you started your activity, are pedophiles afraid of you and more suspicious than before?
After Niv Raskin interviewed me on his program on IDF radio, I received suspicious messages in chats – ‘Oh, you’re a police agent.’ Some went underground for a few days, but I had technological means that convinced them I was a girl, and they came back. Someone sent me a message – ‘Dubitzky, if you wanted to see a picture of Bulbul, you would have told me, and I would have sent it to you; you wouldn’t have had to pretend to be a girl.'”
Avi Dubiztky: "They not afraid of being caught"
“These chats are a loophole that invites a thief. When kids are available in chat and chances are they won’t catch you why not try. It’s addictive and it defeats all logic. In my opinion, no treatment will help, only an electronic handcuff and restrictions of the law. The desired effect is that anyone who knows that it is a minor will say that it is not appropriate and will cut it.”
“Much of Mr. Dubitzky’s activity in the field known by him as “detecting pedophiles” is of limited evidentiary value due to the manner of his activity. Sex crimes on the Internet are enforced in a determined and professional manner by a skilled and qualified set of investigators in all police units, accompanied by lawyers and in an orderly and supervised manner.”
