Paedophile hunters vow to carry on after being cleared of assault and false imprisonment

‘We’ll be back hunting very soon’

Philip Hoban, who set up the Predator Exposure group, speaks outside Leeds Crown Court (PA)

A group of so-called paedophile hunters have vowed to carry on targeting people they think are child abusers after being cleared of false imprisonment and common assault.

Six members of Predator Exposure had been accused of “overstepping the mark” when they confronted two men in West Yorkshire.

Prosecutors claimed one of the suspected paedophiles was put in a headlock and dragged out of a shop against his will, while the other was left “extremely scared and upset” when they turned up at his home.

The group, who went on trial at Leeds Crown Court, claimed they were making lawful citizens’ arrests.

A jury took just over a day to acquit the four men and two women of the charges.

Outside court, as the defendants celebrated with their supporters, organiser Philip Hoban lit a cigar and vowed the group would continue. “We’ll be back hunting, very soon,” he said. ”Tune in, people.”

Earlier this year, the group were banned by a judge from carrying out any “child activist group activity” while facing trial, or publishing images of people suspected of committing criminal offences.

Their stings involved confronting suspects who talked online with Predator Exposure members posing as children.

In August 2018 four of the group went to confront a man at his home in Normanton, West Yorkshire. He was allegedly prevented from leaving his back garden and going inside the house for his medication.

The second man man was chased into a shop in the Chapel Allerton area of Leeds in January this year. Some members of the group attempted to physically drag him outside to make a citizen’s arrest, the jury heard.

Neither of the two men was charged, even though prosecutors accepted the conversations between them and the “decoys” amounted to offences of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Hoban, from Beeston in Leeds, and his 19-year-old son Jordan McDonald, from the Farnley area of Leeds, were found not guilty of two counts of false imprisonment and one of common assault.

Jordan Plain, 26, from Leeds, and Dean Walls, 52, from Moortown, Leeds, were found not guilty of one count of false imprisonment and one of common assault.

Kelly Meadows, 40, from Leeds, was found not guilty of two counts of false imprisonment, and Christine James-Roberts, 60, from Headingley, Leeds, was found not guilty of one charge of false imprisonment.

Additional reporting by Press Association