Judge to Vukovich: "Vigilantism is not something that we accept in America"

This scumbag got 23 years for his 3 attacks.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2018/02/26/anchorage-man-who-attacked-sex-offenders-sentenced-to-23-years-in-prison/

Anchorage man who attacked sex offenders sentenced to 23 years in prison
Author: Tegan Hanlon  clock Updated: 12 hours ago  calendar Published 17 hours ago


At an Anchorage Superior Court hearing for Jason Vukovich, who was sentenced Monday for attacking three registered sex offenders, his older brother Joel Fulton said that despite counseling, he has not yet recovered from what the two men experienced as children.

"I'm never going to get better — never," said Fulton, who has a successful career in cybersecurity in California.

At the two-day hearing that started Friday, Vukovich's lawyer, Ember Tilton, argued for a more lenient sentence for his 42-year-old client, who attacked three men in June 2016, saying to a victim he was an "avenging angel" for abused children. Tilton said Vukovich continues to suffer through mental and emotional turmoil resulting from a childhood of physical and sexual abuse.

But the prosecutor, Patrick McKay, argued that there was no excuse for Vukovich to target and attack three strangers, beating one man so badly with a hammer that he fractured his skull and knocked him unconscious.

"We're lucky we're not dealing with a murder charge," Assistant District Attorney Patrick McKay told the judge. "People do not get to take the law into their own hands just because they don't like a particular group of people or a particular person."

As part of a plea deal, Vukovich had previously agreed to plead guilty to first-degree attempted assault and a consolidated count of first-degree robbery. In turn, prosecutors agreed to dismiss more than a dozen other charges against him stemming from the attacks.

Early Monday afternoon, Superior Court Judge Erin Marston handed down his sentence to Vukovich: 25 years in prison, five years fewer than the maximum. He also sentenced Vukovich to five years' probation.

"Vigilantism is not something that we accept in America," he told Vukovich. "It's not something that we accept in this community and it is just simply something that will not be tolerated."

The men Vukovich singled out and attacked were complying with the law, Marston said. They had gone through the court system, received their sentences and put their names on Alaska's public sex offender registry, where Vukovich found their addresses.

"It was not the purpose of the registry to allow people to do their own brand of justice," Marston told Vukovich. "The purpose of the registry was to keep the community safe."

McKay said that in the summer of 2016, Vukovich, recently released from jail, carried a notebook with a list of nine names that he planned to target. Vukovich said he collected the names from acquaintances. He said they told him the people were "pedophiles."

Over five days in June, Vukovich entered the homes of three of the men, uninvited. He hit two of them with his fists, and another man with a hammer. The attack left that victim with a lasting traumatic brain injury. It's hard for him to string words into sentences. He lost his job. He can't pay his rent.

"My life is changed forever," he told the judge.

McKay said Vukovich also stole from the three men he attacked.

On Monday, Vukovich apologized.

"I realize now that I had no business assaulting these individuals or taking the law into my own hands," he said. "I should have sought mental health counseling before I exploded."

Vukovich has cycled into and out of jail for decades.

As a child, he said, he and his siblings were abused by his adoptive father, Larry Lee Fulton.

"He was a pretty terrible person in general," Vukovich told the judge. "He liked to administer beatings with various implements — belts, eventually a two-by-four that he had custom-made — and he used to like to disrupt the night by coming in to sexually assault (me)."

Fulton was found guilty of second-degree abuse of a minor and in 1989 received a three-year suspended sentence — meaning he didn't have to serve any active time in a prison cell.

Vukovich's older brother, Joel Fulton, eventually ran away from home and later he did the same.

Their paths diverged.

Fulton went to college and later got a PhD. He lives in California with his family, where he said he has good job as the chief information security officer at a data analytics software company. He said he still receives counseling to deal with the trauma of being physically and sexually abused as a child.

Vukovich turned to drugs and crime.

Vukovich told the judge that he regularly used methamphetamine. He has eight prior felony convictions, McKay said.

Fulton told the judge he wasn't friends with Vukovich and had spoken to him at most twice over the past two decades. Still, he said he wanted to help him and he asked the court system to do the same.

"Have mercy on him," Fulton told the judge. "Help him."

While Judge Marston expressed sympathy for the brothers' childhood experiences, he said Vukovich has ultimately proved he is dangerous and "willing to hurt people."

Idiots in Ireland & the UK are wanting their registries to be made public. These vigilante scumbags are the reason why

Vigilante douche George Keenan did not like a dose of his own medicing

The BBC exposed a few of these scumbags. It is amazing that any loser believes that these pathetic excuses of humanity are "heroes." Al they have proven, however is that vigilantes are all cowards yet they are prone to violence. Sharon Shanks and George Keenan are among those exposed as filthy scumbags in this BBC report. By the way, one of these vigilante scumbags has been arrested and will be prosecuted, with more to follow. Round these thugs up!

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-43024711

Self-styled 'paedophile hunters' revealed
By Kevin Magee
BBC News NI investigations correspondent

Some of the leaders of self-styled paedophile-hunting groups operating in Northern Ireland have been identified for the first time.

There are increasing concerns about the methods many of the groups use, and their lack of accountability.

The so-called paedophile-hunting groups target people online who they believe are sexual predators.

They confront them and broadcast the encounter live on the internet, then call the police.

There have been more than 100 incidents of that nature reported to police in Northern Ireland, but no-one has been charged as a result and there have been no convictions.

Former senior police officer and child protection expert Jim Gamble warned that some of the tactics used by the groups are criminal.

"Anyone live streaming these incidents is not about the justice of catching someone who represents a threat to children," he said.

"They are about the self-publicity and the self-centred approach about themselves, much more than about making children safer."

All of the groups keep their identities hidden.

'On whose authority?'

BBC News NI approached two of the people involved in setting up the "hunting groups" in Northern Ireland to ask them for an interview.

Sharon Shanks, from south Belfast, is behind the group called Justice Reborn Northern Ireland and she uses the alias Chelsea Lewis.

Ms Shanks declined to do an interview, saying in an online message that she was unhappy that "journalists and news stations have so far called the hunting groups vigilantes".

"Our identity we keep to ourselves so meeting isn't an option," she said.

During one confrontation that she posted live online, Ms Shanks is overheard using explicit offensive language and threats of violence against a man who came across the scene.

When approached by the BBC just after she had broadcast other live footage on Facebook of herself interrogating a man she had alleged was a paedophile, Ms Shanks refused to answer our questions.

We wanted to ask about the methods her secret group used, and on whose authority she had been detaining people who she believed to be paedophiles.

She declined to answer any questions.

Instead, Ms Shanks pulled on a scarf and was driven way at speed.

There are up to 10 different, self-appointed paedophile hunting groups operating in Northern Ireland.

Often they are in competition with one another, but sometimes they join forces.

'Won't answer questions'

One of those who introduced the concept of "paedophile hunting" to Northern Ireland is 34-year-old Belfast man George Keenan.

He uses the alias James SJ O'Neill and was linked to a group calling itself Silent Justice.

One of his targets last August was a man in County Antrim.

Two days after he was confronted, the man took his own life.

His family said they wanted to maintain a dignified silence.

Mr Keenan recently had a public falling out with other paedophile hunting groups in England and, in an expletive filled video, issued various threats of physical violence against them on Facebook.

Mr Keenan declined a request for an interview using his own name and identity.

BBC News NI approached him in west Belfast to ask him on whose authority he was confronting people he thought were paedophiles.

When asked if any of his actions resembled those of a vigilante, he replied: "Are you serious? Get out of my sight, leave me alone.

"Stay away from anybody that I have previously worked with.

"You are harassing people, I am not here to answer your questions.

"You are absolutely disgusting. Get out of my space right now."

Later the same day, Mr Keenan led a group of people to confront BBC investigations reporter Kevin Magee in a coffee shop in Belfast.

Mr Keenan claimed he had been able to mobilise more than a dozen people from various paedophile hunting groups.

For a short time they blocked off Botanic Avenue and published the episode online.

Eyewitness account: 'Terrible, outrageous behaviour'

A mother-of-two has told of her terror when her home was mistakenly surrounded by a group of masked paedophile hunters.

The self-appointed gang surrounded the house in the Springfarm estate in Antrim in January, claiming that a paedophile was living there.

But the group had made a mistake - they had picked the wrong house.

The 34-year-old woman, who asked not to be named, said she was "absolutely terrified" when members of the gang approached her home.

Her 66-year-old mother and two young children, aged seven and three, were in the house with her.

"A crowd of people got out of cars and they started banging and kicking at my front door - one of the women was screaming," she said.

"They were all saying there was a paedophile in the house, but there was no man in the house, just me, my kids and my mother.

"It was terrible, it really was outrageous behaviour - we felt really intimidated.

"One of the children was hiding under the bed and my mother was petrified and shaken afterwards.

"Now she doesn't want to leave the house."

The woman had only recently moved into the house.

'Job for police'

Neighbourhood watch co-ordinator Seamus Davis went to the house when he heard the commotion.

He said: "There were three or four cars full of people.

"I said: 'Look you're in the wrong place' - and they called me a paedophile lover.

"I told them I hate paedophiles as much as anybody else, but this way you are doing is totally wrong - this is a job for the police.

"You are behaving like a bunch of vigilantes."