HollyMatkinBritish Columbia, Canada – A desperate couple who captured a man intent on raping their 13-year-old daughter are facing potential criminal charges while the suspect walks.
The aftermath of the April 12 vigilante takedown was captured in a Facebook Live video, which showed the 28-year-old suspect lying face down on the floor, with his arms bound behind his back, and his feet firmly tied together, CTV reported.
“He come to my house to meet my 13-year-old f**king daughter to f***k her,” the girl’s mother said in the video. “He wanted to be her first.”
“We f**king tackled him and zap strapped him and called the police,” she added.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to the residence just before 12:30 p.m., freed the man, and transported him to a local hospital, CTV reported.
Police said the suspect was not charged, but that he had been under investigation since March.
The girl’s mother said she first became aware of the man’s intentions approximately six weeks prior to the incident, when she found explicit messages on her daughter’s Instagram account.
She said she immediately reported her concerns to the police, but they only told her to block the messages.
“They wouldn’t even look at my phone,” the woman told CTV. “They just said to block him and forget it. I’ve been waiting for six weeks for the police to give me a name behind the Instagram account.”
Instead of ignoring the threat, the couple decided to take matters into their own hands.
The woman pretended to be her teenage daughter, and sent the man a message to invite him to her home.
“I just didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “He needed to be stopped.”
She claimed that she contacted police to ask them to come to her residence to intercept the suspected child rapist, but said police would not respond.
When the man arrived at the family’s home, and began walking to the girl’s bedroom, she punched him, while her husband tackled him to the ground.
The couple then called the police, and assumed the man would be taken into custody.
Instead, officers told the couple that they would be detained for assault, the woman told CTV.
“The police had directed her not to take matters into her own hands,” RCMP Corporal Amelia Hayden told CTV, adding that an investigation into the man had been opened in March. “We still do have an active and ongoing investigation on the matter.”
Cpl. Hayden explained that vigilante actions were illegal, and that they also had the potential of compromising the original investigation.
“It hasn’t resolved one issue. It’s caused another, and put people in danger,” she said.
Police said that the girl’s parents now face possible charges of forcible confinement and assault causing bodily harm.
Regardless of the potential legal consequences, the couple stood by their decision to act.
“At least now, everybody that knows him… they can protect their own kids because they know what’s going on,” the girl’s stepfather told CTV. “That’s all that we wanted – was just to be able to protect the kids.”
“If I get charged, I still feel it was the right thing,” the teen’s mother added.