'Creeper Hunter' trial: Accused grilled over motive for videos

Breadcrumb Trail Links Local News Jason Nassr is seen in a 2018 photo. (Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press) Contents of the article

The man in the video obviously didn’t want to speak to Jason Nassr.

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He had been confronted with the Windsor man, who is currently facing harassment, extortion and child pornography charges in London, after he appeared to meet a 14-year-old girl with whom he spoke on an adult website and via text had messages.

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The conversation became sexually explicit and Nassr, 42, from Windsor, who narrated the Creeper Hunter TV episode on the website, said a meeting had been set up in downtown Windsor and “I can’t wait.”

The remainder of the episode, shown to the jury at Nassr’s High Court trial, was Nassr confronting the man, then chasing and yelling at him through downtown Windsor, claiming he could arrest him because the man had a criminal record committed the act and said he had given the man’s phone number and name and indicated that he would call the police.

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“Do I go to the police shop alone or do I come with you?” Nassr yelled at the man while Nassr’s target attempted to escape, at one point removing his shirt to change his appearance and returning to his pickup truck before screeching tires solved.

“Oh my god, that was great,” Nassr said as the man drove away.

At the end of the video, Assistant QC James Spangenberg asked Nassr, who completed his testimony Wednesday after three days of confrontational cross-examination, how the video, particularly the highly sexual text messages and meeting, had a legitimate educational purpose when Nassr made claims as one of the Reasons for Creeper Hunter TV.

Nassr said the text messages were the basis for the meetings to confront the predator. The confrontation shows the target he could go to jail and what he has done “has consequences and is unacceptable to society”.

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Additionally, the video would be posted and “now parents can understand more about child kidnapping,” Nassr said.

The episode with the target’s name, age, photos, and hometown stayed on the site, even when the target said they’d learned their lesson. “It would defeat the general purpose of educating the public,” Nassr said.

“You say your motive was education, but your intent was to publicly humiliate and shame,” Spangenberg said.

The Crown’s theory of the lengthy and sometimes bizarre process is that Nassr sought out would-be child abductors for his own sexual gratification, for entertainment purposes, and for the notoriety it would bring him.

He has pleaded not guilty to telecommunications harassment, extortion, and the production and distribution of child pornography in numerous text exchanges with men associated with Creeper Hunter TV online profiles, presenting themselves as underage children.

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The number of harassment and extortion cases comes from Crown communications Nassr had in July 2019 with a 39-year-old London-area man whose identity is protected by a court order as the man’s phone number with an adult female profile in Was linked dating site. The female profile said she was 18, then revealed she was 12.

The text chats between the target and the underage female profile were sexual. A meeting was arranged, but the man never showed up, nor did he respond to subsequent calls and texts. Ten months later, Nassr called the man, recorded the phone call, accused the man of child kidnapping and threatened to call the police. The man said his phone had been hacked.

The jury was told the man was dead.

An investigation by London Police into Nassr’s activities resulted in a search of a Windsor flat and three terabytes of digital information on computers and storage devices linked to the Creeper Hunter TV website.

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The jury saw a fraction of what police recovered, but most of the videos follow a pattern in which Nassr shows up to film the meetings with shocked targets.

At one such meeting, Nassr showed up at a target’s place of work at a nursing home, where administrative staff ordered Nassr to leave after he yelled at the target. Other men are confronted, sometimes with Nassr yelling at them, in their vehicles, in restaurants, and even at an airport.

Beyond education, Nassr has said the project has a journalistic purpose.

Spangenberg showed a clip of a video in which Nassr says what he is doing is not a trap and another in which he said threatening to call the police at a target can get them talking.

Spangenberg asked Nassr why he didn’t call the police in 2019 when he first spoke to the London-area man and only shared information when the police called him months later.

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“I’ve been busy,” Nassr said. “I have a life outside of that,” he said.

“You used the police as a tool for your entertainment and entertainment for your Creeper Hunter viewers,” Spangenberg said, pointing out that Nassr hadn’t called the police but had enough information to do an episode.

Nassr said he was giving the man a chance to make a statement.

After the Crown cross-examination concluded, Nassr, representing himself, showed some of his videos, which he said the website enlightens targets and the public.

One of those videos started with a close-up of Nassr on his phone, talking like a little girl. Nassr told the jury he was a trained actor who embraced the role and denied any enjoyment in playing the roles.

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The target turned out to be a man who had endured a long bus ride to meet a 12-year-old girl he mistook for sex. It was obvious that the man was mentally handicapped. Nassr said the meeting was handled differently by testing the man’s ability to understand right from wrong, calling a family member and sending him on his way.

However, it appears that the encounter was included in a Creeper Hunter television episode.

The trial will continue on Thursday.

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