A provincial court judge has ordered a Surrey, B.C. father to stop bringing his four-year-old daughter to “catch” suspected child predators.
The order came after the girl’s shocked mother pointed out to the judge that Lance Loy had been arrested and charged with assaulting one of the Surrey Creep Catchers' targets in April – apparently while he had his daughter in tow.
“I was disgusted to be honest with you,” said the girl’s mother, who CTV News is not naming to protect the child.
The mom, who is 22, said there’s no reason a young girl should be anywhere near a person suspected of intending to harm a child.
“It’s a pedophile environment. Either he’s sitting there talking beside her about pedophile activities or he’s bringing her around pedophiles potentially. Nothing good has come out of this,” she said.
Loy, who is 37, was a member of the Surrey Creep Catchers, which is part of a loose national network of organizations who say they pose online as children in order to find “creeps” interested in sex with them. Then the group sets them up for real-life confrontations, which can turn violent.
Loy can be seen in several of the videos recording the stings. On April 19, a camera was rolling while at least three members of Surrey Creep Catchers confronted a man in Surrey Centre Mall, at one point grabbing him by the throat.
Loy was arrested that night, Laforge arrested a short time later, and both were charged with assault on May 9.
The woman, who is separated from Loy and shares custody with him, said the girl was in Loy’s care at the time. She said she saw a mention of the arrest on Facebook – and then she wasn’t sure where her daughter was for hours.
“If Lance didn’t have my daughter then who had her? As a mother and a parent you really worry and you start to get scared,” the woman told CTV News. She said she eventually tracked the little girl down to another member of the Creep Catchers.
In a child custody hearing May 25, she relayed this story to Judge P. LaPrairie, asking to be given sole custody of the child.
LaPrairie instead ordered Loy to keep the girl away from any creep catching.
“Lance Loy shall not expose the child to any Creep Catcher activities,” says the order from Judge P. Laprairie. “Lance Loy shall not discuss, nor let anyone else discuss, Creep Catcher activities in the presence of the child.”
CTV News reached Loy by phone, who insisted the child was at a safe distance that night and was never in any danger.
“She wasn’t anywhere near anybody,” Loy said, but didn’t elaborate. He told CTV News that he’s following the court order and has quit Creep Catching altogether.
The girl’s mother said at first she tried to support Loy by going to a Creep Catchers sting herself and taking care of her daughter while Loy participated. But after witnessing it firsthand she decided not to continue, she said.
Records show Loy was convicted of threatening to assault a man with an axe in Hay River, in the Northwest Territories, on Jan. 9, 2015.
The April 19 incident was the latest in a series of confrontations where videos show the Creep Catchers used force. On April 8, Laforge was arrested after he was recorded pushing target Kuljinder Bhatti, who now faces a child luring charge. Laforge faces a charge of assault and uttering threats for that interaction.
In video from April 17, Loy and Laforge can be seen holding another target in another confrontation. Hours later, Laforge was filmed grabbing a man and pushing him to the ground in another incident outside Joyce Skytrain Station.
The group was dealt another blow by B.C.’s privacy commissioner, who ordered them to destroy videos relating to two of their targets.
The commissioner also found the group made “no fair attempt to describe or analyze the facts” of the allegations against their targets, pointing out that a man who was labelled a sex offender initially responded to an ad from a woman who claimed to be 20, and another man targeted was responding to a post in a “platonic” section of Craigslist that contained no sexual content.
But Laforge, in a profanity-laden video posted to the group’s Facebook page last Tuesday night, said he would ignore the ruling.
“I don’t know who they think they are. They’re not even government. It’s funny how that dips--- commissioner goes ‘Oh, you’ve got 30 days and if he doesn’t comply we have no choice but to go to the authorities.’ I thought you were the authorities. F---ing idiot. You ain’t s---.”
Actually, the B.C. Privacy Commissioner was established in 1993 by the provincial government to oversee the province’s privacy laws. In the case the order isn’t followed by the Sept. 5 deadline, the province’s Attorney General could prosecute the failure to follow the order, with fines of up to $100,000 per offense.
