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Supporters of a mother potentially facing charges after an altercation with a man being investigated for child luring rallied outside of Port Alberni RCMP headquarters.
The mother, who CTV News is not naming to protect her daughter's identity, said she punched and restrained a man in her home last week after he allegedly arrived to have sex with her 13-year-old daughter.
In a video posted to Facebook Live, the man can be seen lying face-down on the floor with his hands bound behind his back as the mother outlines the allegations against him.
“He come to my house to meet my 13-year-old f***ing daughter to f**** her. He wanted to be her first,” she's heard saying. “We f***ing tackled him, and Zap strapped him and called the police.”
After RCMP arrived at the home, the man was taken to hospital while the mother and two men who helped her were told they'd be detained.
They now face possible charges of forcible confinement and assault.
"I witnessed that video live on Facebook," Port Alberni resident Robert Borette said outside the detachment Tuesday. "The question I have is why was this family labelled vigilante? I can't see that any other action was really at their resource. They had to do something."
One woman who attended the rally said she did so because she thinks child luring laws in Canada are too lenient.
"It's disgusting. Why does that take so long? They're saying they need evidence, I'm sorry, you have text messages," said Erin Cootes. "That's sufficient in my mind. That is a child and an adult. There's no other course of action at that point."
The mother said she had been asking police for six weeks to help her determine the identity of the adult man messaging her daughter.
She said she again went to police last week when the man asked her daughter to meet up.
"They told me to block him and ignore it, and I came home and said yes to the meet," she told CTV News on Friday.
When she informed investigators the man would be coming over and asked them to attend, she claimed they refused.
RCMP confirmed last week that a child luring investigation involving the man seen in the video was opened in March, and also confirmed the trio of adults may face charges for what police are calling a vigilante act.
"While the investigation remains active and ongoing, we are mindful that the inability to release all of the information known to date has likely contributed to concerns," Insp. Brian Hunter said in a statement. "We can confirm that our investigation includes that the male was allegedly lured to the home and was met by three adults. There were no children there when he arrived."
But there's a reason officers likely didn't agree with the mom's request to intercept the planned meet-up, according to a former police officer-turned-social media safety expert.
"It was a form of entrapment at that point in time," said Darren Lauer, chief learning officer for The White Hatter. "If an account takeover is going to take place, there's certain things that they have to do to make sure that what they do survives a court challenge. That's why that takes time to do if you're going to do it right."
Lauer said that the Facebook Live video, which has gone viral and was even debated on U.S. daytime show The Talk Tuesday afternoon, could impact other investigations.
"My biggest concern here is by broadcasting that, they could've put into jeopardy other cases that the police were involved in where they've already spent, we don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate," said Lauer.
Still, parents who attended the rally said they likely wouldn't have done anything different if they were in the mother's shoes.
"If somebody showed up at your door, somebody texts your daughter, I'm not sure what else I would do," said Borette. "I think that in the way they hog-tied him and left him until the police arrived, they showed remarkable restraint."
Police have confirmed they are looking into charges of sexual luring and making sexual explicit material available to a child.
The assault and forcible confinement investigation against the mother also remains active.
