A transgender pedophile was caught in a pedophile sting conducted in Colorado last week by predator hunters after the man had attempted to meet a 13-year-old girl for the purposes of “teaching” her about sex.
News of the sting first premiered on September 13 on a YouTube account belonging to independent child safeguarding group Colorado Ped Patrol (CPP). The 29-minute video shows CPP head Thomas Fellows confronting a man at a McDonald’s in Weld County, Colorado, on September 7, along with his team.
The alleged pedophile is named by CPP as Ronald “Roni” Jensen, 61, who arrived at the sting location wearing a light blue dress, an auburn wig, sunglasses, and block-heeled sandals. Jensen had been under the impression he would be meeting with a 13-year-old girl, but had in fact been speaking with an adult decoy associated with CPP.
Jensen was met by the CPP team at the eatery’s doorway, with Fellows immediately asking him why he was there and who he was attempting to meet. The team filmed the exchange on body cameras and phones and gave the man the option to have the conversation outdoors to avoid making a disturbance inside, which Jensen agrees to after seeing Fellows had a dossier of evidence on him.
At first, Jensen feigned innocence to the nature of CPP’s sting, claiming his intentions with the 13-year-old were innocent. When asked what he planned to do with the girl, Jensen claims he was set to take her “shopping,” but as Fellows presses Jensen on the more sexual messages he exchanged with the decoy, Jensen begins to argue that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with his desire to become romantic with a minor.
When asked about his stated intention to kiss a 13-year-old girl, he replies, “Kissing? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
He also denies offering to bring the girl an adult toy, writing the allegation off with the claim he had meant a “fidget spinner,” a non-sexual toy.
When asked about messages he sent to the decoy in which he promised to “teach” the child about sex, Jensen asserts he meant “verbally.”
During the sting, Jensen becomes increasingly defensive and irate, and is seen aggressively squaring up to Fellows while pointing a finger in his face. Fellows responds by threatening to defend himself using pepper spray if he is forced to.
At one point during the confrontation, Jensen begins to plead for sympathy, claiming he would never offend again. He appeared to justify his apparent pedophilic attractions by deferring to his gender identity, and suggesting that his communication with the decoy was a symptom of loneliness.
“I’m a very lonely person. This, being this [indicates to himself], you don’t have friends, and I get desperate for friends, it’s all I want…I don’t have friends, people don’t like this, this is me- I’m in the wrong body! People don’t like me, as a man, and I’m desperate to find friends,” Jensen explains.
Fellows replied, “People don’t like you as a man?”
“No, they don’t. I seem to find more people like me as a woman than as a man,” Jensen said.
But soon after, Jensen begins to argue in favor of pedophilia by suggesting it was normalized in the past.
“150 years ago, 13 was nothing…” Jensen said, referring to age, “The only reason it’s changed is because of the puritans and the church.”
“So do you think it’s wrong?” Fellows asked.
“I don’t necessarily agree with the law.”
During the confrontation, Colorado Ped Patrol also revealed Jensen had been subject to a previous rape allegation from a young woman. There were no convictions associated with that report.
Speaking to Reduxx, CPP predator hunter Thomas Fellows says the sting his group conducted on Jensen was the closest he had ever been to having to defend himself physically.
“That was the first time we have ever had to pull the pepper spray out,” Fellows says, “It was because of how he approached me. There was a wall behind me. So when he got in my face, I had no place to go.”
Colorado Ped Patrol is an independent child safeguarding group that was established 18 months ago. So far, the CPP team has facilitated 233 stings, 117 arrests, and 40 convictions with many more cases pending. Fellows says he has 20 team members all over the world, and, despite the group’s name, has conducted stings in over a dozen states outside of Colorado.
The team operates decoy accounts across all social media and dating sites, where they wait for predators to reach out to them before initiating evidence-gathering. All of CPP’s decoy’s are above the age of 18, and use profile photos of themselves “aged-down” using applications like FaceApp.
Fellows explains that he and his team have learned how each county’s police force operate, and that they often take factors like police response times and behavior into consideration when planning out when to involve law enforcement.
He says that in Weld County, where Jensen’s sting was conducted, they often do not call police in advance as they have experience with officers encouraging them to hand over their case, but then leaving the predators walking.
“They’ve taken our cases and told us to stop, and then nothing is ever done. Instead of calling them ahead of time, we call them when we are out there because we don’t feel like anything is being done,” Fellows explains, “So we have started calling them when we are already out there, and we have had a much, much better response.”
On Jensen’s case, Fellows says he was not anticipating an immediate arrest, but does have confidence Jensen will be detained in the coming days.
“The evidence is pretty solid, I think he will be … Of course it would have been better if he was arrested on the spot, but I wasn’t expecting it.” But Fellows says allowing suspected pedophile to return to their homes pending potential charges or arrest comes with its own risks, primarily that of the predator destroying crucial evidence.
“Of course they’re going to erase their stuff. Police might say ‘well we can recover it,’ but what if they throw their phone away? You can’t recover something from a phone that’s not there. Then that evidence is gone.”
On safeguarding against predators, Fellows encourages parents to keep a close eye on their children’s whereabouts on the internet.
“It’s all about awareness. Check your kids’ devices. The more the parents know, the safer their kids are going to be.”
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