Patrick Coyne
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Women are constantly being harassed by creepy dudes who have greasy mustaches growing right on their very souls. We're not sure how the ideal scenario plays out in those perverts' heads. "If I show this random girl my dick for no reason, she'll fall in love with it. I've got a very lovable dick!" Oh, but sometimes that story plays out in a hilariously different fashion than the pervert intended ...
New York had Son Of Sam. San Francisco had the Zodiac Killer. Philadelphia had ... the Swiss Cheese Pervert?
Back in 2014, a serial criminal cruised the streets of Philly armed only with deli-fresh Swiss cheese and his exposed genitals. His modus operandi: approaching unsuspecting women and asking them to wrap his penis in cheese and masturbate him. Let that act now and forever be known as a "cheesesteak handy."
got pathetic sometimes." width="350" height="298" class="lazy" data-src="https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/9/5/6/513956_v1.jpg" />Mayfair Town watchAnd you thought Batman's rogues gallery got pathetic sometimes.
For someone who frequently negotiates wrapping his hog in dairy products with unwary passersby, the Swiss Cheese Pervert was a surprisingly careful man. Even after he'd already harassed several women, the police had no leads on catching him. So the women of Philadelphia took action. One lady was able to snap a photo of the guy. She passed it on to the local town watch. They posted it on Facebook, where it of course went viral, because that is literally what the Internet was invented for (that stuff about "military communications" is an urban legend).
When even the power of the Internet proved unable to connect the grainy picture with a name, it seemed that the investigation stalled out ... until a woman named Gabby Chest stepped forward. Yes, that is seriously her name. Gabby Chest vs. The Swiss Cheese Pervert happened in reality, instead of in a Nancy-Drew-themed porno. Gabby had been receiving strange messages from a man on OKCupid who was asking her to Jack his Monterey with some Swiss. He also shared his somewhat sad supervillain origin story with Gabby -- for him, cheese had become a substitute for women, as "girls are soft and have milky complexions."
Philadelphia Police DepartmentWell, we're off grilled cheese for fucking ever now. Thanks.
Gabby figured that the man who sent her these messages and the Swiss Cheese Pervert must be the same guy. Because seriously, how many people have this fetish? (We mean before now -- we're sure many of you just discovered something terrible about yourself while reading this.) Gabby put her knowledge of the dude on the town watch Facebook page, which enabled a local reporter to piece together his identity and knock on his door.
Five days later, the Swiss Cheese Pervert was arrested. He eventually pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and was sentenced to sex offender counseling and eight months' probation. We wouldn't wish this on many people, but for your crimes against women, sir, we hope you become lactose intolerant.
Consider the story of Alanah Pearce, who committed the treacherous crime of posting video game reviews on YouTube while in possession of a vagina. Because the Internet is a terrible place that would reek of hot dog water if it had a smell, Pearce of course attracted violent comments and rape threats. She tried to ignore them, but was understandably disturbed. Eventually, she got fed up enough to start digging up her harassers' Facebook profiles, and uncovered something terrifying: It turns out that many of the people who hurl explicit, bigoted threats at folks online ... are in fact 12-13-year-old boys.
monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Getty ImagesSHOCKING.
Pearce knew that publicly shaming these kids would probably be an unwise course of action (kids are still kids, even if they should be exiled to a remote island until they grow a conscience). So she took a more low-key approach: She went through their Facebook friends lists, tracked down their mothers, and informed them of what their offspring was up to online. The reaction was predictably priceless:
Mischele Lewis was a single mom in Florence, New Jersey who was bogged down in a messy divorce when she met an Englishman named Liam Allen. Allen came to the American dating game armed to the teeth. He was funny, he was charming, and he had a British accent and a mysterious job with the British Ministry of Defense.
Mischele Lewis"Would you like to hear 'Wonderwall' again?"
The two started dating in 2013, and got engaged later that year. Mischele soon became pregnant. Because of Allen's high-stakes jobs, he talked her into submitting to an intricate "background check" in the form of a series of phone calls from his colleague "Tom," who asked highly detailed personal questions -- not entirely unlike those you might use to steal someone's identity. Eventually, this turned into a series of wired money transfers that amounted to $4,300. You see where this is going.
Mischele found Allen's wallet and ID, which identified him as William Jordan. Some quick Googling revealed Jordan as one of the sleazier con artists out there -- an international criminal who had been deceiving women in the US and UK for over a decade. At this point, the customary way to deal with the situation is to alert the authorities and, if time permits, use the dude's nutsack as a speed bag while waiting for the cops to arrive. However, that wasn't for Mischele; after an initial confrontation, she realized that she was dealing with a world-class weasel, and if she wanted to take Allen/Jordan down, she'd have to beat him at his own game.
South Jersey MagazineAnd no, that doesn't mean she faked an even sexier accent while telling dudes online that she was totally the head of the CIA.
Mischele started contacting other victims and collecting every scrap of evidence on Allen that she could. Bank records, text messages, and video conversations were painstakingly documented, all while she continued her relationship with Allen as an undercover fiancee. By March 2014, Mischele had what she needed to bust Jordan for good. She turned over her binder full of evidence to the police, and he was arrested. Then she presumably walked away, slowly losing the limp she'd been faking all this time, stepped into a fancy car, and poof! Like that, she was gone.
Hunter Moore, aka "The Most Hated Man on the Internet," was the king of revenge porn -- a particularly misogynistic spin on naughty online pictures in which disgruntled people upload compromising photos of their exes. Members of this vast puddle of primordial goop that passes for a community will also seek out and include their victims' personal information, and share the nudes with the women's families, employers -- anybody who might cause them harm. Moore himself seemed to revel in his self-administered status as a "professional life-ruiner." Since the site was based on "user-generated content," he wasn't actually submitting or uploading the images. This made him very difficult to touch from a legal perspective.
Nate SmithAnd impossible to touch from a "right-thinking human being who doesn't want chlamydia" perspective.
That is, until the "community" made the mistake of uploading a topless picture of Charlotte Laws' daughter.
Her daughter was understandably devastated, and Charlotte, in full mama bear mode, started pursuing every avenue possible to get the photo deleted and bring the perpetrators to justice. After isanyoneup.com's hosting company, Moore's lawyer, and local law enforcement all scoffed at her, she took things to the FBI, who paid enough attention for Moore's attorney to freak out and the photo to finally be removed. However, Laws wasn't done. She had seen firsthand how powerless most victims of revenge porn were, and reached a decision. Armed with precisely zero experience in either law or computers, she'd take Hunter Moore down herself.
Charlotte LawsIts like she knew that a guy who made money with unauthorized nudes was up to something shifty.
For the next two years, Laws fought tirelessly, contacting over 100 victims, and collecting information on Moore and his site's users. She began to suspect that Moore or one of his associates had hacked her daughter's email account, and probably had done so to other women as well. She was making tremendous progress. But in Act II of the tense cyber-espionage thriller that was now Laws' life, Moore's "family" got wind of her doings ... and launched a massive harassment campaign to scare her off the case. She started receiving death threats, her private info was leaked online, and she once even had to chase a man trying to hack into her personal network away from her house.
coke snorts." width="350" height="232" class="lazy" data-src="https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/9/7/8/513978_v1.jpg" />Nate SmithBecause if anyone needs protecting, it's the rich asshole who peddles revenge porn in between coke snorts.
But not only did Laws endure -- she fucking won. After a lengthy investigation, she turned over every scrap of evidence she had to the FBI, who in turn arrested Moore for unauthorized access to her daughter's computer, among a host of other charges. In December 2015, Moore was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, where the question "Is anyone up?" takes on a whole new dimension.
For the type of creeper who hangs around Catholic schools and flashes the students, the fantasy is probably that a dozen or so of those girls will get riled up, chase after him -- their knee-high socks pumping, their plaid skirts fluttering in the air -- and then pin him to the ground.
That exact scenario played out for one particular pervert in 2003; it just wasn't quite as sexy as he'd hoped. The flasher had been exposing himself to students of St. Maria Goretti's, an all-girls Catholic school in South Philadelphia. However, instead of the averted gazes and muffled giggling he was probably hoping for, he found himself facing the fury of a horde of teenage girls the likes of which hasn't been seen since Sephora ran out of lip gloss.
Sukeban had to tip their hats and be all, Damn." width="300" height="350" class="lazy" data-src="https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/9/8/2/513982_v1.jpg" />Jetta Productions/DigitalVision/Getty ImagesEven the Sukeban had to tip their hats and be all, "Damn."
Like a ridiculous neighborhood gang from The Warriors, the Catholic schoolgirls chased after the man and eventually tackled him to the ground. Far from repenting his gross ways, as you'd hope, the flasher instead tried to pull a small knife on the gaggle of teenagers. Again, this didn't unfold the way he'd assumed. The girls did not squeal and run away in terror -- they kicked the tiny knife (metaphor, anyone?) right out of his damn hand, then gave him a few bonus kicks just for having the nerve.
So we guess the overall moral of this article is: Don't fuck with Philly girls.
Patrick Coyne is secretly two boys under a long trench coat, pretending to be one adult man. Check out his blog, Florida Cousins.
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