AFTER Ryan Birtwell was prosecuted for trying to wash out a six-year-old boy’s mouth with soap, Stuart Arnold looks at five other examples of people taking the law into their own hands – with varying consequences

Adrian Brown, from Redcar, was jailed for life in July 2004 after being found guilty of the murder of an elderly paedophile. He had boasted to friends that child molesters should be “put down”. Ironically he himself had a sex conviction from his youth.

Father of three Mark Fenwick was cleared of assault by a jury at Teesside Crown Court in October 2007 after confronting a group of youths who had thrown a slab of concrete through the window of his Middlesbrough home. Mr Fenwick had rounded up suspected troublemakers and handed them to police.

Model and former Hearsay singer Myleene Klass received a police warning for waving a knife at youths who had entered the garden of her home in Hertfordshire late at night one evening in January 2010. She was said to be “aghast” at the police action.

Darren Gowland was given a suspended sentence by a judge in February 2011 after firing a starting pistol into the ground in a bid to scare off troublemakers who had gathered outside his Billingham home. Judge Tony Briggs accepted that Gowland had been plagued by problems in his neighbourhood.

North-East vigilante group Dark Justice has been responsible for trapping online child sex predators after luring them into meetings – and seen successful court prosecutions result. However police say their own investigations into sexual grooming are in danger of being jeopardised by such groups.