YouTube removes ‘pick-up artist’ videos after BBC Scotland investigation

Picture from Panorama - Secrets of the Seduction Bootcamp showing Miles and Richard outside a cafe. picture: BBC - Photographer: n/a

A company offering “boot camps” for would-be pick-up artists has had its YouTube account deactivated after an investigation revealed they could face prosecution for posting covert recordings of women they target for sex.

In The Seduction Game, being shown tonight on BBC1 Scotland, reporter Myles Bonnar joins a boot camp for would-be pick-up artists in London run by a company called Street Attraction.

Run by Eddie Hitchins, whose real name is Edib Baraktarovic, it features six students each paying £600 to learn more about “seduction techniques”.

Street Attraction, which also runs residential courses in eastern Europe, posted what it calls “infield videos” – covert recordings of Hitchins and other coaches apparently with young women.

Hitchins also describes 14 ways to help men overcome “last minute resistance to sex”. In one, he advises the man to say that he understands if the woman says that things are going too fast.

An advisory note appears on the screen and says “then carry on escalating”.

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After the investigation by BBC Scotland Disclosure YouTube said it had taken action to remove “not just the videos but the entire channel for violation of our policies on nudity and sexual content”.

Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said these explicit videos could be illegal. She said: “I think there’s real questions about legality, about criminal behaviour, about harassment, about using images, particularly intimate images or audio without consent.

“I think some of these techniques come very, very close to the definition of rape. I think any police officer viewing those videos should know there is a serious question about whether or not consent has been given.

“And that, I think, is then where the police need to launch a pro-active investigation.”

Hitchins denied he teaches men to pressure women into having sex and denied publishing audio from secretly recording women.

He said: “If anything we help prevent rape culture, to help prevent them get involved in anything illegal or non-consensual.”

He denied publishing audio of himself having sex with women and teaching men to pressure women into sex, and said they had only filmed actresses who had given their consent.

Earlier this year Bonnar investigated Adnan Ahmed, who calls himself Addy A-Game, for BBC’s The Social. A police investigation followed and Adnan was found guilty of harassing young women in the street.