If I catch you in a dark alley and hold you up at gunpoint, then it should be a crime, even if you don’t have money in your pockets.
Kobal2 and DrDeth offer similar objections:
If I may paraphrase, they both seem to argue that it’s highly unrealistic for real kids to agree to meet strangers online.
My question would be: how many instances to the contrary would I need to offer for you to rethink this position? I assume if I post one case of a kid being lured into meeting via Internet chat and it turning into sexual abuse, you’d be unconvinced. Five? Ten? Fifteen cases?
I don’t mind doing the legwork to provide cites, but if I dig up ten cases and it’s dismissed as “only ten” then I won’t bother.
This doesn’t respond to the point I made, which is that it makes prevention much more difficult. I guess it does allow for police to luck into stopping the assault if the child’s parents read his IMs before the kid meets the would-be predator at the hotel.
If first-timers never went through with it, then it would never happen in the first place. It seems to me you are assuming a conscience that may not exist. If a guy shows up to have sex with a kid and brings condoms and rope he’s pretty obviously set on doing it. If he shows up and changes his mind, it’s on him to prove it.
Which is a crime in itself. That’s why we have attempted murder.
Why does there have to be a real kid, when every other instance of “attempt” crime doesn’t have to have a real victim?
Correct – which is why renunciation can be a defense to the crime of attempt. If you can show that you intended to commit a crime, but changed your mind and backed out of it, then that’s a defense to the charge of attempt.[sup]*[/sup]
- Subtle distinctions and nitpicks glossed over.
When a female cop pretends to be a hooker, and waits on street corners for guys to proposition her, there is no actual hooker present either, and no “victim”.
And the fact that you could have backed out–there was a locus penitentiae–doesn’t establish that you would have. You’ve got to actually renounce the crime:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=ma&vol=appslip/16471&invol=1
https://njcourts.judiciary.state.nj.us/web0/criminal/charges/inchoate1.pdf
Some courts treat renunciation a bit differently:
http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/Internet/crim_jury_insts/html/chap5_12.htm
and see http://www.jmls.edu/facultypubs/oneill/oneill_column_0600.pdf (discussing the distinction between Holmes’s objective theory of attempt and the MPC’s subjective theory).
Um…
Right. I was agreeing with you in my own special way.
I don’t dispute the fact that it happens.
I object to the idea that it’s so widespread that it’s a clear and everpresent danger, and to the idea that the real rapists use such clumsy come ons. Provide me with 10+ cases of teenagers meeting someone over “hi u wan fuk ?”, and I’ll change my mind. Also, provide proof that these stings have significantly reduced the incidence of rape-by-chatroom. Finally, provide figures comparing # of kids molested through chatrooms vs. # of kids stuck by lightning, because to me you’ve got about the same chances.
Errr isn’t it the other way round ? Innocent until proven guilty ? Especially if he’s not given the opportunity to change his mind in the first place - how can he prove anything ? Until he’s met the girl, she’s a non-person. A thing - a figment of the net with no substance, feelings, or fear. Meeting her in the flesh changes things a great deal. No kid, far less opportunity to hear one’s conscience crying.
Factual question though : if an adult has consensual sex with a minor, and neither of them reports the crime, is it still a crime ? Say a neighbour witnesses them fucking in the garden and calls the cops, but the minor doesn’t want to press charges (nor do the minor’s parents - the minor is very much in love in this scenario, and convinces them there’s no foul), will the adult still wind up on the sex offender DB and all that jazz ?
Yep.
Everybody’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
He’s able to change his mind at any time between the point they start talking and the point where he shows up to have sex with the kid, which in this case was a period of days. It’s true he is not presented with a child and offered the chance to continue or follow through on his stated plan to have sex with the child.
Yeah, sure. That’s why kids never get molested. Once these guys are confronted with an actual human being, they realize they’d never want to inflict that kind of pain and suffering.
Except some of them do want to do that, and others are screwed up enough that they don’t care or can’t stop themselves.
Actually, when I think of entrapment, it’s generally situations like LEO posing as hookers or dealers I have in mind. If a LEO says “pssst…I’m selling drug/sex! Do you want to buy some?”, that’s encouraging a crime that the person might not have committed or even envisioned to commit otherwise (guy is depressed for some reason and think : “hmm…sex/drug. Haven’t thought of that. I guess I could use some”).
Basically, I’ve a problem with a LEO taking any positive action that could be a cause of the crime. “Creating a crime”, in any shape or form shouldn’t be their business. And in my opinion, it should be very strict so as to avoid grey areas. I’ve no problem with the cop posing as an old lady with a purse. I’ve a problem with the supposed old lady shouting “Hey! Anybody willing to rob me? I’ve a lot of cash in my purse, I’m unarmed, plus I looove to be robbed! I want to have an interesting story to tell!!! Please, rob me!”
Basically, that’s what we have with the LEO posing as a teen. Each conversation should be dissected to see whether or not the LEO encouraged the potential culprit at any time. And any instance where it could be construed as encouraging the culprit should result in dropping the case. Since it’s going to be a big mess, and since it’s going to be extremely difficult to end up in a situation where said culprit will go to a meeting and where it could be shown that he went there with an intent to have sex with the supposed teen without ever encourage it, it just shouldn’t be done as a general rule, IMHO.
Let’s take a more extreme instance : I’m a LEO and I approach Suspected Creepy Dude (SCD) telling him : “I’d be willing to pay 10 000 for some porn pictures of a cute 10 yo". SCD answers : " 10 000? Sounds good. I’ll be back”.
Scenario 1 : SCD comes back with the pictures : “You were lucky. I happened to have porn pictures of my 10 yo daughter. Gimme the money”. Should SCD be charged for distributing child porn? I don’t think so, since he was enticed in selling the pictures. Should he be prosecuted for taking the pictures at the first place? You bet!
Scenario 2 : SCD comes back with the pictures : “You were lucky. I happened to have a 10 yo old daughter, and I took the pictures you wanted. Gimme the money”. Now, we have a crime that wouldn’t have happened at all without the intervention of the LEO. Should SCD be prosecuted for taking the pictures? I say no because we don’t want to encourage LEOs whose actions result in child porn being produced.
So, again, I’m strongly in favour of severely limiting the possibility for LEOs to artificially create situations that result in a crime being committed or attempted. Because I want LEOs to prevent or stop criminal activity, not encourage it or even worse, cause it. Transforming law-abiding (even of dubious morality) citizens into criminals should be the job of other criminals, not of the police.
ETA : And of course it never should be the job of vigilantes or commercial TV stations.
I’ll accept as few as a half-dozen. But it has to be a stranger, the “kid” has to be under 16 and the perp over 30, so we exclude anything that might reasonably be a real “date”. In other words, if a 19yo dude meets a 17yo dudette on MySpace and they hook up, and he’s later charged with Statutory rape, this isn’t the level of crime we are talking about, OK?
And, IMHO there’s no “crime” either.
Fell through the Ice already gave you two of those. And really, I think you should count two more even though they miss out on on the ‘30’ part, because if a guy drugs the kids and then molests them I don’t think you can say it might’ve been a date.
Becuase, in the other cases, such as attempted larceny, there’s not so much of the "crime’ going on in the perps head- what he really thinks and intends. Sexual fantasies, and sexual roleplaying on the internet are extremely common, but few exchange fantasties about other crimes.
By the way : several people mentioned the condoms. I’m not sure how having condoms is an evidence of anything. I’ve had condoms in my wallet at essentially all times for the last 20 years or so (though unfortunately I rarely got an unplanned use for them).
OK:
Man changes plea on child sex charges
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli announced the arrest of Michael Raggi
Internet affair led to sex, sheriff says
Well, I’ll concede it’s more common than I thought. However, do note that in at least two of the cases, the child had represented herself as being 18+.
"
When authorities arrived, they found both Mellow and the girl, who he thought was 18."
“The girl first told officers she was 18, but she is 15”.
That isn’t the sort of case we are talking about here.
But again, I concede it’s more common that I thought. We do agree that most child molestation is done by someone who is NOT a “stranger”, right?