There’s some pretty disturbing stuff in that article,
so now I’m much less interested in the chat logs and would really like to hear these phone calls.
CMC +fnord!
Like if the decoy person keeps calling him and calling him after he’s stopped responding to the phone calls?
So you’re saying they do not have to prove the logs are genuine to get them admitted into evidence in a court?
A while ago I discussed having been a member of PJ (No, I won’t say which member) and that it was my experience with them and witnessing their busts as well as participating in other discussions with them that changed my mind about them. Something just didn’t seem right because of statements that were made by quite a few of the higher-ups in membership, and I eventually told them I thought they were going overboard and left.
I was all but called liar for mentioning it here, because I didn’t save all of the skeevy posts to use as evidence.
Doesn’t take long to figure out that it is all a very sick game to these guys, guys who spend hours and hours online pretending to be teenage girls. I’ve got to wonder what kind of psychological issues there are around to make someone seek out PJ and go to all the effort of volunteering to pretend to be a teenage girl. This isn’t something they were told to do by their boss in the police force, it’s something they went far out of their way to do because they wanted to.
That and their euphoric high when they’re ‘busting’ someone… scare the living hell out of me.
This is the kind of stuff that I saw them do:
Further proof that Xavier Von Erck (née Phillip Eide) is unbalanced:
And if you dare oppose anything that PJ or its members do, they have a label for you.
Pedo-enabler. They will claim you are one of the people they busted. They will try to find out who you really are, and put up flyers in your neighborhood.
I believe you. There is a TON of stuff on the internet regarding “Perverted Justice” I only posted those 2 because they really cannot be labeled “rags”. I have a very healthy scepticism regarding anything I read, but I always consider the source and if it can be documented from other reputable sources, well then, there probably is something truthful to it.
There will always be people willing to believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, facts be damned, just like there will always be people that want to argue over the tiniest detail.
I will state again, the OP asked if Dateline has gone too far, it is my opinion, and I have shown my reasons why, that YES, Dateline has gone too far.
Yes.
That’s exactly right. You’re certainly commended for being as sharp as you are on all aspects of this story, but can hardly expect to premise a debate on A, B, and C, froth indignantly when your opposition points out that A, B, and C don’t make your case, and then toss in D which does as though it were part of the debate all along.
Sure – if (and note the subjunctive well: IF) the allegations made in the suit are accurate, I agree that Dateline acted improperly. But until you suggested it above, no one in this thread was talkign about Dateline’s bribing public officials. We were talking about Dateline’s use of PJ’s standard practices.
If your entire ire at Dateline arose because you believe that they bribed officials, then I guess I’d want to see what evidence, beyond the mere allegations by a plaintioff in a lawsuit, you’re relying upon. But I readily concede that, if those allegations are true, Dateline acted badly indeed.
The logs could be admitted as evidence on ther sworn testimony of someone who could authenticate them. That is, someone has to take the stand and, under oath, say the logs are a true and accurate representation of the chat that occurred. That is the threshold for admissibility – the other side is absolutely free to argue that they may have been altered, but would need to have some evidence for that claim.
PJ busts have resulted in a large number of convictions. Have any of those trials, even one, included claims and evidence that the chat logs were altered?
Why not?
I suspect if you really tried this and the IRS truly believed you were a suicide risk, they’d devise a way to arrest you so that you couldn’t kill yourself.
You seem to be arguing that the cops had only two options in the Conradt case: either (a) do exactly what Dateline wanted and storm his house with a SWAT team and a TV crew, or (b) do absolutely nothing. Obviously there are other ways they could have handled it.
That’s a very fair point.
Did the cops in Texas have any reason to believe that Conradt was a suicide risk?
You caveat your response about the IRS by saying – correctly – if “the IRS truly believed you were a suicide risk” they would take cautions when effecting an arrest. I agree.
Now, did the cops in Texas truly believe Conradt was a suicide risk? Why should they have?
Did the cops in Texas have a choice other than to take orders from Dateline?
Unless you have evidence to the contrary, then I’d say yes – the needs of media there to document an arrest do not override the needs of police in making the arrest. If you believe this case was a reversal of that general rule, I’d certainly be opening to hearing some evidence for that belief.
You read the Esquire article didn’t you? The one linked to in this thread?
The one where the officer who expressed reservations about raiding the guy’s house was told ‘You’re working for Dateline now.’
Or do you not bother to read cites?
Sure.
For everyone’s edification, here is the relevant paragraph:
Now, before we go any further, like pointing out that Lynn Keller did not then follow up her comment by pulling a gun on Detective Patterson and hold him hostage to enforce her command, before we note that nothing removed his CHOICE… let’s go back in the article and explore why Detective Patterson was there:
Now, let’s look at what catsix asked:
Since we were discussing the arrests executed by the cops, and their method of effecting those arrests, it seems somewhat dishonest to mention Patterson, who was off-duty and providing personal security. He wasn’t the one applying for the search warrant. He didn’t make any of the decsions you are now complaining about.
And you knew this. But you tried to disguise it, to offer a false impression to strengthen your case.
Of course, I guess it’s possible you didn’t realize it.
But that would mean you didn’t bother to read the cite. Which is crazy.
This program gives me trouble on many levels. First there is no child involved. Then there is no real crime. Do they think they might maybe have a chance to to have sex with an underage girl ? Yes, That would be a thought crime.
But on another level what does it solve. ? Does any one think these guys are now cured.? There are people in this world driven to have with underage people. What can and should be done about that. ? This program is about exploiting with no solutions offered.
They also leave us with the idea that these guys are everywhere. How common is this? Parents are getting all paranoid about the net. Local news runs with these stories too. More fear. Fear is ratings.
Brilliant analysis.
Just wondering, though, what place the citation about “attempt” crimes played in your analysis that there’s no child involved and therefore no crime.
Do you understand that someone can ATTEMPT a crime, and that the attempt is itself criminal, even if no actual crime takes place?
I don’t like the programs either, but this analysis is just all wrong.
These guys thought they were chatting online to underage girls, and they went to that house with the specific intention of having sex with underage girls. By your definition of “real crime,” if i sit down in a bar and hire a hitman to kill my wife, no crime has occurred until he actually pulls the trigger.
And no, it’s not a “thought crime.” There’s no law against thinking about having sex with children. There is, however, a law against attempting to actually have sex with children.
You won’t get any argument from me about the program itself.
I think that it should be law enforcement alone doing this, rather than the police whoring themselves out to Chris Hansen and the other Recreational Outrage pimps at his network. I don’t believe for a moment that Hansen and his bosses are in this for anything except ratings and money, and the cops should be ashamed of themselves for being part of it.
I also agree that the threat tends to get blown out of proportion. Unfortunately, that’s what gets ratings in the “news” industry.
But i still think you’re wrong about the issue of the crime itself. Just because Hansen is a reprehensible little toad doesn’t mean that the cops should make no attempt to catch would-be child molesters.
I sincerely hope not to spoil this conversation by butting in, but I was browsing this site and wound up reading most of this thread. This topic gets me worked up.
I’m going to skip the whole issue of whether or not this is a valid way to catch criminals, and focus instead upon the problems that this show causes. Granted, catching criminals is a good thing, but it must be weighed against the cost.
Now, I have watched this show a number of times. In fact I enjoyed it quite thoroughly until only recently. I questioned why it was that I was enjoying it, and I found that I was enjoying watching these men being humiliated. I had myself fooled. I felt justified in watching it because these guys are dirty scumbags. Well, I was a dirty scumbag for getting many kicks off of the retarded guy who got caught on multiple shows and could only utter “oops” in reaction to being caught with his hand in the cookie jar and many others besides.
I believe that most of the viewers of this show are guilty of the same. The show creates an illusion of sexual morality. It’s not genuine sexual morality (for the most part) that makes us disgusted by these guys but aesthetic sentiment. People are repulsed by the idea of the 30 year old dork, dimwit, or eminem-wannabe trying to get action from a suburban middle-class teenaged white girl. For many of us, it’s because we don’t like these men, not our concern for the well-being of the girl (the girl doesn’t exist after all) that we get an emotional high. Also, when we’re plopped down on the couch watching the tube we don’t like this middle-aged man going after the young boy. He is an outcast, and we have a natural revulsion for him. (I would argue that he is justifiably an outcast because pederasty is unnatural behavior, but when we’re watching the program it’s not our love of natural order in society that gets our emotions going but a problematic sense of self-satisfaction.) This dissimilar revulsion is good and necessary but certainly harmful if indulged like a drug.
Allow me to digress briefly, so that others may gauge better from where I am coming. Pederasts are rightly shunned by society. It is rightly deemed criminal behavior. There is no cultural relativism as in the case of heterosexual sex between post-pubescent males and females. Now, as a responsible citizen and as a man, I believe that these individuals should be shunned for the good of society. But, as a fledgling christian, I am not without my own sins and therefore I should not be the one to cast the first stone. So, the way I see it, we should follow St. Paul’s advice, which is I think to correct these people privately. To tell them that they must abandon any hope of ever indulging their urges, and only after that has failed and he refuses to be shamed and he remains unrepentant of his urgers and remains a source of disorder should he be exposed, humiliated, and removed for the sake of the community. This, of course is the ideal. The reality is very far from the ideal. Everyone is so afraid of their neighbors these days that it is nearly impossible to safeguard our communities and help others in moral crisis with such urges. And this is something that the show greatly exasperates, as somebody else pointed out earlier in the thread, by driving these deviants further underground. We’ve created a situation where it is considered a respectable opinion in polite society that no imaginable torture is too much, indeed enough, for the criminal. With our witch-hunt mentality we’re cutting off the possibilities of extending humane support to help stop people with mental disorders from becoming dangerous criminals. Thereby we’re leaving criminal deviancy as the only open pathway to the victims of predisposition and disease. A situation in which we all lose.
Now, I find it particularly hard to believe that the same people who provide and gorge upon the array of television shows depicting endless and mindless fornication as healthy behavior really care much about the emotional well-being of the truly sexually-victimized youth of America. Why do we insist upon drawing a line between young people who make bad choices about sex and “adults” who are emotionally damaged and destroyed by the same? I’m not completely sure. I think that a lot of it has to do with the imaginary construct called adolescense. But, overall it’s our crap culture and socialized education system. There may even be some jealousy on the part of some people, particularly some women, but more and more men too, who are past their prime and get a good ole’ dose of schade-freude from keeping the more youthful, attractive, vivacious, and potent (socially, not sexually) members of our society bound in adolescent-limbo. Because personality, wit, and good-taste don’t count for much these days. Adloescents are bound as victims just as much as they are bound by our good intentions when we keep them confined to uncomfortable chairs in stagnant rooms for 6 hours a day for thirteen boring years, but I digress too far.
So, my point is that the show is bad for the reason that it tends to make people believe that their moral reason is being outraged, when in fact it is an evocation of much baser sentiments. What follows from this? I don’t know, use your imagination.
“That’s all well and fine,” you say “but what about America’s parents. Certainly, they aren’t coming from the same place. They are concerned about the welfare of their children. Americans need to wake up to this growing threat.” Well, online predators certainly are a threat. I don’t dispute that. But information about the issue needs to be taken-in soberly and not through “infotainment” sources.
But, here is where I draw the proverbial line in the sand for America’s parents…
OK, your 14 year old daughters are in danger, suburban America. But, what about the 14 year old awkward-daughter of the awkward-perv who was busted on TCAP #34 in Mobile?
When I found out, once upon a time, that my buddy’s younger brothers used to hang out at the house of a guy who was busted in one of the first episodes (true story, they were friends with his son and he was busted for trying to meet a 12 year old girl) my first reaction was to make fun of them. I, a kinda intelligent, relatively mature, 21 year old (at the time) could think of no better response than to make fun of them! How cruel and absurd! They could very well have been in danger, and I made fun of them! Cruel, but not nearly as cruel, I gather, as the ninth graders in Mobile. And absurd, but not nearly as absurd as our sense of justice when we consider the price paid for an ounce of this peace-of-mind for Joe and Nancy America to be a bargain. A price, which could include the utter humiliation and shame of the creepy-predator-guy on TV’s innocent creep-kids. Because, it would be such an epic tragedy if Joe and Nancy America were to discover that little Cindy became a slut while they were busy playing golf and getting pedicures. They’d have much rather waited until after she got her diploma, a sure sign of her “maturity”, and went off to College before she began “experimenting.” Where were the schools at when all this was going on!?
Which, brings me to my final (and perhaps most cynical) point…
Its a bit of a stretch to categorize many of these guys as predators. That’s not to say that they’re not criminals, but when they materialize in front of the infamous kitchen-cams, they don’t live up to most of the associations that we put with the word sexual-predator. A few of them quite frankly appear to be border-line retarded. Many of them are obviously very immature. Very few of them have aggressive personalities. See how often these so-called predators stop, dumbfounded, like deer in the headlights, as soon as big scary Chris Hanson shows up. What predator in the wild, when it is exposed during a hunt, rolls over to have its tummy scratched or acts as if it was just looking for grass to munch on?
Well, maybe that wasn’t the most coherent rambling. Digest and enjoy.
I think this is a great public service. I can’t help but think that its made a few would-be stalkers stop and reconsider. Now the hardcore pedophiles…you cant stop them short of jail or chemical castration.
Attempt what crime. There is no child involved. That is entrapment.
I do not argue that they may have been willing to commit a crime. Not only did they not do it but since no child was present no crime could be done. It is like saying if you read an internet sight on beastiality you are committing a crime. My thresh hold requires more.
to answer the OP: yes
i’ve seen several episodes on youtube and most of the men didn’t seam to be perverts as some label them
I think its a far bigger problem that some adults abuse children
Took the words right out my keyboard. granted, these guys shouldn’t be doing this. I also can’t believe that there are idiots out here who still troll chatrooms for underage ass. Don’t they know it’s more than likely a trap? But then again, the other side of me thinks they just don’t care. Maybe they do know and are subconsciously doing it to get caught. Who knows.
I do feel this is entrapment, but Dateline is also destroying a lot of people and exploiting criminals for ratings. A selfish reason. I strongly feel that the bigwigs behind this show could give a shit less about the kids and more about the ratings. I know, I know…I didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said in this thread twenty times already I’m sure…
Pedophilia is a sexual preference, not a perversion. Trying to “cure” these people would be like trying to make a straight man turn gay. They like what they like and it’ll never change. I just don’t understand why the violent pedophiles are allowed back out into the world after prison. The have a very high rate of repeat offenses.
I didn’t read through the whole thread, but are these guys ever given the choice of sex with an adult woman and they’re choosing the apparent 14-year old instead? Or is the apparent 14-year old the only apparent female willing to give them the time of day?