vaderspal (sorry, but my copy/paste isn’t working, so I can’t quote your post from Page 6), I think if anything the perps’ assumptions about the teenager’s real age runs the other way, towards even younger ages than what the teens claim to be. I can’t believe that many 18-20-year-olds pretend to be 14; OTOH, I can imagine quite a few 12 or 13-year-olds finding their way into a chat room and pretending to be a bit older than they really are. So if anything, what we have here are men meeting “14”-year-olds who might even turn out to be younger, which for some of them might just be the icing on the cake.
And viewers of the “Dateline” programs in question know that a virtually all of these men had already sexualized the relationship with the “minor” with sexually explicit chat, detailing various sex acts and who could do what to whom, and so their genuine intent is beyond a doubt. Plus the pics and masturbation videos, which many of them had also shared. Plus the on-site self-incriminating conduct which many of them had performed, such as: showing up with alcohol, porn, contraceptives, sex toys, ropes, etc.; responding positively to the high-pitched (and teen-sounding) voice of a Perverted Justice bait (if they were really hoping for or expecting a mature woman or man, that voice should’ve given them pause); and even stripping while waiting for the teen to show his or her face.
IANAL (or cop), but it seems to me that most of these activities would definitely be illegal in most or all states and that “just” dirty chat with minors might well be, also. (Ideally, the laws prohibiting sex with minors wouldn’t be limited to sex acts only, but prohibit the sexualization and seduction of minors in a broader way, covering the solicitation of sex, the sharing of pornography or personal explicit pics, explicit discussion of sex acts within a deviant personal context, and even failed attempts at all of the above.)
Context is key here. The law would have to be worded so as to allow for normal references to and depictions of sexuality that are designed for public consumption and are widely available to minors, such as R-rated movies, literature, sexual relationships between teens, sex-ed classes in school, and the like. (R-rated movies, even movies like “Lolita,” are not conceived to get teenaged Cindy to sleep with pedophile Bob in a targeted way, unlike Bob’s chatroom activity in which he addresses Cindy directly.) As I see it, the sexualizing of a relationship with a minor can be legally defined in a sufficiently narrow way so as to hinge upon such activities as dirty or seductive speech with the intent of getting that minor to engage in sexual activity with the adult, the sharing of pornography with a minor, etc., without tossing out the First Amendment.
