It’s not on so much this side of the Atlantic, but I’m really taken aback by some of the sentencing. The decoys beg the other chatter over and over to come, and they engage in extremely explicit material themselves.
There was this fat guy who seemed like a really nice guy that just happened to be in the area. He got put in jail for 21 months… 21 months hard time in prison for a good man who got lured. That’s ridiculous. That completely sucks. He just happened to be in the wrong chatroom at the wrong time.
And what the hell is with the police guns and police brutality? Jesus. Nobody is going to pull a firearm. He had just been chatting with Chris Hanson, if he had a gun he would obviously have pulled it out then. No, it’s all for the drama.
The police there ran at him so fast and rugby-tackled or American football tackled him down on the hard concrete except the guy that did it literally smacked him over the head first after shouting “GET DOWN ON THE GOD DAMN GROUND!”, as if it were a friggin terrorist situation. I’m sure he really loved acting like he were some kind of hero in a movie, stupid bastard.
I mean it’s crazy stuff. If they had gone ahead and had the sex by actually luring a 14 year old girl, okay… 21 months there is fine. It’s a nasty thing to lure a girl into having sex. But here it’s the underage girls who did the luring. It’s a joke. But jail is really harsh, nobody wants to go to jail.
A huge amount of policemen are some of the most messed up individuals you could ever come across. They often have incredible power issues. The last thing you want to do is put any sort of power in these guys’ hands.
I think if they actually lured and had sex with a 14 year old girl, 21 months is not fine
I’ve never heard this one before :rolleyes:
Naw but seriously, I find it hard to believe that any of these police officers brutalized suspects when they knew full well they were being filmed by a goddamn TV crew.
I agree that To Catch a Predator is ridiculously out of bounds. What is perhaps worse than the prison sentences is the fact that these men have their reputations ruined on national television - and all for ratings. One of the victims committed suicide while the crew were waiting outside his house. I’m not defending men who chat with teenage girls on the internet, but ruining people’s lives for TV spectacle seems sinister to me.
Internet predators luring teenagers are the 21st century version of the satanic cult abusing children hysteria the U.S. had in the 80s and early 90s (check out the book Satantic Panic for a more detailed explanation of how the stupidity works in moral panics). American statutory rape laws are such that an underaged person can never actually be considered capable of consenting to sex with someone older than them (outside of a narrow age range covered under the Romeo & Juliet laws). Why is this, and why are the sentences the way? Welll, I think it’s because it allows local politicians and law enforcement to say they are tough on child predators and it allows lazy or incompetent parents to feel better and believe that someone else is protecting their child.
They get arrested for crossing state lines to procure sex from a minor. They always suggest the visit themselves, not the people pretending to be a child, and are explicit about what they’re going to do once they get there.
TBH, as much as I disliked the show (I watched it only because I was subtitling it) I never felt sorry for the paedophiles. They weren’t led into what they were saying or doing - it was all their choice and their own words. One of them had, in his car, not only sex toys and condoms but duct tape and a gun, all together in one bag to take into the house.
It was basically a show where everyone including the viewers were horrible people.
Quite a few of the arrests never made it to court. I’m having trouble finding a cite other than Wikipedia for this right now though.
It’s a popular show, there are a lot of clips of it on youtube (though there are many satirical versions on youtube so be aware you might come across one of those).
I think this is why Chris Hanson keeps saying that: “while we’re doing our operation, the state police are doing their separate investigation at the same time”. Then you have the issue of entrapment.
They also have the ability to edit everything, if they don’t like it (for example the guy saying what the decoy said which is often explicit) they can just leave it out. Some of the guys say they knew something was probably up and the reason they knew is because the decoys were so insistent on them coming over.
I also don’t get why they’re allowed to broadcast the person either without their permission, using their image as entertainment and to make money. A show like Cops is different because you are just observing law enforcement, sort of like how you can view a public trial. But Chris isn’t interviewing them on behalf of the state. Some shows, especially satirical shows have to get written consent that they allow a person to show their face on tv.
The fact that it’s a private premises makes it even worse. Imagine if a man invited a woman to her home and they had sex, and then she found out later he had recorded it and was selling it. Would that be legal? If a person invites you into their premises, there is an assumed element of trust, which is why if you fall and break your leg due to their negligance you can sue them for it.
It reminds me a bit of an episode of The Outer Limits where reality tv meets law enforcement for the sake of tv ratings, with obviously bad consequences.
I wouldn’t be against them getting a slap on the wrist for it, but 21 months is harsh. I think one guy even got 6 years, but the judge thought he was lying in court or something. In other states they get like 30 days, but when you put a person in prison at all it’s a big deal and I bet they’re actually more likely to reoffend in some way after they know how prison works.
According to Wikipedia, the guy who killed himself (Suicide of Bill Conradt - Wikipedia) didn’t even try to meet the bait in person. He engaged in sexual chats and solicited dick pics from an actor who was posing as a 13-year-old.
So far as I’m aware, each and every instance of contact is carefully executed so that there is no luring at all – the idea for the visit and any acitivities to be done therein always has to come from the suspect, not the faux-teen on the other end of the chat. Dateline worked with Perverted-Justice to run these stings, and the logs of each and every chat are available at their website.
Why don’t you locate a chat log that you believe shows entrapment or an inappropriate lure, and show me what you mean?
And the defense lawyers have the ability to obtain unedited material for trial, and use unedited chat logs for defense.
Do you have any explanation for their universal failure to show this material that would be so critically helpful to their clients’ defense?
In reading the OP’s posts in this thread again, I can’t tell if his complaint is about the legal sufficiency of the evidence gathered by the show or about the legality of the sentences imposed after conviction.
My last post addresses the legal sufficiency of the evidence gathered.
As to the length of sentences imposed on persons convicted:
Va Code § 18.2-374.3 forbids any person over 18 from using a computer system to propose sexual intercourse or other sexual acts to any person under 18. This is a Class 5 felony in Virginia, punishable with a term of imprisonment of not less than one year nor more than 10 years. So in Virginia, a sentence of six years for this act is well within the sentencing discretion of the judge.
What state’s laws did you believe these sentences exceeded?
Do you believe there is some legal significance to the fact that an actual 13 year old was not involved?
Do you believe there is some legal significance to the fact that he didn’t try to meet him in person?
I think we’ve seen this debate repeated often enough to know how the argument goes: there’s no 13-year-old and there’s no sex, so instead of conducting stings, the police should just hope they get lucky and catch child molesters on their way to committ their crimes or try to track them down after the crime has already been committed and someone has already been harmed. This is independent from the fact that To Catch A Predator is (was?) sleazy and it’s unfortunate that the police get involved with it.
Perhaps there should be regarding the former, absolutely there should be regarding the latter. This is a situation where technology and the law haven’t caught up to one another yet. In the bad old days, the only way a Pedo could obtain a pic was by stalking, abducting or otherwise tricking a minor into a situation where they were together, or very, very close to one another. Now all someone has to do is say “pic plz” and whoever is at the other end can take a webshot and off it goes. It changes the whole nature of the interaction and the meaning of consent. (current legal definitions aside) If a fourteen year old girl is feeling naughty and takes a compromising picture of herself and sends it to another chatter, it is significantly different than a perv lurking the bushes, or tricking her into a dangerous meeting.
I don’t want to speak for thirdname but shouldn’t there be? I assume that the state’s position is, “Well, you thought that you were chatting with a 13yo and that’s close enough.” Do we really know what the person was thinking? Are we punishing thought crimes?
If the police send a 22yo into a liquor store and the 22yo tells the clerk that they’re 20, has the clerk broken the law by selling them liquor?
I completely disagree. “wrong chatroom at the wrong time?” No.
I guarantee that I will not ever be going to a chatroom and agreeing to travel to have sex with a child. This guy knew full well what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. He knew the age of the child.
You cannot convince me that he was in the “wrong place at the wrong time” He was there for the express purpose of having sex with a child. And he was caught.
But the state of Virginia is not taking some ancient law about luring and applying it to this modern interaction. The law in Virginia specifically contemplates computer communication, and punishes a person over 18 who uses a computer system to suggest sexual activity to a person under 18.
You may believe that this kid of conduct should be legal, or should be punished less harshly, and you’re welcome to that opinion. But you cannot complain that the law is the result of outdated legislation meeting the computer age; the law was written after the computer age and specifically mentions the use of computers. The legislature intended to reach computer communication with this law.
I don’t feel even a little bit bad for guys whose idea of fun is meeting with a thirteen year old bringing condoms and a six pack of Mikes Hard Lemonade.
Read some of the transcripts on Perverted Justice. This is not people going in and enticing upright people to cross the line. We’re not talking about a fake seventeen year old in bikini pics going into a sex chat room and dinging them for chatting back.
These are guys who go into little-kid chat rooms, talk to people who make it well known that they are little kids (complete with little kid photos, not sexy pics), propose sexual things to them and then take the initiative to arrange to go meet them.
I would think this would be the first line of defense these guys would take. If I claim that I was aware that the ‘bait’ person was over the age of 18 and was engaging in playacting and came over expecting to meet an adult for sex, what is the State’s rebuttal when all they can produce is an adult who was playacting who invited me over for sex?