There are more lucrative ways to make money. TCAP is a reflection of society’s values; we have laws forbidding sexual contact between adults and minors and most of us would rather prevent child abuse rather than punish the adult after the fact. This show has received so much attention that suspects begin to recognize Chris Hanson in later episodes. Do you feel equal sympathy for those men who freely admit they knew they were doing wrong ethically and legally?
Two things. One, I think that the chat logs of the previous conversation give a pretty clear indication to a reasonable juror that those guys aren’t coming over to watch a football game. The conversations are all sexually charged, and most of the guys show up with wine coolers and condoms. If this 21 year old can convince a jury that he was simply taking this girl out to a party, then good for him. That’s his right and the protection that the law gives him. The system works in the respect that an arrest is not the final word on the matter.
Second, I disagree with your idea that they were “lured.” In my opinion, that is irrelevant. It is every adult’s duty (excepting Romeo and Juliet laws where an 18 year old dates a 16 year old) to turn down sexual advances from underage children. And these aren’t smoking hot 17 year olds who look 22. They are usually 13 and present themselves as virgins doing little kids activities.
I don’t care if the 13 year old is standing in front of you naked just begging for it. It is an adult’s duty to recognize that this child is not mature enough to make a decision about sex. Is it rightfully a crime to taint this child’s youth for your own sexual gratification.
I don’t feel a bit sorry for these guys that get caught.
It depends on the sentence. I’m not against putting some of these guys on the show or even jailing some of them. But here it seems like all of them can get ~20 months routinely in some states (it can be ~30 days in other states), no matter how flimsy the investigation.
You know what’s a crime? Stealing. Not something like: “you bought a bike you believed was stolen and now you’re going to jail”, I’m talking about actual stealing, of something worth over $50. If I were a judge, I might give the perpetrator a severe warning about it for their first offence, and then jail them for the second.
The same with actually have sex with an underage person. That’s a crime and depending on the circumstances people should be put in prison for it - I don’t think there’s anyone who would argue that people should be able to do as they please.
You just don’t get it. Adults don’t “hang out” with middle schoolers.
I’m a 30 year old woman. Would I ever “hang out” with a 13 year old boy I met on a chat room? Would we have any common ground, any reason at all to be spending time together? No. Not even a little bit. I’d never even have occasion to talk to kids that age unless I was teaching or mentoring them. The idea that I’d cruise chat rooms looking for middle school boys to chill with or take to parties is…bizarre at the least. It’s incomprehensible.
If that 13 year old boy was coming on to me, and I’d been having a dry spell, would I have sex with him? Is there really anything he could do to convince me it was a good idea? Even if he begged and pleaded? Gah, of course not. I can easily bet you any amount of money that I will never, ever, in my life, come anywhere near close to sleeping with a 13 year old boy regardless of circumstances.
It’s not normal, even for a 25 year old, to want to “hang out” with kids this young.
You just made my point. We as a society want to *prevent *the child from being exploited or abused, not spank the perpetrator after the fact. A slap on the wrist is not a deterrent.
True but he was put in prison for months at the end of it iirc. Rarely, they will put down something like “pled not guilty” and leave it like that, they don’t even want to tell us that one or two weren’t put in prison.
The decoys are all over 18. Did you see them on webcam or how they would greet the guy outside the home sometimes in really, really short shorts? They were smoking.
In an ideal world, your logic would follow on as correct. However when you use such absolute logic and don’t allow for the human factor, then you can run into absurd conclusions. Just because you’re over 18 doesn’t suddenly make you a bastion of perfection. Acting as an adult and being responsible is realistic. Acting perfectly isn’t.
This missed the point. Sure the decoys are over 18. The police will not put an actual 13 year old in a dangerous situation. What they do is get a young looking 18 year old who could pass for 13. And she has also told the guy that she is 13.
It doesn’t matter that she was really 18; what matters is the intent of the predator. Just because that “prostitute” that you (the general you) solicited on the street turned out to be an undercover cop does not mean that you can get away with it because you weren’t really soliciting a prostitute.
And, sure, people aren’t perfect. I don’t think that it takes super-human morality to keep from fucking a 13 year old, though. Rightfully our society has deemed that to not be a character flaw or somehow falling short of perfection. We look at that as a very serious felony.
Very well put, jtgain.
I take your point. But not everyone may feel like that. You could if you wanted to and I doubt anyone would accuse you of anything. Maybe the reason it seems so bizarre is more because it’s less common for an older female to like a younger male. Remember this guy was 21 with a 14 year old, not 30 with a 13 year old. There’s a big difference.
This is your personal preference though. You sound like as if you’re a really thin person asking how fat people can eat so much and saying that you never in your life will come close to eating a full chocolate cream cake - yes because you’re not like that, but there are some who may have problems with it.
Well, I live in Ireland and while prostitution is frowned upon, it’s in theory not illegal. In places like the Netherlands, “sting” operations are not allowed at all.
When you base a crime on a hypothetical situation, you have to be really careful that you aren’t just creating a situation that the person would otherwise have avoided for the rest of your life, or for many lifetimes. Based on your general mode of living and behaviour. TCAP doesn’t convince me of this.
Once again, these guys didn’t fuck anyone and maybe they never would.
I refer back to my earlier analogy about teasing someone with a known anger problem, and let’s add some alcohol to the mix. The person is sitting down drinking and having fun with friends, when someone starts insulting him and teasing him, mocking him, etc. Now this guy tried to get his anger under control, and in 99.999% of circumstances he would now have it all under control and was ready for almost anything. He had this “system” all set up in place, like he would count to 10 and he would say polite things to try to get away from the situation. Things that would work for any reasonable person.
But this guy riles him up so bad, that the guy exploded and assaulted him. Turns out, that guy was actually a police officer and suddenly the man is under arrest and in jail.
Does the teasing excuse the fact that he assaulted him? Not really. Does it act as a mitigating factor? Of course.
I gaurantee you that you would have men up and down, left and right, everywhere in the country going to jail if they were caught by TCAP. How much of the population does TCAP reach? Like <0.001%? I believe that these people don’t pose a threat in any type of normal circumstance and you know what? If a 15 year old girl is begging for it that much, then I’m not going to be so arrogant as to say that it’s a heinous crime that deserves years in prison. In many countries in europe 14 or 15 is the age of consent. http://http://ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm I do respect the laws and cultures of the US, but this whole thing just seems like a hypothetical built on a hypothetical built on a flimsy card castle, and turned into “OMG CHILD RAPIST MOLESTOR PEDOPHILE”.
What you describe is classic entrapment. The cops in these stings are careful to just be “there” while they let the guy incriminate himself.
And, no, he didn’t have sex with a 13 year old and wasn’t charged with that. He was charged with soliciting a 13 year old for sex. And, yes, I supposed that there was a minimal chance that he was going to the house to give the child a Bible lesson and a lecture on being in chat rooms. He is free to tell that story to a jury and see if they believe him. I don’t, and I submit that most reasonable people do not believe that given all of the evidence.
It sounds like you have a problem with the age of consent being what it is. That’s a fair point to lobby your local legislator to change the laws in your state. I don’t think that it is overly puritanical to outlaw sex between adults and 15 year olds. If an adult woman wants to have anonymous sex with someone that she met on the internet, that is fine. Adults in a free country are allowed to make poor decisions.
However, our society has rightfully decided that a 15 year old has not matured to the point that her decision to do that would be one that is in her best interests. She doesn’t have the mental tools to make a decision that could lead to a life of unfortunate consequences.
If Ireland or whatever wants to have an age of consent of 6 years old, then they are a sovereign nation and can do that. I disagree and certainly wouldn’t want that here.
I think though, that for these individuals, it might be irresistible if that 13yo seems willing.
I don’t think it’s a great accomplishment when I walk out the door, but for an agoraphobic it is.
Possibly for us, resisting the temptations of a 13yo girl are easy, but for a pedophile maybe there is a relative difference in will.
Perhaps a pedophile who never acts on any of his impulses SHOULD be commended.
I don’t know. Should a thief be commended because he didn’t rob a convenience store TODAY?
I guess that you could get into a debate regarding if molesting children is a criminal activity that needs to be punished by jail, or a mental illness that needs to be treated in a hospital.
Either way, society has to take them away so that they don’t hurt our kids.
Your problem is you re looking at pedophilia as a crime, but it’s not. Child molestation is.
Perhaps I would not commend a thief for not stealing because if he is a thief that means he has already stolen once before thus earning the label. I wouldn’t commend a child molester for not molesting a child.
I might commend someone with kleptomania if they didn’t steal something. It definitely is not something analogous, however, because the severity of the crime is quite different.
I might not care as much about the kleptomaniacs desire to steal. If a the kleptomaniac does steal thus earning the label thief, I might forgive that thief because they have a mental illness.
The same can not be said for pedophiles. If a pedophile crosses the line to become a child molester, that’s unforgivable, but even then I believe there are shades of gray.
No matter what Perverted Justice say, they are not acting like innocent adolescent children. I have a hard time buying that young girls would respond positively or even neutrally to some of the disgusting things these men say to them. Possibly these men do think that the girls they are talking to are truly underage and perhaps some have malicious intent. These people should go to jail, but I find it very difficult to swallow that these people are getting such harsh sentences for talking to what seem to be a willing or at the very least curious teenager.
My mom was 15 when she dated my dad who was 24. Today, my dad might as well be labelled a pedophile, but it was my mom who was the one who sought it out. It was consensual. She was not traumatized by the event in which I was conceived. Possibly because there wasn’t so much hysteria about it at the time. My grandmother didn’t prosecute my father and instead insisted they got married. There was no trauma because no one made my mother a victim!
So I don’t buy that ALL of these potential encounters are traumatic or harmful. In fact I sort of owe my life to one such encounter. I will say that I personally DO NOT CONDONE IT, but the sentencing and labeling seem harsh for the age these girls are.
It’s not like their completely oblivious to sex or what the consequences are at that age. I was well aware in elementary school what it was. i do not view 14 and 15yo girls the same way I view an 8yo. I think it is VERY different.
The fact that people are making it so black and white is disturbing in my opinion. When I was 18 and a senior I dated a 14 yo girl who was a freshman. We never had sex, but if I had consummated our relationship, would I have been labelled a pedophile? I am sure her parents wouldn’t have encouraged us having sex, but I don’t think they would have wanted me to go to jail either.
Again, that was only a four year difference. Perhaps we are at least able to accept that there should be some gradiation as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. In that respect I think it’s pretty disgusting that Rupert Murdoch has a wife who is young enough to be his granddaughter.
Why is it less common for an older female to “like” a younger male than for older males to “like” younger females?
SEX. Sexual interest.
Think about it- if it wasn’t about sex, we’d expect to see generally equal numbers of men and women showing up at teenager’s houses on TCAP. If it’s just people looking for a good conversation or someone share a Mike’s Hard Lemonade with, you’d see a much wider spread. You’d see more people who are “hanging out” with people who are not their preferred sex. Wouldn’t a guy just looking for a buddy be more likely to seek out another guy to chill with, anyway? At least they could play video games together. What do you think a college senior guy and a girl fresh from middle school are going to talk about? Avril Lavigne? Makeup? Who sits with who in the cafeteria? Pre-teen girls are vapid creatures- there is nothing, nothing there to interest an older guy beyond sex.
The reality is
We never see women on TCAP.
Women never troll chatrooms.
Women never show up at unknown young teenager’s houses.
Women never “just happen to have” condoms and alcohol on them.
Women never have to say “Oh, I thought he said he was 18.”
Why not? Because women, for whatever reasons, generally don’t try to have sex with kids.
Thus it follows- the men who troll chatrooms, who go to young kid’s houses, who make bullshit excuses, and who end up on national TV…well, it’s almost certain the difference is that they were trying to get sex.
There was a case in the 90’s - an executive for go.com, IIRC. He was chatting in some room which was titled something like “with youunger girls” or “doing it with daddy” or something. He started chatting with a police lure who said she was 13, and eventually arranged to meet on the Santa Moinca pier and “have a good time”. The police found a young officer who could pass for 13 and arranged for her to meet him.
Apparently, he saw her, told her to go “over there” and he would pick her up, then started driving off before he was arrested. His excuse was that he thought (based on room name and the adult-like responses of the lure) that he was talking with a mature woman who was role-playing, and expected to meet an adult. A fact in his favour was that he sent her in the opposite direction and apparently was getting the heck outta there as fast as he could once he saw she appeared 13.
Regardless, he was fired from a really good job, there was discussion whether the coroprate jet could be seized, Disney had recently bought go.com and was NOT amused. Search of his laptop revealed a half-dozen pictures of underage girls. (His argument that the IRC chat rooms allowed people to send pictures and there was no proof he had seen them or knew of them). I think the lawyers argued it out for months, he pled out the minor charge and agreed to “be a consultant” to help the sting operation (yeah, right).
The difference is if a woman wants sex, unless she looks like a bulldog (and even then) she can get it.
The other difference is that in general, men are wired to look for “young and healthy” in women - which may get miswired into “too young”. Women in general are wired for “good hunter, good provider, Alpha Male” which often gets miswired into “the guy with the biggest muscles and tatoos”. However, yes, we have seen quite a few cases of women, usually teachers (the ones with better access to teenagers) being prosecuted for the action.
Plus, finally, there’s the double standard. As some Holywood wag said decades ago about the Polanski case, “if some 14-yo boy came home and said he had just had sex with Raquel Welch, the dad would pat him on the head and say ‘That’s my boy!’”
BUT THEY ACTED!!
These guys went into a chat room, found a girl who they believed to be 13, talked to them multiple times about sexually explicit things they wanted to do, and came to the girl’s house.** THEY FUCKING ACTED!** :mad:
Perhaps a pedophile who never acts should be commended, but these guys acted and they should go to jail. Two years sounds like a perfect sentence to me. If they’d actually done something, I’d say lock them up for life.
Also, I want to point out that women absolutely molest boys. Some researchers even think the numbers might be close to even. However, due to double standards and shame, many boys never report the molestation, and even if they do, the women are often not prosecuted. It’s true that women don’t go into chat rooms as much (apparently), but, as with all molestation, it seems to mostly be done tp boys the women already have access to, as teacher or babysitters. It absolutely happens, and it can be devastating for the boys, because they never even get to admit they were victims. Instead they should feel “lucky”.
It’s a very sad thing, and I hate seeing it whitewashed over here.
But all those teachers were so hot!! :rolleyes:
They acted based on consent. They acted because they believed there was someone out there who wanted to have sex with them. If these guys had went into a chat room and discussed ferreting out information on a woman, tracking her down, raping her, and then were caught outside the woman’s house or apartment with lockpicking tools, duct tape and condoms, yeah, that should be arrested and jailed. But any person old enough to type on a computer is old enough to say Buzz off to someone who propositions them on a computer for sex.