Wouldn't Chris Hansen be doing a better service by targeting those who want toddlers?

[Wee_Bairn]

Inspired by a post in a current thread by the now banned River Hister- wouldn’t this be a much better service to the world? It would eliminate the whole stauatory rape argument, and would target people who are much more disturbed.
You could easily have a decoy cop offer up their two year old- that way you’d elimnate the “can a 14 year old consent” thing, wouldn’t have to deal with the whole “that wasn’t a 14 year old doing the typing” angle, or the “she was curious about sex” angle either. I say this is what he really should be doing, but wonder if people would get as big a kick out of the show if faced with the absolute scum of the world, instead of the fun kooky bunch we get with the current show.

[miss_elizabeth]

Here’s why I think they don’t. Firstly, there are a lot less men interested in having sex with a four year old than there are men interested in having sex with a willing fourteen or fifteen year old. I don’t think you could have a show every week with guys trying to buy a toddler to have sex with; there just aren’t enough out there to sustain it.

Secondly, the real purpose of the show is to frighten viewers. A lot of people are parents with kids who use the internet, so saying “There are men trying to have sex with your child!!” is frightening to them (even if it really isn’t a threat, which I don’t think it is). How many people have four year olds in chat rooms? Pretty much none. So, it’s less scary.

With the guys trying to have sex with young teenagers, you get to disgust/titillate and frighten viewers. With guys trying to have sex with little kids, there’s only the titillation, so obviously it’s not as good of a program idea.

If you think Chris Hansen is making these shows to help protect kids you are very naive I think.

[cookeze]

Toddlers don’t type or hang out in chat rooms.

[Shalmanese]

I’ve posted this before but it’s worth bringing up again:

@danah boyd

But actually, the research in the cases that we’ve gleaned from
actual law enforcement files, for example, suggests a different
reality for these crimes. So first fact is that the predominant online
sex crime victims are not young children. They are teenagers.
There’s almost no victims in the sample that we collected from – a
representative sample of law enforcement cases that involved the
child under the age of 13.
In the predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence,
stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up
an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually
involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s
also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor.
Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were
adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about
their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating
with.
So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal
seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage
vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of
conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance,
adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to
encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who
are considerably older than themselves.
So for example, Jenna – this is a pretty typical case – 13-year-old
girl from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chat rooms, had
the screen name “Evil Girl.” There she met a guy who, after a
number of conversations, admitted he was 45. He flattered her, gave
– sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And
eventually, he drove across several states to meet her for sex on
several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested in her
company, she was reluctant to cooperate with the law enforcement
authorities.
Many of these cases have commonalities with this particular
instance. In seventy-three percent of the crimes, the youth go to
meet the offender on multiple occasions for multiple sexual
encounters. The law enforcement investigators described the
victims as being in love with or feeling a close friendship for the
offenders in half the cases that they investigated. In a quarter of the
cases, the victims actually had run away from home to be with these
adults that they met online.

[thirdname]

You would be talking about crimes that people take very seriously. I doubt the law enforcement would let TV producers and vigilante groups get involved in it, because it would jeopardize the cases. They wouldn’t do that if the goal was to convict people instead of providing entertainment.

[Wee_Bairn]

@cookeze

Toddlers don’t type or hang out in chat rooms.

Parents of such childen do.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Wee Bairn

Parents of such childen do.

But that’s not the point. Very few people are worried that they or their child’s other parent will offer up that child for sex on the internet. Lots of people are worried that their teenaged child will offer herself up for sex on the internet (or just offer information that gives predators the ability to find her).

miss elizabeth gets it in one.

[aptronym]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

Lots of people are worried that their teenaged child will offer herself up for sex on the internet (or just offer information that gives predators the ability to find her).

To be more explicit about it, the show’s popularity is due to people being able to put themselves in that situation. It’s the same appeal that American Idol, or Real World, or Amazing Race has, except on the negative side. In somewhat of a break from the past, people want to watch TV and think, “That could be me!”

(It doesn’t make sense to me either, I hate reality TV)