I don't know if any of you saw last night's Dateline NBC show about sexual predators online. It was dragged out way too long and redundant, very poorly produced, but I think the project is very valuable. Working with the folks at Perverted Justice, a group that tracks and exposes folks who troll for sex with children online, NBC and the Sheriff's department in Riverside, California, set up a sting operation. Posing as 12 and 13 year old boys and girls in chat rooms, they would get messaged by men and set up dates with them. When the men arrived, they were confronted on camera and then arrested.
It's a disturbing show to watch, but I think it's very valuable. In fact, I think this is the sort of thing that law enforcement absolutely should be doing at a time when they spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort on things they really have no business doing. Forget about busting poker games and pot smokers, this is a real and genuine threat to children and needs to be stopped. In 3 days, they had over 50 men show up, most of them with booze, condoms and, in some cases, viagra. And that's in one single county in one 3 day period. Imagine how often this is going on all over the country.
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I didn't see it, but the "MySpace is only and just an evil home for predators" meme has been going around for a couple of months. Remember that MySpace currently has about 43,000,000 members. At a risk of 99.99% safe (0.001%), there'd be about 4,300 "predator" cases. The data don't seem to support even that level of risk.
The "chat rooms" seem to be another kettle of fish. As a parent, I cannot see any benefit for a kid being in a chat room. They cannot be patrolled.
Also as a parent of a teen, and a parent educator, what I'm seeing is that the kids are far, far ahead of most parents with respect to living the digital lifestyle. Many parents are totally unaware of their kids' online activities, and don't have a clue where to start.
One good source: Larry Magid's sites,
http://safeteens.com/
http://www.blogsafety.com/
Frankly, a bigger issue for teens today online is what they are saying, not who is trying to hook up with them. In other words, teens seem to think they're invisible to anyone except their friends, and say heinous things. Those inadvisable statements may come back to haunt them as they apply to college, apply for jobs, and so forth.
I did not watch this, but I believe it. And this is Riverside. Can you imagine some middle-of-nowhere place in the middle of the continent?
I missed it, but read about their previous efforts on the east coast (Virginia or Maryland). Amazingly, there the local DA's office refused to prosecute many of them, giving highly dubious jurisdictional excuses. One guy even showed up twice in under 24 hours (after the location was changed). Appalling.
I know that here in Austin the police have run stings from time-to-time. Someone in my own company (whom I didn't know) was busted.
Just a thought, but there is the other side of the matter that seems to never be fully addressed (esp in TV infotainment). The officers are pretending to be 12 and 13 year olds. And they are relatively successful at "seducing" men between the ages of 30-60 to show up (the textual referents used by the "officers" is not based on law enforcement fantasy?). My question is where are the parents? Where is the individual parental responsibility? How is it that 12 and 13 year old females in our culture are interested, and willing, and offering these opportunities? We can of course simply blame the "perverts" but ultimately we live in a world in which our youth are exposed to ideas, sold desires of conspicuous consumption, through sexuality. Yet, never once is that really accurately and relevantly addressed.
That said: this piece of reporting is something i find much more troubling than sexual perversion. As we get ready to go to war w/ Iran, we find our own US military knows more about our children than any of us could imagine:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner02042006.html
It was appalling. I saw it, or probably something like it, a few months back.
I remember wanting to throw up, and feeling murderously angry about their mealy-mouthed excuses and lies. One of the men had the gall to be outraged that he was being filmed. Had I been there at least one of the camaras would have ended up lodged in the bastard's throat.
Anyway- yeah. This would be a much more valuable use of tax dollars than busting up poker games and pot smokers.
As for spyder's comments about parents: they can't be blamed for everything. Sometimes kids do stupid things unbeknownst to their parents.
The fact also remains that this behavior is predatory: it is secretive, manipulative and by its very nature designed to circumvent parental supervision. And even great parents sometimes fail at protecting their kids. Not to mention predators often lie about their ages and intentions. I imagine a lot of kids think they are talking to someone their own age, or at least much closer to their own age.
I know what you're saying- parents do ultimately have responsibility- but did your parents know everything you were doing when you were a teen? Mine sure as hell didn't.
Maybe a better way to question it would be to ask why would, for example, young girls seek the attention of older men? At least in the cases where they know that the creep is much older than they are.
What are they getting from the interaction? In that respect I think you're dead on about parents. Kids who seek attention from older men usually do so, I imagine, because they are not getting it at home. This doesn't mean they must have a father figure and all that- but they are definitely looking outside the home for something they need.
Predators, I suspect, know this and know exactly how to spot vulnerable kids.
Leni, I doubt that most of the kids that age (12, 13) get anything out of the interaction with these predators. They are at a highly impressionable age and are seduced (in the worst way) into having sex with these individuals. Unless they have been taught to recognize and avoid such tactics, it's not difficult to understand how these kids fall prey to them. I'm sure some of the targeted kids come from highly dysfunction families, but I'll be willing to bet that many more just weren't aware of the danger that they were in.
Tacitus, I wasn't trying to imply anything cynical. It's just that in order for the correspondance to continue the kids have to allow it. They wouldn't allow it, I'm guessing, if they weren't getting something out of it. That something may be perfectly innocent. A new friend, someone who is interested in them, etc. But it may also be the very thing that makes them vulnerable. And I'm talking about before the physical abuse. I'm loathe to use the word, but I suspect the predators see it as a kind of courtship. I don't mean to imply that they get something out of the abuse- that would just be beyond creepy.
In any case, since predators aren't successful with every target I think it's safe to assume that there is a reason, or a number of reasons, why they are able to maintain online relationships with at least some kids.
What I'm saying is that since parents can't protect kids 24 hours a day, one of the best ways to prevent abuse is to arm the kids. And a good place to start is by asking how and why predatory tactics succeed with some victims. Why do the kids continue correspondance? What do the relationships mean for them? What did the kids who didn't continue correspondance know and do? Why were they able to get away?
Which ties in with what you were saying about victims being unaware of the tactics. I think that's very true. I also think you're right that they don't know what they're getting into.
Clearly if they did this would never happen.
Basically, I don't think this can be laid in the laps of parents. Kids hide things from their parents. They always have and they always will, and a family doesn't need to be dysfunctional in order for that to happen. I think a better approach would include consideration from the kids' perspective.
Why do they make the decision to talk to these people? Knowing why they do it might help us arm them with the knowledge of what not to do. Do they think it makes them seem more mature if they have an older boy who is interested in them? I'd bet a lot of them do. I did, when I was that age. That's really what I was getting at.
I'm thinking more along the lines of printing out the conversations and handing them out to kids and analyzing them point by point. "This is where the predator is doing tactic X- how would you respond to this and why?" Since ultimately it is the kids who have control over the contacts no matter how much their parents work to prevent it.
spyder wrote:
Just a note: the ones pretending to be children in these stings do not seduce the predators. To do so would be entrapment and it would risk having the case thrown out. If you go to the Perverted Justice website, you can see hundreds of the actual logs of such conversations and you'll see that they are very careful not to initiate any sexual talk or to suggest that they meet. All they do is not respond negatively to such seduction from the adult, and that is typically all it takes for the predator to continue to try and push it further and further. In fact, they often will put things into the conversations that make it even more obvious how sick the adult is, like mentioning that their father abused them as a younger child. It's amazing how many people there are out there who seek out exactly that kind of child to exploit their already messed up psyche.
I am more than pleased that the police are pursuing predators in this way. Although I originally had no interest in seeing the show based on the ads, after stumbling upon it I found myself unable to turn the channel, taking great satisfaction in seeing these men shamed for their behavior.
That admitted: I am greatly disturbed at this marriage of corporate interest and government power. How is it that the network was allowed to incorporate their broadcast needs so closely with the imperatives of law enforcement? This went much farther than putting a camera crew on ride-along, or posting a hidden camera in a room where an undercover cop was doing his work. The first point of direct contact with the predators was with the network reporter. I cannot see how the interests of justice were enhanced by association with the show, but I could imagine ways in which this could compromise those interests.
I don't believe it is possible to allow this without corrupting the state's proper interest in enforcing the law.
Mr. Brayton,
I am shocked. Appalled. Flabbergasted. Really and truly horrified.
Not because I just realized that there are predators out there who want to destroy the innocence of children.
I am disgusted at your convenient response to a television program intent only on playing with your fears.
If anything, I am a student of Television. Leni is quite correct. That was not the first time they have broadcasted that episode. "Confronted" this issue. Look at their website if you did not see the previous one. The characters do change. The Police are now getting involved. Hooray! Each time I have seen it I have dismissed it as another garbage piece of consumer alarmism (Tonight on your local news, our Super-Charged-Action (5) Team will bring you a shocking expose that you have never, ever heard before. Do not trust your pedicurist. She may be doing filthy things behind your back. We will tell you a story of a poor and sad people who have developed a deadly foot fungus simply by trusting theirs).
Come on. Do you really place your beliefs so completely behind a mythical army of American children who can do nothing but cry out to the pedophiles and pederasts, "Please, I need to be violated. " ??
I don't know. I don't know you. I have only read your blog. You have made some very good points to explain why Intelligent Design is just a conman, intent on injecting God into science. I cannot make the connection between those statements and your current dismay at watching an episode of Dateline NBC.
Please read the twisted tale of Albert Fish if you believe that the producers of that television show have tripped over anything new or anything truly shocking. Does it feel more real to you because those predators can now be discovered using the Internet? Because you can now really see a picture of what a predator looks like, as NBC finally decided to place a picture of it on your TV? Please tell me. Which one of those men was a predator? Which one has actually left a string of broken children behind him? Which one only thought he had found a strange and wonderful prize that could share in the delight of his deluded fantasies? Who could ever prove themselves to be a First Time Offender?
In looking at crime through the filter of my own experiences, I can understand and believe in only one thing, that as (s)he commits his(her) heinous crime, the dreaded Suicide Bomber has only One intention in her(his) mind: Protect the Innocents.
Is your vision of Good Law Enforcement really a picture of government agents pretending to be children just so we can all be satisfied that they have the power to destroy a horrible person? A person who *thought* they wanted to commit a crime and then made the foolish choice to act out their fantasies because of a Government-Agent Man's Lies? Simply because you can let out a cheer and wave your flag behind those Agents as he does it? Seriously?
I am a homosexual man. Would I prove anything by making friends with a Loudmouth Bigot at my neighborhood bar by shrouding myself in the Lie that I, too, wish all the foul Homos were dead? As I lead him back to my apartment with the seducing, whispered words, "Come on. I know where one of them lives. Let's go teach him a lesson, " and then expose myself, should I expect the bright lights of Dateline NBC's camera-editing-posse to emanate the Truth to an innately sluggish American TV audience?
As I accept my assailant's fist, his baseball bat, his knife, his dreaded bulleted point, does America learn, through the ever truthful lens of their forever modern and up-to-date television screens, that it is just plain stupid to hate Gay people? Does any Gay person ever advance their cause by pointing a finger and then announcing, "See?!? She is one, too. Now you *have* to accept me. " ??
I may be the naive one here. I was never molested by an Adult as I was a child. I do not know what that pain feels like. I always rolled my eyes a little while valiantly singing along to the "Safety Kids" series of audio cassette tapes. I apologize. I was a child. I was lucky. I couldn't understand that there are other children in our world who are too stupid, too afraid, or too unloved to feel that they can never raise their hands, never scream out to announce to the World that they are being abused. Is my mother now anguished because she made me sing those songs, as I can conveniently end any argument we have about my own life with the bitchy statement, "Okay, Mom. I understand you love me. You have to understand that this is My body. You have to trust that I also love you and will tell you when I am really being hurt. " ??
No. Emphatic. Deliberate. On purpose. No.
I admit that I have no children of my own. I could never understand the pain of losing one or of finding one damaged at the hands of a criminal. I don't want that responsibility. I am glad that other people have chosen to accept that "burden" and then love me enough to tell me their story. If any person decided to use any of my nieces or my nephews as the mere object of their gratification, I would gladly rip their face off, if given the chance, but I also must admit that, right now, I wish I could reach through the tangled strands of copper and glass and plastic that allow me to send you this message to grab you and shake you until you come to your senses. But that is impossible, both physically and metaphysically. I know I could never shake a person to the point that they really agreed with me.
The great horror of Dateline's "Predator" series is not unearthed in having the gauze ripped away from your eyes to discover that pedophilia really does exist and it probably lives in a house not too many doors down from your own. It isn't even found in an irrational fear that the Government must, at some points in time, engage in super-secret, undercover operations to convict lawbreakers of their crimes. It is in the image of that man, so happy he had found his Great Prize that he ran into a Stranger's house naked and unafraid (many kudos to the FCC for convincing NBC to digitally protect me from really seeing that panorama). Did Dateline really do America any great service by forcing him into the Spotlight and then expecting him to explain his actions? He wasn't just deluded. He wasn't just Evil. By no radical definition of the Truth could I ever call myself a mental health professional, but even *I* could see that he had a serious number of triggers in his brain not quite firing. Should I rest myself in thanking the Heavens that Dateline is on the case, that they will convince the Police to investigate the *real* criminals, and then turn off my Television set and snuggle back into my own safe bed to enjoy a Comfortable night's sleep?
Do I thank the Dateline producers for releasing him back into the wild, just so I can cluck my tongue as he repeats his dreadful actions? Just so I can scream in fury, "Has he learned nothing by having his crimes exposed to the hideous glare of American Popular Opinion? " No. If he has committed a crime by soliciting a child over the Internet, over the phone, make sure it is a Law and then prove it. Send him to prison or to a mental hospital. Your choice. I am fine with that. If the police, the FBI, or any other law enforcement agency has to pretend to be child to gather evidence to justify putting him there, so be it. I am fine with that, too. I do, however, expect their questions, their voice to be neutral ones. It is an even greater crime for a Government to solicit one of its Citizens to commit a heinous act.
The purpose of the Law is not found in being anyone's surrogate parent, whatever laziness, stupidity, pain, or evil we see their choices. It is only an imperfect device that we all attempt to use to stop us from killing ourselves.
I place great trust in that. I place great love in the Democracy we have built, even if I also find a great revulsion in its history or in the way we choose to apply it right now.
United States v. Russell
411 U.S. 423 (1973)
Docket Number: 71-1585
*That* is a Supreme Court decision I can stand firmly behind. That is an important distinction everyone must make when deciding who is a friend and who is an enemy. Do I think The Court has also made many very, very foolish decisions before then and since then?
Yes.
Do I sit back and Wail at Their Evil Nature, just because they have not yet decided to free all of the drug offenders from the bars and the bullet-proof windows that are intended to keep me safe from them? Any fool can see that the current contents of our penal systems bear a strikingly terrible similarity to that of an 1807 South Carolina Plantation. Why can they not make the decision I see quite plainly to be the Correct and Just one?
That is not their job. They apply their judgments on a case by case basis. It is my job, it is Our job to build a stronger case for them. To help them decide that the things *we* feel are correct are, in fact, also the Law. We must convince the Defenders to take up our cause even if they know that they will lose, even if they are not paid for it, because it must be decided in Court, by either a Judge or a Jury. We must convince the Police, the District Attorneys, the Governors that they have been wrong in focusing the powerful Laserbeam of the Law on one community, on one demographic, on any one Class or another while turning a blind eye to the rest of us. Yes, they can get an easy arrest. Yes, they can get an easy conviction. Yes, they can flip a switch to bask in the glory of their adoring audience. That is not the point.
The responsibility always rests in our hands. To vote. To create and then wave an American flag, no matter who tells us we have been destroying it in the process. To scream at the top of our voices, however that word (is)(will be)(can ever be) defined, "Stranger! I am not interested in your delicious sack of candy. I am not afraid of you, but I will not prove it by getting into your car, or by being quiet just because you try to convince *me* that I have committed a crime in just letting you go on about your business. I mean you no harm. You can't destroy me, no matter how hard you try. I refuse to justify my own life by ignoring my own hand in the story of your destruction."
Never imagine you can justify the importance of your own beliefs by so easily announcing you have placed your scorn into the image of another, more hated person.
The American Dream is one of work. Of building a community where everyone feels protected. Are we there yet? No. That is the definition of what a Dream is. People will always try to pervert it into a mandate to accumulate Riches, to spy on their neighbor and then cry out, not because they wanted to stop a criminal, but to be oh so happy that they could smile at the punishment. Justice has nothing to do with protecting your own conveniences.
--- jsc
I am not fundamentally opposed to sting operations, but they really must be very carefully structured. A number of years ago, the FBI (I believe it was, it was one federal law enforcement operation) conducted a sting operation of congressmen to see which ones were susceptible to bribery. The sting would actually offer bribes, and those congressman who actually took the offered bribes would be arrested me.
Several things bothered me about that. One major problem was that the sting operation was that apparently the stingers were selecting the congressmen to be stung. They were unable to try to sting all of the 535 congressmen, and the myriad staffers (who were also susceptible to bribery), so they had to make a selection. One wonders, what criteria were used in making the selection? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that party affiliation was one of the criteria. It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that one of the criteria was that the congressman merely voted against a budget increase for the agency that was running the sting operation--an attempt at payback, in other words.
With regards to the sting described in the post, one wonders the ratio of gay-oriented chat rooms vs. straight-oriented chat rooms the sting operation targetted. If the sting operation placed emphasis on gay-oriented chat rooms, they may very well get results that suggested that gays are more likely to be pedophiles than straight people. Such statistics would merely be more fodder for conservatives' anti-gay diatribes. I recognize that straight people--particularly men--can and do enter gay chat rooms, but that would be lost on the conservatives.
thalidomideglow:
I honestly have no idea what the point of your virtually incoherent comment was. Okay, so NBC's motives in the situation are not pure but also motivated by trying to make compelling television and garner ratings; I agree completely. Notice that I did not say that I think they should continue doing this, I said that these sorts of sting operations should be done by local law enforcement as a matter of routine. For some reason, you seem focused on the network's motives rather than on the reality of the situation. The reality is that, like it or not, there are a hell of a lot of people out there trolling the internet for children to exploit. Over 50 men showed up for this sting in 3 days time in only one location; regardless of NBC's motives, they didn't invent that. If the TV show wasn't involved and it was just a sting operation between Perverted Justice and the police, the same number of men would have shown up.
You also seem to think that these are just men indulging a fantasy, but again the reality just doesn't support that. Several of the men who showed up had prior convictions for the same thing, with at least 3 or 4 of them still bring on probation or parole for the last time they molested a child. In one case, the predator had already destroyed the lives of 3 children, all brothers and sisters. And some of them showed up and walked into the house even after seeing others get arrested outside the house. That kind of compulsion goes way beyond just indulging in a little innocent fantasy. They also showed up with alcohol for the kids in many cases. By what possible definition are these not dangerous predators that need to be locked away from potential victims?
raj-
As a general rule, such stings do not target rooms devoted to sexual orientation, nor do they have to. They typically are in chatrooms for kids, where there would be no mention of sexual orientation at all. Most true pedophiles in fact do not have a preference for girls or boys, or at least they don't manifest it. There are some with a specific taste for either girls or boys, but a far larger percentage of pedophiles will take either one than will adults having sex with adults. I wouldn't even call them bisexuals, really, because the attraction for them is purely predicated on age and vulnerability, not gender. Gender is simply irrelevant for many of them.
By the way, I already said this but it needs to be said again: such stings are not entrapment. In the case that raj cites, there is a good entrapment defense - the police actually offered the illegal bribe to see who would take it. That is not what happens here. I urge you to go to the Perverted Justice website and view the logs and you will see how they do it and how carefully they avoid entrapment. They are very well trained to be passive recipients. In order to have a case that won't get thrown out, the target of the sting must be the one who initiates the sexual talk and must be the one who suggests that they meet and so forth. The "victim" has to simply not respond negatively or give them any reason to stop the conversation. If the illegal act is initiated by the adult, it's not entrapment.
Mr. Brayton,
I am delighted by your response to my comment. I do respect your voice, even if I do not know you. Even if I do not agree with you on many things.
"I honestly have no idea what the point of your virtually incoherent comment was."
That is not an attack. That is a genuine statement. You did not understand what I was trying to say or the way I was trying to say it. That is an opportunity for me, to reorganize my thoughts and then try to explain my own statements, my position to you in a different way, in a way you might understand where I am coming from. It is an opening to an honest conversation about a very painful topic.
You and I have radically different conceptions of what a valid argument should be (or maybe we don't. You decide). I am never intent on proving anything or getting anyone to really agree with my side; Understand? Yes. Agree? No. Usually, I am intent only on clarifying my own feelings, my own beliefs, my own knee-jerk reactions to difficult issues for myself, no other opponent involved.
So I use metaphor, symbol, allusion, and meaning hidden in contradictory run-on sentences, strange punctuation, pun, false voice, and word-play. I just want to vomit into prose the great dissonance going on inside my on mind when looking at a subject I cannot ever really get a handle on. Is that by definition incoherent? Yes. Do I really believe that you have never felt the simple joy of abandoned incoherence? Um... Well... If you haven't, and if it doesn't go against your religious beliefs or 12 step recovery program, there is a concoction out there that humans have invented and have named Beer. It is delicious, but you also have to be responsible when using that magical elixir.
But there I go a nattering again. Sorry. Back on topic. I do apologize to you for the pointless frustration of my previous words. I was pissed off. I still am. I probably always will be as I look at the application of law and punishment and fear in America.
Are we too lazy a nation to look at the sexual abuse of a child without being consumed by hysteria? Even asking that question pisses me off. I want to scream that the answer is no, but then I look at the people running our government and the lurching masses that place so much faith, so much power in their hands. I am really, truly lost.
As a Gay man, I know that a significant number of people I would encounter while traveling across our country see Me as a dangerous sexual predator, intent only on snatching their child away from them to lead him into my life of sin and degradation. That stops the debate on Gay Rights. That stops the debate on Gay Marriage. The convenient pedophilic mask that any person tries to hide me behind needs to be destroyed, because that is not who I am.
You are correct. Dateline did do a great service to the children whose lives have been twisted by the hands of the evil men featured in that story. Law enforcement should investigate each one of them and convict them of their crimes, if they can gather enough evidence so it can be proved in court, and in the correct way, so the conviction will stick upon appeal. I don't question the motives of the folks at Perverted Justice. They are good ones. They want to protect children from being exploited. I would thoroughly support my own local police department using a similar undercover operation, if they can structure it with enough oversight, enough documentation of their actions to prove they have not solicited a crime.
The reason I still dismiss their story as alarmist garbage is the convenient mask that Dateline has placed over the face of the sexual predator. He is not some stranger hiding in the metaphorical bush of faux Internet anonymity, just waiting for the long arm of the law to shake the branches and catch him in his scuttle from his secret hiding places. That is an easy answer. That glosses over important topics of sexuality that parents have a very difficult time discussing with their children. That glosses over the reality that parents can and do abuse their children, that a child's abuser is more likely to be a relative, a friend, or a known neighbor than any stranger lurking and waiting to snatch them. The abuser is not even always a He. Dateline's "Predator" series leads people to breathe a handy sigh of "Phew! There sure are some sickos out there. Thank goodness the police are finally starting to catch them. Turn off the lights. Go to sleep."
This is an issue that deserves more than that complacency. This is an issue that deserves a serious examination.
How do we define what a Child is? Does it depend on which State you live in, whether you have married him(her), whether that child is male or female?
Most of these crimes are not reported. How does law enforcement gain the trust of a violated child to get the story straight? Should they also use the Internet to pretend to be molesters just to see what child's voice calls out to them? Now *that* idea really creeps me out.
How do we approach the rehabilitation and release of a sexual predator? Separate the insane from the sane? How do we fix the broken child, the broken family, the broken Foster Care System, the broken community? How do we dispel the hysteria that is ignited whenever a scandalous case of abuse is sensationalized by the media?
Children can be brainwashed by well meaning parents into thinking they have been abused. If you haven't seen it, watch Frontline's story following the Little Rascals Day Care scandal ("Innocence Lost"). Afterwards, do you have any idea what really happened there? I still can't quite fathom it. All I know from my experiences growing up in the 80s is that the Day Care Industry suddenly became a haven for pedophiles. Was that the truth? Or was it irrational fear spurred on by the movement of women from the Home into the Workplace? I don't know. If you know of any Women's Studies graduate student who is still looking for a doctoral dissertation topic, there is a good one. I would be interested in reading his (her) research and conclusions.
I was confused and angered by the following statement from your original post:
"In fact, I think this is the sort of thing that law enforcement absolutely should be doing at a time when they spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort on things they really have no business doing. Forget about busting poker games and pot smokers, this is a real and genuine threat to children and needs to be stopped. "
That is a pretty lazy statement. I don't understand why you made it. Adult solicitation of children over the Internet "needs to be stopped," and then What? Pedophiles realize that they can't keep trolling on the Internet to find victims, so they go back underground to find their next victim closer to home? They travel to Thailand to spread the horror on a foreign soil where they won't be arrested or prosecuted? Another Lifetime Movie Network Melodrama plotline gets discovered? Yes, law enforcement can catch criminals and put them in jail, but does that ever address the real problems?
Are you trying to tell me that you want to give the police more power, more latitude to go after pedophiles, just so they will stop paying so much attention to potheads and gamblers, just so they will start actually protecting children from the evils that are actually hurting them?
I don't know. That does not sound like the voice I have heard from you in previous posts. Maybe you were just being glib. I didn't take it as a joke. I hope you don't think I am angry and lashing out at you. I am just trying to understand for myself what you meant by that statement. Can you help me understand?
Here is the point I am trying to make: The power we want to give to our local law enforcement agents to go after pedophiles will certainly be used to go after any other evils law enforcement agents want to protect us from, even the imaginary ones. This is especially true if it makes the majority of an irrationally fearful populace feel safe. If you do not think a law is just, work to change it. Dispel that fear.
Dateline's reporting simply feeds it.
Don't you gag just a little when George W. Bush asks us to believe in him and call him "Daddy" and give him unchecked power over watching our every move just because he SWEARS he needs it to protect us, and then regular, average Americans trust him?
--- jsc
thalidomideglow wrote:
I'm sorry, this is the point at which I simply stop taking you seriously. All this really means is that you spew incoherent bullshit. If you have an actual coherent argument to make, feel free. But if you want to deliver acid trip flashbacks, do it on someone else's blog.
Ed Brayton | February 6, 2006 10:09 AM
I understand your point, but a couple of observations.
One, if the stings are directed to chat rooms directed towards kids, those stung must be really dumb if they are instructed to drive to a particular location to "hook up" with the kids that are soliciting them (or the other way around). Kids can't (lawfully) drive. If that is the way these stings are being carried out, those stung should be put away just for the offense of being stupid. I'm being sarcastic, of course.
Two, I know the statistics regarding pedophiles and the sex of the victims and I agree with you.
Three (and this is in response to your next post, I agree with you that the pedophile stings are not entrapment. But the stings regarding the politicians may very well be, and, regardless, the stingers may very well target politicians who are to be stung, as I said earlier. I find that power extremely disturbing