Re: Regarding "To Catch a Predator."


pandora wrote:
"Hyerdahl" <Hyerdahl3@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1150833465.742500.228380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

riclanders@xxxxxxxxx wrote:


Result -- all discussion about the methods employed by Perverted
Justice comes to a screeching halt.

I don't know that the shows producers are all that concerned about the
legal aspects of catching the criminals; what they want to show is the
SHOCKING behavior of men willing to risk almost anything to have sex
with a minor. That's what the press does tho, hold a microscope up to
behavior that elicits shock, disgust and makes society question the
rape culture we live in to have so many men act in this way.

Indeed.

What should be due process is> short-circuited.

Again, the show isn't about catching criminals; it's about our rape
culture and its effect on our nation's children. What the cops and
lawyers do after the event is a separate issue. Certainly if I were
defending one of these creeps, I'd try to discuss entrapment if that
were a good issue. But the show itself, has nothing to do with the
criminal case after the fact. Keep in mind that it isn't cops who are
setting this up. It's the show.

Correct. It is all about showing the public just what these characters are
up to and perhaps warning others about the behavior. It may indeed be
entrapment BUT once these characters have followed up on the invitation,
the evidence is there that they were willing participants. They *might* get
off from facing criminal charges but the damage (to them) is done by showing
their families, workplaces, friends etc, just what kinds of activities they
are interested in.


Your opinions seem more shallow sound-bites than true introspection.

For example, when you write "showing the public what these characters
are up to and perhaps warning others about the behavior" exactly what
are you getting at?

Showing what the suspects are up to would require more than edited
versions of their Perverted Justice chat transcripts. It would include
transcripts pre-dating the sting; that way, we'd learn whether the
sting is an example of their normal net behavior. In other words, you
assume it is without anything to support this assumption.

And exactly what do you mean when you write "warning others about their
behavior"? Warning who? And, again, what "behavior" are you talking
about? Most of the suspects were gainfully employed with no police
records. Is this the behavior you mean?



(edit)

Now, few of us should have any problem with locking-up an authentic
pedo and throwing the key, but all of us should have a problem that
short-circuits due process -- a system that so stacks the deck against
the accused it becomes suicidal for him to question the evidence.

If entrapment was used, that is something that may keep the pedo out of
the slammer. But let's not forget that these men do come to the
alleged homes of these alleged girls to have sex with them. In my book
that makes them culpable.

Yes, it does do that and I'm sure once the evidence is there, well, it's
there.

And if it isn't there, it isn't there, but either way, we'll never know
because when a prosecutor threatens you with 20 years to life, it
doesn't matter if his case is weak, you cop a plea.

Dateline is manufacturing these crimes for no other reason than to
boost ratings. If you paused a moment to think, it would dawn on you
that they could do the same thing -- with the same result -- with any
crime they choose. For example, they could set up a Cheaters type
sting, give the suspect an unloaded gun, take him to the hotel room
where his wife is in bed with another man then film him as he unloads
the gun into his wife and her lover.

Would you approve of that? If not, why not?



We should all have a problem with that, and that's why what Dateline is
doing is rotten to the core.

Exposing what's happening in our American rape culture, is an important
and newsworthy show. How the alleged perps are handled after that may
be another matter.
I'm really sick of these shows and flip right past them, but the moral
majority, it appears, can't get enough of them. And, perhaps it will
make the next Mormon Biship, or Catholic priest, or some other bitter
boy from making the mistake of doing the same thing somewhere down the
line. I mean ....some of the bitter boys caught here were teachers,
ministers, people pretending to be upright members of society.

Indeed. Disgusting.


You're not an historian; that much is clear. Our current sex crimes
laws are less than two generations old. In your great-grandfather's
time girls could get married as young as 15 or 16. In Thomas
Jefferson's time a 14 year old female was considered marriageable too.
Indeed, if what we're told about Jefferson's slave, Sally Hemings is
true, Jefferson got her pregnant when she was 14.

But if you find your ancestors "disgusting" that's another matter
again.

ricland





Marg


ricland


.

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