NBC sued after Predator suicide

[Khamsin]

Here's the scenario:

Someone hot IM's you and starts hitting on you, trying to get you to come over. After everything's arranged they spring on you that they're 16/14. You DECLINE to come over and stop talking to them, 2 hours later a TV crew shows up at your home with law enforcement who 'just want to talk'.

I thought this was the scenario:

Someone obviously prepubescent is in a chat room with you and other people about an innocent family topic appropriate for all ages, and you start talking to them. They're talking about how their day at middle school went while you pressure them into IMing you and talking further. They say they don't feel comfortable talking to strangers, but you convince them that you mean no harm and would like to meet them. They say no, but you persist and after a while they relent. You say you'd like to talk to them on the phone, and they say no, but some more convincing words from you and you've got them on the phone. You offer to come over now, and they say next week might be better, but you insist, and drive over to their house where they catch you.

[Priran]

I thought this was the scenario:

Someone obviously prepubescent is in a chat room with you and other people about an innocent family topic appropriate for all ages, and you start talking to them. They're talking about how their day at middle school went while you pressure them into IMing you and talking further. They say they don't feel comfortable talking to strangers, but you convince them that you mean no harm and would like to meet them. They say no, but you persist and after a while they relent. You say you'd like to talk to them on the phone, and they say no, but some more convincing words from you and you've got them on the phone. You offer to come over now, and they say next week might be better, but you insist, and drive over to their house.

Sounds solid, go for it.

[Apelila]

I thought this was the scenario:

That's what they say they do, but programs like this never show their chat logs. Call me old fashioned but I kind of want to see what they tell these guys online, since we never get to see them in the court system i'm guessing a lot of the TV cases get thrown out / pleaded without ever touching the court system.

better link to the story

I was playing devils advocate before, and I probably could have worded that better before.

So, : The sister's lawsuit contends that he never intended to meet at the location, and then they came to his house when he didn't show, at which point he killed himself. Now that doesn't exactly speak volumes for what he thought would happen to him, but he was A: a prosecutor and B: aware of what happens to sexual predators in our systems. Notice both articles mentioning a large number of these cases being thrown out for the piss poor way they where handled? Misrepresenting yourself, poorly, to get someone arrested who may/may not be playing right along back with you makes you a deuchebag.

So in short, the pedo's are bad, but we need a law preventing this kind of 'investigative' reporting, or at least something to provide more disclosure during the report.

[Epincus]

Wouldn't the chat logs be on Perverted Justice's website? I remember them touting that on one of the specials.

[Weeks]

http://www.perverted-justice.com/?archive=Inxs00

Didn't take long to find, since they posted a link on the front page ridiculing him for committing suicide.

[Charla]

According to Wikipedia, P-J was originally a volunteer organization that just tried to bait their target, but the police didn't take them seriously for the first couple years until someone got convicted from it. Then Dateline stepped in and started filming the sting operations. So if the camera crew went to the target's house after he didn't show up, it's probably the Dateline people and/or the Texas police that were pushing for it.

[Apelila]

Well, after reading this its still easy to have two opinions.
One is that he knew that what he was doing was with a 13 year old, the other is that the chat logs don't exactly show the people ever trying to lead the conversation away from the topic of him getting all kinds of freaky with the kid.

So who's to blame? Both of them, and the show gets extra credit for making pornography out of shame.