Warning: This post contains multiple references to sexual assault cases.
As news is coming out that Cornell University, which has had history of a prestigious clout as an Ivy League school, did little to nothing for seven of its frat students when they were accused with raping a student, it seems almost perfect time for Primetime. I haven’t seen it yet but supposedly it doesn’t have a favorable view of Chris Hansen.
During the mid-2000s, NBC ran about 20 episodes of To Catch a Predator. It was a joint effort sting operation between producers of Dateline NBC, Perverted-Justice (an organization that focused on stopping online child predators in chat rooms and on social media) and many law enforcement entities. Hansen was the host of the show you could say as he would often interview men who had been chatting with members of Peverted-Justice posing as underaged people.
Hansen became famous for casually stepping into a room (kitchen or den) at a house where the predators had traveled to and telling them to “take a sheet.” He’d then question them on what they were doing and what were their intentions. As they tried to leave, the predators would be arrested.
Some would argue it was entrapment but they’d give people online a lot of opportunities not to drive many hours to a location. They would even used obviously older photos of staff in the communications. This was the 2000s. You could tell by the styles and fashions that a photo was from the 1990s. Some photos were taken in the late 1980s. And usually the chat messages were very vulgar and explicit.
This wasn’t the police arresting someone for saying “Hi” to a middle school aged girl at a Wal-Mart. A lot of these guys were major creeps. One man was told to wait in the main foyer of a house and he continued to follow what he thought was a young girl into the next room. He probably was going to be forceful. I remember one even brought a kid younger than 10 with him. Another man was a paster or clergy who tried to get into a fight with a producer. Or maybe it was another person but these creeps knew they had screwed up royally. Despite a parody on a 2007 South Park episode, many men came from regular neighborhoods and had the types of jobs where they were pillars of the community.
One of those was Bill Conradt, who was a district attorney in Kaufman County, Texas, which is southeast of Dallas. In November of 2006, a sting operation was held in Murphy, Texas which is nearby Kaufman County. Conrad had reportedly been chatting online with a member of Perverted-Justice under the pretense he was talking to a 13-year-old boy and had exchanged photos. When he failed to show up at an arranged meeting, law enforcement attempted to serve a search warrant at his home on Nov. 5, 2006. The NBC production crew was with law enforcement and Conradt fatally shot himself with it being recorded. Conradt’s estate sued NBC for $105 million and the case was settled out of court.
Some people at the time felt the sting operation had gone too far. But how many victims of sexual assault and abuse have committed suicide or attempted it? How many turned to drugs or alcohol abuse? How many found themselves in abusive relationships later in life?
Conradt was 56 at the time of his suicide. He had worked almost half his life as a prosecutor. He knew what he was doing. He knew what would happen to him if he got caught, especially on national TV. He made his decisions to chat illegally. Yet people acted like the media was to blame.
While I can understand the sentiments and concerns of the community not wanting sexual predators coming there but there are numerous of them everywhere. I’d think a lot of people would be very surprised. The problem is people need to get over the notion of sexual predators as shady sinister characters lurking in the shadows. Most are in our schools, our churches and our elected offices and governments. It’s easier to hide in plain sight when they’re seen in a respected position.
And yes they are even college students at prestigious universities.
As a former journalist, I covered many sex crimes. Most of the time the people were found guilty. There were a few times people were acquitted even though they had previously been convicted. But I think the blame is on the poor job by the prosecutor and the archaic notion that the victims were getting back at their father and stepfather. I think one of the victims was white and dating a black man. I’m not saying the jurors were racist but the accused was twice convicted of rape and the victim was a family member he allegedly drugged. So the question is how would they like it if it was their daughter, sister or niece?
I even heard one juror said about a sex crime case that they didn’t want to ruin the man’s life. Remember 10 years ago when they said the same thing about Brock Allen Turner?
There was a case in which a man claimed he had accidentally walked by an window nude as the shades weren’t drawn completely and a neighbor claimed he was flashed. So there was a lot of grey area with that case. Another case was a middle-aged man dating a young 20-something who was no more than 10 years older than his daughter got angry his girlfriend was with two friends from high school who were men. Reportedly there was a stripper pole in the backyard or something and he caught them goofing around and forced her to file charges. They pled to a reduced charge of public indecency. The older man was a fugly chud. So I don’t know what he brought to the relationship unless he was a sugar daddy.
Yes, sometimes it’s a misunderstanding and mistake. In the eighth grade, our P.E. classes got to go to the community pool nearby for swimming for a week as the semester was ending. It was the last period of the school day. Girls could wear bikinis but they had to wear a T-shirt over that. I thought it was a stupid idea but it helped a fellow classmate. I started play splashing with someone I had known since pre-school and her bikini top came off. I was nowhere near her to undo it nor did anyone see anything because she had on a T-shirt. Yet the rumors spread I had taken it off. But she had my back and said it didn’t happen that way.
A lot of other people at my school weren’t gentlemen though. There were rumors flying around a teenage girl passed out during Spring Break in Florida and she vaginally raped with a Wiffle Bat. And people would say this to her jokingly. There were also rumors another young woman had been sexually assaulted as she was passed out or asleep on Prom Night and was sexually assaulted. They said she “pulled a Kids” referencing the 1995 movie where Chloe Sevigny’s character is raped at a party after she is drugged. Sounds like to me she didn’t “pull” anyrhing even if it was true because she was unconscious.
My guess is a lot of it was bullshit because people at my high school and the community in general considered cruelty to be one its greatest virtues. In 2014, there was another case in which three men were accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at a post-prom party. Charges were dismissed earlier this year because the defense lawyers dragged the case so long.
And even during my earlier years of using social media and chat rooms, I kept it legal. On the now defunct CollegeClub, I was talking to a young woman and we agreed to meet at the college library. But after a few minutes of talking in real life, she said she was only 17 part of the Upward Bound program. It’s for high school students to get a feel for college life before their senior year mostly during the summer. I was 22, so we decided to stop talking completely.
Now, more than 25 years later, it’s no big deal of our age differences. But even if we just chatted, it was still wrong. She didn’t mind if I was 18 or 19 but 22 is too old and I agreed 17 was too young for me.
That’s why I don’t have any sympathy for these perverts who went after young children. I was talking to several people I presumed were college-aged. And it was all cordial conversations.
But we have people who continue to support pedophiles and rapists even for elective office at the highest levels. I think it’s because a lot of men want to be in control. And it’s easier to blame women “for putting themselves in that position.” Why can’t women enjoy an alcoholic beverages or even some regular mocktail without passing out?
Also if you dig a little closer, you’ll realize a lot of rape victims were SAed by family members or those in the church just for going to family and church social events. I think if rapists and pedophiles put themselves in the positions to be rapists and pedophiles they deserve to have their lives ruined.
Because they sure as hell ruined the lives of their victims.
What do you think? Please comment.
