Blood. Either here or there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Vzj104wDc&feature=related

Should one be happy or sad with this. 5 hour drive with a loaded pistol and never got a shot off. I mean this in both senses of the word.

Life sentence. No parole.

Mother of God - they sent a S.W.A.T. team for him in the end ?? Were they afraid he was going to get a shot off? A bit OTT I thought.

Life is way too harsh. Five years and loads of counselling and watching afterwards.

Can't agree with you there A9. This person is a predator who likes to prey on children. Class A crime in my book. That he was also in a position of responsibility is too frightening to think about. I'm not so sure about the rehabilitation part either. Is there the very real danger that this predatory behaviour is innate to the individual and unlikely to be rectified by simple counseling? It's not like he's making a choice between comitting a robbery or not. The motivations are inherent to the being of the individual imo.

rockyracoon wrote:

Can't agree with you there A9. This person is a predator who likes to prey on children. Class A crime in my book. That he was also in a position of responsibility is too frightening to think about. I'm not so sure about the rehabilitation part either. Is there the very real danger that this predatory behaviour is innate to the individual and unlikely to be rectified by simple counseling? It's not like he's making a choice between comitting a robbery or not. The motivations are inherent to the being of the individual imo.

Well, he didn't commit a crime at all! Couldn't a good lawyer not get him off, ahem, with a lot lenient sentence than life - he was pleading about the divorce etc. so wouldn't his sentence depend on prior offences ?? What if his record was clean as a whistle ?

Don't you think the age of consent is arbitrarily placed by society and culture?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Don't you think the age of consent is arbitrarily placed by society and culture?

Indeed it is. It was commonplace for 15 year-old girls to be married off to twenty-something men in Roman times. Our sense of when it is right for people to become or choose to become sexually active is extraordinarily elastic and varies hugely to this very day. That complicates questions such as these.

You don't even look to Roman times. Sexual activity with teenagers was common place even in Victorian times.

Auditor #9 wrote:

rockyracoon wrote:

Can't agree with you there A9. This person is a predator who likes to prey on children. Class A crime in my book. That he was also in a position of responsibility is too frightening to think about. I'm not so sure about the rehabilitation part either. Is there the very real danger that this predatory behaviour is innate to the individual and unlikely to be rectified by simple counseling? It's not like he's making a choice between comitting a robbery or not. The motivations are inherent to the being of the individual imo.

Well, he didn't commit a crime at all! Couldn't a good lawyer not get him off, ahem, with a lot lenient sentence than life - he was pleading about the divorce etc. so wouldn't his sentence depend on prior offences ?? What if his record was clean as a whistle ?

Don't you think the age of consent is arbitrarily placed by society and culture?

Oh, indeed he committed a crime. It's is illegal to solicit minors for sex. He's caught bang to rights and on national television to boot. Is it a wonder his wife is divorcing him? I think any attempts at reconciliation at this stage would pretty well be out the window. I believe that minors, the elderly and indeed any other vulnerable members of society should be protected by the full weight of the law and the consequences should be severe. Zero tolerance, 100% penalty.

The essential issue here is not sexual consent nor the age of consent. Children, who have yet to form their world and ethical outlook, should be protected from the predatory activities of these individuals. No ifs, ands or buts. Sexual preditors have no place in society. Children, who already face too many pressures from advertising and the overwraught expectations of the consumer society, should at least have a safe haven from these people.

rockyracoon wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

rockyracoon wrote:

Can't agree with you there A9. This person is a predator who likes to prey on children. Class A crime in my book. That he was also in a position of responsibility is too frightening to think about. I'm not so sure about the rehabilitation part either. Is there the very real danger that this predatory behaviour is innate to the individual and unlikely to be rectified by simple counseling? It's not like he's making a choice between comitting a robbery or not. The motivations are inherent to the being of the individual imo.

Well, he didn't commit a crime at all! Couldn't a good lawyer not get him off, ahem, with a lot lenient sentence than life - he was pleading about the divorce etc. so wouldn't his sentence depend on prior offences ?? What if his record was clean as a whistle ?

Don't you think the age of consent is arbitrarily placed by society and culture?

Oh, indeed he committed a crime. It's is illegal to solicit minors for sex. He's caught bang to rights and on national television to boot. Is it a wonder his wife is divorcing him? I think any attempts at reconciliation at this stage would pretty well be out the window. I believe that minors, the elderly and indeed any other vulnerable members of society should be protected by the full weight of the law and the consequences should be severe. Zero tolerance, 100% penalty.

The essential issue here is not sexual consent nor the age of consent. Children, who have yet to form their world and ethical outlook, should be protected from the predatory activities of these individuals. No ifs, ands or buts. Sexual preditors have no place in society. Children, who already face too many pressures from advertising and the overwraught expectations of the consumer society, should at least have a safe haven from these people.

Didn't she solicit him? Probably not as I'm remembering the conversation now.

Is life really the sentence for that? It seems really really harsh. Other than that, you win.

rockyracoon wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

rockyracoon wrote:

Can't agree with you there A9. This person is a predator who likes to prey on children. Class A crime in my book. That he was also in a position of responsibility is too frightening to think about. I'm not so sure about the rehabilitation part either. Is there the very real danger that this predatory behaviour is innate to the individual and unlikely to be rectified by simple counseling? It's not like he's making a choice between comitting a robbery or not. The motivations are inherent to the being of the individual imo.

Well, he didn't commit a crime at all! Couldn't a good lawyer not get him off, ahem, with a lot lenient sentence than life - he was pleading about the divorce etc. so wouldn't his sentence depend on prior offences ?? What if his record was clean as a whistle ?

Don't you think the age of consent is arbitrarily placed by society and culture?

Oh, indeed he committed a crime. It's is illegal to solicit minors for sex. He's caught bang to rights and on national television to boot. Is it a wonder his wife is divorcing him? I think any attempts at reconciliation at this stage would pretty well be out the window. I believe that minors, the elderly and indeed any other vulnerable members of society should be protected by the full weight of the law and the consequences should be severe. Zero tolerance, 100% penalty.

The essential issue here is not sexual consent nor the age of consent. Children, who have yet to form their world and ethical outlook, should be protected from the predatory activities of these individuals. No ifs, ands or buts. Sexual preditors have no place in society. Children, who already face too many pressures from advertising and the overwraught expectations of the consumer society, should at least have a safe haven from these people.

I haven't watched the video yet, but protection of children would be my priority. The law doesn't really allow for the fact that people who commit this kind of offence tend to do it over and over again and do a huge amount of damage.

Had he relied on the lawyer to get him off he wouldn't need to drive the 5 hours

I watched the video just now and there are a lot of things not right about this.

The cops were confident enough that he wasn't armed to let him into the house with the 13 year old - and then they're standing outside the house with some pretty heavy artillery. No wonder the guy ran.

Police brutality sickens me - and I don't care who the victim is. One cop leaned his knee on the man's neck while at least two other men had him well under control - what was the necessity for that? The man - as we knew from earlier, was clearly unarmed and clearly outnumbered.

Secondly, none of that material should be admissable in court because he wasn't mirandised - and what were the cops doing letting a TV station in on a job like that? Letting the interviewer question him before he had been mirandised and before he had been even spoken to by them? That is a gross abuse of his rights.

Thirdly there is no information given in that clip about how the initial conversation started. That worries me and considering the other efforts made by the TV station and the cops, I'd be keen to see that before I'd make a judgement.

A sting like this is not real life - because there is something inherently provocative in a 13 year old declaring that she's interested in "trying out some stuff" with him. Setting someone up is not the same at all as catching them in the act. That kind of stuff reminds me of the Truman Show - reality TV meets news meets car-crash telly gone mad.

Rocky racoon wrote:

Quote :

Life sentence. No parole.

Quote :

Oh, indeed he committed a crime. It's is illegal to solicit minors for sex. He's caught bang to rights and on national television to boot. Is it a wonder his wife is divorcing him? I think any attempts at reconciliation at this stage would pretty well be out the window. I believe that minors, the elderly and indeed any other vulnerable members of society should be protected by the full weight of the law and the consequences should be severe. Zero tolerance, 100% penalty.

The essential issue here is not sexual consent nor the age of consent. Children, who have yet to form their world and ethical outlook, should be protected from the predatory activities of these individuals. No ifs, ands or buts. Sexual preditors have no place in society. Children, who already face too many pressures from advertising and the overwraught expectations of the consumer society, should at least have a safe haven from these people.

While I agree 100% with you that children should be protected, I'd be a lot more comfortable passing judgement if I'd seen the whole conversation. What we're shown of the conversation from the child's side is actually very provocative and designed to lure him, rather than allow him to progress the dialogue of his own accord, a situation is crafted for him to catch him - there's something very, very wrong about law-enforcers using the law to do that. And there is something equally wrong in a TV station declaring him guilty to the world without a trial, which is the very least that any person is entitled to.

I couldn't possibly say the man is guilty - though I'd be interested to hear how the case was dealt with - it's not possible to make that kind of judgement on so little evidence.

It's not clear-cut - but then few things in life are. If he's found guilty of being a sexual predator, then by all means, let the most appropriate sentence be administered.

Out of curiosity, do posters think it's appropriate for a thirteen year old girl to be involved in such a sting? It's not quite the same as a kid going into a shop to buy alcohol or cigarettes while the enforcement person is prowling in the aisles to see if spotty teenager behind the counter knows the law, is it?

Quote :

Out of curiosity, do posters think it's appropriate for a thirteen year old girl to be involved in such a sting? It's not quite the same as a kid going into a shop to buy alcohol or cigarettes while the enforcement person is prowling in the aisles to see if spotty teenager behind the counter knows the law, is it?

Good post Kate - it was hugely ott I thought and indeed there was something almost sick and in itself predatory about the whole sting. The word 'pornography' is often used to refer to over-indulgence in emotion of kinds other than sex (I heard Fisk using it about the constant footage of 9/11 ) and I think there was something disturbingly voyeuristic about the whole thing. It was an msnbc number .. and do we know that girl was 13? Jesus the states is f* lads - it's like Natural Born Killers all the time over there, the tv-crazed hoors.

I can't get the video to work. Has anyone got another link for it?

The girl was not 13. They are always over 18 and pretending to be a minor. He will be charged with soliciting a minor and his goose is cooked. Miranda does not come into it as that comes after arrest and the guy asking the questions is not a cop. He has a TV show called To Catch a Preditor and everyone in the country is familiar with it. It is rare to catch a cop or better still a prosecutor.

One of these donkeys was in the military and is facing 80 years. One prosecutor killed himself after getting caught by the balls
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15592444/

Quote :

The girl was not 13. They are always over 18 and pretending to be a minor.

That's worth knowing. Certainly in the video where she talks about the experience and how 'good' the cops were, she doesn't seem like an adult.

Quote :

He will be charged with soliciting a minor and his goose is cooked.

His goose is not cooked until he's found guilty in a court.

Quote :

Miranda does not come into it as that comes after arrest and the guy asking the questions is not a cop. He has a TV show called To Catch a Preditor and everyone in the country is familiar with it. It is rare to catch a cop or better still a prosecutor.

Which is the point. What kind of justice system do you have where a man can be interrogated by Troy McLure on a programme that everyone in the country is familiar with. He's in law enforcement a year and should have the sense to know not to say anything to anyone - not so a bad guy can get away with a crime, but because he has the right not to be tried until he's in the courts. It's unacceptable to mess with one person's rights to protect the rights of another. The process itself, as Audi says is utterly predatory and prurient in the light of the broadcast.

Miranda does come into it because the first person who spoke to him should have been an arresting officer. Is that how the programme runs every week? It seems to me to be a twisted intervention of the media into the law of the same kind as that Judge Judy crap. When precisely did the US hand over its justice procedures to the media? It reminds me of The Crucible - death by public hysteria.

It doesn't lessen the crime of soliciting a minor which should stand on its own, what it does in my eyes is lessen any respect I'd have for the US justice system. Though perhaps we should just be grateful that he wasn't waterboarded to get a confession; not everyone is equal under American law...

If the guy is stupid enough to fall for this he deserves it.

The show goes to a police department and pays them to do the sting. In the example where the prosecutor was caught was about 800000 dollars. It is a popular show. The cops arrest him when he starts to leave. The charges might be a bit different depending on the State but none of them is pretty. This poor fool loves the show http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2417802098041081074&ei=F_HNSP_KEYqCrQLD-sy0Ag&q=to+catch+a+preditor&vt=lf

Some guys have been caught twice.

Doesn't the show not just lure out the predator but almost create the conditions for the predator to arise? What if they chance upon some borderline case which the show happens to push over the edge? This also assumes there's a predatory type out there who aims for minors ... it'd be interesting if they caught a woman ..

First of all the guy logged onto a site with the intention of chatting to someone and he eventually made his intentions clear. No one stuck a gun to his head. Given the lead, he took his opportunity to meet up with what he throught was a 13 year old cutty in order to have sex, and drove over 5 hours in order to do so. Once the preditor thought he had the prey, he pounced and went out of his way to enact his plans.

I amn't for police brutality but ,make no bones about it, the insane gun laws in the US make physical force almost a requirement of the modern US police's procedure. In fact, the fella was able to temporarily get away from the swat team. If he had had a concealed weapon, the swat team would have failed in their procedure however violent it was.

Anyway, the arrest procedure doesnt take away from or mitigate the intentions of the culprit. Imagine if this fellow had had children. This not about winning or losing an argument or debate. This is about the atmosphere in which children now grow up. Unfortunately, as community cohesion breaks down across Western societies and it become increasinly difficult for parents to monitor children's activities due to work and travel commitments, such type stings will have to be used to weed out the predators in society. These predators are not ordinary run of the mill criminals but individuals, whose urges they can not seem to control, that ruin the lives of countless children and probably breed a whole new set of predators for the future.

As for female predators, they are already present if a prison show I was watching last night is anything to go by, and they were just as vicious and predatory in their nature. The sadism and violence which now seems to accompany so many sex crimes also makes a case for draconian penalties to be applied.

This is not a pretty topic but it is one, imo, where there has to be a complete lack of intolerance for the offender(s).

rockyracoon wrote:

First of all the guy logged onto a site with the intention of chatting to someone and he eventually made his intentions clear. No one stuck a gun to his head. Given the lead, he took his opportunity to meet up with what he throught was a 13 year old cutty in order to have sex, and drove over 5 hours in order to do so. Once the preditor thought he had the prey, he pounced and went out of his way to enact his plans.

I amn't for police brutality but ,make no bones about it, the insane gun laws in the US make physical force almost a requirement of the modern US police's procedure. In fact, the fella was able to temporarily get away from the swat team. If he had had a concealed weapon, the swat team would have failed in their procedure however violent it was.

Anyway, the arrest procedure doesnt take away from or mitigate the intentions of the culprit. Imagine if this fellow had had children. This not about winning or losing an argument or debate. This is about the atmosphere in which children now grow up. Unfortunately, as community cohesion breaks down across Western societies and it become increasinly difficult for parents to monitor children's activities due to work and travel commitments, such type stings will have to be used to weed out the predators in society. These predators are not ordinary run of the mill criminals but individuals, whose urges they can not seem to control, that ruin the lives of countless children and probably breed a whole new set of predators for the future.

As for female predators, they are already present if a prison show I was watching last night is anything to go by, and they were just as vicious and predatory in their nature. The sadism and violence which now seems to accompany so many sex crimes also makes a case for draconian penalties to be applied.

This is not a pretty topic but it is one, imo, where there has to be a complete lack of intolerance for the offender(s).

Unconnected, someone was telling me last night about how tightly controlled the school pick up situation is in the States - children only let out of the school when the parent/collector had been identified by a teacher. Parents have to put up a sign in the dash window to say who they are and by I.D.d. I would be worried by the extent to which the Internet and sex tourism has produced a globalised commercialised abuse of little children. Otherwise, I wonder is it really so much worse than it used to be -
children were given a lot more unsupervised time out of the house and most walked home from school. Girls were raped and otherwise abused regularly and didn't report, and incest was rife. Children were not equipped with the language and confidence to report and were not believed.

There was a study in Ireland a couple of years ago that showed that most children here were happy and self-confident.
My guess is that things have got better, not worse, and that the more children have appropriate education and are listened to with respect, the better it will get.

cactus flower wrote:

Unconnected, someone was telling me last night about how tightly controlled the school pick up situation is in the States - children only let out of the school when the parent/collector had been identified by a teacher. Parents have to put up a sign in the dash window to say who they are and by I.D.d. I would be worried by the extent to which the Internet and sex tourism has produced a globalised commercialised abuse of little children. Otherwise, I wonder is it really so much worse than it used to be -
children were given a lot more unsupervised time out of the house and most walked home from school. Girls were raped and otherwise abused regularly and didn't report, and incest was rife. Children were not equipped with the language and confidence to report and were not believed.

There was a study in Ireland a couple of years ago that showed that most children here were happy and self-confident.
My guess is that things have got better, not worse, and that the more children have appropriate education and are listened to with respect, the better it will get.

Excellent points regarding historical instances of abuse of which we're only too well aware of in Ireland, and that children today are probably safer than in the past. However, it also seems that the level of violence attendant with sexual crime is increasing. The depravity should, imo, have zero tolerance and those susceptible to these urges should be flushed out into the open and given the appropriate penalties. Children, and indeed the elderly and other vulnerables, should be allowed to walk the streets and byways of Ireland without fear.

On the other hand, many children could do with a good dose of manners these days. But a subject for another post.

I believe in choice myself. A child molestor must be publically hanged till death. None of this neck-breaking rubbish either but a slow strangulation. In this way the screams while being heard throughout the land could cool the ardour of those so tempted. The condemed should be given the choice of what part of the body he should be hung from.

youngdan wrote:

I believe in choice myself. A child molestor must be publically hanged till death. None of this neck-breaking rubbish either but a slow strangulation. In this way the screams while being heard throughout the land could cool the ardour of those so tempted. The condemed should be given the choice of what part of the body he should be hung from.

And those who reagard it as a sickness, how will they react? Homosexuality was a crime once too remember, I thought you were all for choice in most matters.

I'm not making a case for child molestation here, but certain people reckon that the concept of childhood is a rather novel one. In the days before widespread literacy, an adult didn't neccessarily know much more then a youngster. The boundary between the two was at whatever age a kid learned the bulk of the facts of life. So what we call a child was able to drink, able to work, and able to marry. Nowadays, the boundary between adulthood and childhood is weakening again, as television restores the pre-literate equilibrium between child and adult.

Homosexuality should never have been a crime as far as I am concerned. I would prosecute those involved in obscene behavour at gay pride parades though. To have a float going down the street with a lad giving another lad a Seidog is a bit much.

If someone killed your child with a hatchet and said he had a sickness would you accept that a bit of counciling and some medication would be fine. This mindset seems to be firmly engrained in Europe.

This leniency is the reason violence and crime is on the rise over there.

No backbone in Ireland. Everyone is afraid to come to the assistance of a victim of violence on the street. No future for a nation of Jellyfish like that.