So I was watching a streaming marathon of NBC's dateline. All was fun and games and I was laughing through the entire time even when a guy committed suicide.

But as it went on I realized something.

Should these guys be arrested?

Sure they think like pedos and they are pedos but last I checked thinking or having a fantasy isn't illegal even if the fantasy itself IS illegal when put into practice. It's legal to think about ****ing children, but it's illegal to **** children. All of the decoys and actors used are 18 yet the men are charged with intended actions on a child BUT, remember the decoys are 18. So take the police and Dateline out of the picture and it's just harmless roleplay that is perfectly legal.

I wonder how many guys brought that up in court. Through the entire thing of him being talked to and etc. there was never a child involved so all the talk of sex and etc. was in the eyes of the law perfectly legal but because of what this person THOUGHT was gonna happen or THOUGHT about what they were gonna **** they get arrested, are labeled a sexual predator and their lives are ruined.

All of this for THOUGHTS.
Like it's Thought Crime or some shit.

So, should all of these guys arrested and prosecuted using these methods really be arrested and prosecuted at all? Let alone publicly lynched on TV.

Also throwing this out there, you may say "Well what do you want them to do? Use REAL children" they already do that...just not on TV of course. It's no secret that the police and those working to bust these guys have their own collection of child pornography and set up sting websites, men come in and purchase a membership to these sites and they bust them. I've read stories of an officer using his own daughter but that was an extreme case and most of the time they just take whatever CP they find when they bust a guy and reuse it.

Well, I'm in favour of what they (the police) did because there's a good chance it will prevent money going to CP sites and gangs and in extreme cases it may prevent a child being sexually abused. But then, I'm against human rights in general so I'm probably not the person to ask.

What they did in this case was probably for the greater good but some people may see it as a slippery slope towards the banning of free speech etc.

Miniman, you make it out as if the Dateline guys ruined their lives for no reason. The pedos put themselves into that position and ruined their own lives. All dateline did was stop it before it turned into a real crime. It's not like these guys new for a fact that there were a bunch of adults on the other end of those sting operations. If it actually was a real child, those guys would probably be ****ing them or whatever they were willing to do.

oh hey you just picked up a child over the internet telling them that your going to solicit them for sex when you meet them, but hey its just for tv so we're going to let that slide and let you be on your way. remember that for next time!

Quote from Gavel

Miniman, you make it out as if the Dateline guys ruined their lives for no reason. The pedos put themselves into that position and ruined their own lives. All dateline did was stop it before it turned into a real crime. It's not like these guys new for a fact that there were a bunch of adults on the other end of those sting operations. If it actually was a real child, those guys would probably be ****ing them or whatever they were willing to do.

Yeah but again it sounds more like "Well, what they WANTED to do was illegal"

And the preemptive justice excuse is a bit lacking. That would be like the United States nuking every country that started producing missiles and saying "Hey, they COULD have nuked us!". Sounds like a coulda, woulda, shoulda thing.

what you just said miniman is a completly different extreme, and nuking every other country in the world would have massive consequences that arresting a paedophile wouldn't have

and it's not really a coulda, woulda, shoulda thing if the guy invites a small child to their house with obvious intent to have sex with it

It's not like they perform these sting operations on every person who goes into a chatroom, homebrew. It's only if they suspect them of such actions. A better example would be more like the case of James Randall. CSIs found evidence linking him to the murders of Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh. Evidence that they found were tire tracks and dog hair samples found at the scene of the crime. The CSIs then initiated several operations used to confirm a match. The operations included offering a free tire change or whatever it was to Randall so that they could get his truck to perform a tire track comparison. Another would be the free flee bath they gave his dog so they could compare the dog hairs found at the crime and, at the same time, take a few fiber samples from the rug since they were found at the crime scene, too. Would you say that all of that is a violation of a person's rights?

Yeah I totally agree with you miniman. I mean, you got to wait till they actually have sex with a couple of children and ruin their lives first before you could get them in trouble. The pedos are totally innocent because they're just trying to molest pretend children right? Of course they would not have sex with real children, because we haven't seen them do that yet, therefore they gotta **** a couple more real children before we could catch them. You're completely correct.

I pretty much agree with Gavel, but there was a similiar incident at my high school. A teacher was arrested for having sex-related conversations over the internet with one of his students, turns out the student wasn't even real, it was just some old FBI hag trying to arrest some teachers. He's in jail for apparently sexually "soliciting" a "student", when really the student enticed him into having a relationship. Isn't there something wrong with that? It's like someone offering you his last bottle of water, and he becomes dehydrated and dies, and you are charged with murder and put in jail for life.

Quote from Garuda

I pretty much agree with Gavel, but there was a similiar incident at my high school. A teacher was arrested for having sex-related conversations over the internet with one of his students, turns out the student wasn't even real, it was just some old FBI hag trying to arrest some teachers. He's in jail for apparently sexually "soliciting" a "student", when really the student enticed him into having a relationship. Isn't there something wrong with that? It's like someone offering you his last bottle of water, and he becomes dehydrated and dies, and you are charged with murder and put in jail for life.

*manslaughter. either way, i agree with miniman. these people are basically put in jail for no reason. they never did actually solicit a child, they solicited a "pretend" child yet they got put in jail for committing a crime they really didn't do.

Here comes GBS to say something stupid again.

As I said earlier, these people are already suspected of being child molesters. These sting operations are basically methods of solidifying evidence and it's not like none of them don't come clean after Chris Hansen tells them to "take a seat", anyway. To say they didn't do anything is a completely naive outlook on this whole thing.

but i didn't say they didn't do anything, most of them probably do **** kids daily. i'm just saying that they got put in jail for soliciting someone under 18, when the only REAL and SOLID evidence they had was from this chat room ordeal that they set up, and on which the other end was someone over 18 years old.

it's like if a girl sees a convicted sex offender walking the streets and yells 'RAPE!'.

It's called a sting operation and law enforcement officers do it all the time for more than just catching pedos.

And that was a terrible example. That's nothing even close to the Dateline shit. Enlighten me on how you drew such a connection.

Also, to say that it's stupid to arrest someone for the intent of committing a crime but not actually committing the crime just shows you have no actual knowledge of law. I.E., ever heard of someone get arrested for conspiracy? In other words, someone plans to do something malicious and gets caught in the planning process by law enforcement, they can still get convicted under those grounds. You can get arrested for threats, too. It's called assault and as you may or may not already know, a threat is an action of intention, not the actual action. By threatening someone, you point out that what you attend to do to them. Such actions may or may not occur, but it's still grounds for an arrest.

Quote from Gavel

It's called a sting operation and law enforcement officers do it all the time for more than just catching pedos.

And that was a terrible example. That's nothing even close to the Dateline shit. Enlighten me on how you drew such a connection.

Also, to say that it's stupid to arrest someone for the intent of committing a crime but not actually committing the crime just shows you have no actual knowledge of law. I.E., ever heard of someone get arrested for conspiracy? In other words, someone plans to do something malicious and gets caught in the planning process by law enforcement, they can still get convicted under those grounds. You can get arrested for threats, too. And as you may or may not already know, a threat is an action of intention, not the actual action. By threatening someone, you point out that what you attend to do to them. Such actions may or may not occur, but it's still grounds for an arrest.

hey, look at me! i take your statement, wipe my ass with it, then go on talking about something completely unrelated!

How about you learn how to debate, rather than be a ****ing douchebag, person who loves gay buttsex.

If that's all you can say when someone combats your argument, don't even come back in here, you god damn idiot.