NBC news, in association with Perverted Justice, have now taped and aired three televisions programs — and all subsequently re-aired on MSNBC — where pedophiles are entrapped in online chat rooms and in-person “meetings” are set up between the pretend underage teen and the alleged pervert.

When the pervert comes over to the home he — I have yet to see a woman on the show — is met by a camera crew and a reporter instead of the “child” and he is confronted with cold questions and not warm flesh for pleasuring. In the third installment of the program the perverts are arrested by the local police department when they flee the house.

While I admire the effort to remove perverts from our streets so they are unable to prey on our children, I do not approve of the commercial desire to use perversion and mental illness for television profit. What is the point of “interviewing” a pervert about perversion on television? To get great ratings? To sell soap?

To remind us to watch the evening news? The interviewer’s questions are always obvious and as coarse as the pervert’s intent and there’s always a denial from the pervert caught with his hands still in his pants. You can’t help but feel a tinge of sympathy for these pathetic souls as the interviewer attempts, but ultimately fails, at taking the high moral ground by haranguing and pitchforking feeble and incoherent minds.

Several of the men appear to be mentally incapacitated and a couple of the men are repeat offenders by making more than one appearance on the television show! That kind of wounded mind deserves a permanent hospital stay with no hope for parole and not mockery on television because the real message being sent by the television producers is child predators make interesting and compelling entertainment. At no time is a child in danger so the entire setup is a skewering morbid take on Candid Camera.

Let the Perverted Justites do their honorable mission in private. There’s no reason to publish the horror of their work on television where some dangerous minds might just get inspired by the notoriety and fame provided the perverts caught in a national televised net.

20 Comments

  1. It’s a telling fact that the police weren’t involved in the “sting” until the third installment of the program.
    If the producers were really interested in justice, they would have had the police involved from the beginning to help detect and capture predators. I have no problems with other publicized sting operations where police have posed as children to capture online predators, then alerted the media who could put out the warning about monitoring children’s internet chatting. But, to “catch and release” — allowing the predator to be able to strike again — is just a sign that the program was ratings motivated.
    One of our local newspapers did a similar thing not too long ago. It wasn’t involving children, but visitors to an Asian “spa” that had been spectacularly raided by the FBI, local police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS and all sorts of other law enforcement people as part of an investigation into possible human trafficking and other crimes.
    The newspaper account the day after the front-page raids detailed how a reporter waited outside of the closed spa and tried to interview customers as they pulled on the locked front door. They must have missed the local news reports about the huge raid. The reporter wrote about the various male customers pulling up in their pickup trucks, cars, and even a bicycle, then running away from the reporter once she started asking uncomfortable questions about why they at the spa.
    It made for a spectacular read that probably sold extra newspapers at gas stations and vending machines when people saw the front page headline. People want to know: Did my husband go to the spa for something more than his backache? Was the driver of the pickup truck who ran away from the reporter a neighbor? Do I work with the bicycle dude?
    At least, the newspaper didn’t print a story where they tried to “catch and release” people before the police were involved.
    It’s too bad the TV producers didn’t involve the police earlier than they did. But, of course, if they captured all of the criminals on the first round, there wouldn’t have been three installments of the story and all of the ratings that went along as viewers watched in horror.
    I wonder if the program aired during “sweeps” week?

  2. as an unreality show.
    Its leave a comment Monday. When I read “That kind of wounded mind deserves a permanent hospital stay ” I was going to applaud until I realized you meant the pervert and not the television announcer and producer. I say shoot the pervert and hospitalize the announcer.

  3. Hi Chris —
    Your Asian Spa story is right in line with the “Perverted Justice” series on NBC/MSNBC — same sort of problem, same sort of “no solution” — when done in the public eye to sell eyes to an advertiser.
    I think even involving the police is in the series is grandstanding because many of the men they “caught” (50 in one day) are repeat offenders meaning they’ve been arrested for this kind of deviant sociopath behavior against children many times and the one fact that begs not to be denied in the series of reports is that these men are incorrigible and unrepentant – but not by choice but by the defects of their mind.
    Locking them up in a prison does not solve their problem or the problem they create for us. They need to be medicated and given watchful monitoring in a hospital for the rest of their lives if we truly care about helping them by removing them as a threat to our children.

  5. Locking them up in a prison does not solve their problem or the problem they create for us. They need to be medicated and given watchful monitoring in a hospital for the rest of their lives if we truly care about helping them by removing them as a threat to our children.
    Maybe all states should set up a program like the Special Commitment Center in Washington State.

  6. Dave —
    I am surprised by the harsh tone of your response.
    I find it perverted that MSNBC/NBC chose to make money setting up perverts for a fall under the glowing lights of their cameras. I don’t call that “Perverted Justice” I call that “Fake Television.”
    A “government website” isn’t selling advertising or trying to get ratings off the backs of the mentally ill.
    You may not have a problem publicly punishing those who are slaves to sexual drives their minds cannot control but I do because it is easy to spew hate in the face of hate and to ridicule those unable to do the right thing but I prefer to find solutions instead of condemning those who are already damned.

  7. Chris —
    The link you provide is precisely the kind of place I am arguing for in today’s post.
    I think that is a brave, and likely, publicly unpopular program.
    Thank you for finding it for us.

  9. Adults who target children are always dangerous and finding a way around their illness or perversion or genetic defect is a challenge.
    The fact that many of those men that were repeat offenders show the system is broken. I don’t believe the glue of the solution is in putting the perverts on television to expose them to fame and/or public humiliation because we already know that doesn’t work it only titillates.

  11. The easy solution is to just lock them up and throw away the key.
    The harder solution is to examine why these men are that way and to figure out how to deprogram them with therapy or medication or gene therapy and then find their “markers” that we can later use to treat and identify and help men like them when they are younger.
    Perhaps then we can save future children by saving their molesters from ever getting to the point of acting on what we think is impure instinct.

  13. I’m skeptical about the futuristic scenario of looking for these “gene markers.” Who’s to say that this information will be used to separate these people from society rather than helping them? What if these “markers” aren’t necessarily correct?
    I’m reminded of the movie Gattica, set in a future where genetic testing is done at birth and babies have their conditions predicted and treated starting from their emergence from the womb. They are steered toward jobs that would be “safe” for them and kept away from jobs deemed “dangerous.”
    It sounds like it’s too crazy to happen, but who knows?

  14. Hi Carla —
    I agree “gene markers” and then “gene therapy” to “heal” or “reverse” the natural progression of life can by scary but don’t we already sort of do that in the dark when we look at medical family histories and placement tests? Aren’t those a sort of crude gene marker that can be used to exploit or persecute a person based on best guestimates? At least with a scientific method behind gene markers we might have a reliable way of helping and healing “defects from the norm.”
    I loved “Gattica” — it was a beautiful and prescient movie — and I think it’s likely going to be quite real one day but that might not be a bad thing because your body will begin to define your abilities and not your socio-economic status as science becomes the true equalizer of talent and ability against privilege and predestiny.

  15. I wrote a commentary on this program for my radio show.
    I’m 70 years old and recognize this program as a wake up call for grandparents and parents alike. Most of us had no idea that mentally ill adults were contacting our children over the Internet with hopes of meeting them at our screen doors.
    I say run these programs over and over until every parent is aware of the danger that is out there. Simply being rural doesn’t protect one anymore.
    Robert Skoglund, 28 years a humorous commentator on Maine Public Radio

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