10 ms·

Convicted of sex crimes, but with no victims

109 points by apsec112 6y ago

m0zg 6y ago
NY Times is trying to normalize pedophilia. This is becoming a theme as of late, I wonder why. Dude drove to a 13 year old with a pack of condoms. Pretty sure he wasn't going to use them to make water balloons with her.
- chromedev 6y ago
  No, that is just the alt-right pushing an agenda stating that the left is trying to normalize and legalize pedophilia when the current President bragged about walking in the dressing room of teenage beauty pageants. if anything, it appears that people that support that behavior and his appointees that helped Epstein are the pedophile enablers.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Read the article, will ya?
kergonath 6y ago
This one’s going to get flagged to death quickly. Apart from the paedophile angle, there is an interesting philosophical question of whether something is a crime if there is no victim, and whether you should go to jail for something you hypothetically might have done at some point in the future. Personally, I think of Minority Report the same way as 1984: both are magnifying glasses showing how dangerous some of our tendencies are. Definitely not manuals of how things ought to be done. Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice.
- chongli 6y ago
  In more typical cases it’s pretty clear cut. Suppose you just finished working out in the gym, you’re in the locker room getting dressed, and you see a wallet and decide to steal it. Much to your dismay, when you get back to your car and look through the wallet you find your own ID and realize it’s your own wallet that you took. Well, despite your intention to commit a crime no crime has in fact taken place. You’re perfectly within your rights to take your own wallet home with you from the gym, even if you think you’re being sneaky about it. This concept has a proper name in the law: actus reus [1]. Along with mens rea, it forms a two-part test to determine whether a crime has been committed in common law. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus
- onion2k 6y ago
  There are lots of 'victimless' crimes - speeding in your car (reckless driving), buying drugs to consume yourself (use of controlled substances), planning to murder your partner (conspiracy). The victim is either 'society' or the person committing the crime. If you commit one of these crimes you're punished for demonstrating a willingness to do what society as a whole has decided it doesn't want people to do. Whether or not that's correct is a matter for debate, but the idea of 'if there's no victim there can't be a crime' is probably nonsense. There's bound to be at least one or two victimless crimes you think should actually be criminal.
  - mimi89999 6y ago
    Vehicle speed can be easily measured and is a fact and an offense. Here there were conflicting informations about the other person's age and the offendents could have believed that the other person is 20+. Let's put that differently. If your speed meeter is broken and you believe that you are not speeding, but in fact are still speeding, then the situation is clear. Here the other person was really 20+, so his judgment was actually correct.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    Victimless is not victimless. I propose the criterion of counterfactual victimhood - whether given the behavior of the subject, there exists an alternate universe in which there was a victim of a crime. For instance, consider an attempted murder that failed before the murderer even got near the target. In that case, the victim is counterfactual. However, there are true victimless crimes even under this definition; crimes that never would have had a victim. Speeding for instance doesn't pass this test, but "smoked a joint at home" does. This seems to make it a good fit for my moral beliefs.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    I think it's less about whether or not actually intending to commit a crime should be punished, but about whether there was ever such an intention in the first place. The article makes it sound like this person didn't really believe that the person he was talking to was only 13 years old and, given some of the messages mentioned in the article, that sounds reasonable. He was talking to a bunch of adult using the photo of an adult woman. People on the internet are not exactly known for never bullshitting people just for the lulz.
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  > Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice. In Australia, it's illegal (and someone was convicted) for downloading a drawing of child-like cartoon character (Simpsons) performing a sexual act [1]. The rationale is explicitly that although nobody was harmed in the specific instance, the act normalizes and encourages harm to real victims. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-08/fake-simpsons-cartoon-is-child-porn-judge-rules/233562 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-08/fake-simpsons-cartoon...
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    Similarly in some countries it is illegal to be found in possession of marihuana (or even just xanax https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/28/laura-plummer-freed-from-egyptian-prison https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/28/laura-plumme...). In the same spirit it was illegal until relatively recently in the UK to have homosexual sex (see Turing).
  - kergonath 6y ago
    Yeah. This is a travesty of justice. And massively hypocritical, if you don’t also punish people who draw murder scenes for normalising and encouraging violence.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  > Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice. Where do we draw the line though? If you're about to shoot someone and get stopped last second, should you just walk away free to try once more? Should we be sending the signal to possible future criminals that "you either succeed in your crime, or you get as many chances to try again as it takes"? I think intentions, to the extent that we can be reasonably sure of what they are, should be taken into consideration more than the actual outcome of an action. The article presents a very one-sided story of some guy who didn't mean any harm to anybody and didn't believe the person he was talking to was really only 13. Assuming that that's really what happened, the poor guy probably learned a lesson and won't be as careless again (asking for some form of ID could have prevented this whole situation). The whole point of a trial is to determine an appropriate punishment for a crime that serves to deter others from repeating it. Anything beyond that is just barbarism.
  - likeclockwork 6y ago
    I just want to say that in the US at least as far as I know every part of shooting someone is a crime. So even if you were stopped at the last second you could still be prosecuted for assault, brandishing, etc. If you were stopped before even trying to shoot someone though what have you really done? You approached someone empty handed?
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
      My point is, when the intention is clear, an attempted crime should itself be treated as a crime. What's more, if people weren't so damn emotional about everything, since it's very hard to prove someones intention, cases like the one in the article should be thrown out before ever reaching a judge. The real evil in this story, I would say, is the typical "innocent until suspected guilty" approach people tend to have for certain crimes, specially when children are involved. Let's be honest, the scenario of the article didn't prove anything. It gave some indication that maybe the guy was attempting to commit a crime, so he should never have been convicted of anything.
      - 6y ago
- autisticcurio 6y ago
  There is a lot I can say about this subject, half of me is torn between keeping quiet to not harm the scientific discovery, the other half of me doesnt agree with Winston Churchill when he said "the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few", and what I mean by that is should someone suffer for some scientific experiments and discovery masquerading as law. I'll refer you to the sexual habits of the Bonobo monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sociosexual_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sociosexual_behaviour When David Attenborough/BBC filmed them in the 50's or 60's, it was decided that certain elements of their behaviour would be hidden from the British viewing public, instead remaining as knowledge only within academic circles. I will also say that what you do in your life, what you say, read and reply to can be highly illuminating for some academics especially psychologists and the god like security services, but as always there is not always consensus, think Freud and his Oedipus complex etc. Another example is the Hare psychopathic test. https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_... Now it should be noted that Jon is not qualified, but bad science exists in all areas, very few subjects are pure like maths. Some theory's gain popularity over time and others fall into disrepute. I'm also reminded of the fact we are a complex real-time (electro) chemical reaction and this also shapes our conscious and unconscious decisions. Also I wouldnt under estimate the security services, who in my opinion carry out operations that would never get past the ethics board of a Uni and also engage in phishing attempts amongst many other things; Bitcoins is in my opinion a security services invention for reasons I wont go into here. Tor is also an obvious US Navy example although the popular reasons for existence may not be true, I guess we will never know the truth either! The Military with the police have engaged in many undercover operations for scientific discovery, because firstly if the subjects knew what was going on, you cant be sure the subjects would be acting up for the experiment or not. For a decent scientific study to take place, subjects can not be aware of the real experiment. Some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqnUTOkpuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqnUTOkpuQ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicals... And it goes on elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... I wonder how many academics will pour over these posts and others for their own research? The Tea Room Trade also known as the Tea Room Study is an interesting book to read on the subject of human sexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearoom_Trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearoom_Trade and also an unethical study. But before you get up in arms about unethical studies remember this, criminals and war are unethical so you need to prepare for the worst, but its also why you should let the police handle it first and not go all vigilante. Cognitive Dissonance is also a powerful force sometimes controllable sometimes not which can literally destroy people in variety of ways and arguably something the religions learnt thousands of years ago by putting the fear of god into people in order to maintain some semblance of law and order when oral tradition was the main form of education. Technological surveillance like we have today didnt exist so other methods had to be developed with the knowledge and toolset of the day and whilst mainly forgotten in the mists of time are still relevant today as part of the toolset. Manipulation of an individual can take place in many shapes and forms. Derren Brown's recent C4 program 20 years of Mind Control showed some, not all of the methods used to control peoples decision making. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-20-years-of-mind-control https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-20-years-of... When watching this TV program I was reminded of some of Boris Johnsons strange interviews, initially thought to be search engine manipulation, but may have been more involved with the UK Nudge unit than we will ever find out about because unless you were in London, you wont know what else was going on in the area regarding advertising, search engine results and news stories appearing in your news feed if you lived or commuted into London. Yes its more big brother than you think in my opinion. The biggest issue with kids and sex is its a highly volatile and emotive subject just like Religion, most people want the best for them like they do most people but our society is also setup to make us compete which means some people will stop at nothing to get one over some other people and how exactly do you interpret words written or spoken? There is an element of projection of our own desires in all communication imo. And as others have said here, where do you draw the line? Is someone like this person safer in prison or in the community. I dont think Julian Assange feels safe in Prison, but I would considering his circumstances, never underestimate the innovation of some prisoners. In many ways we are still living the failings of Religion seen as the olde worlde law and order using oral tradition because they probably never envisaged our technological developments today and acquisition of knowledge. Every country shows the lack of foresight and influence of power throughout time, for example, many roads in the UK follow land owners boundary's unlike the US where you have blocks (avenues and streets) like in New York. Obviously geographical and economical constraints also influence decision making purposes in this road example, but the point is still relevant in all walks of life, including how best to send a message to the wider public about the rights and wrongs of life. Sting/entrap a few people and get the message out via the media perhaps? Considering what is known today about sexual abuse with minors, education is also a massively controversial subject, do you educate primary school kids or not. The UK Stranger Danger in the 70's & 80's didnt really alert kids to family abuse, so a failing in the state, but kids are also alot like AI, in that they learn from data, which in the case of kids, is from activities going on around them, but manipulation of their curiosity, the omission to present all the facts to educate kids can also lead kids (and people) in general into drawing the wrong conclusion, reminding me of the saying curiosity killed the cat. I'm also reminded that despite being educated in something, we do sometimes forget to remember when we need it most, and its this bit which also intrigues me. The Govt knows the virtue of training, especially the security services like SAS, SBS, Navy seal, yet seeks to punish the public when they forget? Seem hypocritical to me, but lifes lessons can be harsh. The reactions of people is also illuminating, do strong views in situations like this actually give more of an insight into the authors psyche, level of education, and/or emotional stability? Its hard to quantify the level of influence beliefs and age of exposure and repeated exposure have over someone's views and decision making processes, but I whether we like it or not, our parents should take some of the blame something the legal system fails to address considering its virtue signalling and supposed adherence to following the science.
- throwaway9d0291 6y ago
  > Apart from the paedophile angle, there is an interesting philosophical question of whether something is a crime if there is no victim, and whether you should go to jail for something you hypothetically might have done at some point in the future. Sentencing generally has three primary factors: - Deterrence: The harsher the sentence, the stronger a signal we send to people who might commit similar crimes in the future. - Rehabilitation: How do we help the criminal so that they don't commit crimes again in the future? - Retribution: Eye for an eye. Since there's no victim and no real harm in a sting like this, I don't think retribution should be a factor at all. Since the "crime" was a construction by the police rather than a real-life situation, I don't think deterrence really makes much sense here. That can be left for the real-life instances of the crime. So I think the overriding factor in sentencing should be rehabilitation. Getting people like this help so that they can control themselves. I'd say even prison is too much. Ideally, they should be released on parole while they're being treated and not added to any sex offender lists. Were this to be the end-result of the sting, I think this practice would be totally fine, comparable to (forgive the comparison) animal control neutering strays. Better to get people help before they commit a real crime than after.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    You left out "containment" -- keeping people who commit crimes away from the general public and thereby denying them the opportunity to commit crimes. In this case, the age thing is about like asking a prostitute if she's a cop and complaining that she lied when getting arrested.
  - kergonath 6y ago
    Yes, the fact that they are dumped into the American prison system, which is mainly a profit generator unfit for all three, does not help at all. I guess if the consequence was that these people had to undergo some psychological tests it would have been better. And even so, I doubt most of them would do anything in the real life, i.e. without some convenient honey trap. But then, it would be all cost and no reward for the police, so they probably would not bother.
ummonk 6y ago
So with the exception of a handful of states, mistake of fact is not a defense against statutory rape. I.e. someone who has sex with someone under the age of consent whom they believe to be 18 is still guilty of statutory rape. The opposite is happening here, since the perpetrator isn't planning to do anything with someone actually under the age of consent - just someone whom they believe to be under the age of consent.
- sakoht 6y ago
  This is a good point. It seems we convict people for crimes they don't know they are committing, and also for thinking they are committing a crime when they aren't. It seems they should have just had the cops hide and wait until he actually tried to make a move on the undercover "girl" cop. Him showing up out of curiosity, perhaps even concern, is impossible to distinguish actual willingness to hurt a child if the jump on him immediately and arrest him. The subject of child rape is so terrible, we give a pass to shoddy police work. One would think that a lack of child porn, or overt sexual conversation from the guy would have made the judge think he didn't actually intend to take advantage of her without more evidence.
shajznnckfke 6y ago
I think a big chunk of the population are follower types who could be convinced to go along with all sorts of things. These people are generally going to behave as society expects them to, or at least as the last persuasive person they talked to expects. I think the type of sting operation described in this article could ensnare millions of such people, few of whom would have ever felt any impetus to commit this sort of crime. The subject of this article certainly displayed poor judgement, but wasn’t any kind of danger to society without this scenario constructed by the police. I don’t think public in any way benefited from this operation. All it did was take a productive member of society out of commission. I think this is like the time the government put out a bounty on rabbit heads, so farmers started breeding more rabbits. The farmers are the police and the rabbits are sex offenders.
- glogla 6y ago
  Yeah. If police is coming up with ways to manufacture victimless crime, they obviously don't have enough to do in real crime, and we can defund them and save the money. If they are coming with this while there is real crime unsolved, well, they are doong it wrong.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > The subject of this article certainly displayed poor judgement, but wasn’t any kind of danger to society without this scenario constructed by the police. I don't agree. The whole point of sting operations is that they enable police to catch people that pose a danger to society by catching them in the act. In this case we have a man in his early 20s caught actively trying to meet a 13yo girl for sex. The same man stated he already had sex with 5 or 6 other girls like this, although he didn't specified their ages.
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    I’d agree with you if the supposed victim wasn’t a 24 year old who provided pictures of themselves in the lead-up to the meeting. To me, it reads like the police constructed an interaction where it would have been clear to the target of the sting in the moment that he was engaging with an adult (which was indeed the truth), but that included a few phrases that show evidence of guilt when removed from that moment. I think the police could have demonstrated much more convincing evidence of guilt if they had someone who looked like a 13 year old answer the door, and recorded the man’s reaction.
tempsolution 6y ago
This is ridiculous and yet another demonstration of the absurdity that they try to sell as US "justice" system. So let's summarize. 1) Guy is looking for adults on an adult page 2) Adult women(24) with an adult picture says she is 13 3) Guy probably thinks like "okay, doesn't look 13". Which arguably is stupid, given that US citizens should know how stupid the US is when it comes to minors. 4) Talks more 5) Women says again she is 13 6) They agree to meet anyway 7) Guy drives to her home and she greets him. She is obviously a grown women. 8) Guy gets arrested for child rape Yeah sounds about right. God bless America! So let's rewrite the story a bit: 1) Guy is looking for some mint on craigslist 2) When asking the seller why the mint "makes people high", the seller says it's actually weed. 3) Guy thinks, okay, doesn't look like weed, it looks like fucking mint 4) Guy says, I will buy this mint anyway, looks like mint 5) Seller says again "Dude, it's fucking weed, but okay" 6) Seller sells the mint 7) Guy receives the mint in his mailbox and opens it 8) Cool it's mint, smells of mint, looks like mint. 9) Guy gets arrested for drug possession Erm what? In the real world, that cop should have been suspended for false advertising and the seller's account as well. Good thing the world has no other problems...
moonchild 6y ago
> She used slang a 13-year-old probably wouldn’t know, like “FTP” [Fuck The Police] This, I am afraid, represents a rather naïve view of 13-year-olds.
- hnarayanan 6y ago
  Also everyone knows it stands for File Transfer Protocol.
- sundvor 6y ago
  The story of how the ADHD man was set up by the power hungry sting op disgusted me; the pic of the officer with the headphones looked like that of a young adult. His challenge of the age went unanswered, from what the report said. My impression of the US is steadily not improving. The only FTP I'm familiar with is that of a certain protocol... (Mid 40s, two decades in Australia).
  - senectus1 6y ago
    me too brother.. me too :-/
traloid 6y ago
is being punished for attempted murder unjust because you failed to hurt the person and thus there is no victim?
- tempsolution 6y ago
  Dude, read the article? This is like a cop posing as a cow and trying to say on "slaughterYourCowToday.com": "Hey look, I am actually a real human being, please don't slaughter me"... But hey, the picture of that cow shows a freakin cow. Now the guy drives to the farm and is greeted by a fucking cow. He takes a gun and tries to shoot the cow. But the police rolls in and arrests him for attempted murder... Yeah sounds like justice to you?
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  If I had to come up with an equally just sting where the crime is attempted murder, it would go something like this: Officer: “I’d love if you’d bring some chocolate ice cream to our date! By the way, I’m deathly allergic to chocolate.” Rube Sting Target: “Allergic to chocolate? You’re joking, right?” Officer: “What’s your cell number?” ... Officer: “See you soon! Don’t forget to pick up that death by chocolate on the way!”
  - mimi89999 6y ago
    Even though it's a very sad story, that comment made me laugh.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Add on “and then when you arrive you see the officer eating chocolate, but get arrested when you hand them a piece”.
- sakoht 6y ago
  It's a good question, though one could argue that, if you fail to hurt a person there is no "murder victim", but there is an "attempted murder victim". If you actually make the attempt. If you only "plan" to murder someone, then never go attempt to go through with your plan, I don't believe you have committed a crime. You have the cross the line of taking direct action to initiate the action. Though if you plan with others, "conspiracy" to commit a crime is itself illegal, even if you don't take other action to act on it. The plot loophole in Minority Report is that they could have just stayed near the victim to protect him/her and waited until the perpetrator actually crossed the line of making an attempt, and arrested the person for attempted murder. Forget the whole central dilemma of the movie.
sakoht 6y ago
Sentences that are too short, or too long, are both a byproduct of a lack of latitude on the part of the judge to apply reason and common sense. Our system a judge's "bias", but then end we up with a bureaucracy instead of a human who can see nuance. Mandatory minimum sentences have the same effect. The prosecutor uses the fear of the sentence to get a guilty plea and negotiates a plea bargain. This means people who should have gotten a fair trial in front of a judge and a jury are scared into pleaing guilty and letting the prosecutor decide how much time they will do by framing the plea offer. We bother to have judges to prevent this stuff, and should use them. Mandatory minimum sentences have the same effect
stormdennis 6y ago
So she was in fact as she doubtless appeared to him on video, a woman 120% his age, not someone aged 65% of his age. To older people it can be hard distinguishing the ages of people a lot younger. But there's no way a 20 y.o. could confuse a person barely out of primary school with someone of University graduate age.
- Merem 6y ago
  Looking at the picture in the article, how many 13-year-olds have wrinkles on their forehead? Certainly not many at all. So in this case, it's even really easy to see that she is not that age.
- bumblebritches5 6y ago
  Uh, in 6th grade a theater worker mistook me for a college student, and he was about college age...
calvano915 6y ago
I knew someone that this exact thing happened to. Literally the casual encounters section with different women (many older) over months, and a bad choice /poor judgement one day that lead to arrest and conviction. For him, ultimately it added up to a huge pain in the ass for years but he didn't do prison time. It appears that many aren't as lucky or resourced. It's easy to judge harshly based on the topic, but all I can say like TFA is that many of these people have no prior history and this type of police activity likely leads to just ruining as many lives as are being protected. Its similar to living in a gated community or such; a false sense of security with questionable effectiveness. A lot of the harm for those who get caught up in this came from the Adam Walsh Act (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Walsh_Child_Protection_and_Safety_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Walsh_Child_Protection_...) which required mandatory minimums that have now been successfully challenged in courts. If you read about Adam Walsh's story, while tragic the circumstances had nothing to do with a sexual predator type situation, and could be judged as negligence by a couple adults responsible for Adam's safety the day of his disappearance. What I would hope everyone could support is possibly leaving these stings in place but allowing first time offenders the ability to rectify the situation like the person I knew by participating in ongoing therapy and reasonable monitoring to ensure they do not pose a threat to society, and stepping things back a bit with labeling them as offenders when no actual victim was harmed and there were no priors.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The article mentioned that people being caught by the sting operation usually receive harsher punishments than people who actually commit the crime that the sting operation is supposed to prevent. It's truly absurd.
  - autisticcurio 6y ago
    Some people get off on power, just look at what is said about politicians. How many people know women breastfeeding can orgasm? https://www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/sex-after-baby/breastfeeding-and-sex-five-surprising-facts https://www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/sex-after-baby/breastfeed... https://www.todaysparent.com/family/womens-health/i-was-turned-on-by-breastfeeding-am-i-a-freak/ https://www.todaysparent.com/family/womens-health/i-was-turn... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146818142000301894 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1468181420003018... Either way, whether its hormonal or not, it could explain why some usually older women get really nasty towards other mothers breastfeeding in public. Maybe these older women have difficulty reconciling the feelings and/or knowledge of breastfeeding with social norms? Question is, is this orgasming when breastfeeding paedophilic and if so why the bias in the law enforcement, legal system and society in general? Is it simply to reduce penetrative harm and/or the mental harm that occurs when stepping outside social norms? Such a massive controversial subject.
somuchstigma 6y ago
If you dare to look further into this topic, please also look at a child protection non-profit that considers human and civil rights as a core value and tries to bust the enormous amount of stigma that surrounds the topic: https://prostasia.org/about https://prostasia.org/about You might feel uneasy about "sex positivity" being associated with preventing child sexual abuse. They also have a lot of other messages around primary prevention that might initially repel you. These days, they've got their own Twitter mob trying to shame and cancel them away, but really, "when you associate shame and guilt with sex, you are facilitating sexual abuse": https://prostasia.org/blog/the-weapon-of-shame https://prostasia.org/blog/the-weapon-of-shame and https://prostasia.org/blog/who-should-be-excluded-from-child-protection https://prostasia.org/blog/who-should-be-excluded-from-child... Here's their take on offender registries: https://prostasia.org/blog/how-the-registry-harms-families/ https://prostasia.org/blog/how-the-registry-harms-families/
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  I wonder why this comment is dead; Prostasia is a great organization that does a lot of work for artistic freedom and a better understanding of how the law and child protection organizations can help people. It stands resolutely against child abuse, to a greater degree than other organizations who may only have good intentions but not the actions to show for it.
robk 6y ago
Sorry it was abundantly clear she said 13. He knew what he was doing was wrong full stop.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  The officer said 13 and sent a picture of someone nearly twice that age. Backing away would be a reasonable response on Hambrick's part. Not sending someone to prison because he ignored an obvious lie would also be a reasonable response on the part of the police. If I offer you $1000 in cash but tell you it's a dog turd, are you a fool for grabbing it?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I’m actually 12 and as such should not be on this website. Should the moderators be held accountable for not deleting my account, even though I have previously discussed my experience in college?
  - otterley 6y ago
    Possibly. There are laws like COPPA that companies have to follow around storing the data of children under 13, and they may delete your account after learning your true age, rather than undertaking the efforts that the law requires, lest they risk getting into trouble.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      I know about COPPA; that is why I specifically chose “12” and not “13” ;) I brought this up because I am fairly sure the the moderators know enough about me to say that I am not actually 12 regardless of what I state here, which is the point I am trying to make: does the law require one to take statements made by a person on the Internet at face value if they seem patently false? If yes, is such a law practical and/or reasonable? (FWIW, Y Combinator forbids children under the age of 13 from making accounts for this reason. However, when people have done so in the past it has usually been tacitly ignored for reasons pertaining to “it would be a net loss for everyone if we enforced this”.)
gorgoiler 6y ago
If this could work with millions of people it’s possible to leverage chat frameworks and GPT to automate the dragnet. With a Ring door camera the evidence gathering could also be automated. Facebook / Faceswap / reverse google image search could get us a pretty good guess at a legal name and cell number. Homeland security can correlate to online handles. If the private face databases do not cooperate then that’s going to make life difficult, but exerting media / public pressure on them to “help catch pedos” should enforce their compliance. Correlate this all with taxpayer and employer information too. It’s a victimless crime so a fixed penalty — 20% garnished from wages for a decade — seems appropriate. (It’s “fixed” in that the percentage doesn’t change, even though the amount does.) Getting to trial is time consuming and expensive even if we have caught the same person that we catfished into showing up at the doorbell camera. However, if we automatically WhatsApp the perpetrator a link to a plea bargain Google Form, a good percentage are going to no-contest the charges and admit guilt via a submit form button. Degrade the video quality enough and apply some ML to match skin and hair tones. We don’t need to be precise if we make it seem like we won’t back down in court. Tie this all into the IRS and we of course will automate the fines collection. 20% of average income multiplied by a million would be a significant enough revenue to cover the salaries of our consultants and admin staff. Moreover, sir, there will be a significant impact on your reputation with key voters. According to our analysis of private conversation sentiment in the most volatile quintile in key swing states, this proposal will be sure to secure you a third term in office.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Do it like in Germany. Just send out a letter to every citizen asking for money with some neatly hidden clause that you admit guilt of the supposed crime if you pay the fine. Doesn't actually matter if there is any meat to it. Some people will sign it simply because they can't afford a lawyer.
SlavikCA 6y ago
O.U.R. published response to the NY article here: https://ourrescue.org/blog/the-new-york-times-misses-the-point-not-preventing-children-from-being-sexually-victimized-would-be-the-real-misservice-to-society/ https://ourrescue.org/blog/the-new-york-times-misses-the-poi... > the new york times misses the point: not preventing children from being sexually victimized would be the real misservice to society
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Seems like yet another instance of "give up your rights, think of the children" case.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    What right? The right to invite someone online that you believe to be 13 years old to have sex?
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      > you believe to be 13 years old There is no evidence that this was the case here.
      - Natsu 6y ago
        That's his defense, of course, that he didn't believe this person despite them continually saying that they were 13. But if you find someone pretending to be 13, you have to be incredibly stupid to go along with them for sex, whether they're lying or not. I mean, right or wrong, you're in trouble.
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        People are doing incredibly stupid things that hurt nobody but themselves all the time. Should we put these people to jail?
OneHundredAnd10 6y ago
Of course the NYTimes is trying to tug on the heartstrings of the nation to empathise with pedophiles. The subversive author, Michael Winerip, has an unsurprising background that you can confirm here: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/03Rparenting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/nyregionspecial2...
maroonmed 6y ago
It is completely disgusting how The New York Times would publish such an article that is essentially trying to normalize the illegal act of knowingly holding a sexually indecent conversation with an underage individual. These individuals wholly deserve the entire book being thrown at them.
frereubu 6y ago
This reminds me of the case of Dan DePew, where a police officer got too deep into an investigation to let it go. The NYT cases are less involved, but the ethical issues are almost identical: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/05/the-fatal-ensnaring-of-dan-depew/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/05/the-fatal-ensnaring... I find this kind of approach to police work very unsettling.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I find this kind of approach to police work very unsettling. Especially since this "too personal involvement" is celebrated in each and every TV cop show and movie, it seems...
ponsin 6y ago
I'm not a psychologist but from what I understand some people who have urges for young people just like some people have urges for people of the same gender. Obviously I have no problem if someone acts upon their urges towards people of their gender, but do have problems with people who act upon urges to young people. I would assume that in such case some form of voluntery conversion therapy would be useful. Similarly if someone has urges towards their gender but would prefer for whatever reason (to be more normal, to follow their religion, to have kids, ...) they would like to have urges towards the opposite gender, I see no problem with voluntery conversion therapy. One big pet peeves of mine with a lot of left leaning people is that they are pro gay because "it is their choice and doesn't effect me" yet they are against voluntery conversion even though the same logic holds. And before anyone says "they aren't proven to work", maybe we should allow scientists to work on that. After all, if armies have been able to convince POWs to fight for them patriotically against their country, I don't think it should be that hard to get people to love certain people
- commoner 6y ago
  > to be more normal The assertion that opposite-sex attraction is "normal" and that same-sex attraction is abnormal is not supported by science. Homosexuality was removed from the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology The American Psychological Association advises against conversion therapy because it is ineffective and potentially harmful: > The American Psychological Association Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) and concluded that efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm, contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates. Even though the research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality regardless of sexual orientation identity, the task force concluded that the population that undergoes SOCE tends to have strongly conservative religious views that lead them to seek to change their sexual orientation. Thus, the appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for those who seek SOCE involves therapist acceptance, support, and understanding of clients and the facilitation of clients’ active coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, without imposing a specific sexual orientation identity outcome. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.p...
A_TX 6y ago
It makes no sense to be looking for child predators on adult sites, by pretending to be teens who are looking for random adult strangers to offer free sex to. Real child predators are not likely to fall for this. Vulnerable people who are curious and confused are the ones falling for this trap. Here is how to catch real child predators (video below). These people have done it right because they really were interested in catching child predators. Running sex sting operations on adult sites (to catch child predators) is just a lazy, easy way. It’s much easier to create fake crime, by targeting vulnerable people and fooling them into playing the role, and it’s a fact that it’s all done for money. Doing this has brought them in so much money. https://youtu.be/dbg4hNHsc_8 https://youtu.be/dbg4hNHsc_8 Here’s the reality of how they trap vulnerable people. (Watch and listen to the video) https://floridaactioncommittee.org/watch-oral-arguments-in-2nd-dca-entrapment-case/#comments https://floridaactioncommittee.org/watch-oral-arguments-in-2... Here’s a very interesting article about the cult group that has been behind this scam. https://americancrimejournal.com/operation-underground-railroad-retains-controversial-firm-kirton-mcconkie-threatens-legal-action-against-acj/ https://americancrimejournal.com/operation-underground-railr...

109 points by apsec112 6y ago

m0zg 6y ago

NY Times is trying to normalize pedophilia. This is becoming a theme as of late, I wonder why. Dude drove to a 13 year old with a pack of condoms. Pretty sure he wasn't going to use them to make water balloons with her.

chromedev 6y ago
No, that is just the alt-right pushing an agenda stating that the left is trying to normalize and legalize pedophilia when the current President bragged about walking in the dressing room of teenage beauty pageants. if anything, it appears that people that support that behavior and his appointees that helped Epstein are the pedophile enablers.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Read the article, will ya?

kergonath 6y ago

This one’s going to get flagged to death quickly. Apart from the paedophile angle, there is an interesting philosophical question of whether something is a crime if there is no victim, and whether you should go to jail for something you hypothetically might have done at some point in the future. Personally, I think of Minority Report the same way as 1984: both are magnifying glasses showing how dangerous some of our tendencies are. Definitely not manuals of how things ought to be done. Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice.

chongli 6y ago
In more typical cases it’s pretty clear cut. Suppose you just finished working out in the gym, you’re in the locker room getting dressed, and you see a wallet and decide to steal it. Much to your dismay, when you get back to your car and look through the wallet you find your own ID and realize it’s your own wallet that you took. Well, despite your intention to commit a crime no crime has in fact taken place. You’re perfectly within your rights to take your own wallet home with you from the gym, even if you think you’re being sneaky about it. This concept has a proper name in the law: actus reus [1]. Along with mens rea, it forms a two-part test to determine whether a crime has been committed in common law. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus
onion2k 6y ago
There are lots of 'victimless' crimes - speeding in your car (reckless driving), buying drugs to consume yourself (use of controlled substances), planning to murder your partner (conspiracy). The victim is either 'society' or the person committing the crime. If you commit one of these crimes you're punished for demonstrating a willingness to do what society as a whole has decided it doesn't want people to do. Whether or not that's correct is a matter for debate, but the idea of 'if there's no victim there can't be a crime' is probably nonsense. There's bound to be at least one or two victimless crimes you think should actually be criminal.
- mimi89999 6y ago
  Vehicle speed can be easily measured and is a fact and an offense. Here there were conflicting informations about the other person's age and the offendents could have believed that the other person is 20+. Let's put that differently. If your speed meeter is broken and you believe that you are not speeding, but in fact are still speeding, then the situation is clear. Here the other person was really 20+, so his judgment was actually correct.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Victimless is not victimless. I propose the criterion of counterfactual victimhood - whether given the behavior of the subject, there exists an alternate universe in which there was a victim of a crime. For instance, consider an attempted murder that failed before the murderer even got near the target. In that case, the victim is counterfactual. However, there are true victimless crimes even under this definition; crimes that never would have had a victim. Speeding for instance doesn't pass this test, but "smoked a joint at home" does. This seems to make it a good fit for my moral beliefs.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  I think it's less about whether or not actually intending to commit a crime should be punished, but about whether there was ever such an intention in the first place. The article makes it sound like this person didn't really believe that the person he was talking to was only 13 years old and, given some of the messages mentioned in the article, that sounds reasonable. He was talking to a bunch of adult using the photo of an adult woman. People on the internet are not exactly known for never bullshitting people just for the lulz.
zmmmmm 6y ago
> Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice. In Australia, it's illegal (and someone was convicted) for downloading a drawing of child-like cartoon character (Simpsons) performing a sexual act [1]. The rationale is explicitly that although nobody was harmed in the specific instance, the act normalizes and encourages harm to real victims. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-08/fake-simpsons-cartoon-is-child-porn-judge-rules/233562 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-08/fake-simpsons-cartoon...
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Similarly in some countries it is illegal to be found in possession of marihuana (or even just xanax https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/28/laura-plummer-freed-from-egyptian-prison https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/28/laura-plumme...). In the same spirit it was illegal until relatively recently in the UK to have homosexual sex (see Turing).
- kergonath 6y ago
  Yeah. This is a travesty of justice. And massively hypocritical, if you don’t also punish people who draw murder scenes for normalising and encouraging violence.
DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
> Being convicted without having harmed anyone is a travesty of justice. Where do we draw the line though? If you're about to shoot someone and get stopped last second, should you just walk away free to try once more? Should we be sending the signal to possible future criminals that "you either succeed in your crime, or you get as many chances to try again as it takes"? I think intentions, to the extent that we can be reasonably sure of what they are, should be taken into consideration more than the actual outcome of an action. The article presents a very one-sided story of some guy who didn't mean any harm to anybody and didn't believe the person he was talking to was really only 13. Assuming that that's really what happened, the poor guy probably learned a lesson and won't be as careless again (asking for some form of ID could have prevented this whole situation). The whole point of a trial is to determine an appropriate punishment for a crime that serves to deter others from repeating it. Anything beyond that is just barbarism.
- likeclockwork 6y ago
  I just want to say that in the US at least as far as I know every part of shooting someone is a crime. So even if you were stopped at the last second you could still be prosecuted for assault, brandishing, etc. If you were stopped before even trying to shoot someone though what have you really done? You approached someone empty handed?
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    My point is, when the intention is clear, an attempted crime should itself be treated as a crime. What's more, if people weren't so damn emotional about everything, since it's very hard to prove someones intention, cases like the one in the article should be thrown out before ever reaching a judge. The real evil in this story, I would say, is the typical "innocent until suspected guilty" approach people tend to have for certain crimes, specially when children are involved. Let's be honest, the scenario of the article didn't prove anything. It gave some indication that maybe the guy was attempting to commit a crime, so he should never have been convicted of anything.
    - 6y ago
autisticcurio 6y ago
There is a lot I can say about this subject, half of me is torn between keeping quiet to not harm the scientific discovery, the other half of me doesnt agree with Winston Churchill when he said "the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few", and what I mean by that is should someone suffer for some scientific experiments and discovery masquerading as law. I'll refer you to the sexual habits of the Bonobo monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sociosexual_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sociosexual_behaviour When David Attenborough/BBC filmed them in the 50's or 60's, it was decided that certain elements of their behaviour would be hidden from the British viewing public, instead remaining as knowledge only within academic circles. I will also say that what you do in your life, what you say, read and reply to can be highly illuminating for some academics especially psychologists and the god like security services, but as always there is not always consensus, think Freud and his Oedipus complex etc. Another example is the Hare psychopathic test. https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_... Now it should be noted that Jon is not qualified, but bad science exists in all areas, very few subjects are pure like maths. Some theory's gain popularity over time and others fall into disrepute. I'm also reminded of the fact we are a complex real-time (electro) chemical reaction and this also shapes our conscious and unconscious decisions. Also I wouldnt under estimate the security services, who in my opinion carry out operations that would never get past the ethics board of a Uni and also engage in phishing attempts amongst many other things; Bitcoins is in my opinion a security services invention for reasons I wont go into here. Tor is also an obvious US Navy example although the popular reasons for existence may not be true, I guess we will never know the truth either! The Military with the police have engaged in many undercover operations for scientific discovery, because firstly if the subjects knew what was going on, you cant be sure the subjects would be acting up for the experiment or not. For a decent scientific study to take place, subjects can not be aware of the real experiment. Some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqnUTOkpuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqnUTOkpuQ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicals... And it goes on elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... I wonder how many academics will pour over these posts and others for their own research? The Tea Room Trade also known as the Tea Room Study is an interesting book to read on the subject of human sexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearoom_Trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearoom_Trade and also an unethical study. But before you get up in arms about unethical studies remember this, criminals and war are unethical so you need to prepare for the worst, but its also why you should let the police handle it first and not go all vigilante. Cognitive Dissonance is also a powerful force sometimes controllable sometimes not which can literally destroy people in variety of ways and arguably something the religions learnt thousands of years ago by putting the fear of god into people in order to maintain some semblance of law and order when oral tradition was the main form of education. Technological surveillance like we have today didnt exist so other methods had to be developed with the knowledge and toolset of the day and whilst mainly forgotten in the mists of time are still relevant today as part of the toolset. Manipulation of an individual can take place in many shapes and forms. Derren Brown's recent C4 program 20 years of Mind Control showed some, not all of the methods used to control peoples decision making. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-20-years-of-mind-control https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-20-years-of... When watching this TV program I was reminded of some of Boris Johnsons strange interviews, initially thought to be search engine manipulation, but may have been more involved with the UK Nudge unit than we will ever find out about because unless you were in London, you wont know what else was going on in the area regarding advertising, search engine results and news stories appearing in your news feed if you lived or commuted into London. Yes its more big brother than you think in my opinion. The biggest issue with kids and sex is its a highly volatile and emotive subject just like Religion, most people want the best for them like they do most people but our society is also setup to make us compete which means some people will stop at nothing to get one over some other people and how exactly do you interpret words written or spoken? There is an element of projection of our own desires in all communication imo. And as others have said here, where do you draw the line? Is someone like this person safer in prison or in the community. I dont think Julian Assange feels safe in Prison, but I would considering his circumstances, never underestimate the innovation of some prisoners. In many ways we are still living the failings of Religion seen as the olde worlde law and order using oral tradition because they probably never envisaged our technological developments today and acquisition of knowledge. Every country shows the lack of foresight and influence of power throughout time, for example, many roads in the UK follow land owners boundary's unlike the US where you have blocks (avenues and streets) like in New York. Obviously geographical and economical constraints also influence decision making purposes in this road example, but the point is still relevant in all walks of life, including how best to send a message to the wider public about the rights and wrongs of life. Sting/entrap a few people and get the message out via the media perhaps? Considering what is known today about sexual abuse with minors, education is also a massively controversial subject, do you educate primary school kids or not. The UK Stranger Danger in the 70's & 80's didnt really alert kids to family abuse, so a failing in the state, but kids are also alot like AI, in that they learn from data, which in the case of kids, is from activities going on around them, but manipulation of their curiosity, the omission to present all the facts to educate kids can also lead kids (and people) in general into drawing the wrong conclusion, reminding me of the saying curiosity killed the cat. I'm also reminded that despite being educated in something, we do sometimes forget to remember when we need it most, and its this bit which also intrigues me. The Govt knows the virtue of training, especially the security services like SAS, SBS, Navy seal, yet seeks to punish the public when they forget? Seem hypocritical to me, but lifes lessons can be harsh. The reactions of people is also illuminating, do strong views in situations like this actually give more of an insight into the authors psyche, level of education, and/or emotional stability? Its hard to quantify the level of influence beliefs and age of exposure and repeated exposure have over someone's views and decision making processes, but I whether we like it or not, our parents should take some of the blame something the legal system fails to address considering its virtue signalling and supposed adherence to following the science.
throwaway9d0291 6y ago
> Apart from the paedophile angle, there is an interesting philosophical question of whether something is a crime if there is no victim, and whether you should go to jail for something you hypothetically might have done at some point in the future. Sentencing generally has three primary factors: - Deterrence: The harsher the sentence, the stronger a signal we send to people who might commit similar crimes in the future. - Rehabilitation: How do we help the criminal so that they don't commit crimes again in the future? - Retribution: Eye for an eye. Since there's no victim and no real harm in a sting like this, I don't think retribution should be a factor at all. Since the "crime" was a construction by the police rather than a real-life situation, I don't think deterrence really makes much sense here. That can be left for the real-life instances of the crime. So I think the overriding factor in sentencing should be rehabilitation. Getting people like this help so that they can control themselves. I'd say even prison is too much. Ideally, they should be released on parole while they're being treated and not added to any sex offender lists. Were this to be the end-result of the sting, I think this practice would be totally fine, comparable to (forgive the comparison) animal control neutering strays. Better to get people help before they commit a real crime than after.
- Natsu 6y ago
  You left out "containment" -- keeping people who commit crimes away from the general public and thereby denying them the opportunity to commit crimes. In this case, the age thing is about like asking a prostitute if she's a cop and complaining that she lied when getting arrested.
- kergonath 6y ago
  Yes, the fact that they are dumped into the American prison system, which is mainly a profit generator unfit for all three, does not help at all. I guess if the consequence was that these people had to undergo some psychological tests it would have been better. And even so, I doubt most of them would do anything in the real life, i.e. without some convenient honey trap. But then, it would be all cost and no reward for the police, so they probably would not bother.

ummonk 6y ago

So with the exception of a handful of states, mistake of fact is not a defense against statutory rape. I.e. someone who has sex with someone under the age of consent whom they believe to be 18 is still guilty of statutory rape. The opposite is happening here, since the perpetrator isn't planning to do anything with someone actually under the age of consent - just someone whom they believe to be under the age of consent.

sakoht 6y ago
This is a good point. It seems we convict people for crimes they don't know they are committing, and also for thinking they are committing a crime when they aren't. It seems they should have just had the cops hide and wait until he actually tried to make a move on the undercover "girl" cop. Him showing up out of curiosity, perhaps even concern, is impossible to distinguish actual willingness to hurt a child if the jump on him immediately and arrest him. The subject of child rape is so terrible, we give a pass to shoddy police work. One would think that a lack of child porn, or overt sexual conversation from the guy would have made the judge think he didn't actually intend to take advantage of her without more evidence.

shajznnckfke 6y ago

I think a big chunk of the population are follower types who could be convinced to go along with all sorts of things. These people are generally going to behave as society expects them to, or at least as the last persuasive person they talked to expects. I think the type of sting operation described in this article could ensnare millions of such people, few of whom would have ever felt any impetus to commit this sort of crime. The subject of this article certainly displayed poor judgement, but wasn’t any kind of danger to society without this scenario constructed by the police. I don’t think public in any way benefited from this operation. All it did was take a productive member of society out of commission. I think this is like the time the government put out a bounty on rabbit heads, so farmers started breeding more rabbits. The farmers are the police and the rabbits are sex offenders.

glogla 6y ago
Yeah. If police is coming up with ways to manufacture victimless crime, they obviously don't have enough to do in real crime, and we can defund them and save the money. If they are coming with this while there is real crime unsolved, well, they are doong it wrong.
rumanator 6y ago
> The subject of this article certainly displayed poor judgement, but wasn’t any kind of danger to society without this scenario constructed by the police. I don't agree. The whole point of sting operations is that they enable police to catch people that pose a danger to society by catching them in the act. In this case we have a man in his early 20s caught actively trying to meet a 13yo girl for sex. The same man stated he already had sex with 5 or 6 other girls like this, although he didn't specified their ages.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  I’d agree with you if the supposed victim wasn’t a 24 year old who provided pictures of themselves in the lead-up to the meeting. To me, it reads like the police constructed an interaction where it would have been clear to the target of the sting in the moment that he was engaging with an adult (which was indeed the truth), but that included a few phrases that show evidence of guilt when removed from that moment. I think the police could have demonstrated much more convincing evidence of guilt if they had someone who looked like a 13 year old answer the door, and recorded the man’s reaction.

tempsolution 6y ago

This is ridiculous and yet another demonstration of the absurdity that they try to sell as US "justice" system. So let's summarize. 1) Guy is looking for adults on an adult page 2) Adult women(24) with an adult picture says she is 13 3) Guy probably thinks like "okay, doesn't look 13". Which arguably is stupid, given that US citizens should know how stupid the US is when it comes to minors. 4) Talks more 5) Women says again she is 13 6) They agree to meet anyway 7) Guy drives to her home and she greets him. She is obviously a grown women. 8) Guy gets arrested for child rape Yeah sounds about right. God bless America! So let's rewrite the story a bit: 1) Guy is looking for some mint on craigslist 2) When asking the seller why the mint "makes people high", the seller says it's actually weed. 3) Guy thinks, okay, doesn't look like weed, it looks like fucking mint 4) Guy says, I will buy this mint anyway, looks like mint 5) Seller says again "Dude, it's fucking weed, but okay" 6) Seller sells the mint 7) Guy receives the mint in his mailbox and opens it 8) Cool it's mint, smells of mint, looks like mint. 9) Guy gets arrested for drug possession Erm what? In the real world, that cop should have been suspended for false advertising and the seller's account as well. Good thing the world has no other problems...

moonchild 6y ago

> She used slang a 13-year-old probably wouldn’t know, like “FTP” [Fuck The Police] This, I am afraid, represents a rather naïve view of 13-year-olds.

hnarayanan 6y ago
Also everyone knows it stands for File Transfer Protocol.
sundvor 6y ago
The story of how the ADHD man was set up by the power hungry sting op disgusted me; the pic of the officer with the headphones looked like that of a young adult. His challenge of the age went unanswered, from what the report said. My impression of the US is steadily not improving. The only FTP I'm familiar with is that of a certain protocol... (Mid 40s, two decades in Australia).
- senectus1 6y ago
  me too brother.. me too :-/

traloid 6y ago

is being punished for attempted murder unjust because you failed to hurt the person and thus there is no victim?

tempsolution 6y ago
Dude, read the article? This is like a cop posing as a cow and trying to say on "slaughterYourCowToday.com": "Hey look, I am actually a real human being, please don't slaughter me"... But hey, the picture of that cow shows a freakin cow. Now the guy drives to the farm and is greeted by a fucking cow. He takes a gun and tries to shoot the cow. But the police rolls in and arrests him for attempted murder... Yeah sounds like justice to you?
shajznnckfke 6y ago
If I had to come up with an equally just sting where the crime is attempted murder, it would go something like this: Officer: “I’d love if you’d bring some chocolate ice cream to our date! By the way, I’m deathly allergic to chocolate.” Rube Sting Target: “Allergic to chocolate? You’re joking, right?” Officer: “What’s your cell number?” ... Officer: “See you soon! Don’t forget to pick up that death by chocolate on the way!”
- mimi89999 6y ago
  Even though it's a very sad story, that comment made me laugh.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Add on “and then when you arrive you see the officer eating chocolate, but get arrested when you hand them a piece”.
sakoht 6y ago
It's a good question, though one could argue that, if you fail to hurt a person there is no "murder victim", but there is an "attempted murder victim". If you actually make the attempt. If you only "plan" to murder someone, then never go attempt to go through with your plan, I don't believe you have committed a crime. You have the cross the line of taking direct action to initiate the action. Though if you plan with others, "conspiracy" to commit a crime is itself illegal, even if you don't take other action to act on it. The plot loophole in Minority Report is that they could have just stayed near the victim to protect him/her and waited until the perpetrator actually crossed the line of making an attempt, and arrested the person for attempted murder. Forget the whole central dilemma of the movie.

sakoht 6y ago

Sentences that are too short, or too long, are both a byproduct of a lack of latitude on the part of the judge to apply reason and common sense. Our system a judge's "bias", but then end we up with a bureaucracy instead of a human who can see nuance. Mandatory minimum sentences have the same effect. The prosecutor uses the fear of the sentence to get a guilty plea and negotiates a plea bargain. This means people who should have gotten a fair trial in front of a judge and a jury are scared into pleaing guilty and letting the prosecutor decide how much time they will do by framing the plea offer. We bother to have judges to prevent this stuff, and should use them. Mandatory minimum sentences have the same effect

stormdennis 6y ago

So she was in fact as she doubtless appeared to him on video, a woman 120% his age, not someone aged 65% of his age. To older people it can be hard distinguishing the ages of people a lot younger. But there's no way a 20 y.o. could confuse a person barely out of primary school with someone of University graduate age.

Merem 6y ago
Looking at the picture in the article, how many 13-year-olds have wrinkles on their forehead? Certainly not many at all. So in this case, it's even really easy to see that she is not that age.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
Uh, in 6th grade a theater worker mistook me for a college student, and he was about college age...

calvano915 6y ago

I knew someone that this exact thing happened to. Literally the casual encounters section with different women (many older) over months, and a bad choice /poor judgement one day that lead to arrest and conviction. For him, ultimately it added up to a huge pain in the ass for years but he didn't do prison time. It appears that many aren't as lucky or resourced. It's easy to judge harshly based on the topic, but all I can say like TFA is that many of these people have no prior history and this type of police activity likely leads to just ruining as many lives as are being protected. Its similar to living in a gated community or such; a false sense of security with questionable effectiveness. A lot of the harm for those who get caught up in this came from the Adam Walsh Act (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Walsh_Child_Protection_and_Safety_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Walsh_Child_Protection_...) which required mandatory minimums that have now been successfully challenged in courts. If you read about Adam Walsh's story, while tragic the circumstances had nothing to do with a sexual predator type situation, and could be judged as negligence by a couple adults responsible for Adam's safety the day of his disappearance. What I would hope everyone could support is possibly leaving these stings in place but allowing first time offenders the ability to rectify the situation like the person I knew by participating in ongoing therapy and reasonable monitoring to ensure they do not pose a threat to society, and stepping things back a bit with labeling them as offenders when no actual victim was harmed and there were no priors.

imtringued 6y ago
The article mentioned that people being caught by the sting operation usually receive harsher punishments than people who actually commit the crime that the sting operation is supposed to prevent. It's truly absurd.
- autisticcurio 6y ago
  Some people get off on power, just look at what is said about politicians. How many people know women breastfeeding can orgasm? https://www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/sex-after-baby/breastfeeding-and-sex-five-surprising-facts https://www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/sex-after-baby/breastfeed... https://www.todaysparent.com/family/womens-health/i-was-turned-on-by-breastfeeding-am-i-a-freak/ https://www.todaysparent.com/family/womens-health/i-was-turn... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146818142000301894 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1468181420003018... Either way, whether its hormonal or not, it could explain why some usually older women get really nasty towards other mothers breastfeeding in public. Maybe these older women have difficulty reconciling the feelings and/or knowledge of breastfeeding with social norms? Question is, is this orgasming when breastfeeding paedophilic and if so why the bias in the law enforcement, legal system and society in general? Is it simply to reduce penetrative harm and/or the mental harm that occurs when stepping outside social norms? Such a massive controversial subject.

somuchstigma 6y ago

If you dare to look further into this topic, please also look at a child protection non-profit that considers human and civil rights as a core value and tries to bust the enormous amount of stigma that surrounds the topic: https://prostasia.org/about https://prostasia.org/about You might feel uneasy about "sex positivity" being associated with preventing child sexual abuse. They also have a lot of other messages around primary prevention that might initially repel you. These days, they've got their own Twitter mob trying to shame and cancel them away, but really, "when you associate shame and guilt with sex, you are facilitating sexual abuse": https://prostasia.org/blog/the-weapon-of-shame https://prostasia.org/blog/the-weapon-of-shame and https://prostasia.org/blog/who-should-be-excluded-from-child-protection https://prostasia.org/blog/who-should-be-excluded-from-child... Here's their take on offender registries: https://prostasia.org/blog/how-the-registry-harms-families/ https://prostasia.org/blog/how-the-registry-harms-families/

claudiawerner 6y ago
I wonder why this comment is dead; Prostasia is a great organization that does a lot of work for artistic freedom and a better understanding of how the law and child protection organizations can help people. It stands resolutely against child abuse, to a greater degree than other organizations who may only have good intentions but not the actions to show for it.

robk 6y ago

Sorry it was abundantly clear she said 13. He knew what he was doing was wrong full stop.

fuzxi 6y ago
The officer said 13 and sent a picture of someone nearly twice that age. Backing away would be a reasonable response on Hambrick's part. Not sending someone to prison because he ignored an obvious lie would also be a reasonable response on the part of the police. If I offer you $1000 in cash but tell you it's a dog turd, are you a fool for grabbing it?
saagarjha 6y ago
I’m actually 12 and as such should not be on this website. Should the moderators be held accountable for not deleting my account, even though I have previously discussed my experience in college?
- otterley 6y ago
  Possibly. There are laws like COPPA that companies have to follow around storing the data of children under 13, and they may delete your account after learning your true age, rather than undertaking the efforts that the law requires, lest they risk getting into trouble.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I know about COPPA; that is why I specifically chose “12” and not “13” ;) I brought this up because I am fairly sure the the moderators know enough about me to say that I am not actually 12 regardless of what I state here, which is the point I am trying to make: does the law require one to take statements made by a person on the Internet at face value if they seem patently false? If yes, is such a law practical and/or reasonable? (FWIW, Y Combinator forbids children under the age of 13 from making accounts for this reason. However, when people have done so in the past it has usually been tacitly ignored for reasons pertaining to “it would be a net loss for everyone if we enforced this”.)

gorgoiler 6y ago

If this could work with millions of people it’s possible to leverage chat frameworks and GPT to automate the dragnet. With a Ring door camera the evidence gathering could also be automated. Facebook / Faceswap / reverse google image search could get us a pretty good guess at a legal name and cell number. Homeland security can correlate to online handles. If the private face databases do not cooperate then that’s going to make life difficult, but exerting media / public pressure on them to “help catch pedos” should enforce their compliance. Correlate this all with taxpayer and employer information too. It’s a victimless crime so a fixed penalty — 20% garnished from wages for a decade — seems appropriate. (It’s “fixed” in that the percentage doesn’t change, even though the amount does.) Getting to trial is time consuming and expensive even if we have caught the same person that we catfished into showing up at the doorbell camera. However, if we automatically WhatsApp the perpetrator a link to a plea bargain Google Form, a good percentage are going to no-contest the charges and admit guilt via a submit form button. Degrade the video quality enough and apply some ML to match skin and hair tones. We don’t need to be precise if we make it seem like we won’t back down in court. Tie this all into the IRS and we of course will automate the fines collection. 20% of average income multiplied by a million would be a significant enough revenue to cover the salaries of our consultants and admin staff. Moreover, sir, there will be a significant impact on your reputation with key voters. According to our analysis of private conversation sentiment in the most volatile quintile in key swing states, this proposal will be sure to secure you a third term in office.

imtringued 6y ago
Do it like in Germany. Just send out a letter to every citizen asking for money with some neatly hidden clause that you admit guilt of the supposed crime if you pay the fine. Doesn't actually matter if there is any meat to it. Some people will sign it simply because they can't afford a lawyer.

SlavikCA 6y ago

O.U.R. published response to the NY article here: https://ourrescue.org/blog/the-new-york-times-misses-the-point-not-preventing-children-from-being-sexually-victimized-would-be-the-real-misservice-to-society/ https://ourrescue.org/blog/the-new-york-times-misses-the-poi... > the new york times misses the point: not preventing children from being sexually victimized would be the real misservice to society

dependenttypes 6y ago
Seems like yet another instance of "give up your rights, think of the children" case.
- Natsu 6y ago
  What right? The right to invite someone online that you believe to be 13 years old to have sex?
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > you believe to be 13 years old There is no evidence that this was the case here.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      That's his defense, of course, that he didn't believe this person despite them continually saying that they were 13. But if you find someone pretending to be 13, you have to be incredibly stupid to go along with them for sex, whether they're lying or not. I mean, right or wrong, you're in trouble.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        People are doing incredibly stupid things that hurt nobody but themselves all the time. Should we put these people to jail?

OneHundredAnd10 6y ago

Of course the NYTimes is trying to tug on the heartstrings of the nation to empathise with pedophiles. The subversive author, Michael Winerip, has an unsurprising background that you can confirm here: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/03Rparenting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/nyregionspecial2...

maroonmed 6y ago

It is completely disgusting how The New York Times would publish such an article that is essentially trying to normalize the illegal act of knowingly holding a sexually indecent conversation with an underage individual. These individuals wholly deserve the entire book being thrown at them.

frereubu 6y ago

This reminds me of the case of Dan DePew, where a police officer got too deep into an investigation to let it go. The NYT cases are less involved, but the ethical issues are almost identical: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/05/the-fatal-ensnaring-of-dan-depew/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/05/the-fatal-ensnaring... I find this kind of approach to police work very unsettling.

coldtea 6y ago
>I find this kind of approach to police work very unsettling. Especially since this "too personal involvement" is celebrated in each and every TV cop show and movie, it seems...

ponsin 6y ago

I'm not a psychologist but from what I understand some people who have urges for young people just like some people have urges for people of the same gender. Obviously I have no problem if someone acts upon their urges towards people of their gender, but do have problems with people who act upon urges to young people. I would assume that in such case some form of voluntery conversion therapy would be useful. Similarly if someone has urges towards their gender but would prefer for whatever reason (to be more normal, to follow their religion, to have kids, ...) they would like to have urges towards the opposite gender, I see no problem with voluntery conversion therapy. One big pet peeves of mine with a lot of left leaning people is that they are pro gay because "it is their choice and doesn't effect me" yet they are against voluntery conversion even though the same logic holds. And before anyone says "they aren't proven to work", maybe we should allow scientists to work on that. After all, if armies have been able to convince POWs to fight for them patriotically against their country, I don't think it should be that hard to get people to love certain people

commoner 6y ago
> to be more normal The assertion that opposite-sex attraction is "normal" and that same-sex attraction is abnormal is not supported by science. Homosexuality was removed from the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology The American Psychological Association advises against conversion therapy because it is ineffective and potentially harmful: > The American Psychological Association Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) and concluded that efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm, contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates. Even though the research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality regardless of sexual orientation identity, the task force concluded that the population that undergoes SOCE tends to have strongly conservative religious views that lead them to seek to change their sexual orientation. Thus, the appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for those who seek SOCE involves therapist acceptance, support, and understanding of clients and the facilitation of clients’ active coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, without imposing a specific sexual orientation identity outcome. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.p...

A_TX 6y ago

It makes no sense to be looking for child predators on adult sites, by pretending to be teens who are looking for random adult strangers to offer free sex to. Real child predators are not likely to fall for this. Vulnerable people who are curious and confused are the ones falling for this trap. Here is how to catch real child predators (video below). These people have done it right because they really were interested in catching child predators. Running sex sting operations on adult sites (to catch child predators) is just a lazy, easy way. It’s much easier to create fake crime, by targeting vulnerable people and fooling them into playing the role, and it’s a fact that it’s all done for money. Doing this has brought them in so much money. https://youtu.be/dbg4hNHsc_8 https://youtu.be/dbg4hNHsc_8 Here’s the reality of how they trap vulnerable people. (Watch and listen to the video) https://floridaactioncommittee.org/watch-oral-arguments-in-2nd-dca-entrapment-case/#comments https://floridaactioncommittee.org/watch-oral-arguments-in-2... Here’s a very interesting article about the cult group that has been behind this scam. https://americancrimejournal.com/operation-underground-railroad-retains-controversial-firm-kirton-mcconkie-threatens-legal-action-against-acj/ https://americancrimejournal.com/operation-underground-railr...