Kids and the Men Who Like Them

Kids and the Men Who Like Them
by Raven Usher
The police do this thing they call a “prostitution sting.” They dress a female officer like a hooker and have her stand out on a public street. Then they arrest anyone who offers to pay her for carnal pleasures. The criminal charge is “solicitation.” Guys wanting to buy sex may not seem like a serious criminal threat. In fact there are many people who make the claim that the tactic of using prostitution stings is entrapment. That the cops are manipulating circumstances to unduly tempt the guy into committing the crime. You notice no one has that complaint when the cops do drug stings to catch dealers.
Recently someone used the “entrapment” argument on me for a similar kind of sex sting. We both know the person who got caught. But he was not busted for just solicitation. His crime was “solicitation of a minor over the internet.” He was caught by a national task force (not the police) that hunts down pedophiles who lurk in internet chat rooms. It is called “Perverted Justice” and they list all the pedophiles they catch on their web site, www.perverted-justice.com.
They work in the same manner of a prostitution sting. An agent goes into a public chat room and pretends to be a minor. He sits and waits for a pedophile to make an illegal proposition. They try to get phone numbers and call to confirm them. (They have people who can sound like minors on the phone for that.) Then they set up a meeting place and catch the pedophile red handed when he shows up.
It is one thing to claim entrapment when a guy is propositioning what he thinks is a consenting adult hooker. But when a guy goes out of his way to try to get sex from a thirteen year old girl, claiming entrapment is just plain gullibility. Saying a criminal is not responsible for a crime because investigators sat back and allowed him to commit it is asinine. That is especially true when it is a crime against a child.
It is unforgivable to blame the victim of a crime for inciting the crime. It is no less reprehensible to claim wrong-doing on the part of investigators when they take measures to catch criminals by taking advantage of predictable criminal behavior. If the cops know a criminal is going to be in a certain place at a certain time to perpetrate a crime, they would be negligent not to be there waiting to pounce.
And yet, when I shared the news about the bust via an internet instant message, this is what I got:
raven usher: http://www.perverted-justice.com/?archive=insert_clever_handle_here
eyeswideshut: I am not excited about what he did
eyeswideshut: same token
eyeswideshut: it is a single sided story
eyeswideshut: and some of these look like entrapment
eyeswideshut: half truth's
eyeswideshut: and omissions
That web page address is accurate, by the way. Look it up. It includes his picture and a full transcript of the instant message conversation in which he propositioned and arranged to meet a girl he knew to be only thirteen years old. And yes, he really did show up for the meeting.
I do not know what upsets me more; that I know someone who did that or that someone else I know tried to play the entrapment card. I have known this guy for a couple of years. (The “sounds-like-entrapment“ guy has known him just as long.) He has been in my house. He has been around my thirteen year old daughter. If that thought does not make your skin crawl, nothing will.
For the record, he has not been arrested (yet). I am not able to tell you if he ever will be. Do I think he is guilty of a crime? Yes. I have read the transcript. There is not any gray area in it. What am I going to do about it? First, I am going to keep my family away from him. Second, I am going to tell this story to everyone who will listen. Awareness is the first and best step to any fight. The GLBT community should know that by now.
Blessed Be.