Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer (Currents section) had an editorial by Mark Bowden about those who lure men via cyberspace into seeking sexual liasons with underage young women. He believes that if you offer anything on the internet, someone, somewhere will be the sucker for it–even if it is completely outrageous and not plausible in the real world. He suggests that programs like “To catch a Predator” on NBC or other task forces (mentioned in the article) that lure men to have sex with mothers and their young children are only culling out the most idiotic of our nation–those unlikely to ever succeed in such a liason in the real world. He wonders if these programs only play on the dark thoughts that everyone has and uses media to enhance those desires that would likely never have risen to the place of an act without the anonymity of the internet. “Dangle temptation before a large enough crowd, and a few would-be sinners will step forward….New flash: There is evil in the souls of men.”
So, do these programs and the trolling efforts by police snag dangerous people or merely the foolish? Bowden seems to be suggesting that this is a fad born out of hysteria, just like the 1980s and the Satanic Ritual Abuse fad. Well, much of the SRA was hype and hysteria (not all though), but our data on child abuse and the impact of child porn is not hysteria. There are real numbers on child abuse. When 1:3 women (and 1:4 or 5 men) report unwanted sexual contact before age 18…
But, maybe we ought to have a go at trying to prosecute portals and sites that allow porn. Maybe we can learn something from China. They eliminate all sites that speak ill of the government. Even Google filters their Chinese search engine. If only Yahoo, Google, MSN, and AOL took the problem of porn and sex-filled chat rooms seriously what would become of the world? That is what it will take: individuals who want to spend their life erradicating the internet version of polio.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
Please be patient with my comment here. I commented on another thread once about how obsessive society has become over child sexual abuse in proportion to its disinterest in all adult sexual immorality. From the very beginning of the NBC series something did not sit right with me about these “sting” operations. First, if such operations cannot be initiated and conducted entirely within our police forces then vigilantism becomes a paramount concern. We pretend in polite society as though it would be not normal for sexually mature men to be attracted to sexually mature women. Biologically the poseurs in these sting operations are sexually mature and acting with intent to lure the predator into a sexual encounter. That encounter, when stripped of superficialities, is nothing more than a show of how strong the mating drive in humans can be. Socially the behavior is unwanted but the biological force behind it is understandable. I do believe the “predators” in these situations are partially created by a society that expects conflicting results. They(alleged predators) are completely responsible for their behavior and do understand the law in these cases, but just like an addict they perpetually give in to base impulses that in other contexts society celebrates.
In these sting operations the poseurs, or would be victims, are never actually injured by the predators behavior. The crime is always one of intent. The punishment meted out to each is damaging, painful and will follow them throughout their life. Can we say by doing this we are providing an adequate negative consequence to deter such intent? By the numbers such sting operations expose it seems obvious that we are not. That is why I say such efforts are really setups for personal failure. We should know that the boy who was once 14 and taught the wonders of young women in pages like Playboy, who is expected to capture as many coeds in college as possible, and who simply grows older will react instinctively to both seek the opportunity and follow up on it. At the end of each show we have successfully displaced our guilt for the general immorality we live in onto the “predator” who we trained.
Another distinction that I believe must be made is that the “children” in such shows have always been of the early post-pubescent age range. They are not children in a biological sense but are newly sexualized adults ready for mating. It has been only recently that society has claimed the third seven years as off limits and under age. Frankly, I believe that boys and girls at this age are mostly culpable for their behavior, but more easily taken advantage of and thus deserving of some leniency. But in our setups we do not allow for that. Instead we cull the goats and roast them good. While the goat still stinks we make light of the fornication the lambs all indulge in and excuse the behavior because we know we never stopped doing it to!
We should be doing more to help our young men and women develop the character that puts their higher well-being, as well as that of others, above the simple yet strong instinct for sexual union. When we do that we empower them to choose to refrain from sexual unions that cannot be based in wholesome marriages. At least, for the secularist among us, we should teach that a moral commitment and monogamy take higher precedence over the strong urge to simply copulate!
I suppose it should be obvious that though predators are predominately male, it isn’t exclusively a male disorder. In such sting operations that fact should be brought out by utilizing young male poseurs online to catch the much rarer female predator. Statistically they would have to wait much longer to expect any result, something that a network isn’t likely to do.
Jody, thanks for your thoughtful response. I would agree with your main premise that we have crazy sexual mores in the west that highly encourage sexual freedom and then set limits that run cross purposes with the freedoms we tout. However, in watching one or two of the NBC shows on the topic, it seems to me that many of the men that come are looking for young and fresh, never been taught before young women. That is less about our sexual mores and more about a particular personality or social pathology. What is it about these men that make them fantasize and then act on being the first to “teach” a young girl of 12-15.
While actual 12-15 year old girls who sexualize themselves and their relationships are culpable for something, one has to ask why are they vulnerable to acting that way? What experiences and perceptions lead them in this direction and what is it that they are seeking?
Agreed on both your points, it isn’t really possible to defend or excuse the behavior of the men in each of their particular attempts. Though I’m not a clinician or counselor the subject of both actual pedophilia and virgin conquests is a psychological curiosity to me. In the first case one need only look at the perpetrator’s sexual development and wonder what/where/when did the strange attachment come into being. The male dominated tendency to desire youthful flesh is probably related in some ways, yet it does seem to be a different developmental pathology, one that unfortunately many young “victims” might attempt to engage with to gain a sense of power and control. Oddly, in the mind of a very aware young female the perpetrator is really powerless at some point, which these sting operations seem to prove. It is only my guess that for the men who were caught they could probably each trace a progression of their mental and physical acting out that eventually led them to engage in illegal sex acts including statutory rape. I would confess that this latter route of incremental depravity, excluding pedophilia, would by an easy trap for myself or many of my guy friends to fall into. And we do talk about how what once was considered “fair game” is now too dangerous to give a minutes thought to. That is simply the challenge of growing up that all men must face. Some where along that line of development some men secretly stop developing toward a morally responsible attitude.