Venom
Philosopher
"Pedophile" indicates preference for pre-pubescent kids, but that isn't the same as legal age of consent, which is higher.
-
Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more
30 Pedophiles Arrested in Virginia
- Thread starter William Parcher
- Start date
"Pedophile" indicates preference for pre-pubescent kids, but that isn't the same as legal age of consent, which is higher.
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
It appears to be an anomalous result.
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
"Pedophile" when used outside clinical settings is also fairly well-established as colloquially referring to an attraction to the underaged in general though, so it's acceptable usage.
I would guess one reason is that most people agree to a plea bargain because they are scared into making a one or they cannot afford a lawyer. Also the fact that not everything gets put online for us to really know how many cases got dropped or found not guilty. All we usually hear is that all these men got arrested during a sting operation.
Last edited:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
100% agree. The people caught and prosecuted in these stings have actually, physically attempted to meet a person for sex after they were told that person was under the age of consent. No amount of weasel words or handwaving makes any difference to what this means - THERE IS NO WAY TO SPIN AWAY THIS FACT!
Honestly, the degree of tortuous pretzel-twisting being employed by some posters in this thread is both mind blowing and deeply disturbing. It is simply weasel wording and the making of tortuously contrived excuses for these scumbags.
Last edited:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Which, of course, is exactly what these sting operations do!
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
You seem to be arguing that if a grown woman tells you she's underage, and you know she's not, and you decide to have sex with her anyway, that should be a crime.
As in, we as a society should criminalize that choice, and punish anyone who makes that choice. Is that correct?
Does it extend to other activities, or just sex? If you do something that you know is not a crime, after someone else warns you that it is a crime, your act should be considered the crime the other person thought it was?
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
I'm telling you that you have just presented a ridiculous contrived argument and is exactly the sort of argument pedophile apologists make.
If the person has no way of actually knowing the age, and makes an appointment for sex with a person who says they are under age, the very act of showing up that appointment shows intent and ought to me a crime. Yes we should criminalize such behavior.
What you think you know is irrelevant - what you do know is what counts. Statutory rapists of the kind caught in these stings know that what they are arranging is a crime.
If you plan to rob a bank, and then turn up at the bank at the planned time to rob it, and the police knew about your plan, and catch you as you walk in, do you think the Police ought to accept the excuse that you weren't really going to rob the bank.
There was a woman in Australia recently who attempted to get her new boyfriend to hire a hitman to kill her husband. The attempt failed, there wasn't even an attempt to murder him but the boyfriend, the hired hitman and the woman were tried, convicted and are now in jail "Why?" I hear you ask... because planning a crime IS a crime!
Planning a murder is a crime
Planning a bank robbery is a crime
Planning a burglary is a crime
Planning ANY crime IS a crime
I why should planning an illegal sex act with an under aged person be an exception?
Last edited:
You are forgetting that these men did not plan on having sex with a child. They are initially told the girl is an adult and they correctly knew she was lying when changing her age.
Someone tells a man they are an adult (and they really are), then goes to meet her, he gets told she is younger (which is a lie), and they do not have sex. You think it makes sense to call this a crime? Especially one that ruins lives?
Someone goes to a bank to withdraw money from their account. Someone tells him this is illegal. He knows it is not so he withdraws the money. By your logic, he should be arrested. Hell, by your logic, he should be arrested even if he did not withdraw money. All because someone said it was illegal and he planned on doing it.
Last edited:
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,399
We aren't actually debating whether or not to criminalize that behavior. The law is what it is already, and it's not about to change. We're arguing whether or not police should be using these tactics (meaning specific sorts of stings, not stings in general) to try to arrest people.
And actually, there is a pretty good way of knowing what someone's age is: meet them.
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
But see that's prevarication; it doesn't actually apply to the kinds of situation we're talking about. The reality of these stings is a case where someone whom you don't know is grown or not tells you she's underage, and you arbitrarily guess that she's lying, and you decide to have sex with her anyway. And yeah, it's perfectly okay for that to be a crime.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
theprestige specifically asked me that question
Even if they did not have sex?
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
If you physically try to rob a bank but fail because the police stop you, you're still a bank robber.
Sorry I just don't think this is a good analogy. Since the person is really an adult and no sex occurred. No one physically tried to have sex with a child or someone they thought to be a child.
Someone goes to a house they are invited to to get some money. They are told it's really a bank. He knows that it is just a house and still ask for money. He gets arrested for trying to rob a bank. Police say they got a robber off the streets. You say great! He should have left when they said it was a bank! He is a dangerous person off the streets! Great use of police resources!
Last edited:
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
This ends up not mattering, because many states have laws that criminalize "travel to engage in sexual activity with a minor" regardless of whether the perpetrator actually finds the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Indeed these kinds of laws were specifically enacted to head off "but I didn't actually get to so there was no crime" as a positive defense. The idea is, if you have somehow managed to signal an intention to commit a crime, and you take positive, physical steps in the real world to commit that crime, lack of success isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Last edited:
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 64,399
No he didn’t. You changed the question he asked to one of your own. Presumably you thought your question was more relevant than his, but he didn’t ask the question you answered.
But he did not travel there to get sex from a minor. He went to someone that told him she is 18 and then he figured out she was lying when changing her age to something younger. Yes, he is dumb for continuing no matter what he "knew", but I just don't think this should be how police spend their time and resources. I also don't think someone should be a sex offender for it.
Last edited:
Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
No, he chose to believe that she was lying, because that allowed him to mentally justify continuing to pursue the sexual activity after he'd been told she was underage. More importantly, he wasn't instantly arrested. He had the opportunity, when the "prostitute" told him she was 17, to back out without consequence, and he chose to rationalize his way into proceeding instead.
I understand why someone would consider that situation borderline. I don't particularly like that specific setup myself, but I don't think there was anything legally or morally wrong with busting him, without even considering that the guy got 30 days and no registry.
But we can't frame these edge cases as representative of pedophile stings as a whole. "This one sheriff did this one thing one time and this other sheriff on the other side of the country did this other thing this other time" are at best arguments against those individual cases. I can cite some botched, incompetently-run, even downright shady murder investigations, but no matter how many of them I can come up with - and there are legions of examples - they don't add up to an arguments that police shouldn't be conducting murder investigations generally. (If you think "murder" is too far on some scale or other away from "attempt to groom a minor for sex" that it's just unacceptable to use as analogy, feel free to substitute literally any class of crime here whatsoever that police investigate, from armed robbery to wire fraud. Some police doing it badly doesn't show that police shouldn't be doing it at all).
Last edited:
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
I don't think they are. I think newspapers fell into that habit out of a belief it would allow them to escape being sued for libel. It doesn't work, you can still sue them blue no matter how many times they put "alleged" in front of your name if they write an otherwise libellous article. But they stuck with the practice out of a combination of inertia and the hopes that any safeguard, however feeble, is better than none.
I think a newspaper's legal department might make their editors use the term, but there's not actual law for it.