[This Article Of Mine Below Is A Customized Re-post From My Steemit Channel.]
If you live somewhere where the statutory age of consent is 15 years old or lower, then you likely do not live in the United States of America as I do. That is, unless you live in an embassy or a consulate here in my nation where the laws of your nation apply instead of the local laws while you are inside your embassy or consulate.
When I was a teenager so many years ago, I was browsing around in a bookstore and I came across this one book that had to do with teenage sexuality. Upon reading a few pages of it, I stumbled across a true story about this one situation in which a 23-year-old man was at a party and he went upstairs to one of the bedrooms to rest inasmuch as he had a little too much to drink. Two female high-school cheerleaders subsequently walked into that same bedroom. One of them was 15 years old, and the other one was 16 years old. The 15-year-old cheerleader undressed the man and she undressed herself. Then she proceeded to have sexual intercourse with him. Afterwards, the 16-year-old female cheerleader did the same to him.
According to the book I was reading, the 23-year-old man later told his therapist about what had happened at the above-described party. Surprisingly, the therapist told him that those two young girls had taken wrongful advantage of him inasmuch as he was really not in the right frame of mind to decide whether or not he wanted to have sexual intercourse with them. The therapist stressed that these two girls were only looking to gratify themselves sexually and couldn’t have cared less about seeking this 23-year-old man’s consent before having sexual intercourse with him each.
Now when I look back on that book, I begin to wonder if it is still in circulation. I don’t remember whether the author revealed the name of the therapist. However, nowadays every self-proclaimed child advocate and self-appointed pedo-expert in the nation would be roasting this therapist left and right for placing the blame for the incident on anyone other than the 23-year-old man inasmuch as he was the adult in that situation and should have known better according to all of these self-righteous busybodies.
No shades of gray exist anymore in evaluating the circumstances behind adult/adolescent sexual encounters here in the United States of America. The older man is always at fault in these situations, because self-proclaimed child advocates and self-appointed pedo-experts have misled society to believe that older men are the cause of all the problems of pre-teenage and teenage girls. At the same time, according to them, teenage boys are always infallible in any sexual situation involving an underage girl, even a criminal one, so long as they are legally too young to vote in a presidential election here in the land of milk and honey.
Now, I’m not saying that this 23-year-old man should not have exercised more common sense than he did. He could have locked the door to the bedroom where he was resting to avoid any problems with anyone. However, he probably never expected any underage girls to come walking into that bedroom and seducing him as they did. Many of you probably agree that he could have said “no” to both of them too when they proceeded to engage with him sexually. However, let’s remember that he was lying down on the bed from having too much booze to drink when this incident happened. Therefore, he wasn’t in full control of all of the mental faculties that comprise his superego.
I seriously doubt that these two teenage girls would ever have been criminally charged with any kind of sexual offense or for sexual assault. However, this man would have had a very strong criminal defense in the event that these girls’ parents had found out what had happened and they had pressed criminal charges against him of statutory rape or the likes. That is to say IF these girls were below the statutory age of consent in his state jurisdiction at the time of the incident. We must remember that as late as the earlier part of the 21st century, there were actually state jurisdictions here in the land of milk and honey that had statutory ages of consent lower than 16 years old. For example, South Carolina’s statutory age of consent for girls was 14 years old up until 2008.
Nowadays statutory-rape laws are much tougher than they were years ago, and vigilante organizations that go after adult men of any age who seek out teenage girls on the Internet to meet up with and have sexual intercourse with are everywhere here in the United States of America. Back when Chris Hansen was making a name for himself as a television journalist on his series “To Catch A Predator” on Dateline NBC not too long ago, it appeared that he and his crew had a certain set of rules and guidelines they had to follow to set up sting operations in houses and in public places to catch sexual predators. Now when you watch some of these amateur vigilante organizations on social media that attempt to mirror the actions of Chris Hansen and his team in their sting operations, some of their activities can borderline on the absurd.
It would not surprise me in the least if one of these vigilante organizations or groups were to confront one of their suspects and force him to listen to the lyrics of the song titled “Young Girl” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap on their cell phone to convince him on what he needs to do the next time he encounters an underage girl on an online dating application. If you are not familiar with that song, the YouTube video below plays it in its entirety.
The Song Titled “Young Girl” By Gary Puckett And The Union Gap
A. American Online “Predator” Catchers Are Getting Out Of Control In Many Of Their Sting Operations At The Cost Of The Public Safety
I don’t particularly like to badmouth vigilante organizations that expose online sexual predators in both the United States of America and Canada, because I realize that many things could have been done to prevent the ultimate tragedy that befell Amanda Todd so many years ago if one of those groups of online “predator” catchers had run interference on the situation at hand with her before she committed suicide. I figure that if these people can stop another Phillip Garrido or Brian David Mitchell from harming someone’s pre-teenage or teenage daughter, then I feel that they are doing something positive for the communities where they operate.
At the same time, as I have pointed out in previous Hive-Blog articles of mine, I have very strongly mixed feelings about these vigilante organizations who proclaim to be carrying on the so-called Chris-Hansen legacy. Many of these vigilantes are uneducated and couldn’t care less about whom they hurt in their line of fire when they’re out on one of their sting operations to save another teenage girl from becoming pregnant or even raped. Many of them fill people’s heads up with lies about each and every man over 21 years old who has ever taken a non-Platonic interest in an adolescent girl.
I’m not mindless that every state jurisdiction of our nation has a statutory age of consent that civilians must either observe or take action to change through their elected officials if they feel that it is unfairly too high. Actress Whoopie Goldberg certainly stirred up a great amount of controversy so many years ago after she made her comment on The View that there was a difference between “statutory rape” and “rape rape.” Anyhow, I am also in favor of jurors applying the doctrine of jury nullification to their verdicts whenever they feel that a defendant is being wrongfully absorbed into a witch hunt in the form of a frivolous and malicious statutory-rape trial. However, whenever one of these vigilantes attempts to humiliate a man in his late teens or early twenties on YouTube merely for meeting up with a high-school girl at a restaurant to have a romantic dinner, this is where I feel that these vigilantes are way, way out of line in their sting operations and that they have taken matters way too far.
As I was surfing around on YouTube, I came across a video that this one vigilante organization named the “P. O. P. Squad” posted in which they intercepted a 22-year-old man named Mike who had planned on meeting a 15-year-old girl off the Internet to have dinner at a restaurant. This vigilante organization mainly operates in Connecticut, and their initials “P. O. P.” stand for “Preying On Predators.” The head of this vigilante organization who calls himself “Nito” disguised himself as a 15-year-old girl named Amy on a dating application to lure Mike into meeting him at a Panera’s restaurant.
I watched this YouTube video from beginning to end, and I even read the chat log of the online conversation between Mike and “Amy” from the dating application that they showed in their video; but there was no mention anywhere therein about anyone wanting to have sexual intercourse. Mike did not send “Amy” any pictures of his private parts, and he did not ask her for any nude photographs of her.
The chat itself was entirely harmless, and it was unconventional at worst according to American societal norms. Mike may have wanted to infiltrate the teenage dating scene, but he did not show any intentions of breaking the law and he exhibited no characteristics of a sexual predator. He did not groom anyone. Moreover, he did not commit any crimes despite that Nito and his colleague repeatedly insisted that he had done so, after they confronted him.
Now, if the P. O. P. Squad had intercepted an 85-year-old man who was planning to meet up with a 10-year-old girl he first contacted on the Internet and there was clear evidence in the chat log that he wanted to molest her sexually, I would be telling them to rake that man over the coals as much as they could and put him in the hot seat. However, Mike’s actions on and off the Internet don’t even come close to that of an actual child molester. He is merely a young man barely in his twenties who wanted to have a romantic dinner with a high-school girl. Although such a scenario may not make him a clone of Tony Danza or even an icon for age-appropriate perfection, it still does not make him the next Phillip Garrido or Brian David Mitchell either.
There is no evidence to prove that Mike intended to have sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl, and there is no law against a 22-year-old man going out on a date with a girl that age either. You can view the YouTube video below of his conversation with the P. O. P. Squad.
The P. O. P. Squad Questions Mike Regarding His Dinner-Date Plans With A High-School Girl
The YouTube video starts out showing the chat log of the exchange of online communications between Mike and a decoy posing as a 15-year-old girl. What makes no sense to me is that Mike’s communications appear on screen with a username of “Predator Mike (Ami15).” Nito must have done something to make Mike’s communications appear that way in the chat log, because I seriously doubt that anyone would use “Predator” in their username.
Nevertheless, as you read the chat log, you will notice that Mike never uses any profanity in his communications. He also refrains from using any sexually graphic language. Nothing in anything he posted even remotely indicates that he has any ulterior motives for the 15-year-old girl named “Amy” that he arranges to meet. Normally, before a crime can be determined to have been committed, the conversation between someone over the legal age of majority and someone under the statutory age of consent in their state jurisdiction has to become sexually charged. The P.O.P. Squad ignores all of the guidelines in determining whether or not Mike is a sexual predator.
When the YouTube video gets to the beginning of the part where Nito and his colleague confront Mike at the Panera’s restaurant, the audio quality of the recording is very poor, which demonstrates how unprofessional the P. O. P. Squad is in conducting a sting operation of this nature. Eventually, Nito and his colleague angle themselves in front of Mike in a way in which we can hear everything that all three of them are saying.
At the outset of the interview or conversation, Nito keeps telling Mike to wipe “the smirk” off his face. However, what makes Nito and his colleague’s actions so hypocritical is that Nito’s colleague laughs and jokes about things that are not really funny. I honestly don’t believe that Mike was intentionally smirking to be a smart aleck of any kind but rather that he was in shock.
Nito is smug and cocky throughout most of the conversation in that he presents himself as somebody who believes to be morally superior to most people, when, in fact, he really appears to be clueless about much of what he is saying to Mike. There is some confusion at the beginning of the conversation on what Mike’s actual age is, but it is quickly established that he is in his early twenties.
Nito stresses to Mike that he is over the age of eighteen and is legally responsible for his actions as an adult. However, Nito’s argument means absolutely nothing inasmuch as Mike never mentioned anything in the chat log about wanting to have sexual intercourse with “Amy.” Nito bases his contention that Mike has somehow committed a crime purely on his speculation of what Mike intended to do rather than on any actual supporting facts. In other words, Nito is accusing Mike of a thought crime, which is not really a crime at all inasmuch as it cannot be proven in a court of law and it is usually unfounded in the first place.
Throughout the conversation, Nito insists that Mike only had to keep on communicating electronically with “Amy” and appear somewhere to meet her and automatically he would be guilty of enticing a minor in the state of Connecticut. No, Nito. It doesn’t work that way. Subsection (a) of the Connecticut General Statute § 53a-90a regarding the offense of “enticing a minor” reads as follows:
A person is guilty of enticing a minor when such person uses an interactive computer service to knowingly persuade, induce, entice or coerce any person under sixteen years of age to engage in prostitution or sexual activity for which the actor may be charged with a criminal offense. For purposes of this section, “interactive computer service” means any information service, system or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
It doesn’t matter that “Amy” told Mike that she was 15 years old in the chat log. He did not have a sexually charged conversation with her online, and he only invited her to eat out with him. That is no crime on its own regardless of the 7 years age difference between “Amy” and Mike. Therefore, Nito and his colleague are ill-informed on how this law actually reads. One of the YouTubers named CeCe C. in the comments section of their above-cited video on YouTube even tells them so.
Nito expresses his skepticisms regarding what he believes to be Mike’s true intentions. However, Nito and his colleague have no proof whatsoever that Mike has committed any crime or intended to do so.
Nito shows his desperation to pin a crime on Mike by ranting and raving about how creepy he thinks it is for a man in his early twenties to meet up with a 15-year-old girl at a restaurant for a romantic dinner. Now, if Nito and the P. O. P. Squad think that it is “creepy” for a 22-year-old man to invite a 15-year-old girl out to a romantic dinner, then Nito and his colleagues are perfectly entitled to their opinion. Nobody here is trying to convince them to think otherwise. However, there is a very big difference between something being “creepy” and something being illegal. Also, Nito and his colleagues’ opinion in this regard is not necessarily the gospel truth.
Mike exercised his right to assemble, which is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. That is, he has the right to consort with whomever he pleases so long as he does not break the law regardless of how “creepy” anyone may find it. Therefore, if he chooses to socialize with a 15-year-old girl and she is okay with it, then it is their business. That is, unless the girl’s parents take out a restraining order to stop him from having any sort of contact with the girl.
If this sting operation had taken place in Canada, it would be a different story. Of course, Canada has a completely different constitution from that of the United States of America. Therefore, many of their laws are different from those of the United States of America regarding Internet safety.
If I had been sitting at that table with Nito, Nito’s colleague, and Mike at that Panera’s restaurant, I would have told Nito that my cousin has been married to his wife for over three decades and he first began dating her when he was 30 years old and she was 15 years old. I’m sure that my cousin had treated his wife to romantic dinners back then before they were married, but it doesn’t make him a creep or even a child predator. As a matter of fact, my cousin protected his stepdaughter from a child molester back when she was a toddler. Therefore, my cousin could not be any further from being a child predator than anyone could possibly be.
What really gets my blood coagulating whenever I see a frivolous and malicious sting operation like this one is that while vigilantes like Nito and the P. O. P. Squad are basically harassing innocent bystanders like Mike, our society continues to turn a blind eye to the ever so growing epidemic of deadbeat teenage fathers that is plaguing our nation. Somehow Nito and his colleagues find a way to demonize innocent bystanders like Mike and blame all the problems of pubescent and adolescent girls on men over 21 years old, but they never seem to recognize the pain and the hurt that deadbeat teenage fathers have been causing underage girls for way too long. For that reason, I would like for our Congress and our president to pass a law that would draft all deadbeat teenage fathers into the military on their eighteenth birthday here in the United States of America.
I’m not overlooking the fact that the P. O. P. Squad has intercepted some very questionable characters in their sting operations in the past. However, what really bewilders me is how our society refuses to acknowledge that there are deadbeat teenage fathers committing much more heinous crimes against pubescent and adolescent girls than even many of these suspected online predators as I described in my Hive-Blog article titled “Could Deadbeat Teenage Fathers Be Worse Than Suspected Online Predators?” We all need to get our heads out of the clouds and realize that teenage boys who are legally too young to vote in a presidential election here in the land of milk and honey have greater access to pubescent and adolescent girls than adult men do and, therefore, more of them are sexually victimizing underage girls in their peer groups than adult men are.
Nevertheless, Mike does the right thing during his conversation with Nito and the other vigilante by not giving out any more information than he has to do so while being polite in order to keep Nito and the other vigilante from making a scene in front of everyone there at the restaurant. However, it is still apparent that Mike is in a state of shock inasmuch as he doesn’t know either one of these vigilantes from Adam. Also, because he hasn’t committed any provable crimes, they are actually harassing him without any true cause of action.
Nito proceeds to read the chat log in obvious desperation to nitpick for something in it that he can find to incriminate Mike in some way or another. However, he still comes up bone dry in proving that Mike did anything illegal.
Okay. I get it. Some of you are still asking why Mike would even need to meet up with a 15-year-old girl to have a romantic dinner rather than finding someone his own age for that same purpose. Allow me to elaborate on the prospective reasons for his doing so.
If Mike hates Saint Valentine’s Day as he admitted to “Amy” in the chat log, then it could possibly mean that he missed out on the teenage dating scene back when he was a teenager himself in high school; and he is, therefore, trying to fill in that void from his adolescence in some way or another. It doesn’t make him a sexual predator. There is also this thing called hypergamy. That is, it may be difficult for him to hook up with a woman his own age, because many women his age are hooking up with older and more financially established men as opposed to men their own age.
When I was 19 years old, my mother once told me that she believed that there was a trend of young men dating middle-aged women at the time inasmuch as most young women were dating older men. That is, according to her, young men had to take what was left over. However, I told my mother that it was also possible that we were going to witness a trend of adult men in their late teens or older sneaking around with high-school girls and even middle-school girls.
Nevertheless, I have nothing against middle-aged women having boyfriends as young as 19 or 20 years old. However, I can understand how young adult men between 18 and 25 years of age may feel reluctant to hook up with a woman who may be the same age as their mother or even older than her, because, quite frankly, some of these women will treat their young boyfriends like sex toys rather than as equals in their relationships. Perhaps Mike did not want any part of that scene in that he does not prefer cougars for that same reason, and, therefore, he attempted to make a go at worming his way into the teenage dating scene somehow.
So what if Mike once had a 16-year-old girlfriend? He was younger back then than he is now. He even explained that he knew the girl’s parents and they didn’t pose any objection to the relationship. John Walsh, who is the co-founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, began dating his current wife, Revé Drew Walsh, when he was Mike’s age and his wife was only 16 years old. Mr. Walsh absolutely hates sexual predators. Therefore, it would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to accuse him of being one.
During their conversation at Panera’s Restaurant, Nito asks Mike leading questions in an effort to get him to admit to some kind of wrongdoing, even though he has broken no law and no evidence of any crime ever surfaced during the sting operation. Nito tries to demonize the entire scenario by describing it as a “grown man meeting up with a child.” However, Mike was not an 89-year-old man offering candy to a toddler on a playground. Instead, he was a young man barely in his twenties treating a high-school girl to a romantic dinner.
My great-aunt married a 24-year-old man when she was only 15 years old. She and her husband had many good years together, and I can be sure that my great-uncle treated her to many romantic dinners from the time that she was 15 years old.
Nito’s lecture to Mike plays out like a lame and repetitious movie script. Nito and his colleague even show themselves to be out of touch with what is actually happening before them. They talk like two clueless individuals with one-track minds.
Nito? So what if Mike wanted to have a romantic dinner with a high-school girl? He wasn’t going to rape her. If “Amy” wanted it to be like the movies and Mike agreed to it, he obviously was not looking for anything horizontal with her. At least not before she was to become legally old enough to consent to sexual relations with him. He also may very well be one of those people who is putting off sex until marriage.
Unfortunately, after Nito and his colleague continue to shove their opinionated sermons down Mike’s throat, Mike eventually caves in and goes along with their accusation against him of being “weird” so that he can appease him. What else can he do? He doesn’t want a scene, and most people would respond the same way.
Nonetheless, Nito and his colleague never produce any condemning evidence that an actual criminal depravity or sexual offense has taken place. They only prove that they are both obsessed with getting Mike to confess to a crime that he never committed.
Nito claims that Mike had a legal obligation to block “Amy” on his dating application and discontinue his chat with her after he had found out that she was only 15 years old. However, what Nito is saying is not necessarily the law, and Mike broke no laws despite that he appeared there at the restaurant to meet up with “Amy.”
Nito asks Mike, “Who has a romantic dinner just to be friends?” Nito? That is not the issue. Nobody was going to have sexual intercourse after this dinner. There is nothing in the chat log that could prove any ill intentions on the part of Mike. Mike kept the chat with “Amy” completely Rated G.
Out of desperation, Nito asks Mike leading questions and says, “What grown man, aside from predators, comes to meet a child?” In other words, Nito misconstrues Mike’s scheduled dinner date with “Amy” as an attempted child molestation, whereas Mike showed no more intentions with the girl than to dine with her. Nito then answers, “None!” However, Mike was not some dirty old man seeking to grab a toddler off of a playground. He simply wanted to have a quiet dinner with a high-school girl. There’s a very big difference between the two scenarios.
Some of you Americans out there who may have had a sheltered upbringing may find such a dinner date to be odd in terms of Mike’s age difference with “Amy,” and, yes, it may be taboo in our culture. However, in other parts of the world, such dating arrangements are not only accepted by society but even done widely and openly. In other words, adult/adolescent romantic relationships are not frowned upon in most cultures as opposed to those of the United States of America and Canada. For example, I once read the personals of an online newspaper from El Salvador, and a 23-year-old man had placed an advertisement therein expressing his interest in dating a young woman between 15 and 20 years of age.
There was also once this one co-worker of mine in his early-to-mid-twenties from so many years ago whose parents were from the Dominican Republic. I overheard him one day talking to his male co-workers and he admitted to them that he had found a 15-year-old girl in his neighborhood to be attractive. None of them found anything wrong with him. I found nothing wrong with him. He was only being open and honest about how he felt about the girl. As I said once before herein, there is no such thing as a thought crime.
The main problem here is that Nito obviously believes that everything revolves around his make-believe world of age-appropriate perfection. He has this one delusion in his mind that teenage girls are still wearing diapers by the time they are in high school. He strikes me as someone who lived a sheltered life growing up in a gated community in some quiet suburb away from the real world.
In his conversation with Mike, Nito states, “Everybody who sees this will think it’s weird.” Really, Nito? Or perhaps many of them will think that you’re weird and obsessed.
Nito employs scare tactics in his conversation with Mike and warns him that he could have confronted a very violent situation if the young girl’s father or some other male family member of hers had appeared instead of Nito and his colleague. What Nito says may not be completely untrue. However, let me address this concern.
I revealed in one of my previous Hive-Blog articles that back when my father was 19 years old and was stationed with the United States Air Force in Tampa, Florida, he began dating a girl whom he had thought was 17 years old. The girl thought that he was only 15 or 16 years old. My father later received a telephone call from the young girl’s father and the father told him that she was really only 13 years of age. The young girl’s father told my father that he could continue on dating her so long as he followed a set of rules that he and his wife had laid down for her and for anyone she dated because of the age factor. My father subsequently toned down the relationship and eventually he broke up with the young girl.
Anyhow, in contrary to what Nito may believe, no blood got spilled and no punches were thrown after my father was contacted by his 13-year-old girlfriend’s father. Also, the conversation was over the telephone. These situations don’t always turn out violent, even though Nito’s presumption of their doing so is not completely without merit.
In his conversation with Mike, Nito gets vocally frustrated when he unsuccessfully attempts to put Mike in someone else’s shoes regarding the question of his meeting up with a 15-year-old girl to have a romantic dinner. Nito asks, “What if it was your 15-year-old daughter meeting up with a 22-year-old man for a romantic dinner?” However, Mike is wise not to fall for his ploy in that respect.
Nito acts as though he believes to have some kind of telepathic ability, when he is really clueless about Mike. Nito plays a self-appointed shrink and pushes Mike into saying something that might be incriminating. Still Nito produces no condemning evidence that Mike has committed any crime.
Nito asks Mike, “How many times have you done this?” However, Mike didn’t do anything illegal. Therefore, such a question is leading in that it attempts to get Mike to incriminate himself for a crime that he did not commit. He conveys that he had the full approval of the parents to date his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend when he and that same girl were both still together.
Nito asks Mike if he has an attraction to young girls. Well, Nito, Mike is young himself. Therefore, naturally he would be attracted to women still in their youth. Moreover, no male member of the human race grows a light switch on them at 18, 19 or 20 years old that they can simply flip off whenever they come across a very beautiful-looking girl of high-school age despite what society may believe.
Mike does admit in the conversation that he has been suicidal in the past. However, it does not make him a sexual predator. It only means that he has had a rough patch in his life.
Nito commits the ultimate stupidity of all stupidities and asks Mike whether he has gotten professional help for suicide or “pedophilia.” Here Nito is way, way out of line with Mike, because Mike doesn’t even come close to qualifying to be a pedophile according to its definition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (“DSM-5”). A 15-year-old girl is too old to be an object of pedophilia according to the DSM-5.
In this respect, Nito opens himself up to a slander lawsuit for the same reasons that Elon Musk had done so recently. In other words, Mike would have very strong grounds to sue Nito and the P. O. P. Squad for slandering him on camera before a YouTube audience. After the P. O. P. Squad posted this same video, I wouldn’t doubt that some libel/slander attorney probably contacted Mike and offered to represent him in a civil action against Nito and the P. O. P. Squad. At the end of the day, Nito and his colleague engaged in mendacious pedo-shaming.
Nito accuses Mike of having a smug attitude. However, Nito is the one who acts more arrogant than anything.
Nito asks Mike what he would tell people about what he had done. As Mike probably doesn’t know what the right answer is to that question inasmuch as he didn’t commit any crime and, therefore, there could be no right answer to it, he merely responds, “Don’t do it.” He does so to appease these two busybody social justice warriors. Nito argues whether Mike would have acted differently if someone were to say to him, “Don’t do it.” Once again, because Mike never broke any laws, he had no real answer he could give them.
Nito notes that Mike had asked “Amy” in the chat log, “Am I going to get a message from your dad threatening me for talking to you?” Mike explains to Nito that he merely wanted to be sure that none of these girls with whom he was chatting online were underage, which only shows that he really is a law-abiding citizen rather than a sexual predator.
Nito takes a cheap shot and tries to emphasize that Mike had failed to differentiate between an adult woman and an underage girl in that he wanted to move the relationship along with “Amy” at the same speed as he would with an adult woman. I honestly don’t think that the thought of it ever crossed Mike’s mind, but Nito was obviously desperate to find something incriminating against Mike despite that Mike never violated the law.
Nito warns Mike that there are other vigilante groups and organizations out there who mainly beat up men like him. Well, Mike is not a sexual predator. Therefore, any such vigilante group or organization who beat him up would deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I don’t condone violence in general. However, if these violent vigilante groups and organizations really care about teenage girls, their energies would be better channeled into beating up deadbeat teenage fathers instead. (e.g. Levi Johnston, Isaac Frausto and Ethan Fair). I would never encourage anyone to commit a violent crime. However, if one of these vigilante groups or organizations were to knock the tar out of Levi Johnston, you would not find me shedding any tears for him after the trouble he caused Bristol Palin and her family.
Nito argues that the police could have appeared on the scene and have arrested Mike. However, they would not have been able to make any criminal charges against him stick, because he didn’t break any laws. He wasn’t even carrying any condoms on him. Therefore, it is clear that he never had any intentions of having sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl.
Nito actually has the nerve to ask Mike whether he has ever seen Chris Hansen on “To Catch A Predator” of Dateline NBC. However, even Chris Hansen would not have wasted his time on an aimless confrontation with Mike, because there was nothing sexual in the chat log to show that Mike had any intentions of having sexual intercourse with “Amy.” Mr. Hansen even stressed in many of his television shows that a conversation between an adult man and one of his decoys has to become sexual in nature before he and his television crew can invite the suspect to come to the house where they are running their sting operation or, otherwise, they would all be wasting their time in pursuing something that would not likely hold up in court.
Nito insists that Mike had plans to go home with “Amy” after eating at Panera’s Restaurant. However, I read the chat log at the beginning of the above-cited YouTube video and nowhere therein do I recall Mike ever having mentioned wanting to go to the residence of “Amy” afterwards. Even if he had said that he wanted to do so, it still would not have been evidence of any ulterior motives on his part.
Nito explains to Mike that he is using his video footage to go to legislators in his state jurisdiction to get tougher laws passed regarding online predation. However, if Nito shows those legislators videos like the one with Mike, it could have an opposite effect on what laws they pass. For example, they could turn around and broaden the anti-entrapment laws after they see how Nito harassed Mike without any substantial proof that he had committed a felony or any kind of crime. That would be poetic justice in my humble opinion.
What Nito and his colleagues appear to want is a Fascist totalitarian police state rather than a safe environment for the younger members of their communities throughout Connecticut. If he and the P. O. P. Squad really cared about the well-being of kids, they would be going to state legislators across the nation to urge them to reform our nation’s broken inheritance laws. However, they would prefer to turn our nation into another despotic power similar to that in the classic science-fiction movie titled THX 1138 as exhibited in the YouTube video below containing a trailer of that same film.
The Movie Trailer For George Lucas’s Science-Fiction Thriller Titled THX 1138
Nito keeps referring to Mike as “people like you” throughout their conversation. However, Mike is not really one of the people that Nito is talking about, because Mike is not a sexual predator.
Nito offers to refer Mike to a female psychiatrist. Nito doesn’t allow for the psychiatrist’s name to be mentioned on camera, because she likely doesn’t want the medical board investigating her for possible professional misconduct. That is, if she is misdiagnosing anyone as being a pedophile who really isn’t one, which I suspect may be happening, the medical board could take her medical license away. The DSM-5 has strict guidelines for mental-health professionals to follow.
Because Nito and his colleague falsely accuse Mike of being a pedophile further back in the conversation, Mike should not trust them to refer him to any mental-health professional. There can be no question that Nito and the P. O. P. Squad are clearly using Mike to further their own misguided agenda and to capitalize on their videos at his expense and detriment. Moreover, a man going to a female psychiatrist to discuss his sexuality is definitely not a good idea.
After Nito and his colleague tell Mike that they wish to escort him out to his car, Mike responds to them that he wants to stay there in the restaurant to finish eating his food. Then Nito insists that a normal person would have lost his appetite by that point in time as though he has a market on normalcy.
Nito complains in his video that Mike went out a side door of the restaurant later on, because they believe that he didn’t want them to get his license plate number. However, Mike was probably looking to avoid them outside the restaurant, because they could have been muggers for all he knew.
Nevertheless, the conversation between Mike, Nito and Nito’s colleague resumes at Mike’s car. Nito promises Mike that he will not contact the police if Mike really gets “help.” However, Mike should have told them to go ahead and call the police, because he didn’t commit any crime and all he would have had to have done would be to assert his right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution if the police were to have arrested him. Then once a lawyer was in the picture, Mike would have been released and the criminal charges, if any, would likely have been dropped inasmuch as they would have been unfounded at best.
Mike does argue that because “Amy” was not a real 15-year-old girl but rather an adult decoy posing as one, he could not have committed any crime. Mike may have been inaccurate in that assertion of his, but he was correct that he did not commit a crime. Because he said nothing sexual in the chat log, the authorities would have no criminal case against him.
Nito brings up an example of a sting operation he and the P. O. P. Squad performed in which they caught a 66-year-old man trying to meet up with a 15-year-old girl for sexual intercourse. Nito adds that this man is now incarcerated. However, if this 66-year-old man is currently serving time behind bars, then it is because the conversation he had with the decoy posing as a 15-year-old girl was sexually charged. Also, this man would be over five decades older than the 15-year-old girl if she had been real, which shines somewhat of a different light on that particular situation. There is no substantial evidence that Mike was ever going to have unlawful sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl. Therefore, there was a big difference between the actions of the 66-year-old man and those of Mike.
Nito finally admits that he is not a lawyer or a police officer. Oh, wow! It took him this long to realize that much. However, Nito continues to shoot off his mouth, and he tells Mike that the world needs to know that “you guys” exist. Nito? Mike is not a sexual predator! What does it take to get that fact through your thick head?
Nito employs a very poor example of how he believes that the criminal justice system goes so much easier on sexual predators than it does on marijuana users. I beg to differ, because marijuana is being legalized in many parts of our nation. Moreover, marijuana users never end up on sex-offender registries for their particular crimes, whereas people arrested in sting operations for trying to hook up with a minor for sexual intercourse do so and it adversely affects them for the rest of their lives. Nice try, Nito, but no! You can’t fool everyone, and you don’t fool me.
Nito tries to make himself look like a Good Samaritan who is out to right all the wrongs of the world and to steer people in the right direction. However, he is very far from being one, because he doesn’t seem to be able to get all of his facts straight. Therefore, innocent bystanders like Mike end up getting needlessly humiliated on camera before an entire YouTube audience.
Nito preaches at Mike that Mike made his own bed and now he has to sleep in it. What bed are you talking about, Nito? Mike never committed any crime. Therefore, you are fabricating lies about him.
Nito advises Mike to take that same night as a “gift.” Well, if Mike retains an attorney and wins a substantial amount of money from a slander lawsuit against the P. O. P. Squad, then I guess you could consider his video-recorded conversation with Nito to be a blessing in disguise.
Out of curiosity, I read the comments section to this same YouTube video and I found the usual love fest among self-proclaimed child advocates and self-appointed pedo-experts in terms of all their hateful comments. Some of the commenters even insisted that Mike had engaged in grooming a 15-year-old girl, but they never explained how he would have done so. They were only looking for a way to pervert-shame him regardless of how mendacious their accusations against him were.
Nevertheless, what was so interesting was that there were also people in that same comments section who objected to how the P. O. P. Squad handled this same sting operation. For example, this one ex-police officer warned them that they were building a case more for a criminal defense attorney than for a prosecutor. That same ex-police officer also complained that they made the decoy to be too old for anyone in law enforcement to take seriously and that they rushed through the steps to arrange a meeting with their suspect way too quickly for it to have produced any condemning evidence of a crime.
There appeared to be as many objectors in the comments section of the above-described video as there were people praising the P. O. P. Squad for this sting operation against Mike. Some of the fans of the P. O. P. Squad got testy with the objectors and called them a weirdo or a “sick f---” simply for disagreeing with them, which shows precisely how brain dead many of the viewers on YouTube who favor this kind of vigilantism really are. In any event, it appeared to be the consensus among the objectors in the comments section that the P. O. P. Squad had zeroed in on someone who was too close in age difference to the stated age of their decoy.
One question that persists in my mind is whether the P. O. P. Squad would have the bravery to travel to South Africa to save all these Afrikaner children from suffering both physical and sexual brutality at the hands of the Zulu gangs. They probably wouldn’t entertain the thought, because they’re too busy going after frivolous Lolita-style liaisons here in our nation or pushing to get the statutory age of consent raised to 18 or 21 years old in their state jurisdiction. Also, they would actually have to use some kind of excessive force to stop these atrocities in South Africa from happening if they were to travel to that nation to save the Afrikaner children from harm. They likely don’t even care about what is occurring on the other side of the world.
What I find so interesting is that back before the Internet was made publicly available and even for a while after the Internet went public, there existed something called a “teen chat line” in which teenagers could phone a telephone number with a 900 area code or a 976 exchange and converse with other teenagers to socialize. Once in a while someone on a sitcom or a comedian would joke on television about adult men calling those phone numbers and disguising themselves vocally as teenage boys so that they could hook up with jailbait for an evening of romance, so to speak.
Nevertheless, you would never come across any stories in the press or the media about men getting arrested for having sexual intercourse with underage girls they met on these teen chat lines back then. It could have been that even though it was still a big deal for 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-, 16- and even 17-year-old girls to date significantly older men back before the Internet went public, it was still not as big of a deal back then as it is nowadays. Compromises were periodically made regarding the age difference between an underage adolescent girl and her significantly older boyfriend back in those days. More middle-school and high-school girls were getting married back then than now to take all the legal dangers out of their relationships with older men.
B. Every “Predator” Catcher Should Be Required To Obtain A Private Investigator’s License Here In North America
When we talk about the continent of North America, we’re talking about the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. Fortunately, the Mexicans don’t go berserk every time they see a 14-year-old girl walking down the street with her 23-year-old boyfriend in their country. However, Americans and Canadians become more and more reactionary every year about adult/adolescent relationships no matter how benign they are. All we have to do is turn on our television set or surf around the Internet, and we can find loads of hostility against all adult/adolescent relationships.
American and Canadian legislators are constantly being pressured to pass tougher laws encompassing the statutory ages of consent in every jurisdiction of both nations. Vigilante groups and organizations mislead the public to believe that they have their best interest at heart, but, in reality, most of these vigilante groups and organizations are only seeking fame and fortune in conducting their sting operations and posting them on YouTube or elsewhere. Whenever these vigilantes go to our legislators, they are usually doing so to get laws passed that will give them more legal ammunition against individuals they suspect of being sexual predators.
Now, I’m not saying that all of these vigilantes are self-serving individuals, but too many of them are. Therefore, both American and Canadian elected officials alike need to pass laws that would require that each and every one of these online “predator” catchers obtain a private investigator’s license.
Not too long ago I came across a story on YouTube about a developmentally-challenged man in Canada who fell victim to a groundless sting operation that both the Langley chapter of Creep Busters and the White Rock chapter of Creep Catchers, both vigilante organizations, launched against him. His name is Jaxson Jacoe, and he was 21 years of age at the time of the incident. He went on a dating application to search for a girlfriend. A decoy going by the name of Ashley posted on that dating application that she was 19 years old, and he became very excited to meet her. However, after she told him that she was only 14 years old on that dating application, he told her that he would meet with her somewhere with the understanding that they would only be friends.
After Mr. Jacoe went to the place where he promised to meet “Ashley,” the Creep Busters of Langley and the Creep Catchers of White Rock appeared instead and confronted him about a crime that he had not even committed and had no intentions of committing. The YouTube video below has an interview with Mr. Jacoe and his father explaining what happened.
Jaxson Jacoe Describes Both The Langley Creep Busters And The White Rock Creep Catchers’ Unjust Actions Against Him
Both the Langley Creep Busters and the White Rock Creep Catchers humiliated Mr. Jacoe by posting the video of their conversation with him on Facebook. However, even if they had been able to prove that he was there to become sweethearts with “Ashley,” it still would not have meant that he was planning on committing a sex crime against her.
Now, I understand that Canada has harsher laws than the United States of America regarding when a meeting between an adult and a minor off the Internet becomes a crime. However, if the Langley Creep Busters and the White Rock Creep Catchers had gotten Mr. Jacoe arrested for luring a minor from the Internet, a prosecutor who believes in the true administration of justice would likely have refused to try such a case.
Mr. Jacoe never talked about sex in his chat with “Ashley.” He never took any pictures of her, and he never provided her with suggestive pictures of himself. He brought no condoms to where they were going to meet. He never asked her for nude photographs of herself. He exhibited absolutely no characteristics of being a sexual predator throughout the entire sting operation.
The irresponsible actions of both the Langley Creep Busters and the White Rock Creep Catchers wrongfully costed Mr. Jacoe his job. Canadian government officials are siding with Mr. Jacoe on this matter. Mr. Jacoe and his father also indicated that they had wanted to take some kind of legal action against the two vigilante organizations that ruined Mr. Jacoe’s life. You can judge for yourself what actually happened in viewing the YouTube video below that shows the confrontation both vigilante organizations made with Mr. Jacoe.
The Langley Creep Busters And The White Rock Creep Catchers Ambushed Jaxson Jacoe
Both the Langley Creep Busters and the White Rock Creep Catchers voiced their intentions to sabotage Mr. Jacoe’s livelihood. Even though they were in the wrong, they continued to insist that they were preventing him from robbing a 14-year-old girl of her innocence in the future. However, they had absolutely no evidence whatsoever to prove that he had actually committed a crime or intended to do so beyond that he appeared there to meet a minor off the Internet.
This same incident took place back in 2017. Therefore, I am not sure if Canada had yet passed their current law back then that prohibits adults from meeting up with minors off the Internet under any circumstances. In any event, if that law had been in effect back then, the police there probably would not have entertained bringing criminal charges against Mr. Jacoe based upon such a frivolous and malicious claim that these vigilantes were making against him.
This poor man received hate from all the usual self-proclaimed child advocates and self-appointed pedo-experts on the Internet who believed that they knew everything and that everyone else knew nothing about the incident. His life will likely never be the same as it was before, and I don’t mean that it will be better than before. These vigilantes’ actions reek of entrapment. You can get the whole big picture regarding the incident by reading the online article titled “Creep Busters ambush of man with mental disability called ‘vigilantism’” by Eric Rankin.
In my humble opinion, many of these vigilante organizations and groups that conduct sting operations to catch sexual predators do so for the money and the fame rather than out of genuine concern for the safety of minors throughout both the United States of America and Canada. If legislatures in both the United States of America and Canada were to pass laws that would require every member of vigilante organizations and groups like the P. O. P. Squad, the White Rock Creep Catchers, and the Langley Creep Busters to obtain a private investigator’s license, many of these vigilante organizations and groups would likely disappear from existence inasmuch as they would not like having to adhere to any kind of protocol or to any set of guidelines to conduct their sting operations legally. Only the serious ones would go to the trouble of obtaining their necessary private investigator’s licenses so that they could continue with their sting operations. At the same time, there would be significantly less incidents in which innocent bystanders like Mike and Jaxson Jacoe would be needlessly humiliated on the Internet and subjected to unnecessary problems as a result of it.
C. My Conclusion To This Topic
Although vigilante organizations and groups appear to have the public’s best interest at heart in going after sexual predators who victimize minors, many of them are in the business they’re in inasmuch as they are looking for the attention and the money. All you have to do to realize this fact is notice how many of these same vigilante organizations and groups have Patreon accounts where they receive money contributions from their fans on a regular basis and how many of them sell merchandise to capitalize on their presence on YouTube and on other social media platforms.
There may be no law anywhere here in the United States of America against an adult man chatting with a 15-year-old girl on a dating application on the Internet and arranging to meet up with her somewhere so long as he does not have sexual intercourse with her or engage in any other kind of sexual misconduct with her. However, because of the reckless behavior of many online “predator” catchers, it is so easy for any young man over the age of 21 to fall victim to the abuses that these vigilantes commit in order to receive views on social media platforms.
Both the United States of America and Canada need to add statutes on their law books that would require anyone who conducts a sting operation to catch sexual predators to obtain a private investigator’s license. This way, these vigilantes would have to abide by a set of rules and guidelines in conducting their sting operations, and they would even possibly have to get training to improve the techniques they use in doing so.
Chris Hansen’s negligence alongside that of his television crew and Perverted-Justice in Texas back in 2006 needlessly led to the death of one of his suspects before the man even had a chance to get a fair trial. Recently vigilante organizations and groups who have found inspiration from Chris Hansen and his team on his former television series “To Catch A Predator” on Dateline NBC have engaged in reckless activities that have needlessly victimized innocent individuals who have nothing to do with their overall objective. These vigilantes should not have the same freedoms as bounty hunters, and even law-enforcement officials have complained about them in that same regard.
It is ironic that Chris Hansen even once did a news show about reckless bounty hunters so many years ago. Well, online “predator” catchers have replaced bounty hunters in many ways in that regard here in our nation and in Canada.
This Article Is Copyright-Protected.