This show still feels like it's just entrapment for entertainment. The girl is 18 and only posing as a 13 year old willing to have sex with an older man. If I have sex with an 18 year old but trick myself into thinking she's 13, am I a predator?
That should be Hansen's premise for bringing the show back. A show where 13 year old girls say they are 18, offer sex and Hansen patronizes men for being attracted to a minor.
It's the mens rea of the offence. Since he thinks that he's committing the offence, that constitutes the mens rea. If they are 13 pretending to be 18 then he has some defence against the charge.
If nothing else, it can make getting a fair trial a bitch. These all look like open-and-shut cases, but still, we're relying on heavily edited segments being broadcast for their entertainment value. What if the guy is actually innocent, Chris Hansen's confident manner aside?
Back in 2000, a local TV figure committed suicide after the local newspaper started writing about an ongoing police investigation, linking him to multiple cases of sexual harassment:
If the guy was innocent then his reputation was unfairly tarnished; but if he was guilty then society never had the ability to process him correctly. So justice was never quite done.
Personally, I don't miss the guy at all; I remember him talking in the late 80s about how AIDS was doing a good thing by killing off gays. But as has been noted, schadenfreude is not the same thing as justice.
Indeed, schadenfreude is not the same thing as justice. However, the recordings, transcripts, and officers waiting outside provide that. And it's still funnier'n shit.
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