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Chris Hansen and "To Catch a Predator"


I'm told there is a new documentary, "Predators," that takes a good look at Chris Hansen and the television program that made him famous, "To Catch a Predator" (2CaP). 

For those of you who don't remember: "To Catch a Predator" was part of the development of the moral panic about child predators that would in time lead us to QAnon. 

2CaP was a spin-off of DATELINE.  It Premiered in late 2004 and its run continued through 2007. The format was always the same. The key segments would take place in a sting home, which looked to the sting targets like an ordinary suburban house, although containing a critical hidden camera and lots of sound equipment. Typically, a man would show up at the front door of the home, in the belief that he had a 'date' with an underage girl.  He had acquired that belief by way of internet communication with adults impersonating underage girls in chat rooms. 

The sting targets, then, would arrive at the home and a police woman who had the '18-going-on-13' look necessary for this task would greet him, sound welcoming while keeping her distance and encouraging him to wait in what looked like a family's living room -- she had to go freshen up, or something. 

The mark would still typically be standing in the middle of this room when Chris Hansen would walk in and, without explaining who he was (Hansen was not instantly recognizable, at least when the program began its run) he would say "why don't you have a seat," or analogous words, and mildly suggest that the two will have a talk.  The target often clearly saw this person as the "child's" father, and thought he could get himself out of trouble by saying the right things. 

At the end of the conversation, when there was presumably enough footage for the television show, the target of the sting was told he could leave.  He generally knew by this time what was coming -- he'd be jumped by law enforcement on the other side of that ordinary-seeming door. ANd that expectation was not disappointed. 

When a program continually elicits sympathy for the child predators, it is doing something wrong, and 2CaP clearly was. 

I may watch the documentary in due course.  I will only note now that South Park did a wonderful parody of the underlying program and its host: https://southpark.cc.com/wiki/Chris_Hansen

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