Couple Charged With Trying to Arrange Sex With 5-Year-Old Girl

[TX-RAT]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258671,00.html

[ComerPerro]

1. entrapment at its finest

[RubyDuby in GA]

3. Does that excuse the sick bastards who do these things to children?

That this one time they happened to be talking to law enforcement officials instead of an actual asshole who exploits children?

[ComerPerro]

6. There is no child, there is no father. Should we arrest the cop for selling his daughter for drugs?

[Tunkamerica]

8. good point

[MissB]

21. During his chats with undercover agents, he admitted to molesting another child.

See my link

[ComerPerro]

45. could have been all talk, who knows.

[ends_dont_justify]

71. Should a child suffer for "could have"? That's why people investigate NT

[pnwmom]

43. No child, no father. But two adults who admit trying to set up

a deal to rape a child -- who arrived at the motel, armed with their camera and vibrator.

Good for the police on this one.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

49. Hmm.

should we arrest cops who go under cover as prostitutes for prostitution?

[proud2BlibKansan]

64. AMEN

And I want to know why immigration was involved.

[politicat]

68. Hate to inform you....

But when you look at the arrest records for child pornography and child pandering, 99.999% of the cases are actually this sort of entrapment. 98% of the so-called child porn out there was created by people that are on your payroll, created with your tax dollars. 98% of it exists entirely so that governmental agencies can get next year's funding.

Further, the actual amount of childhood sexual activity of this nature that is actually going on is almost impossible to estimate because of the amount of entrapment going on. Entrapment of this nature actually does nothing to protect real children, and does a great deal to divert real efforts to keep children from exploitation into bureaucratic fictions. If real child and adolescent mental health agencies had just 1% of the budget that the feds abuse this way, we could treat the vast majority of the children who are being abused in actuality and help them to grow up without scars and rage. Instead... my tax dollars are at work funding creepy ass feds making up sick fantasies about pimping out imaginary daughters for drugs. The feds are the sickening assholes in this. The others are just idiots. The feds made up the story... the accused are just idiots who believed the feds.

And I say this as a woman who was truly abused by an adult when I was a child. I say this a woman who has spent a large portion of my adult working life as a therapist, and as an academic who has done a decent amount of research into childhood sexual experience and its after-effects. (I phrase that very specifically because my research leads me to believe that it is not the sexual nature of the experience but the exploitation, destruction of trust and the Judeo-Christian social stigma of sex that causes problems. That doesn't mean I'm an advocate for adult-child sexuality; far from it. Our culture is too sick to ever handle anything even remotely like open and functional adult-adult sexual relationships. Expecting a child to navigate those waters is far too much to expect.)

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

13. Yes, let's wait until they really rape a 5-year-old.

:eyes:

Sickening.

[ComerPerro]

14. and lets take out Saddam before he nukes America

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

30. Oh please, you sound ridiculous.

[ComerPerro]

31. no different. After all, you can't deny that if Saddam had the capability

the means, the resources, and the desire to wipe the US off the map, he would have.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

35. Here's your argument:

Bye.

[ComerPerro]

36. nice, but your "lets wait till they rape a real girl" is THE strawman

[WinkyDink]

58. I can and will "deny" it. Just because the US has used atomic bombs on civilians,

doesn't mean anyone else with the capability of using similar weaponry would.
But that's O/T.

[Gormy Cuss]

18. Yeah, merely providing them with the opportunity isn't good enough

:eyes:
Pretty hard to claim entrapment as a defense when the guy admitted to a prior event with an 8 year old and his wife was given the opportunity to bow out. Sometimes there's gray area but if the facts are as presented in the news story it was only a matter of time before they molested some child, perhaps even their own.

[ComerPerro]

23. So its a good idea to send them to prison for ten years for something they never even did?

[Gormy Cuss]

25. If the statute addresses intent to commit under that charge, then yes.

If the law does not include intent, then no.

[ComerPerro]

32. The cop should be thrown in jail for selling his daughter for illegal drugs

[Gormy Cuss]

33. Undercover cops posing as hookers should be arrested for solicitation

using that logic.

[ComerPerro]

34. I don't agree with those types of stings either

[Gormy Cuss]

41. Both types however have been upheld by the court.

I don't agree with a lot of laws but I do understand that I am expected to obey them. My only recourse is to work to change the laws.

[NickB79]

15. It doesn't appear to be entrapment

Any more than the "To Catch a Predator" TV show is entrapment. To entrap someone, you must get them to do something they would normally never consider doing. However, this couple appear to have been actively looking for children online to have sexual contact with. As Wikipedia says:

"For the defense to be successful, the defendant must demonstrate that the police induced an otherwise unwilling person to commit a crime. In U.S. law, this is generally stated as that the accused would never have committed the criminal act but for the police inducement. However, when a person is predisposed to commit a crime, offering opportunities to commit the crime is not entrapment, a widely held misconception similar to the idea that police officers must answer questions truthfully if they are asked the same question three times, or that they must say "yes" if asked if they are a police officer."

[ComerPerro]

20. To Catch a Predator should be illegal. They use some extremely shady methods

in order to get ratings. I've only caught an episode or two, but was disgusted at the way the "decoy" provokes the mark by playing to the sexual stereotypes of innocent young girls.

[NickB79]

61. The decoy is what disgusts you?

I'm disgusted by the middle-aged men talking about and sending pictures of their genitals to people they think are 13 years old.

The reason these decoys play the sexual stereotypes of innocent young girls is because that is what these men are actively looking for. I have no sympathy for someone like that, and so far the courts have agreed.

[pinniped]

73. You must have missed the episode where the guy arrived and immediately took his clothes off.

Other sick fuckers show up with condoms in their pockets.

Some of those fuckers got busted before, too.

[Hepburn]

16. How is that entrapment?

The story does not have much detail ~~ an certainly NOT enough detail in any manner to conclude that the conduct was entrapment.

The defendant has to be induced and/or persuaded to commit the offense about which he/she had NO intention to commit. If anything, the facts in the article mitigate against this being entrapment. There is NO entrapment if the defendant is ready and willing to commit the offense and law enforcement merely offers him/her an opportunity to do so.

Basically, the elements of entrapment are:

1. The idea of the commission of the crime came from the govt agent.

2. The govt agents talked the person into committing the crime.

3. The defendant was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the govt agents spoke with him/her.

[ComerPerro]

22. Well, we have no way of knowing how much was egged on and encouraged by the agent

[pnwmom]

48. I'm sure the encounters were recorded. That's the way to know.

[Blue-Jay]

24. That's really not "entrapment".

A couple of filthy animals expressed an interest in raping a kindergartner. A cop coaxed a meeting out of the sick bastards, and they were arrested. Period.

[gollygee]

26. The charge is for intent to rape

not for rape. They certainly did intend to.

[ComerPerro]

44. attempted rape of a nonexistant person

Can I be arrested for talking about robbing a bank that doesn't exist?

[Richard Steele]

55. Irrelevant. The INTENT existed, even if the victim did not.

And yes, if you are planning to rob a bank, that could
lead to "attempted robbery" and "Conspiracy" charges, even
if you were mistaken about the bank's actual existence.

[pnwmom]

38. Yup. A good use of entrapment.

They got someone who admitted already having molested another child, and who was ready to abuse this one, sight unseen.

[ComerPerro]

39. the state of IL got a lot of people to admit to crimes to, but guess what, it was corrupt

and many of these were forced confessions.

[pnwmom]

47. I bet the confession was recorded on video.

And not forced. Don't forget, the police have the chat room stuff. Who forced the defendants to go into the chat room? And then forced them to meet in the coffee shop? And then forced them drive to the motel with their vibrator and camera?

It seems to me that this police dept. was very careful about who it caught in its snare, even giving the woman a chance to back out.

[TX-RAT]

54. Looks like they did it by the book

Good, these 2 need to disappear.

[Fridays Child]

2. In addition to other punishment (and it should be severe), these people...

...should be surgically, permanently sterilized.

[shield20]

4. Fuck them - hope they get hit HARD! nt

[Laf.La.Dem.]

5. FOX

FOX - has a story about SEX - what a big surprise:crazy:

I assume that is better to report on than the War, Stock Market down turn, trade balance, budget deficit, New Orleans, Attorneys, Veteran Hospitals etc. etc.

[loudsue]

7. Agent Mike McCool. What a great name!

There is NO "entrapment" here. This was a perfectly legal and appropriate sting operation, and took some nasty people off the street that shouldn't be allowed to procreate, and have a child that could be the next victim.

Good on the law enforcement guys!

:kick:

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. How can they charge them for a crime that didn't happen?

They were charged with assault on a child that didn't exist?

I don't get it.

[Eric J in MN]

62. attempt, like charging someone with attempted murder (NT)

NT

[Alcibiades]

10. Sick

Even though this particular crime would not have happened if not for law enforcement creating the conditions for it to happen, these folks clearly would have victimized somebody at some point. Luckily, they will soon be in a Federal Prison--and thanks to the new Walsh Law, they may never get out! Good riddance.

[TX-RAT]

11. I agree

[Alcibiades]

17. I know some folks who are involved

in this type of law enforcement, and I think at lot of DUers would be less alarmed by this type of sting if they knew what the FBI does to get these (largely) guys. In the process of the investigation, it will have been made clear to the would-be offender that what they want to do is not only wrong, but illegal. Note how they documented that this was someone who at least claimed to have prior sexual contact with a child. Note, for example, the way in which the officer gave the woman in this case the chance to "opt out" of the offense. Note that she didn't do it.

Because sex offenders can come from any walk of life, and they are all, to a man, master manipulators who game people and the system, many hire good lawyers. As a consequence, law enforcement has to build good cases against them. This has the advantage not only of building solid cases resulting in convictions, but of protecting people who might "make a mistake." Some sex offense cases can be murky, he said/she said matters. This one seems open and shut. Throw the book at them.

[ComerPerro]

12. Thing is though, the parent would have been put in prison as well

[pnwmom]

56. And a real child would have been abused.

Is that what would have had to happen, to overcome your scruples? Must we have real child victims?

Or is it possible to catch real predators without putting children at risk? I think it is, and that the police seem to have done a good job in this case.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. I still don't understand.

"Dudley and Hamm were charged with aggravated sexual abuse of a minor."

The child did not exist. I can see a solicitation charge, or conspiracy even, but how do you assault somone who doesn't exist?

Unless, of course, the charge was for the alleged confession in the chat room - but wouldn't there have to be some kind of corroborating evidence to that crime?

[pnwmom]

57. You would need to see the wording of the statute.

It probably covers this situation -- otherwise, we're sure to hear about it.

[MissB]

19. Non-faux link

This one doesn't require registration, but the kgw one does.

http://www.katu.com/news/local/6476767.html

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_031307_news_sex_child.ba6e8fb.html (random excertps pasted below)

In a series of e-mail chats with the agent, Dudley allegedly agreed to pay the father so that he and Hamm could perform oral sex on the child and take photos.


According to court papers, Dudley described himself during the chat as a "decent" person with a "weird" fetish. When the agent expressed surprise that Dudley's wife would take part, Dudley typed that he told Hamm before they were married about his interest in young girls. Dudley said he was trying to scare her off, "but she said she loved me and didn't care what I was into."


An undercover agent then had two phone conversations with Dudley, who allegedly detailed prior sexual contact with an 8-year-old girl. Moreover, Dudley said that he and Hamm were trying to have a daughter and wanted her to live the "lifestyle."


The agent later met the couple at a Denny's in Portland. Court papers say the agent told Hamm that she should not take part in the sexual encounter if she was only doing so to please someone else. Hamm allegedly told the agent that she wanted to do it.


Also, there were some online chats, again random excerpts below.

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_031307_news_5yo_child_sickos_chat_excerpts_.d27b144.html

Dudley allegedly described the sex acts he'd like to perform in graphic detail, and wrote, “my wife only wants to watch but yeah she is into it.” Soon, according to the transcript, Dudley made a deal with the person he thought was a father selling his five-year-old daughter for sex.


While speaking with the undercover agent online, Dudley allegedly said he was sexually active as a child and that he is sure some kids “enjoy” it.


In a later conversation online, Dudley said he and his wife had been attempting to have a child of their own for the past two years and that they planned to raise their child in “the lifestyle.”


Dudley also admitted to molesting an eight-year-old girl, according to the documents, and said he has a sexual preference for three to nine-year-old children.

[gollygee]

27. Oh ugh. That is nauseating.

And now it's time to pick my daughter up from preschool. :(

I hate knowing that things like this happen in the world.

[TX-RAT]

28. Wow

[nonconformist]

40. Oh my. Good riddance to these scumbags

Thank God they weren't able to have children yet...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

37. The sting operation itself seems kosher, BUT

I wish they didn't make TV shows out of them.

[Morgana LaFey]

74. I've gotten to the point I see that TV show as exploitation too

I'm definitely not against stings like this -- tho I'd much rather see them catching more clearly serial offenders -- I'm just against the exploitation of these sick men for TV ratings. Ewwwwwww. You also gotta know that other serial child molesters out there watch the show for kicks themselves, and maybe even tips and tricks.

[ComerPerro]

42. My bad. This is not entrapment. Law enforcement can do whatever it wants

to imprison and convict whoever they want. Not only that, they are immune from scrutiny.

And this couple should be murdered with a shotgun.

The hell with reforming people and preventative treatment or education. Lets just lock everyone up!

Way to go, liberals.

[Goblinmonger]

46. Did you even read post 19?

You seriously want to defend THAT? Seriously?

I know cops can be shit heads. This seems pretty clear that these people had intent which is what they will be charged with. They need to go through complete due process and be given their day in court. If that facts in post 19 are correct, I hope they go to jail for a long time.

[TX-RAT]

52. You seriously want to defend THAT? Seriously?

Every time something like this gets posted, there's always one coming to their defence. Sad part is it's always the same one.

[seriousstan]

63. Interesting, isn't it? Almost telling.

[blondeatlast]

66. I wasn't going to say it, but I WILL agree with it... nt

[Colobo]

65. Sad? If anything, it's telling and scary...

[politicat]

70. Unfortunately, yeah, I think we should look at the way the law works.

No, I don't think the accused, if they did what is being alleged that they did (and remember, INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY), are humanity's finest flowers. If nothing else, they're dumb as bags of hammers because any thinking person, being presented with another asshat saying "Here, give me weed and I'll give you my kid for the afternoon," would think, "either I'm being set up by cops, to be blackmailed, or this person is really fucking scary and I should avoid, avoid, avoid". Taking them out of the breeding pool does NOT bother me in the least because people that dumb... HOWEVER, the process of the law needs to be scrutinized and, if necessary, revised.

Let's change the situation a little. Say that Ashcroft managed to push through some sort of draconian federal law that made Democratic Party activity a federal crime equal to counterfeiting. Now say that agents from Immigration and Customs (the actual agents involved) trolled over Feminist chat rooms looking for liberals to entice into illegal acts of envelope stuffing. A man posing as a woman sits behind the computer, feeding lines to any woman he could get to chat with him (her) and trying to get her to meet him(her) to try out this political action stuff. He (she) would obviously say at some point, "Oo.... this is wrong and it's so illegal!!" but the whole point of these exercises is to get the person on the other side of the computer's trust. In that, it's exploitative and probably pushes the target to do more than they would under normal circumstances.

We would say that what the Feds are doing in the above situation is wrong. That's the key point. The behavior of the Feds is suspect no matter what the behavior they are trying to incite is - whether it's how to teach your printer to print $20s, set up a secure chat room so that cell members can talk about ecoprotests (technically, a lot of ecoprotests are illegal, like spelling words with salt on golf courses - considered property damage), or trolling for parents willing to pimp their children for drugs.

Remember, back in the 60s and 70s, the best way to know who the Fed Mole was in any political action group was to look for the one agitating for violence... and saying one agreed with such creature was tantamount to Conspiracy. Let's NOT go back to those bad old days...

The likelihood of the accused ever finding real parents willing to pander for their daughters is about um... 0, and even if they had their own, they probably would have learned a lot in the process and never done. Having treated a number of families with sexual dysfunctions, it's something of a two-way issue -- there's a lot that goes on - opportunity, perceptions of volition and willingness, empathy, and even actual adolescent to adult seduction. There are issues of a cultural disconnect between our sexuality as a species and our religiously oriented discomfort with sexuality in general. So... basically, my tax dollars just paid for a couple of spooks to spend six months crafting an elaborate fantasy that does not speak well of THEIR mental health to catch a couple of inept drug dealers.

Ya know, my local cops can do the same for about a 10th the price and time and for about 20 times the effectiveness.

[gollygee]

51. That's a bit of a jump

your belief that this is entrapment

to

"law enforcement can do whatever it wants" and "they should be murdered with a shotgun"

The couple obviously went with every intention of raping a child. Whether a real child was involved doesn't matter in regard to their intent. And it would be unethical to set a real 5-year-old up like that.

[Alcibiades]

67. These statutes have been created

in response to the public demand for them, following a few extreme, highly publicized cases.

Law enforcement does some questionable things, no question. There are some silly laws out there that have federal agents out in the field working to catch folks. The resources spent on getting to those who prey sexually on children, however, are well spent.

I know you're probably not interested in reading the evidence offered at trial against these sort of people. Magnify that by a hundred or so. Imagine having to read, as the prosecutors do, all the supporting materials and documentation against these offenders. If you had to do that, I bet you'd feel differently.

This isn't a question of treatment. Why didn't the man in question get treatment? Is it because he lacked the resources? He can afford pot, and if he can afford pot, he could afford some therapy.

I suspect that the fellow in question did not seek treatment for the simple reason that he enjoys sex with children, and, rather than give it up, spends his time seeking it out.

Education? What does education have to do with this? There are highly educated sexual predators out there, as well as grade-school drop-outs. This is not a crime people commit because they are poor or poorly educated. This is a crime that people commit because they are sick, and many of them don't respond to treatment.

Who the heck thinks the FBI is immune from scrutiny? Far from it. You're reading about this case because we have a media that is free to cover the entire judicial process, from arrest to release. The FBI's case will, in fact, be scrutinized, in an open court proceeding that you are welcome to attend.

If law enforcement were really out grabbing random people off the street and charging them with terrible sex crimes, that would be one thing. This case is entirely different, in that it involves someone who self-identified as a pedophile and arranged to meet a man willing to sell his child. The reason why we need to be able to do this is because the men who commit sexual crimes against children are usually quite psychologically sophisticated. They rely on silence and shame to be able to commit their offenses with impunity. They seem normal, except that they like to have sex with kids, and they almost always claim that the kids like it, too. I know of one case in which a single man was allowed to adopt two pre-pubescent boys. He was good enough for the adoption board twice, and good enough to work for his employer, a noted children's charity. What nobody knew is that he was a sadistic pedophile who kept a sawhorse in his closet. The sawhorse was something handy for strapping the boys onto, every day. He also had a lot of internet equipment, and made home movies he would exchange with other pedophiles in an international pedophile pornography ring.

That's just one case. There are sicker guys than that one out there. The offenders in this case, and others, do get their day in court, trust me on that. The due process of law will take place, and they will be convicted (or more likely plead guilty), and hopefully they won't get to have the child that they want to victimize. I'm a proud liberal, and I support giving law enforcement the tools they need to catch men like this. I support the freedom to have a childhood free from daily rape and beatings. No one is talking about "locking everyone up." We're talking about locking up the worst of the worst. The more you know about this kind of crime, the more likely you are to support locking these sorts of people up.

[Beaverhausen]

50. Anyone who thinks this wouldn't have happened needs to read this

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4038249/

Sadly there are people out there who do have this encounter with very young girls. Some spend thousands traveling to other countries where these young children are bought and sold like cattle.

How lucky this couple only had to go to their computer to find a participant in their sick act.

[TX-RAT]

53. That is so sick

[Pangolin]

60. I'd rather the military fought child slavery......

than fighting for big oil in Iraq. In Afghanistan the military walks right by situations that equate to child slavery without a pause.

Another country with documented cases of human trafficing is Saudi Arabia. Makes you wonder why Bush and Cheney are so happy to visit there.

[lukasahero]

59. Jesus wept.

While some want to discuss this as some right or wrong on the part of the police and our legal system, I'll stick to weeping over what damage we have wrought our children.

[politicat]

69. WHY THE HELL was this an Immigration and Customs Enforcement case???

No foreign nationals. Nothing was imported. To my knowledge, there aren't terrorist organizations making tons of money off of child porn (the market's far too small and opium is far more profitable, not to mention easier to make) so it's not a Cornerstone case. No gangs involved, so not Operation Community Shield. And it's not an Intellectual Property case.

How this falls under Homeland Security, I don't know. This is DOJ, at best. Local Law enforcement, more appropriately.

I am so sick of my tax dollars funding this sort of sick fantasy crap....

[TX-RAT]

72. I don' care who was involved.

2 sick fucks are off the streets, good riddance, money well spent. I'd rather my tax money be spent on something like this, than a war i disagree with.

[politicat]

75. Two accused.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Don't be Faux News and convict without a trial.

Vigilantism and trial by press is not the America we want to live in.