Catch Them If You Can…

(This post is rated TV-14. But if you’re not at least 14, what are you doing on my blog anyway?)

Last month, Lauren and I started a weekly tradition.

Every Sunday night, MSNBC was airing old episodes of To Catch a Predator, followed by Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes. We started having mini-pervathons every week. There’s something about that show that’s just so…awesome. Chris Hansen is my hero. He’s so stinking funny when he verbally-slaps these guys in their faces. Examples:

“So what part of the bible tells you to say all this kind of stuff here in the chat…Is that the Old Testament or the New Testament?”

“You said ‘Do you want a boyfriend or a dad?’ That's a little creepy, I gotta tell ya.”

“You're naked, there's a 14 year old girl, you're chasing a cat around and you've got Cool Whip… Is that accurate?”

“What's going on in here does seem pretty pervy, doesn't it?”

We cheer for him and laugh our butts off at the guys who are showing up to do rotten things to what they think are underage girls and boys.

On the show, they work with a group called Perverted Justice. The other day, I was thinking how awesome it would feel to bust people, so I looked into joining the group. It’s surprisingly easy, and I started debating whether or not I could actually handle being involved in an online sting to catch these guys. I was thinking I probably could deal with the nastiness, and then I pulled up the page of people who have been caught in Utah.

I pulled up one of the four guys caught here in the last few years, and ACK! It was a guy I went to high school with. The chat log of his interactions with what he thought was a 13 year old girl was posted, and I read a little bit. It wasn’t too graphic (thank goodness), but it was enough to make me reconsider my interest in joining the group.

I’ve only ever known one person that was convicted of sex crimes (that I know of), and whenever I see him/her, I’m constantly freaking out because of the way he/she surrounds him/herself with kids. As much as I would like to catch somebody like that and get them put away before they can hurt more kids, I don’t think I could deal with seeing transcripts of what they want to do on a regular basis. I’ll stick to being separated from the situation by watching Chris Hansen do his thing. (His dramatic readings of the chats are Emmy-worthy.)

In the meantime, if you have kids/nieces/nephews/grandkids/friends’ kids, you might want to check out the sex offender registry. It’s surprising how widespread these people are. I’m all about being kind to people, but I’m also all about being prepared when a lot of these sicknesses are addictive and hard to shake.

Oh, and for some reason, Predator isn’t turning up on my DVR for the next few weeks, so if you’re interested in checking it out, I think you can watch episodes on MSNBC’s website. Be warned, though: it can be pretty graphic. And also, pretty funny.