To Catch a Predator
To Catch a Predator is an American reality television series in the television news magazine program Dateline NBC. The program features confrontations of host Chris Hansen, partly filmed with a hidden camera, with adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with a minor and typically being arrested as a result, with the minors being adults impersonating underage persons in online chats.
The series premiered in November 2004. It followed twelve undercover sting operations as they were conducted across the United States with the watchdog group Perverted-Justice. Following the third investigation, law enforcement and other officials became involved, leading to the arrests of most individuals caught. Upon its airing, the series received mixed reactions for its sordid tone, and the ethical and legal concerns raised over the nature of the sting operations it depicted, in particular potential violations of entrapment laws.
The show was cancelled in 2008, following the suicide of Rockwall County, Texas, assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, as police attempted to serve him with a search warrant after he had been caught talking to and exchanging pictures with a Perverted-Justice volunteer posing as a 13-year-old boy. Conradt fatally shot himself as police and an NBC camera crew entered his home, an act that was captured by the filming crew. His estate sued Dateline for US$105 million, then settled out of court. Hansen stated that the show ended because it had simply run its course, though he later ran a Kickstarter campaign to relaunch the series, and he searched for new broadcast venues for it. In 2016, a spiritual successor program named Hansen vs. Predator became a recurring segment on Crime Watch Daily, a syndicated television news magazine hosted by Hansen. A third spiritual successor, Takedown with Chris Hansen, premiered in 2022 and currently airs on the TruBlu streaming network.
Reruns of the Dateline segments are occasionally broadcast on MSNBC. NBC affiliates WTMJ in Milwaukee, KSHB in Kansas City, and WBRE in Wilkes-Barre have also produced local versions of To Catch a Predator. Various spin-offs have aired in the same format, including To Catch a Con Man, To Catch an ID Thief, To Catch a Car Thief, and To Catch an i-Jacker, which featured iPod thieves. To Catch a Predator is also aired on FX and Crime & Investigation in the United Kingdom, the Crime & Investigation Network in Australia and New Zealand, and Fox Crime in Portugal.
History and format
To Catch a Predator began as a series of segments on the American NBC news magazine/reality show Dateline NBC, premiering under the title Dangerous Web in 2004. In its four years of production, it grew to become the most popular segment on Dateline, its cultural status underlined by satirical references in parodies and other comedies, such as The Simpsons, 30 Rock, and Conan O'Brien's opening sketch at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006.The show's host Chris Hansen clarified in an interview with NPR News that the subjects confronted on the show should be labelled properly as potential sexual predators and not as pedophiles. Hansen stated, "Pedophiles have a very specific definition, people who are interested in prepubescent sex."
The first two investigations did not include law enforcement officers on site, and individuals caught in the sting were allowed to leave voluntarily, though Dateline provided all video and transcripts to law enforcement and suspects were eventually arrested. Arrests are sometimes made in a dramatic fashion by multiple officers who, with Tasers drawn, ambush the suspect and command him to lie face-down on the ground before being handcuffed. In the Fort Myers investigation, a police officer in camouflage sometimes arrested the perpetrators as they left the sting house. Tasers are sometimes shown being used to subdue fleeing or merely unresponsive individuals.
The show was cancelled in 2008. In an interview with Time magazine, Hansen stated that the show had simply run its course.
Investigations
Bethpage, New York
The first installment drew 18 men throughout two and a half days to a sting house in Bethpage, New York. One of the men arrested in the series' 2004 investigation, Ryan Hogan, was a New York City firefighter, assigned to Engine Company 237 in Brooklyn, who used a firehouse computer while on duty in order to lure a Perverted-Justice agent posing as a teenage girl to have sex with him. On June 8, 2006, Hogan pleaded guilty to putting obscene photos of himself on the Internet, as part of a plea agreement. He was sentenced to five years of probation, continued psychological treatment, and submission to random polygraph tests.Herndon, Virginia
An hour-long special that premiered in November 2005 depicted an operation in Herndon, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and saw 19 men arrive over three days. Among the men caught were a rabbi, Rabbi David Kaye, an emergency room doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Beck, and an elementary school teacher, Steven Bennof, who lost their jobs after taping. One of the more memorable predators caught included a man by the name of John Kennelly, who arrived at the sting house naked and was caught by Dateline the very next day at a McDonalds in Arlington, Virginia trying to meet another decoy.Mira Loma, California
Fifty-one men were caught in Mira Loma, California, over the course of three days.Greenville, Ohio
The premise behind the fourth Dateline investigation was to see if internet predators were as big a problem in small towns as in big cities, so Dateline set up operations in Greenville, Ohio. In total, 18 men were arrested over three days between March 24 and 26, 2006.Fort Myers, Florida
By June 30, 2009, all the cases stemming from investigations in Fort Myers, Florida, made it through the court system. Of the 24 men captured as a result of the investigation, 20 were convicted of using the Internet to solicit a child for sex. The 20 sentenced men were ordered to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. Among them included a Sunday school teacher, Brian Emmons, a teen mental health counselor; Peter Ernandez, a youth counselor and medical student who was studying to be a pediatrician, who stripped naked; Marvin Lakhan, Fredi Fernandez, a security guard at the Miami National airport, as well as Clifford Wallach, a man who brought his son to the house. Most of them were also put on sex offender probation.Fortson (Columbus), Georgia
The sheriff's department in Harris County, Georgia, had arrested 20 men over four-and-a-half days in a sting operation in Fortson, a suburb of Columbus.Shortly after the first half of this investigation aired, the Georgia Governor's office announced a new Child Safety Initiative which would triple the number of special agents in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation dedicated to catching Internet predators and double the number of forensic computer specialists dedicated to helping prosecute computer crimes.
Petaluma, California
In January 2010, Lt. Matthew Stapleton of the Police Department of Petaluma, California, credited a To Catch a Predator sting operation with scaring potential predators away from Petaluma. Referring to later decoy operations by local police, Stapleton said, "As soon as they found out that we were from the Petaluma area, they completely cut off communication with us."However, after six days of testimony, a judge threw out the case against one of the defendants and criticized the tactics used by Datelines partner, Perverted-Justice, for engaging in entrapment.