Sex predator conspiracy

On Nov 27, 12:14 pm, David Chesler <ches...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>  What about whatever it is they charge the predators with in To Catch
> A Predator?  Aren't those older men doing the same thing, pretending
> to be younger in order to romance girls?

That's different.  The deceptive mom in the MO case was just trying to spy on the victim to find out what kind of things the victim had been saying to her peers about the mom's daughter (a former friend of the victim).  The mom had no intention of actually meeting, much less "going out" with, the victim in her fake online role as a teen boy.  All she wanted to get the victim to do was talk.

When a middle aged man pretends to be a teen in order to arrange meetings with underage girls, he doesn't just want the girl to talk.   Once he makes an overt act to try to convert that online fantasy roleplaying into a reality by setting up and then going to a meeting, he can be arrested for conspiracy (to do what ever it is he was planning to do -- have sex with a minor, transport her across staid lions for immortal porpoises, or so on).

Frankly, though, it usually happens the other way around.  The purported "victim" is actually not a 13 year old girl but a full grown FBI agent or local cop of either gender.  The agent pretends online to be a teenie-bopper, strikes up a conversation with some predatory-minded man in some online forum, and arranges a meeting.  When the perp shows up for the meeting, he is arrested, for conspiracy etc.   In most states it doesn't matter that the actual "victim" was not actually a teen; what matters is the perp's criminal _intent_ to have sex with a minor and his commission of some overt act toward fulfillment of that goal (even if the fulfillment of the goal was literally impossible because the purported "victim" did not exist).

--
This posting is for discussion purposes, not professional advice.
Anything you post on this Newsgroup is public information.
I am not your lawyer, and you are not my client in any specific legal
matter.
For confidential professional advice, consult your own lawyer in a
private communication.

Mike Jacobs
LAW OFFICE OF W. MICHAEL JACOBS
10440 Little Patuxent Pkwy #300
Columbia, MD 21044
(tel) 410-740-5685      (fax) 410-740-4300