At the Intersection of Stupidity and Evil

So what’s the deal with pedophiles?

Ok, besides the abusing of children, how did they get so stupid? How are they not extinct?

Tonight I watched Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”. I don’t know why; I turned the TV on for background noise and got caught up in it. Have you seen this show?

Basically, they have someone pretend to be 13 year old girl. This person then waits in online chat rooms for a pedophile to engage them. They chat on line back and forth, and it gets explicit. They pedophile asks to meet the child at their home for sex.

So the guys show up, goes into the house, and then they meet Chris Hansen, the Dateline Reporter, who then talks to them about what they’re doing. The guys usually apologize, claim they really weren’t there for sex, say it’s the first time they’ve ever done it, and promise never to do it again.

So let’s look at this. The pedophile shows up. The child isn’t in the room. They stay. A guy in a suit comes out of the kitchen. They stay. The guy starts talking about why they were there and reads the internet chat transcripts to them. They stay. The guy in the suit starts asking questions. THEY ANSWER THEM?!?!

Some of these guys even say they had the feeling it might be a set up. And they still stayed. And talked. With cameras recording everything.

Of course, they are arrested as soon as they leave.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, we get this story:

Police charged an Eastern Kentucky man Tuesday after workers at a Lexington computer store discovered more than 600 images of child pornography on two laptops the man had taken to the store for repair.

And this is actually a common story. I see these stories every couple months. I worked in a store where someone actually dropped off a desktop filled with illegal images for repair. Of course he went to jail. Did it occur to them to maybe, just let the broken machine stay broken? Do they think computer techs are bound by some privilege like doctors, priests, and lawyers?

I’m not making light of pedophiles; I’m simply amazed at how stupid some of these monsters can be.