The Point | CRIMINAL HYSTERIA

9-2-2007 National

What passes for virtue is often just lack of opportunity.

My Inquirer colleague Jeff Gammage reported Aug. 28 on the artistry of Michele Deery, who stalks pedophiles online for a task force in Delaware County. Deery patrols Internet chat rooms for would-be child molesters. She has no trouble finding them.

"When she logs in to a sex-themed chat room, she is quickly contacted by five or six men," Gammage wrote.

On occasion - and this is her goal - Deery will lure one of these men from the virtual world into the real one, arranging an assignation that, if it were real, would be illegal. Last month, she engaged a prime sucker in Hamburg, Pa., named Drew Weidner in a fantasy that was apparently too vivid for him to confine to cyberspace. Drawn by Deery's promise - she was pretending to be a lascivious woman eager for a sexual romp with Weidner and her two (imaginary) daughters, ages 11 and 14. You run into people like this all the time.

Deery says it isn't easy these days to draw men like Weidner from their fantasy world. She says her targets often ask, "Are you a cop?" - a question so stupid one fears for the future of the human race.

We are in the midst of open season on those weak and troubled souls who are aroused by the thought of sex with a child. Few people today, especially those with this particular bent, have not seen Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator or another of the proliferating programs that do work like Deery's in the name of home entertainment. Suckers like Weidner are lured not just to their arrests, but to humiliation on national television.

One target of To Catch a Predator, an assistant prosecutor, of all things, shot himself in the head at his home in Texas as the network cameras approached his house to unveil his darkest imaginings to the world. This sad fellow had resisted enticements to act on his fantasy, so the show's producers came to his door.

I have watched an episode or two from that show. The bewildered, guilty, astonished-at-my-own-stupidity, my-life-is-over looks on the faces of the would-be pedophiles make for compelling TV. It is also enough to make me, a father of five, feel sorry for the first time in my life for a would-be child molester.

From time to time, our society indulges in binges of criminal hysteria. Fifteen years ago it was "satanic cults." Scores of people were rounded up and prosecuted for bizarre sexual transgressions on the basis of testimony essentially coached from small children. There were theories of "repressed" or "recovered" memories flying about - theories that are largely disputed today. Day-care workers all over America were suspected of devil worship. There were books and TV specials filled with alarming statistics and ribald tales. What is needed for these periodical public spasms are targets - be they witches, communists, devil-worshipers, terrorists or pedophiles - implicated in crimes so indefensible that they are not entitled to fundamental rules of fairness and due process.

The current hysteria over sex offenders rests on two widely held but dubious assumptions: 1) They are incurable recidivists, hence irredeemable; 2) Those who indulge sick fantasies on the Internet always (or at least usually) act upon them.

The first assumption is demonstrably false. According to a study of sexual offenders released from prison in 1994 in 15 states by that notorious defender of pedophilia, the U.S. Department of Justice, just over 5 percent were arrested for committing another sex crime within three years. The usual recidivism rate for released prisoners three years on is 67 percent.

The second assumption, cited in Gammage's story by state police Cpl. Michael McTavish, rests on a worthy and controversial study conducted by psychologists Andres E. Hernandez and Michael L. Bourke at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C. Working with 155 male volunteers serving time for Internet sex offenses, they found that 85 percent admitted to having abused at least one child. Mind you, these were men already in prison for sexual offenses, certainly a hard-core sample of child-porn enthusiasts. The work does suggest that serious consumers of child porn will eventually molest a child, but it is hardly conclusive, and rests on a sample that is hardly representative of all those who dip into such sites. Given the ease and anonymity of Internet use, a more likely assumption is that far more people will access it than will ever victimize a child.

Yet these two assumptions are used to justify stings like the one that named Drew Weidner, who, according to the latest reports, is in a Delaware County prison on $250,000 bail, charged with attempting to corrupt minors, aggravated indecent assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, and criminal solicitation. I mean no disrespect to Deery and McTavish; they are clearly dedicated and well-meaning public servants, who no doubt rest better knowing that Weidner is less likely today ever to actually molest a child. But based on the reports made public, he may be guilty of nothing more than having evil thoughts and of succumbing to Deery's imaginative offer to act on them.

I suppose one might argue that anyone in this day and age who would fall for an implausible trap like Deery's is a danger to himself and society, and the world is safer with him behind bars. But there is a fallacy at work here. If the world were strictly divided between normal decent people, who have no such desires, and evil people, who do, then casting the net far and wide to reel in the sinners only makes sense.

But morality isn't that neat. A soul never breathed who has not strayed into dark fantasy from time to time, be it sexual, murderous, adulterous, larcenous or otherwise. The computer has done many wonderful things for society, but it has also created a devil's playground of the imagination. Fantasy blends viscerally into quasi-reality on the monitor, complete with images, videos and chats. Whatever your predilection, no matter how bizarre, on the Web you can find someone who shares it, who encourages it, and who might even offer to help you act it out - but remember, make sure you first ask, "Are you a cop?"

How likely is it that in normal life Weidner, a 40-year-old man who clearly spends too much time with his computer, would have ever encountered the fantasy conjured by Deery: a salacious young mother and two prepubescent daughters? Not one, mind you, but two? One marvels at the sheer scale of erotic ambition, and might chide Deery for overreaching, except for the fact that she snared another bug-eyed sap with the same fantasy three years ago. He is now serving a 20-year prison term. It may be that Weidner would have someday sought out a child to molest. He may already have. But it is also entirely possible that his predilections, without Deery's bizarre seduction, would have remained confined to the cyber-gutter.

"Law enforcement tends to go after the easy targets at the low end of the problem," says Phil Jenkins, a professor of religion at Pennsylvania State University and author of several books on the subject of sexual molestation, including Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America and Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online. Jenkins argues that the real targets ought to be the providers of illegal pornography who cater to sordid appetites, but this would require a higher level of computer skills than most local police possess.

"So they go after the idiots," Jenkins says. "It shows they are doing something."

When the police enter this netherworld, they are treading into the gray area between crime and sin, between action and thought. The same is true in terror investigations. Is it a crime for someone to vent his anger toward the state and society in words and images, and fantasize about taking violent action? Must we wait for the crime to occur before acting to prevent it? It is not a new dilemma, but it is one given special urgency by the remarkable modern tools of private communication.

In the old days, when those seeking child pornography (or porn of any kind) had to walk into a store and buy it, the potential for public shame was enough to discourage many if not most sales. The allure of Internet porn, and the reason for its booming success, is anonymity. You can peek and dream and not get caught.

So maybe the answer is not to lure gulls like Weidner into arrest or televised humiliation, but to simply warn them, and pose the potential for public shame. If Deery can lure someone like Weidner to meet her in Upper Darby, she could probably learn enough to send two uniformed officers to his door to scare the wits out of him. Something like this is being tried in the United Kingdom, where those snared online are both warned and offered treatment. Such an approach is less dramatic, but in many instances may be more humane and appropriate.

Deery's current approach will always meet with success, for the same reason that in most neighborhoods a truckload of stolen goods sells fast. Dangle temptation before a large enough crowd, and a few would-be sinners will step forward. Why not start trolling the Net for customers willing to hire a discreet assassin who, for a modest and untraceable fee, would eliminate troubling ex-spouses, or bosses, neighbors, or public officials? I'll bet you could find people out there with murder in their hearts. It may have already been done.

News flash: There is evil in the souls of men. ..more.. by Mark Bowden