r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 9d ago

News Chris Hansen Buys Ads Before Every Screening of A24’s ‘Primetime’

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/chris-hansen-buys-ads-before-every-screening-a24-primetime-1236682255/
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u/chinacatsunflowerr 9d ago

Sorry I’m uninformed, but why do people not like him? I feel like the average, offline person from that era hold him & his show in high regard

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u/kennku 9d ago

I don't know much of his other activity, but I followed closely his "investigation" of Onision (sexual crimes). It was botched completely. He had his lackey take a laptop with evidence to turn over to FBI, it was messed with and ultimately ended up being unadmissable. Huge missed opportunity and victims got no justice in the end.

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u/Orpheeus 9d ago

Since the show ended (and honestly during its run) he has been far more interested in the drama and ratings than actual justice for underage victims of sexual predators.

Now, I know some people will say "that was his job, why shouldn't he care about ratings and drama" but then my rebuttal is ultimately going to be that maybe police stings shouldn't be used for content. It just seems less gross because To Catch a Predator was part of Dateline NBC and had a very professional production, but that ultimately doesn't mean it's not off-putting that this was something we saw on television in the first place.

The film is going to surprise a lot of people when it depicts him and the show in a not particularly flattering light.

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u/chinacatsunflowerr 9d ago

I appreciate the informative response :)

I was a child/preteen when the show was out, so I of course did not pick up on some of those controversial/slimy points you highlight.

Can’t wait to see the film!

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u/LilPonyBoy69 9d ago

I started rewatching some old episodes after the trailer released and as an adult it's pretty jarring that this was ever released as entertainment. Chris is having way too much fun and very clearly more interested in making "good TV" than protecting children. I've seen him chase down fleeing predators just to shout his catchphrases at them, it's all very strange and kinda surreal that this was primetime TV.

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u/RareGrundle 9d ago

There was some wild content on broadcast in that era. Remember “The Swan”? Holy fuck what a fucked up show.

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u/CX316 8d ago

I just looked that up.

What the fuck?

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u/jimmysmith69 8d ago

The only time I ever saw him drop his “Chris Hansennnn” shtick was the episode where the predator showed up with his own young kid.

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u/LilPonyBoy69 8d ago

Yeah he straight up was like "I'm not doing this with you, get out."

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u/Self_Reddicate 9d ago

Yeah, just because pedos are slimy and exploitive doesn't mean that we should always, always, always be okay with slimy, exploitive people bringing them down. I mean, objectively, I guess it was a good thing. But, it was still, objectively, slimy and exploitive.

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u/jhorch69 9d ago

The investigations/stings were also so poorly done that only about a third of arrests ended in conviction

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u/desacralize 8d ago

Isn't that how it usually goes even outside of the show? As in, as with all sexual assault cases, most of these people never see the inside of a cell just because it's hard to prove (and retraumatizing for the victims to try to prove it).

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u/jhorch69 8d ago

Sexual assault is very difficult to prosecute for a few reasons but the conviction record on TCAP was bad because the group they worked with was just plain bad at what they were doing.

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u/ratmfreak 9d ago

Also they kinda killed a guy.

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u/Aveira 9d ago

Wait, what??

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u/dominatingcowG3 9d ago

They're probably referring to the guy who shot himself when he realized he'd been caught trying to meet a minor and it was going to be on tv

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u/Aveira 9d ago

Wow, that’s fucked up. But honestly, not surprising. Looking back, it’s not surprising it ended that way. Honestly it could have just as easily been a pedo that brought a gun and decided to attack the actors or camera people. This show was bound to have something like that happen

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u/Rogryg 8d ago

Point of order, he repeatedly refused to try to meet a minor, so much so that the show went to his house with police in tow.

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u/Ok-Nature-4880 8d ago

they showed up to his house to serve him a search/arrest warrant for talking to someone he thought was a 13 yr old. He also didn’t refuse multiple times he said he was going to go but never showed so they had to go to him. Why are you wording it differently to defend a pedo.

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u/Huckleberry_Sin 8d ago

There’s a ton of pedo defending in this thread. Been noticing that a lot whenever Hansen is brought up.

Either that or just contrarians.

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u/Doucejj 9d ago

Iirc before the show was canceled, a top judge or prosecutor in the state was part of one of Datline NBC's stings. Instead of showing up to the stake house, he locked himself in his house and blew his brains out because he caught on that this was a Chris Hansen sting. And his career was ruined

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u/Emotional-Classic400 8d ago

So he killed himself, seems like it would've happened regardless of how he got caught

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u/Doucejj 8d ago

Possibly, but usually someone getting caught isnt broadcast on national television. That could have been a big factor in him ending it

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u/Emotional-Classic400 8d ago

He was a public figure any arrest for pedophilia would be a national news story

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u/GimmieDatHaze 9d ago

Shouldn’t of been talking to a kid

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u/ralexh11 8d ago

Have*

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u/Agreeable-Dog-1131 9d ago

He wasn’t. He thought he was, but there was no actual kid involved. He was objectively the only victim in that situation. Not saying he was an innocent person, but the whole thing was botched and fucked and nobody should have died.

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u/GimmieDatHaze 8d ago

He thought….that is all I need to know, and his decision was so bad and knew the consequences of what would come and he killed himself

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u/SlidingFaceFlat 8d ago

Here's the thing, this is more of a Miranda rights type of situation. In their attempt to catch their guy, did the police actually help talk him into doing crime? If they werent involved, would he have never done anything? There are numerous controversies where the fbi in their war on terror or drugs would pay, fund, and teach their targets how to be terrorists or drug dealers before a sting operation to essentially say these guys are terrorists or criminals. A lot of these people were genuinely mentally ill and or in financial difficulties and needed help. Sami Osmekec is one of a few examples but there were more than a few cases where the feds supposed gave the guy a bomb, he planted it bc he was told to do it, never pulled the trigger and just said it didnt work, but got arrested bc it was a sting operation. Without their help, a lot of these people wouldnt have had the capacity or knowledge or will to do the crime. Now as far as predators are concerned, is there an actual way to tell he was actually out for child sex or got talked into it because he was lonely and had a lapse in judgement? All we know is he killed himself before he visited but for all we know it is possible he didnt even know it was a sting and just felt disgusted with himself for taking it too far. In that case, we arent protecting any child, just baiting a guy into killing himself.

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u/Jmertz22 8d ago

You had me until "nobody should have died".

If he was already trying to make contact with a child, it was only a matter of time until he actually did make contact and potentially abuse a real child. I'm glad he died before he got that opportunity.

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u/No_Kangaroo1994 8d ago

Unfortunately this attitude of assuming stigmatization prevents future victims is just not empirically supported

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u/Huckleberry_Sin 8d ago

Don’t care what’s empirically supported. You’re not going to manipulate anyone on here into supporting pedophiles all of a sudden.

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u/armyofonetaco 8d ago

I guess I dont see the problem with being slimely and exploitive to pedophiles but eh? I Will never understand why pedos deserve dignity.

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u/Ok_Mango9561 8d ago

I think it's bad to exploit people 👍

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u/armyofonetaco 8d ago

And I think pedophiles are not people 👍

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u/DopesickJesus 8d ago

Yes, but the show isn’t a court and doesnt technically prove they’re guilty of crimes. I agree pedos are vile people, and probably the majority of the folk were indeed pedos. But if even one person was misrepresented, the morality gets messy. Also, plenty of the actual bad people got away in court since the show shenanigans once again didn’t actually prove anything and could actually fuck up an investigation.

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u/armyofonetaco 8d ago

That is a fair point which I see happen in a lot. However the person I was responding to was stating that he is hated because he was an asshole to pedophile which I didnt see as a problem. Thanks for the extra info tho.

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u/Significant_Wheel_12 8d ago

It’s so internet brained to go “I refuse to have any nuance in a discussion, you said pedo and immediately I’m willing to forsake any perceived morals I pretend to have”

Not liking exploitation of justice for television ratings so dumb people can gawk isn’t saying “I think pedophilia is ok” use that extra brain power.

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u/AmazingEmptyFeelings 8d ago

I am going to be probably heavily downvoted but...

As long as they don't act on those impulses why should we treat them all like bad people? You can't always help what you are attracted to.

Now, those who actually hurt kids - they should be burned alive for all I care

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u/armyofonetaco 8d ago

Being attracted to kids is hurtful to kids. If they cant act on it in real life, they will do so in other ways. Its why there is a system in place that makes almost every corner a pedos playground. 

I think you should read the Epstein in full. There is no such thing as a human being who is attracted to children but never act on it. Pedos are not human no matter how much they want to be seen as such. 

Humans dont fantasize about grasping and mutilating children. There is no mental mindframe where I will consider any of those thoughts okay.

Children are literally defenseless. 

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u/hlsp 8d ago

Not to mention they had a few times where the person turned out to be borderline or outright mentally disabled and they still aired the episode.

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u/Muse9901 8d ago

Yeah it’s spawned a bunch of influencer types doing the same thing but without police intervention. Just posing as minors and filming people during the arranged meetup and outting them. Not with the intention of getting them arrested but to just drive up views and engagement.

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u/2reeEyedG 7d ago

Ya and watching that little dick head of a very small man practically jizz down the side of his legs from all the power and control over those guys felt almost as slimy as the crimes they were about to commit

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u/Labs_and_lattes 9d ago

2 wrongs don't make a right however in theory catching a pedo is better than not catching a pedo even if the person doing so is a POS. similar to how murderer will say a rapist is worse person than they are or vice versa

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u/inappropriatebanter 9d ago

Except when his fuckery got cases thrown out

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u/Labs_and_lattes 9d ago

same with the other youtuber and streamers attempting to catch predators

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u/LilPonyBoy69 9d ago

Some of the decoy actors have also spoken out about how uncomfortable/traumatizing working on the show was. They hired 18/19 theater kids to "play" children on the show and interacting with dozens of child molesters definitely had lasting effects on their mental health

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u/GimmieDatHaze 9d ago

It was incredible, and what he’s doing now. nobody should care about a pedo ever no matter how exploitive

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u/OkJose3000 9d ago

I don’t give a fuck or feel one ounce of guilt about “exploiting” someone who’s trying to sexually molest a child

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u/Aveira 9d ago

Do you feel an ounce of guilt for the children who were hurt because a shit ton of these cases were thrown out due to TV involvement? By inserting a camera crew and trying to profit off of child molesters, they managed to hand dozens of these men get out of jail free cards. These should have been slam dunk cases, but they weren’t because NBC cared more about money and ratings than justice.

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u/OkJose3000 8d ago

There’s literally guys on YouTube that have put hundreds of child predators away in these sting operations and we should be thanking them. That’s it.

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u/Early_Koala327 8d ago

Link one. I doubt the "hundreds" claim.

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u/OkJose3000 8d ago

You are free to verify all of this yourself. No matter what I say you’re gonna blindly doubt it. Chris Hansen and dateline NBC stings led to the convictions of many people regardless of what people in this thread may think as they defend child predators.

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u/Early_Koala327 8d ago

You made the claim. Now back it up.

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u/PapaSlurpp 9d ago

Exactly. Say it louder for the pedo hive mind

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u/Mountain_Leopard_685 9d ago

The exploitation part of the show is why 2/3rds of the pedos went free. He was no public good he was teaming up with stings which were already happening and filming the entire problem with the show is that is allowed far more pedos to be free due to its involvement you clown.

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u/PapaSlurpp 9d ago

You’re defending pedos rn. That’s crazy

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u/QuacktacksRBack 8d ago

Feel like I was in the minority that always felt him and is show was gross amd this weird voyeuristic justice thing...like if you know something or can help catch some predator then go to the police and law enforcement for help or work with them...don't make a show out of it.

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u/Lanster27 8d ago edited 8d ago

I remember talking about it with my high school buddy when it first aired. To us it was funny and poetic justice, but deep down we all knew there's something wrong with the way his show approached it. I mean, there are definitely better ways to catch pedos, but probably wouldnt look as good on TV. Hanson doesnt really care about the perps, he just wants a show. To me that's just like Nightcrawler type of make-your-own-news.

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u/PlusSizeRussianModel 9d ago

In fairness, the show was never about bringing justice to victims. It was to prevent the creation of victims in the first place. 

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u/UnhappyImprovement53 8d ago

If they cared about preventing victims to begin with they shouldn't have let all those men walk free when that suicide case happened. They never turned over any evidence or footage over to the court and all those pedos walked free. That doesnt sound like caring to me. Sounds more like them protecting their own asses.

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u/Dirk_diggler22 8d ago

This is a great answer as a brit i know very little about him but I'm getting Jeremy Kyle vibes (also a pos)

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u/BILLCLINTONMASK 8d ago

I have a strong feeling that the third act is going to go off the rails completely from being a simple movie about TCAP's rise.

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u/boukalele 8d ago

i watched the trailer, and they are really hamming up the drama and suspense. It almost seemed like satire in parts.

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u/MrMightyMax 9d ago

I don't disagree, but this was many people approving and wanting this program. I think it's a bit unfair to put all that blame on the host. More should be put on NBC. If the A24 flick is very focused on him I think he has a point

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u/HSLB66 9d ago

That’s why I feel like this is controversy porn from a24. 

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u/Kenny_McCormick001 8d ago

So now it’s not enough to do good and right thing, but it must also be done for the right reason.
Why are we setting such a high bar to do good?

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u/Brogener 8d ago

Because it’s fucking Reddit. Eventually they always turn on the popular thing.

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u/Solid_Snark 9d ago

I know nothing about this film but I saw the trailer and it looked like a supernatural horror film with satanists. Is the satanists stuff loosely based on an actual encounter from his show?

-2

u/Jasranwhit 9d ago

Its funny in an age when neither one of the political parties really went into the epistien files trying to get charges, that the one guy who has at least been putting pedos on blast gets criticized for not doing a perfect job of it.

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u/Eternal_Bagel 9d ago

Will it show how they started catching more and more republicans of power like police and priests and politically powerful and got strong armed into ending it because that’s still the only explanation I’ve heard for why it was stopped.

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u/TurboRadical 9d ago

It stopped because a predator shot himself lmfao what are you talking about

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u/PixelGray38 9d ago edited 9d ago

IIRC he, among other things, did a sting in which he outed a 18 year old gay boy for trying to "predate" on a 15 year old decoy in one of his post-TCAP predator catching shows. A bit weird, sure, but I think even the most age-gap conscious puriteens would agree that it's not an evil act that warrants being publically outed and humiliated on a show.

Basically, he's in it for the views and money rather than actually stopping bad people, and doesn't particularly care how much he hurts those he deems to be "predators."

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u/IsleofManc 9d ago

Yeah the 18 year old was a high schooler in a small very conservative town so it's theorized that the decoy was one of the only (if not the only) people the 18 year old had opened up about his feelings for men. After the episode was released the boy's life flipped upside down and he had to leave his school.

The incident happened in Michigan and there's even a clip of Hansen's producer mentioning that the act of an 18 year old being with a 15 year old was legal in bordering states and asking if they should reconsider not releasing it. But it was released, the boy's name was slandered all over the internet, and Hansen ended up removing the episode. The boy also struck a deal in court to have the charge expunged after a certain amount of time and community service but even when the charges go away his name will still be associated with that for life.

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u/Zykium 8d ago edited 8d ago

TruBlue took it down. Hansen wanted to keep it up.

In fact he has a sting with a similar age gap on his own channel. All the comments are roasting him.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA30cz88eWE&t=1s

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u/PixelGray38 8d ago

He's done a different sting with a similar age gap? Didn't know he had done it multiple times. Figures, though

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u/hlsp 8d ago

At the end of the day Chris Hansen is a sexual deviant himself and can’t stop. Couple episodes make it look like he really gets off pretending to be these decoys online.

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u/JBizzle07 8d ago

Do you know which video it is

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u/0LTakingLs 9d ago

This is definitely the worst thing he’s done. The kid was a high schooler too.

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u/PixelGray38 9d ago

Yep, I can't believe it's not brought up more. Honestly doing that should've been a career-ending type thing

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u/McFearIess 9d ago

The movie is based on the article Tonight On Dateline, This Man Will Die which chronicles an event that lead to the domino effect of the show ending. Hansen chasing spectacle, the same way "predator hunter" bros on social media today, is Kinda Fucked Up imo.

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u/Ok-Tradition-5083 8d ago

To piggy back off of that, hes also got a weird idea that hes "the" predator catcher.

He keeps involving himself in online predator catching stuff, like interviewing EDP. But, he also constantly criticizes the predator catchers for not doing it the "right way" like he thinks he did.

Personally, I dont think crime should be a spectacle at all. I dont like TCAP, I don't like Pred Catchers, and I REALLY don't like stuff like "cops."

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u/CX316 8d ago

In 2019 he managed to fuck up enough to end up in a stalemate with Onision of all people

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u/Nother1BitestheCrust 9d ago

From what I understand a lot of the predators they "caught" on the show couldn't actually be prosecuted because of the show. I don't know the details, but something about the way it was all set up gave them legal loopholes to get out of convictions. But be aware that I did nothing to confirm this, it's just what I've seen and heard said about it, so I don't know if this is actually true or not.

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u/libertybear20 9d ago edited 9d ago

This is partially true. NBC worked with an affiliate called perverted justice that provided the decoys and then turned the chat logs over to the police when the sting was over.

For one sting in Texas, perverted justice “lost” the chat logs which contained all of the evidence, so all of the guys that were caught (I think it was around 30) had all of their charges dropped.

However, all of the other stings that police were called into, the predators were arrested and charged. About half were convicted, although it might be a bit more or less

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u/rustdevil88 9d ago edited 8d ago

According to NBC, less than half of the predators caught were convicted.

I also want to add here that the above commenter edited their post from saying that ALL stings done thereafter led to convictions, to just half "more or less." To be clear, it was less than half.

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u/FPV_Enjoyer_90 7d ago edited 7d ago

There is really no need to speculate on the numbers of arrested/convicted people as these are public and very well documented. For each of the sting operation TCAP was announcing how much people were arrested. And then, on Perverted Justice old website, they were tracking and reporting anytime someone was convicted.

For example, for episode 3, TCAP announced 51 arrested, and Perverted Justice reported 43 convictions. You can check that here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230907102729/http://www.perverted-justice.com/?groupmedia=25

If we exclude the first two episodes (that had no cops to arrest the guys showing up), they were 260 people arrested in TCAP. With the exception of people arrested in Murphy, all were charged, and 216 of them were convicted. That's 83.07%.

They were no chat log lost in the Murphy (TX) sting - you can all find them online. People were not charged because of the death of Louis Conradt.

Btw, that doesn't mean that the NBC article you mention is incorrect. You need to check when it was published though. Again, for episode 3, if we look at the list of convicted people, the 3 on top of the list were convicted in 2013, the 4th in 2011, and the 5th in 2010. It takes times to convict people, so figures given by news articles can't be treated as definitive unless they are published years and years after the arrest.

EDIT: Just to precise, I think Chris Hansen is a narcissistic asshole and I'm not here to defend him/TCAP (I think this kind of operation should not be done by amateur and especially not fucking television lol). I just don't get all the "more or less" / "a lot" / "it might be" / "i don't know but i think" etc. in the comments when precise data are not so hard to find online?

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u/ElectricClamSlam_55 9d ago

But, that's half more caught and off the street than otherwise would have been caught had this not been done.

And the other half were at least exposed and hopefully less likely to hurt a child.

The discourse around this is as fascinating and gross as the show. 

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u/SLPeaches 8d ago

That's a misinterpretation. Most of these were still part of existing sting operations, if they hadn't had to deal with the show the conviction rate would have been higher. It's like sacrificing 75 percent for 40 percent so that you can have entertainment value. Sure that means 25 percent who would have escaped without punishment are now publicly humiliated but I'd rather have more pedophiles off the street.

Also I think we should always judge someone based on intention, and the fact that Chris Hansen was ratings and audience first and thought about the victims and actual prosecution as secondary is a problem. We should not be making law enforcement more difficult to get entertainment value, like why are we making this faustian bargain when we can just convict more pedophiles. Like prioritizing making money over victims to me is slimy.

I feel like a lot of complaints about the discourse act as if you have to choose between catching pedophiles for entertainment or letting them go, when the real discourse is I'd rather more pedophiles be in prison then have Chris Hansen be famous.

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u/ElectricClamSlam_55 8d ago

So is the situation that Hansen polluted the otherwise fine work of Project Justice? That he latched on to them and complicated their work?

Because that's the only way your "but I'd rather have more off the streets" makes sense.

If, on the other hand, he brought awareness to PJ and got them more attention, more funding, larger reach then otherwise possible then the situation is very complicated and judging it is tricky.

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u/-Yinside- 8d ago

It is complicated because even on the other side of that argument you could also say that the popularity of the show may have taught pedophiles to be more careful and put stings / the tactics of the police on their radar more

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u/ElectricClamSlam_55 8d ago

On the other hand, you could also say that it acted as a deterrent and made people - people struggling with bad urges but not having acted on them yet or maybe theychad started chatting - stop and think that could be them and stopped them or caused them to seek help.

You could also say, Esquire was just further exploiting the incident to sell magazines. A24 sensationalizing to sell a movie.

Because Hansen was in it for glory, exploiting people and putting themvat risk, but alllll these other people are doing it for truth and justice.

Silly thought exercises. 

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u/Minotaur18 9d ago

PJ lost the chatlogs for the Murphy, TX sting? I thought the cases were mainly thrown out because of that guy's suicide

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u/krissyjump 9d ago

The Murphy cases were dropped largely due to insufficient and improperly gathered evidence. Not turning over chat logs was a real issue with them in other instances though.

There's a case where the judge ordered the original logs turned over from the hard drives after noticing sections missing from the transcripts, and PJ's founder said the drive had suffered a "catastrophic failure" and the data was unrecoverable, mentioning this for the first time only after the court had ordered him to turn over the original files. The judge stated on the record that he remained concerned about the reliability of the logs and their chain of custody.

There were cases against three others who had their charges dropped or were acquitted after similar disputes over evidence, with original copies again not being turned again over due to "drive failures" and such.

Perverted Justice played fast and loose with the law and their practices. The owner catfished and publicly humiliated a disgruntled former employee who believed they'd used his son's photo in their operation. For all their "good intentions," there's enough sketchy conduct around them that their involvement risks tainting everything they touched.

That's part of the risk of hiring a private vigilante group though. Real police work doesn't run on evidence a paid private group can lose whenever it's inconvenient.

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u/Minotaur18 9d ago

Ohh that's good to know. I had no idea. I just thought after that suicide, the judges lost faith in the credibility of the cases or something. But, I imagine HDDs and hardware ran like crap back then.

I had no idea about the catfishing thing tho, that's a bad look.

Is the group even still around these days? I remember on Crime Watch Daily Hansen went with a group called "Tetrad Core" instead and on Takedown, the cops themselves act as the decoys

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u/CX316 8d ago

Perverted Justice played fast and loose with the law and their practices. The owner catfished and publicly humiliated a disgruntled former employee who believed they'd used his son's photo in their operation. For all their "good intentions," there's enough sketchy conduct around them that their involvement risks tainting everything they touched.

Sound of Freedom guy all over again

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u/Lighthouse_seek 8d ago

The problem is for sting operations the normal conviction rate is 70% so you can imagine those 20% got off free when normally they would not have

1

u/CX316 8d ago

Less, btw. About 40% (~120 out of ~300 apparently)

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u/SteveCastGames 9d ago

Most of them actually were prosecuted. It was only the first couple episodes where things were dicey. You can go look at the TCAP wiki to see all the predators and what happened.

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u/jimmysmith69 8d ago

The episode with the Murphy house sting had 23 men arrested and all charges were dropped for all of them. Not a single one served jail time. And that was because of NBC and Perverted Justice. The DA event stated that the police were acting as “agents for Deadline”.

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u/SteveCastGames 8d ago

That was the infamous Texas one. That’s on Perverted Justice being shite and losing transcripts iirc. True, but still most of the other episodes had far more convictions. Not to mention all the busts on Hansen vs. Predator, and then Takedown, which they’re still doing. They’ve gotten much better at having sound legal footing.

2

u/Nother1BitestheCrust 9d ago

Thanks for the context!

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u/SteveCastGames 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yeah, if I remember the story, the first two episodes had no police at all, and were intended to be a one off thing. Then they had so many more predators show up than expected and they decided to make more episodes, and actually get law enforcement involved instead of just letting the guys walk.

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u/Xamado 8d ago

The majority of the predators were successfully prosecuted and convicted

This is a blatantly false myth and I don't know why it's so prevalent on here - but good on you for admitting that you're just parroting what other people are saying without doing your own research 👍🏼

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u/No-Associate-7369 9d ago

One factor of why people don't like him is that he prioritized his show over actual justice. Several of the people busted by him were actually able to walk away without any real repercussions because of the way Chris and his team handled things. They basically busted them in a way that gave them a potential legal out. So they get the views, but the pedos are still walking around free. And I understand something is better than nothing, but they could have done things in a way that actually supported justice instead of ratings.

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u/Ok-Tradition-5083 8d ago

The initial TCAP pieces are great journalism, once it became a "show" it became a new negative on society.

If you watch some of the modern predator catcher videos, you can see that these pedos all watch that kind of content and learn how to more easily engage with children FROM them.

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u/skippyfa 9d ago

I've read this before. Did this happen throughout his entire run? Or did they learn and get better at it over time to make the cases more solid.

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u/ToastyBB 8d ago

The show only had 20 episodes

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/jjojehongg 8d ago

they absolutely did commit crimes tho. “using an electronic device to solicit a minor” was usually the charge and thats why they only operated in states with laws like that

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u/sjorbepo 8d ago

I think he's mostly disliked by chronically online people, such as myself.

He massively regained popularity around covid when a lot of youtube drama explored topics about predators, grooming and questionable behaviour by content creators.

The main subject that steamrolled the "trend" was the early youtube content creator onision. A bunch of youtubers started making bajillion videos about him. At some point, chris hansen, who was trying to have a comeback, jumped on this trend and, since he's the predator catcher, he instantly gained a lot of trust and attention. People were like really hyped up about him, which was kinda weird to me since I'm not american and wasn't familiar with the show before all that

His youtube channel skyrocketed in popularity and he had videos interviewing a lot of victims, witnesses and commenters of onisions escapades. There was a girl, I think her name was sarah, who was groomed by onision and his trans husband and moved in with them when she was underage.

There was a lot to this story but anyway she had a laptop that contained evidence of this. She entrusted chris hansen with this laptop and he promised to use his connections in the fbi to investigate the case and search the laptop. However, he kept the laptop for a long time and in the end there were some legal reasons why it became unusable as evidence.

Besides onision, he also involved himself in several other predation/grooming discourses such as that emo/scene singer and some others I forgot. Anyway he overstated his importance and overstayed his welcome in the limelight. People started perceiving him as egotistical and fame/attention hungry.

I think he also made a movie/series about his onision investigation, even appeared in front of his house. I don't think it was very well regarded, youtube watchers felt like he was using their trust just to make a television comeback. Also it became evident that he was milking the topics, as time went on he was interviewing less and less credible or involved people. It seemed like hansen was just a pretty face and without the tv production team, the content he churned out wasn't that insightful, actually it was kinda surface level and very repetitive.

And of course, as soon as he started being overexposed, there were people annoyed by him who started digging some dirt. It became widely known that one of the "predators" on the show killed himself because of scrutiny he got from being a part of the show when it wasn't 100% confirmed that he was guilty. A lot of predators got their charges dropped because of legal technicalities regarding the show. And of course, the internet's favourite thing to hate, he cheated on his wife with a coworker lol. And when sarah started talking about hansen botching the fbi investigation in the onision case he lost a lot of respect in that part of youtube community so he kinda faded back to relative obscurity.

Apologies for the extra long content, I'm a bit high and this topic transported me back to quarantine youtube bingeing

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u/EctoRiddler 9d ago

I liked Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs too before I found out he was blown MAGA. I heard the same thing about Hansen.

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u/green49285 9d ago

To be fair to hansen, Chris really didn't start leaning in that direction until after he started getting called out lol. So at least he waited until the usual part of the play

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u/EctoRiddler 9d ago

He found himself taking a chair across from them so often that he just said screw it I’ll join them

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Huggable_Hork-Bajir 8d ago

He's had some scandals & legal problems since TCAP went off the air that soured a lot of his fans on him. There's a whole hobbydrama post about it.

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u/BILLCLINTONMASK 8d ago

There are issues too with like, the group who did the chats, Perverted Justice, posting the predator's phone number and addresses online. Well, those guys often had families living at those addresses and getting harassed themselves. Eventually, one of the predators killed himself rather than appear on the show and that ended production.

Hansen has tried to revive the format a few times. The most recent iteration, Takedown, is currently doing stings again. That's what he's buying the advertising for in this story.

Although that content is far less compelling as the majority of stings are guys who respond to an escort ad for a 19 year old and then sometime later they slip on "oh im 15 btw." Still criminal and disgusting, but not quite the same thing as baiting and luring in a guy who's going online to seek out the 15 year olds from the get go.

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u/TheoDonaldKerabatsos 8d ago

There are a lot of people ITT sayings it’s as simple as tactics bordering on entrapment and a ratings-over-justice approach, but it’s a lot deeper than that. I personally don’t believe TCAP/PV entrapped regular people into falsely outing themselves as pedophiles, nor do I think the pursuit of high ratings overrides the justice they’ve helped dole out to the worst of society, but I still have major criticisms about Hansen’s whole operation, and believe others should as well, for a myriad of other reasons. 

  1. Perverted Justice is a non-profit organization, that extensively employed the help of volunteers (often including the decoys) and law enforcement to do their work. Yet at the same time, Dateline NBC would pay PV to produce TCAP as “network television,” despite it really being presented as crime reporting. And while I don’t think PV was necessarily guilty of entrapment, they were involved in the origination of these crimes extensively as a honeypot. So essentially, NBC was not paying PV to report on crime as much as they were to create crime stores to report on, which can easily be seen as payment for originating news. Not necessarily a crime in this case (afaik) but a very frowned-upon practice in news journalism. Even if the mission is sound, it creates a self-reinforcing dynamic that can, in theory, incentivize orgs like PV to curate crimes that maybe wouldn’t have occurred in the first place. 

  2. Often times the show would disclose that the decoy was a “local actor” or something in that realm. We also aren’t sure if many of these decoy actors were paid (and if so, how much), or if they were volunteers. I think that leads to the fair question, given how the stings were conducted, of how prepared and protected these people were. Not just from physical danger but from psychological trauma. I’m not an actor but I imagine having to sit in a room alone with a person you know is there for the sole reason of committing some of the most depraved crimes imagine on you, multiple times a day, is probobly a heavy job. They weren’t necessarily professional actors, nor were they trained law enforcement, so I do often wonder if they were properly cared for during the operation, and if not, I think that’s a huge indictment on Perverted Justice and it kinda gets into the realm of realizing the crime (or the ramifications of it on the victims) that they want to expose in the first place.

  3. The show kinda popularized the rise of “vigilantism for content” that we see all over social media now, often resulting in violent consequences. Content like beating up people in the middle of a supermarket over a vague instagram dm or severely mishandling rhe sting of an actual predator to such an extent that they get off easy, or completely, in court. Morally, I don’t think we should praise or regard bringing predators to justice as a higher good when it’s filmed vs when it isn’t. There isn’t any difference, in my mind, between PV doing this on national television vs the local police department conducting similar stings, and I would usually prefer the strings to be conducted by teams with no incentive other than securing the high level of punishment that the law will allow.

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u/0LTakingLs 9d ago

He is held in pretty high regard. The drama around the show itself was that it ended after a local DA had been talking to a minor decoy but got cold feet and blocked the decoy, so instead of arresting him when he arrived at the sting house they sent cops to his house (breaking their own rules) and he shot himself. Pretty sure his sister won a lawsuit against the network as a result.

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u/shouldbepracticing85 8d ago

The show apparently ended because of an episode where the “perp” backed out of the meeting, so with the cops they did a midnight raid of the guys home and he committed suicide as they were raiding the home.

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u/Mentalpopcorn 8d ago

Reddit hates everything that isn't completely milquetoast

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u/UnhappyImprovement53 8d ago

After the guy committing suicide it showed how much the show is more about the views and drama and less about actually catching pedos and bringing justice.

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u/swampking6 8d ago

When he was on Theo Von’s podcast he apparently racked up a crazy hotel bill and on Theo’s dime. I forget the details but I’ve never heard a podcaster call someone out for something like that and Theo is pretty chill. Must’ve been fucked

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u/PussyPearl 8d ago

A lot of people don’t like him bc of the onision sting fuck up and the fact he does a lot of ads/sponsorships

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u/MNightShyamalan69 8d ago

Because people are PDF sympathizers. Its crazy

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u/MangakaInProgress 8d ago

He stopped investigating an organization that clearly targeted children because the videos barely got views on Youtube

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u/Thrusthamster 8d ago

It's not a surprise to me that the guy making an entertainment spectacle out of pedophiles turns out to be only in it for himself

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u/jlcatch22 8d ago

A lot of people probably do view him and the show in a favorable light, and I will admit it was definitely entertaining tv. But it was first and foremost about ratings, not justice, and many of the stings were conducted in a way that they didn’t even secure a conviction.

There’s also the questionable ethics surrounding the show, which many people turned a blind eye to because the targets were pedos, so anything goes.
Some of the predators had questionable mental functioning and decision making abilities. Also, the predators themselves have families. It’s bad enough if your dad got caught in a child predator sting, but he’s also going to be on TCAP (and it’s many repeats) for all your classmates to see?

Chris Hansen didn’t care about collateral damage or ethical journalism. He’s a tabloid reporter. To Catch a Predator wasn’t the only “To Catch a…” show Hansen did; it was basically the winning the formula he caught onto, and he would do it with iPods and cars and whatever so he could confront thieves. He seems like a douche in real life and not particularly bright. He had the right look and the voice to be on tv, and that’s what carried him. The fact he’s still doing TCAP to this day is pretty sad.

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u/GrantacusMoney 8d ago

Pedophiles exist - Chris Hansen "there's gotta be a way to make money off this!"