‘To Catch a Predator’ spawned a generation of online pedophile hunters

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The videos come in a barrage: Men — they are almost always men — filmed in closeup, their expressions angry, or confused, or scared.

“Who are you here to meet?” says the voice behind the camera. It’s the moment of exposure, a juncture of dramatic irony: We know — or are told, at least — that the voice behind the camera has chat logs that show the man we’re watching trying to arrange sex with someone he thinks is a minor. If it were 20 years ago, we’d hear Chris Hansen’s refrain: “You see how this looks, right.”

Back then, in the heyday of NBC’s hit show “To Catch a Predator,” what would follow was the network TV host ushering in the police for a dramatic arrest. Now, the sequence is more likely to end in shouted abuse and maybe a scuffle, the video shot on phones and streamed — sometimes live — on platforms like Kick or Facebook.

The film “Primetime,” a critical success that stylishly explores the rise and fall of the one-time NBC hit “To Catch a Predator” and its host Hansen, ends in an eruption of violence borrowed from the program’s actual history. Louis “Bill” Conradt, a Texas prosecutor and the subject of one of the show’s stings, killed himself with a point-blank gunshot to the head as SWAT teams and a film crew surrounded his home.

That incident fractured the real-life Hansen’s image and precipitated the cancellation of the show, as well as a lawsuit that was eventually settled by NBC.

But the story wasn’t over: Hansen, after a few similar failed ventures elsewhere, continues his sting operations on the streaming platform TruBlu, which he co-founded (he described the depiction of him in “Primetime” as “detached from reality” in a YouTube review ).

Is Chris Hansen a pedophile-hunting hero or a great American villain?

And Hansen copycats are everywhere online, filming their own self-styled sting operations, despite facing occasional restrictions or shutdowns from online platforms and warnings or repercussions from police (Instagram videos of vintage Hansen, too, dramatically emerging in front of supposed predators, have proliferated after the film’s release).

These online videos have at their heart the same ostensibly altruistic mission as “To Catch a Predator”: to protect minors by finding and exposing men who are looking to exploit them online.

But their projects demonstrate that the ethical issues at the heart of “Primetime” are still live questions today: What happens when the quest for justice collides with the entertainment industry and the profit motive? And why can’t viewers stop watching?

Hansen has served as an inspiration, explicit or not, for many of the social media pedophile hunters of today.

Emma Hussey, an Australian criminologist, has focused her research on pedophile hunters in the US. “To Catch a Predator’s” influence has been very clear in her interviews with self-described hunters, she said. “Participants mentioned Chris Hansen directly, compared their activities with the program and talked about his interviewing style,” she wrote in an email.

The show provides a familiar, predictable structure to follow. As Hussey put it, “Someone poses as a minor, a meeting is arranged, the target arrives, and the person conducting the confrontation takes control. The audience already understands the roles and anticipates the reveal.”

For the hunter, Hussey said, taking on the Hansenesque hero role is appealing. They can be “the person who takes control, exposes wrongdoing and earns public approval for doing so,” said Hussey.

Joshua Mundy, an Ohio father of three (soon to be four), said he was only vaguely familiar with “To Catch a Predator” in 2020, when he started the investigations that would later become the online video series “Dads Against Predators.” It started, he said, with a personal experience of injustice: Someone in his family “got messed with” and the perpetrator faced what he viewed as limited consequences. So Mundy said he began following the man around, telling people about what he had done, like a one-man sex offender registry.

“To Catch a Predator,” he said, had offered him what looked like a straightforward trajectory: He and his team would catch “predators” and turn them over to police for arrest.

When Mundy actually started running sting operations of his own, it was a surprise to find “it wasn’t that A-to-B easy,” he said. (Ohio, for instance, has strong entrapment laws.)

Dads Against Predators has sometimes worked with police to provide information that leads to arrests. But most of the group’s videos end with punishment, either in the form of public embarrassment or violence: The vigilantes follow their target around in public, shouting their alleged misdeeds. Or they slap or punch their target in the face, before letting them go.

The idea that online stings would translate seamlessly to arrests is only one of the ways that “To Catch a Predator” presented what experts call a misleading image of how sexual abuse and investigations into it unfold.

“The show was right that the problem was real,” said Scott Berkowitz, the founder and director of RAINN, the anti-sexual violence organization. “But it was wrong about almost everything else.”

“Particularly where it concerns child sexual abuse, the imprint that the show has is undeniable, and I think ultimately extremely harmful,” said Kate Sim, a tech researcher who directs the Children’s Online Safety and Privacy Research program.

The show, launched in the still relatively early days of the internet, capitalized on the “stranger danger” panic that framed unknown outsiders as the greatest threat to children. The newfangled internet granted children almost unbridled freedom — and the ability to wander far afield, digitally at least, of where their parents could protect them from harm.

In the world of “To Catch a Predator” and its descendants, the predator comes from somewhere else, summoned via the internet.

In reality, Sim said, the vast majority of child sexual abuse happens within families — a grim truth that’s more difficult to reflect in a flashy TV show.

“Shows like ‘To Catch a Predator’ offer a really compelling idea that with enough vigilantism, you can just identify these creeps that are in your neighborhood,” she said. “When it comes to child sexual abuse, I think there’s something really viscerally uncomfortable about thinking about the fact that it’s somebody who’s known to you — and usually in a caring capacity.”

Last year, Nicholas Attalla, an influencer who goes by the name “Niky Sal” online, arrived at a Tim Hortons in Jamestown, a small city just on the edge of New York’s border with Pennsylvania.

Attalla was there on a mission: He’d been posing as a 14-year-old girl online, scheduling a meetup with a person who claimed to be a 16-year-old boy, according to CNN affiliate WGRZ . What followed was a confrontation that ended with Attalla stabbed and facing criminal charges after police say he started a fight with a man he accused of trying to meet up with a 14-year-old, reported WGRZ.

It wasn’t the first time that an attempted vigilante sting operation ended with violence. Mundy was charged with affray in 2023 after he and several Dads Against Predators collaborators confronted a man in a North Carolina Target, according to WGHP. Co-founder Jay Carnicom was shot in the leg during the fight.

For Mundy, it’s proof of how far the group is willing to go to expose the men they think of as predators. Among a sea of other online vigilantes, he said, “we are the only ones that are actually like taking a bullet because of this.” (Attalla, for his part, pleaded not guilty and was released, and he’s still posting content about supposed predators on social media).

Police aren’t so happy about the whole thing, with some saying the vigilante tactics are dangerous and reckless. In 2020, a group of Ohio police chiefs and other law enforcement officials issued a statement warning Dads Against Predators to stop. , They cited two cases of suicide and another possible suicide by men who had been filmed by the group, according to CNN affiliate WTVG .

“Local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors of Sandusky County and the City of Fremont cannot and will not sit back anymore and watch as DAP continues to parade its form of vigilante justice,” the letter reads. “Its intentions may be well-intended, but their methods and outcomes are improper and unacceptable. The ‘exposed’ individuals may be exactly what DAP says they are, but they also may not be. DAP’s careless and reckless regard for law and order and due process has resulted in the loss of life, and the situation has gotten out of hand.”

The statement didn’t stop Dads Against Predators, who now claim they’ve caught predators in 40 states (on their website, you can click onto an interactive map to watch encounters in the state of your choosing).

Mundy is still proud of the work he does. It’s police, he said, who are “creating dangerous situations by just allowing these men, like, in public and not doing anything about it.”

“The work has to be done,” he said. “If a house is on fire, you can’t be mad at me for going to try to run in there and get somebody when nobody else is, you know?”

Have the efforts to publicly identify men seeking sex with minors made life safer for young people?

In the case of “To Catch a Predator,” Joe Fischel , a Yale professor whose research has included the show, is unequivocal about its failures: “I don’t think the show made the world one iota safer in terms of sexual violence for children,” he said.

“It is a kind of sad state of affairs that a show purportedly to address sexual violence really did nothing to address sexual violence,” Fischel said. The show worked with local police, but many of the criminal cases later ended up being thrown out due to issues of entrapment or jurisdiction, per Fischel; none of the other men arrested in the sting that included Conradt’s suicide were prosecuted. And, as Fischel put it, the more mundane work of preventing sexual violence, like providing children with robust education about sex, intimate relationships, and sexual violence, and supporting them when they report actual harm, is left out entirely of the original show and its imitators.

Sim, the internet safety researcher, reads the appetite for online vigilantes as a symptom of a system where it feels like even after greater awareness about the prevalence of sexual harassment and abuse, not enough justice has been done.

But the shows also feed a more basic impulse: “this idea of the spectacle of punishment,” as “Primetime” director Lance Oppenheim said. He traces the publish punishments of Hansen back to “the town whippers thousands of years ago, who would be publicly punishing someone, publicly shaming someone, and thousands of people would show up.”

Mundy claims that his group’s work has led to multiple convictions, despite his at-times contentious relations with police. But he said that they don’t measure their success in arrests or convictions (and they don’t track the men they’ve “exposed” after the videos come out, either). Instead, they measure success in “changing the culture, changing the attitudes that people have towards pedophilia,” he said.

“This is to educate the audience, to show the audience these people are right next to you,” he said. “It’s really like an alarm clock to society.”

But still, there’s an aspect of fame involved. He said he’s become a small-town celebrity in Fremont, a point of pride for his own children. Almost daily, he gets recognized on the street, he said. It’s hard not to think of Hansen as portrayed by Robert Pattinson in “Primetime,” who’s depicted as enamored with his own burgeoning fame.

Mundy said that the pressures of balancing the drive to produce entertaining content with what he sees as a public safety mission weigh on him daily. Dads Against Predators charges $15 a month to stream its content, and it’s been so successful that it’s now his full-time job. He draws a distinction between his organization and some of his competitors, who might confront their subjects while wearing a Santa suit, or pour cayenne pepper in their eyes as punishment — algorithm-courting clickbait that he says compromises the integrity of the stings.

Oppenheim and Ajon Singh, the screenwriter of “Primetime,” are aware that the public spectacle of punishment they captured hasn’t gone away.

Instead, they said, it’s gotten worse.

“The main difference with ‘Catch a Predator’ in 2006 was that you had the option to change the channel,” Singh said. “It feels like you don’t even have the ability to change the channel anymore. You just keep swiping and keep getting more and more upsetting and deranged things.”

CNN’s David Mack contributed to this report.

Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

这些视频铺天盖地而来：几乎都是男性——以特写镜头拍摄，他们的表情愤怒、困惑或恐惧。

“你来这里见谁？”镜头后的声音问道。这是揭露真相的时刻，也是戏剧性讽刺的转折点：我们知道——或者至少被告知——镜头后的声音掌握着聊天记录，显示我们正在观看的这个人试图与他认为是未成年人的人发生性关系。如果这是20年前，我们就会听到克里斯·汉森那句老生常谈：“你明白这看起来有多糟糕，对吧？”

当年，在NBC热门节目《诱捕捕食者》（To Catch a Predator）的鼎盛时期，接下来通常是电视主持人引导警察前来，上演一场戏剧性的逮捕行动。而现在，这一幕更有可能以互相辱骂甚至扭打告终，视频则被手机拍摄下来，并通过Kick或Facebook等平台进行直播——有时甚至是现场直播。

电影《黄金时段》（Primetime）是一部广受好评的作品，它以时尚的视角探索了NBC曾经的热门节目《诱捕捕食者》（To Catch a Predator）及其主持人汉森的兴衰历程。影片结尾，一场暴力事件爆发，而这场暴力事件恰恰取材于该节目的真实历史。路易斯·“比尔”·康拉德特（Louis “Bill” Conradt）是德克萨斯州的一名检察官，也是该节目卧底行动的目标人物。在特警队和摄制组包围他家时，他近距离朝头部开枪自杀。

那次事件损害了汉森在现实生活中的形象，导致该节目被取消，并引发了一场诉讼，最终由 NBC 达成和解。

但故事并未就此结束：汉森在其他地方几次类似的尝试失败后，继续在他共同创立的流媒体平台 TruBlu 上进行卧底行动（他在 YouTube 评论中将《黄金时段》中对他的刻画描述为“脱离现实”）。

克里斯·汉森是打击恋童癖的英雄，还是美国历史上臭名昭著的恶棍？

尽管面临网络平台偶尔的限制或关闭以及警方的警告或处罚，汉森的模仿者仍然在网上四处出现，拍摄他们自己所谓的钓鱼执法行动（电影上映后，汉森在Instagram上发布的早期视频也大量涌现，视频中他戏剧性地出现在所谓的捕食者面前）。

这些网络视频本质上与“抓捕捕食者”有着相同的表面上的利他主义使命：通过发现和揭露那些试图在网上剥削未成年人的男性来保护未成年人。

但他们的项目表明，“黄金时段”的核心伦理问题在今天仍然是现实问题：当追求正义与娱乐业和逐利动机发生冲突时会发生什么？为什么观众无法停止观看？

汉森对当今许多在社交媒体上猎杀恋童癖的人都起到了激励作用，无论这种激励是公开的还是隐晦的。

澳大利亚犯罪学家艾玛·赫西的研究重点是美国的恋童癖猎人。她说，在她与自称猎人的受访者的访谈中，《诱捕捕食者》节目的影响非常明显。“受访者直接提到了克里斯·汉森，将他们的活动与节目中的活动进行比较，并谈到了他的采访风格，”她在电子邮件中写道。

该节目提供了一种熟悉且可预测的结构。正如胡西所说，“有人假扮未成年人，安排会面，目标人物出现，然后策划对峙的人掌控局面。观众已经了解了角色，并预料到了真相揭晓。”

胡西说，对于猎人来说，扮演汉森式的英雄角色很有吸引力。他们可以成为“掌控局面、揭露不法行为并因此赢得公众认可的人”。

来自俄亥俄州的约书亚·蒙迪是三个孩子（即将迎来第四个）的父亲。他说，2020年他开始调查后来发展成网络视频系列“爸爸对抗捕食者”时，对《诱捕捕食者》这个节目只是略有耳闻。他说，这一切源于他个人的不公经历：他的家人遭到性侵，而施害者却只受到了他认为微不足道的惩罚。于是，蒙迪开始跟踪这名男子，四处揭露他的罪行，就像一个活生生的性犯罪者登记册。

他说，《抓捕捕食者》这部剧似乎为他提供了一条清晰的职业道路：他和他的团队将抓捕“捕食者”，并将他们移交给警方逮捕。

蒙迪说，当他真正开始自己开展钓鱼执法行动时，他惊讶地发现“事情并没有想象中那么简单”。（例如，俄亥俄州有严格的诱捕法。）

“爸爸反性侵犯者”组织有时会与警方合作，提供线索协助逮捕嫌疑人。但该组织的大多数视频最终都以惩罚告终，形式包括公开羞辱或暴力：这些“义警”会在公共场合尾随目标，大声斥责他们的罪行；或者在放走目标之前，扇他们耳光或打他们一拳。

认为网络钓鱼执法可以无缝转化为逮捕行动的想法，只是《诱捕性侵犯者》这部纪录片呈现的性侵犯及其调查过程被专家称为误导性画面的众多方式之一。

“节目对问题的严重性判断是正确的，”反性暴力组织RAINN的创始人兼主任斯科特·伯科维茨说，“但它在其他几乎所有方面都是错误的。”

“尤其是在儿童性虐待方面，该节目的影响是不可否认的，我认为最终会造成极其严重的危害，”儿童在线安全和隐私研究项目主任、科技研究员凯特·西姆说道。

该节目在互联网发展初期推出，利用了当时人们对“陌生人危险”的恐慌情绪，将陌生的外来者描绘成对儿童的最大威胁。新兴的互联网赋予了孩子们近乎不受约束的自由——至少在数字世界中，他们可以畅游四方，而父母却无法保护他们免受伤害。

在《诱捕捕食者》及其衍生节目中，捕食者来自别处，是通过互联网召唤而来。

Sim表示，实际上，绝大多数儿童性虐待都发生在家庭内部——这是一个残酷的真相，很难在华丽的电视节目中反映出来。

“像《抓捕捕食者》这样的节目提出了一个非常有说服力的观点，那就是只要足够警惕，就能识别出你社区里的那些变态，”她说。“说到儿童性虐待，想到施虐者可能是你认识的人——而且通常是你曾经关心过的人——这真的会让人感到非常不舒服。”

去年，网名为“Niky Sal”的网红尼古拉斯·阿塔拉来到了位于纽约州与宾夕法尼亚州交界处的小城詹姆斯敦的一家蒂姆·霍顿斯咖啡馆。

据CNN附属电视台WGRZ报道，阿塔拉此行的目的是：他此前在网上冒充14岁女孩，并安排与一名自称16岁男孩的人见面。随后双方发生冲突，最终阿塔拉被刺伤，并面临刑事指控。据WGRZ报道，警方称阿塔拉与一名男子发生争执，他指责该男子试图与一名14岁女孩见面。

这并非首次有试图私刑抓捕罪犯的行动以暴力收场。据WGHP报道，2023年，蒙迪与几名“爸爸反捕食者联盟”（Dads Against Predators）的成员在北卡罗来纳州一家塔吉特百货商店与一名男子发生冲突，随后他被控扰乱公共秩序罪。该联盟联合创始人杰伊·卡尼科姆在冲突中腿部中枪。

对蒙迪来说，这证明了该组织为了揭露他们认定的性侵犯者愿意付出多大的努力。他说，在众多网络义警中，“我们是唯一真正为此挺身而出的人。”（阿塔拉本人拒不不认罪并被释放，他仍在社交媒体上发布有关所谓性侵犯者的内容。）

警方对整件事并不满意，一些人认为这种私刑方式危险且鲁莽。2020年，俄亥俄州的一些警察局长和其他执法官员发表声明，警告“爸爸反捕食者”（Dads Against Predators）组织停止这种行为。据CNN附属电视台WTVG报道，声明中列举了两起自杀事件和另一起疑似自杀事件，这些事件的当事人都是被该组织拍摄的。

信中写道：“桑达斯基县和弗里蒙特市的地方执法机构和检察官不能也不会再袖手旁观，任由DAP继续以私刑的方式行事。他们的初衷或许是好的，但其手段和结果都是不当且不可接受的。被‘曝光’的人或许正如DAP所说的那样，但也有可能并非如此。DAP对法律、秩序和正当程序的漠视和鲁莽已经造成了人员伤亡，事态已经失控。”

该声明并没有阻止“爸爸反捕食者”组织，他们现在声称已经在 40 个州抓获了捕食者（在他们的网站上，你可以点击交互式地图观看你选择的州发生的遭遇事件）。

蒙迪仍然为自己的工作感到自豪。他说，正是警察“放任这些人出现在公共场合，却不采取任何行动，从而制造了危险局面”。

“这项工作必须有人去做，”他说。“如果房子着火了，当其他人都不敢进去的时候，你不能怪我冲进去救人，你知道吗？”

公开识别与未成年人发生性关系的男性的举措是否让年轻人的生活更安全了？

就《诱捕捕食者》这档节目而言，耶鲁大学教授乔·菲舍尔的研究也包括这档节目，他毫不含糊地指出该节目的失败之处：“我不认为这档节目在儿童性暴力方面让世界变得更安全了哪怕一分一毫。”他说。

“令人遗憾的是，一个号称旨在解决性暴力问题的节目，实际上却对解决性暴力问题毫无作为，”菲舍尔说道。该节目曾与当地警方合作，但据菲舍尔称，许多刑事案件最终因诱捕或管辖权问题而被驳回；在康拉德自杀事件中被捕的其他男子均未被起诉。而且，正如菲舍尔所说，预防性暴力的更实际的工作，例如为儿童提供全面的性教育、亲密关系教育和性暴力教育，以及在他们报告实际伤害时提供支持，在原版节目及其模仿者中完全被忽略了。

网络安全研究员 Sim 认为，人们对网络义警的渴望，反映出这样一个体系：即使人们对性骚扰和性虐待的普遍性有了更深刻的认识，但正义仍然没有得到充分伸张。

但这些节目也迎合了一种更基本的冲动：正如《黄金时段》导演兰斯·奥本海姆所说，“这种惩罚的奇观”。他将汉森公开受罚的现象追溯到“几千年前的城镇鞭笞者，他们会公开惩罚某人，公开羞辱某人，成千上万的人会到场观看。”

蒙迪声称，尽管他与警方关系时有摩擦，但他的团队的工作已促成多人被定罪。但他表示，他们衡量成功的标准并非逮捕或定罪的数量（视频曝光后，他们也不会追踪那些被“曝光”的人）。相反，他们衡量成功的标准是“改变文化，改变人们对恋童癖的态度”。

他说：“这是为了教育观众，让观众看到这些人就在你身边。这就像给社会敲响了警钟。”

但名气的一面依然存在。他说自己在弗里蒙特小镇成了名人，这让他的孩子们引以为豪。他几乎每天都会在街上被人认出来。很难不让人联想到罗伯特·帕丁森在电影《黄金时段》中饰演的角色，那个角色沉迷于自己日益增长的名气。

蒙迪表示，如何在制作娱乐内容和履行他认为的公共安全使命之间取得平衡，每天都让他感到压力巨大。“爸爸反捕食者”组织每月收取15美元的流媒体费用，其内容非常成功，现在已成为他的全职工作。他将自己的组织与一些竞争对手区分开来，后者可能会穿着圣诞老人服装与拍摄对象对峙，或者往他们眼睛里倒辣椒粉作为惩罚——他认为这种为了博取算法点击量而使用的噱头损害了钓鱼执法的真实性。

《黄金时段》的编剧奥本海姆和阿琼·辛格意识到，他们所记录的公开惩罚景象并没有消失。

他们说，情况反而变得更糟了。

辛格说：“2006 年的《捕食者》节目最大的不同之处在于，当时你可以选择换台。现在感觉你连换台的权限都没有了。你只能不停地滑动屏幕，然后不断看到越来越令人不安和变态的内容。”

CNN的戴维·马克对本报道亦有贡献。