I being to wonder if all so-called children (defined here as below the age of consent) that are actively wanting to meet adults (here defined as 18) are really just law enforcement and media decoys. I suppose there are some children out there who do this for real, but I always seem to be hearing about these dragnets.
From a legal point of view, it seems that the only way for the prosecution to have a good case is for the supposed child to clearly indicate that she is a certain age, and for the predator to cleary indicate that he wishes to meet for sex. I don't think that it is a crime to meet someone for the sake of meeting (or maybe I am wrong here?) Now don't get me wrong - I wouldn't want to have my pre-18 year old (or high school graduate) daughter meet any kind of guy either. I am just curious about the legality from a conceptual POV.
Every time I heard about these sting operations, it seems that just the fact that some adult has actually shown up at a meeting is enough for him to be arrested, and a search warrant put out on him as a judge could be pursuaded that there is probable cause that he has kiddie porn (which is a crime just for the sake of having it.) And when searched, these guys always have thousands of images, and they get put away simply for having these images. I tend to think that the laws on kiddie porn were sharply strengthened to serve as a proxy punishment for men that want to meet girls.
What I wonder about is how deep does communication with a kid have to be before it constitutes something that law enforcement considers worth pursuing. I have plenty of Myspace "friends", and I'm sure a few are under the age of consent (since everyone lies, who's to know?) When asked to "Comment pleaze!", I comment. I would prefer that Myspace enforce at least on the profile setting that everyone is 18, and that they setup something like Myteenspace for folks under 18. Of course, kids could still lie, but at least they would have somewhere to go for themselves. I'm never going to meet any of these kids, but I don't want to have to be worried about anything just because they happen to be young. (I haven't met any adults from Myspace either yet, but at least I would consider that.)
I figure that just to be safe, if I ever were to hook up with someone from Myspace, I would first ask her in a message, "what is your age?" and get a solid response. I suppose that a girl could lie about her age, but such a girl could do that in any situation. I would tend to think that if there were evidence that a girl stated her age as an adult, and there has been no other information that you could reasonably discern that would set her as under the age of consent, and it is reasonable to consider her to be at the age she has stated based on her physical appearance, that you could not possibly get convicted for statutory rape.
