A new documentary raises questions about the true crime TV show ‘To Catch A Predator’

A new documentary looks at the true crime TV program “To Catch A Predator” and its copycats. NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe talks with filmmaker David Osit about some of the uncomfortable questions “Predators” raises.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Before we hear this next interview, a heads-up – it includes a discussion about child sex offenders and a mention of suicide.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RASCOE: If I say ‘To Catch A Predator,” most of you know what I’m talking about.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TO CATCH A PREDATOR”)

CHRIS HANSEN: How you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right. How are you?

HANSEN: Would you have a seat over in that chair, please?

RASCOE: That’s journalist Chris Hansen confronting a man who’s about to get arrested for using the internet to solicit a child for sex. “To Catch A Predator” was lurid, controversial and very popular.

DAVID OSIT: I can’t think of anything else that aired under 20 times over the course of three years and is still something that multiple generations talk about.

RASCOE: That’s David Osit. He’s the producer and director of a new documentary that’s in theaters now. It’s called “Predators.” It’s an unsettling look at “To Catch A Predator,” which first aired in 2004 as a segment on the TV news magazine “Dateline NBC.”

OSIT: The program would begin with online chats with a man and someone that they believed to be an underage boy or girl, who was in fact a nonunderage person who was pretending to be underage. They would set a time to meet. It would be at a sting house. The men would show up.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TO CATCH A PREDATOR”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Hey. I’m glad you could come.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hey, girl.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) How are you?

OSIT: There would be an actor or an actress there pretending to be the underage child. There’d be hidden cameras filming this interaction.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TO CATCH A PREDATOR”)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You going to have a seat, too?

OSIT: The decoy would leave, and Chris Hansen would then walk out…

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TO CATCH A PREDATOR”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Yeah.

HANSEN: You seem pretty comfortable there.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hi, sir.

HANSEN: How are you?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: All right. How are you doing?

HANSEN: What’s happening?

OSIT: …And interview the men…

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “TO CATCH A PREDATOR”)

HANSEN: So what are you up to tonight?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Not a whole lot.

HANSEN: Well, I’ll tell you. For the last several days, you’ve been up to a lot. You’re a pretty prolific chatter there.

OSIT: …Have excerpts from the chat log to read out loud to them. The men would respond in various degrees of humiliation or denial and then be told they were free to go. At which point, they would leave the house and be arrested at gunpoint by law enforcement.

RASCOE: And it became a pop culture thing to like, oh, Chris Hansen’s coming out. Oh, what did – you know, it became something that was, like, a joke, almost.

OSIT: Very much so, yeah, I think because this is before social media. So there’s a generational shift at this moment in 2004, 2005, where we’re all on the internet but we’re not yet socializing on the internet. So you have this bizarre mix of schadenfreude and horror at watching what you should never be allowed to see, that we’re never in a room for, which is the worst day of someone’s life, and we get to have a front row seat to it. And that’s what the show really was, and that’s why it captivated a whole generation.

RASCOE: There’s some uncomfortable questions that you raise in “Predators.” And they start with one of the decoys – the male decoy – talking about a sting in Texas that ended very tragically.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “PREDATORS”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: You could offer me $10 million to film that episode in Texas again, and I wouldn’t take it. I would not take it and be happy about that decision.

OSIT: That was a sting in suburban Dallas. The identity of one of these men happened to be that of an assistant district attorney in a neighboring county. They wanted to make sure that he showed up. He drove by, but he didn’t come in, so they decided to bring the show to his home. They had a warrant for his arrest. And the “Dateline” camera crews, as well as the local police, arrived at his home, where they realized that this man had in fact committed suicide after seeing the assembled group of law enforcement and media outside of his home.

RASCOE: “To Catch A Predator” eventually aired some footage of that incident. There was a lawsuit, and the program ended about six episode later. What you get into in the documentary – and obviously, you have this horrible situation where this person, you know, killed themselves – there is this tension, right? Child abuse is abhorrent, full stop. There’s no question about that. But is there any room for empathy for these men? Should there be? Or do they deserve whatever happens to them, no matter what happens, because they were engaging in something so horrible?

OSIT: I’m of the mindset that empathy shouldn’t be offered based on who someone is. It should be offered based on who we are. I don’t think that the film I made is asking you to feel bad for these men or feel bad for predators. I certainly don’t feel that way. It – I feel like it’s more about caring how we treat people in a society that we all share. This is a situation where we don’t know exactly what’s going on in the mind of somebody. And very frequently, it’s a situation where someone is a sex offender because they themselves were victims as children. I’m not sure that the only answer in these situations is police. I’m not sure that the only answer in these situations is incarceration. It might, at times, very well be. But I am asking to consider a world where we think about, how do we treat people? Because if we can decide that one group of people is a villain and beyond redemption and not deserving of humanity, as we see all the time in society, it’s very easy to say that about any other group of people.

RASCOE: Chris Hansen – he has a new show on TruBlu called “Takedown.” He told you he makes these kinds of programs for survivors of abuse. But your documentary kind of asked, who are these really for? Why is this entertaining?

OSIT: It’s a great question. And there’s no easy answer, except I think all of us carries this sort of mix of empathy and cruelty and we’re capable of both. There’s also times when we watch TV to feel good, and sometimes it’s other people’s suffering. Sometimes it’s the knowledge of knowing we’ll never have it as bad as those people. And what I think a lot of true crime television helps people feel is a little bit more authority over their lives. I think if you feel like things aren’t going well and you don’t have sort of the services that you need or the money that you want, you can, at the very minimum, kind of enjoy the fact that bad guys are getting put away.

RASCOE: You included in this documentary that you were abused as a child. Did you know that you were going to include your own, or at least some of your own story in this?

OSIT: It wasn’t my plan, no. It took even me by surprise. I started to think about what I was making in terms of asking people to consider the humanity of all people – victims, predators. I think that when you’re a victim, as I was, you really can feel like you’re not a human being. When you feel that way, for me, at least, my reaction was that I never want someone else to feel that way. I felt like it was worth including some element of my story in the film in a way that wasn’t trying to make anyone feel indicted, but as an organic revelation over the course of the film’s runtime that, you know, all of us are part of the cycle of hurt – content creators, filmmakers, journalists and audiences.

RASCOE: Well, there’s this idea, though, of protecting children. But I guess – is it your view that these sorts of stings – are they a way to do that? Are they a way to protect?

OSIT: Personally – this is just my opinion – but I think that if these stings were a way to protect children, we would have seen a fall in numbers of people showing up for them over the 20 years or so that these things have been happening. But of course, the numbers have gone up. My issue is less with the idea of catching child predators, which of course is important and vital. It’s more, how does it become entertainment?

RASCOE: Yeah.

OSIT: How does it become something that’s basically grounded in the idea of, can this become a commercial, viable enterprise, to do this kind of work and to catch people who might need some sort of other help to make sure that these cycles get broken?

RASCOE: The camera changes everything. The act of it being there makes it into something different, and then it brings us into it. We’re now a part of it, right?

OSIT: We become sort of the active ingredient in the chain reaction, so to speak. You know, the source of the humiliation of these men isn’t really Chris Hansen. It’s not the police. It’s us.

RASCOE: That’s David Osit, producer and director of the new documentary “Predators.” Thank you so much for talking with us.

OSIT: Thanks for having me.

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‘Her life will never be the same’: WA family sues Roblox over sexual exploitation of 12-year-old daughter

A photo of two avatars virtually conversing on a Roblox game. (Photo courtesy of Dolman Law Group)

3 

BY JASON SUTICH

Content Editor

A Snohomish County family filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Roblox Corporation, accusing the video game platform of prioritizing financial gain instead of protecting their then 12-year-old child from sexual exploitation by an online predator.

The lawsuit aims to hold Roblox accountable for “recklessly” and “deceptively” operating its business in a way that led to the sexual exploitation of the plaintiff, according to court documents.

The plaintiffs alleged the 12-year-old girl was targeted by a man who posed as a child, gained the trust of the girl, and coerced her into sending sexually explicit images of herself.

“As a direct result of Defendant’s reckless disregard for child safety, plaintiff has suffered devastating and life-altering psychological trauma. Her life will never be the same,” the complaint stated.

As a result, the plaintiff suffered “unimaginable harm,” and hers is only one of countless cases of children who have been subjected to sexual exploitation at the hands of Roblox’s defectively designed app, according to the complaint.

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Roblox hosts millions of young users daily

In Roblox’s 2024 Annual Report, an average of 82.9 million users used the platform daily. Of those active users, 20% were under the age of nine, 20% were ages 9-12, and 44% were 17 years old or older.

The lawsuit claimed that, as early as 2010, virtual games on Roblox hosted and promoted sexually explicit content, with developers being able to manipulate avatar activity in a way that simulated sexual activity.

Some of these virtual game experiences included “condo games,” where users can remove an avatar’s clothing, revealing nudity, and enabling “disturbing” simulated sexual activities, according to the complaint.

Another game mentioned was the “Public Bathroom Simulator Vibe,” which allowed access to users as young as nine years old. This game allegedly enabled users to simulate sexual activity in a virtual bathroom, as well as virtual strip clubs where avatars would perform sexually explicit acts like lap dances.

“Through numerous well-documented and publicized cases, Roblox has long been aware of the systemic exploitation that its app enables and facilitates,” the complaint stated. “For years, countless children have been sexually exploited and abused by predators they met on Roblox.”

Roblox rooms used to trade child pornography

Aside from game experiences, investigative reports found that a search for “adult” on the Roblox platform revealed a chat-room group of more than 3,300 members “openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.”

After tracking members’ activity from the previously mentioned group, additional groups engaged in similar activity were found, including a group with 103,000 members.

Keyword searches for Roblox character usernames also revealed several profiles named after Earl Brian Bradley, “one of the most prolific pedophiles ever,” who raped and molested hundreds of children.

The lawsuit also alleged that Roblox prioritized revenue and user growth, rather than prioritizing enhanced child safety.

“In pursuit of growth, Roblox deprioritized safety measures even further so that it could report strong numbers to Wall Street. For instance, Roblox executives rejected employee proposals for parental approval requirements that would protect children on the platform,” the complaint stated. “Employees also reported feeling explicit pressure to avoid any changes that could reduce platform engagement, even when those changes would protect children from predators.”

Additionally, the complaint alleges that Roblox advertised itself as a safe platform for children, but systematically failed to provide proper safeguards.

“Had the defendant implemented even the most basic system of screening or age and identity verification, as well as effective parental controls, the plaintiff never would have interacted with these predators and never would have suffered the harm that she did. Plaintiff’s life has been devastated as a direct result of Defendant’s conduct,” the complaint stated.

Several claims are being brought against Roblox, including fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, and strict liability for design defects, among others.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages and requesting a jury trial.

Roblox provided a statement on the allegations.

“We are deeply troubled by any incident that endangers any user. Roblox aims to build a platform that sets the bar for safety online, and we prioritize the safety of our community. This is why our policies are purposely stricter than those found on many other platforms. We limit chat for younger users, don’t allow user-to-user image sharing, and have filters designed to block the sharing of personal information. We also understand that no system is perfect and that is why we are constantly working to further improve our safety tools and platform restrictions to ensure parents can trust us to help keep their children safe online. 

We also understand this is an industry-wide issue and we are working to develop industry-wide standards and solutions. For instance, Roblox is implementing an industry-leading policy to help prevent older users from communicating with children by requiring a sophisticated facial age estimation process for all Roblox users who access our communications features. We partner with law enforcement and leading child safety and mental health organizations worldwide to combat the sexual exploitation of children and are a founding member of the Tech Coalition’sLantern project and the nonprofit Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST),” a Roblox spokesperson stated.