August 19, 2021 • 32 mins
Amy sat down with @officialchrishansen and asked him out of the gate what he would say to parents that don’t think that a predator would ever contact their child? His response: “WAKE UP!” This is an important thing we all need to be aware of, so we hope you take time to listen to this episode. Chris also has a podcast where he shares updates on predators that were caught on his show if that might interest you: “Predators I Have Caught with Chris Hansen."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, road, a little food for you. So life ain't Oh,
it's pretty Bay, It's pretty beautiful. Thanks, beautiful laughs, A
(00:23):
little moth tighten up because said he kick with four
Happy Thursday. We're gonna be doing something a little bit
different today for the four things. I'm not going to
have my typical four things imaging dividing up the topics
because I'm sitting here with Chris Hansen, who's an investigative journalist,
(00:45):
and I just feel like this topic is very serious.
You likely know Chris. He's done a lot of amazing work,
but he's at least known in my mind for sure,
from Dateline and BCS to Catch a Predator, and he
also has a pod cast where he's revisiting some of
those cases called predators I have caught. And I just
(01:06):
think this is such an important topic, and Chris, thank
you so much for joining me in this discussion and
helping raise awareness and remind everyone, including me as a
parent and some of my other parent listeners, or shoot,
even if you're not a parent, it's just good to
remember that online predators are out there and this is
very real, and you know, we need to be aware
(01:27):
of that. We don't want to believe that it could
happen to our kids, right that their rate has properly
been taught some rules. But think about this amy. You know,
seventeen years ago we did the first predator investigation in Bethpage,
Long Island. I was unsure if anybody would show up
even for that, whether or not I had wasted tens
of thousands of dollars in the network's money. Seventeen years later,
(01:50):
just a few months ago, we're in Michigan, and again
guys show up to meet underage boys and girls for sex.
We had a Michigan State Corrections off served prison guard.
We had a guy who had done contracting work in
the Governor's mansion. This is just months ago, as we
get ready to launch a whole new television predator investigative series.
(02:11):
I honestly thought that it would be a one or
two episode event on day Line, and that by the
third time we did it, there was a very good
chance no one would show off, that people would have
learned their lesson. Now fast forward, and especially during the pandemic,
when the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children will
tell you that the the amount of predatory contacts online
(02:33):
has exploded. When we started, we merely had decoys and
chat rooms on a well and Yahoo. Well today you
can't even keep track of all the social media platforms
besides the you know, the obvious, the TikTok's, the interactive gaming,
the Twitter and Twitch, and you know that, the dating websites.
I mean, it's really difficult to keep track up. So
(02:53):
there is more potential now in terms of social media platforms,
and more potential because kids are spending more time online.
This is where they get educated, this is where they
have their social interaction, and this is where they explore.
So this is where it's happening. So it's very important
to have this conversation with your kids about being saved online.
(03:15):
And it starts with an age appropriate conversation. I think,
what would you say to a parent that's like, oh,
that's just never going to happen to my kid, wake up.
You have to start with a conversation when the kids
are young, and as I mentioned before, age appropriate and
kids respond to this. I think there are people out
there who want to trick you on the internet. Kids
(03:35):
don't like to be tricked, and you don't want to
get too heavy into explicit and too you know, deep
into it early on, because you'll lose them. But if
you start there and as they get older, use some
examples of how adults have you know, preyed upon children online?
I think you can get their attention. And the problem
(03:55):
here with this particular crime is that we don't have
an effective way of demand and reduction. We have punishment,
and there is treatment available, but it's not a sexy
part of medicine. When we talk about drugs, we can
treat it more as a sickness than the chrome addiction.
We don't have the ability to treat this as an addiction.
We don't have the understanding to delineate between addictive behavior,
(04:19):
criminal behavior, sociopathic behavior. It's just all lumped into one category,
and so it becomes very difficult to piece it out
to know who can be treated and put on parole
and be fine, who needs to be locked up for life.
You know, it's it's not a very sexy aspect of medicine.
So we have some very dedicated people who are studying
predators and pedophiles behind bars, and they're getting some some
(04:42):
honest answers from these people, but there is still no
roadmap to finish the problem, and I doubt there ever
will be, And so your best defense is protecting your children,
having that discussion, having that dialogue, and taking physical precautions,
technical precautions, with your various advices. And there's no issue
I think as apparent snooping. Sometimes you need to know
(05:05):
what's going on. What is the main platform? I know that. Yeah,
in the last few years, there's so many other different
avenues that have popped up, But is there still a
main way that that they're doing it? It shifts amy.
It can be skipped the games one day, it can
be a dating website one day. It can be TikTok
one day, it can be all kinds of things. But
(05:26):
the one thing that all of these events have in
common is that once the contact is made on the
social media platform, it changes over to communication directly on
the smartphone, and so you need to have some sort
of monitoring. When I was growing up, the advice was
don't talk to strangers. Was a good advice then, good
advice now. But the difference now is that the person
(05:46):
contacting your child online who's a stranger on a Wednesday
may be so adept at grooming at cajole, ng at
convincing your child that this person is someone different, that
it's another kid or whatever, that he's not a stranger
by the end of the week, and that's when this
guard drops and this comfort level starts to be created.
(06:08):
And that's the dangerous of Now you mentioned grooming, and
I think that it is a skill. I mean, it's
a really scary one. But some are very very good
at it to where you know, I don't know, a
kid for sure, doesn't even realize that that's what's happening.
Like if you're an adult that's aware, you're onto it,
so you're not going to fall for it. But a
kid isn't. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of transcripts or
(06:31):
thousands of pages of transcripts you know that I've read
over the years, you see a pattern. But and it's frightening,
and especially we go back now and do the podcast
where we look back at these cases where these guys
are now you know, did they go straight, did they
go to prison? What happened? And and we dig a
little deeper and go behind the scenes in these cases.
So it forces me to immerse myself into something that
(06:55):
I may have only dug into a little bit because
it was happening so quickly, and it really is disturbing
when you get deeply into it and you you go
word by word and line by line, and you see
it follows a pattern and they break down these traditional
walls that existence society between adults and children, and kids
(07:16):
fall for it. Sometimes this is a personal question for you,
just because it popped into my head when you said
you're digging deep into it and I just can't imagine
being in this particular line of work. How are you
able to shut it off in a way to where
after you were to film an episode and it's or
you're dissecting, you know, going back and looking at a
(07:38):
case or digging really deep into something, because I mean,
this is heavy stuff. I know the journalists have to
deal with a lot, but how how are you able
to compartmentalize? Well, you know, I've done it for forty
years now, and whether it's you know, the newer investigations,
the television series that we have about now on Discovery
Plus and we're working on some more along those same lines.
(08:00):
We expose you know, different kinds of editors. The Peter
Nygard's The Eisions of the World on on social media
YouTube etcetera. It does get at you because it it
becomes very personal because when you go after somebody today,
because of the nature of social media and the ability
for people to create misinformation campaigns, they sometimes come back
(08:21):
after you. And so you have to have very thick skin.
You have to be focused on, you know, the mission,
and you can't be afraid that somebody is going to
come back at you and say something, whether it's true
or not. And we have this discussion in our hosthold
all the time. It's like, look, these people are gonna
take shots, but they're like ants in a jar. You know,
they're irritating to look at, but they really can't hurt you,
(08:44):
at least in our case. So you have to continue
on and stay focused. But yeah, it it's dark material.
And I often joke that, you know when people ask
if you ever got therapy or anything like that, and
and I'm not dismissing therapy. I think it's critically important
and it it saves a lot of people. And you
talk to the Michael fell So the world and they'll
back that up. But you know, when it comes to me,
I sometimes you know, bury this stuff and I keep
(09:05):
it nice and safe under a cement camp where it belongs,
and and I have different ways of coping with it,
but you know, you just have to not let it
get you down. You know, you have to see the
big picture. At least for me and everybody, it's very
individual specific. So I realized that the material that we've
produced over the years is for the greater good, and
it educates people. It takes people on a journey of
(09:26):
discovery they wouldn't normally get to take, and they see
things and hear things they wouldn't normally get to see
in here. So if you can get in the mind
of a criminal and you can hear the voice of
a victim, you can better prevent other people from becoming victims.
And I think that's that's part of my job as
as a journalist. And so you mentioned on your podcast Predators,
I've caught that you'll do a deep dive to see
(09:48):
where are they now and have they rehabilitated and what
are you all finding as you dig a little deeper
to where they are now? Are people getting the help
they need and they're able to move past this? It's
a mixed bag. And as you can imagine, people who
have moved on with their lives. Maybe somebody who surfaced
in one of our investigations was twenty or twenty one.
(10:10):
He was trying to meet a girl who is thirteen
or fourteen, thinking, Okay, in a few years, if this
works out, the age of difference won't be illegal. It's
more of a Juliet think. I would argue that at
that age difference, it's a crime, and there's no difference
between a forty year old and a twenty year old
in terms of the harm they could cause. But he
said that there are those guys in that category who
have moved on, who become artists and business people and
(10:31):
productive members of society. It's not something they want to
talk about. It's something I want to talk about with them,
and we're in the process of trying to to. You know,
have people on the show who will talk about it.
You have an area of people in the middle where
we really don't know what they're up to. We have
some who are still in prison and we will never
figured it out. We have some, for instance, the Rabbi
(10:52):
David Kay who was criminally prosecuted in our second investigation
way back in two thousand six. He's been in o
A is in multiple times for prole violation. I mean,
here's a guy who's with his therapist and his promation officer.
Parole officer comes to talk to him and he's not
supposed to have a device that access as certain aeras
in the Internet, and while he's in the interview with
(11:13):
the therapist and the promation officer, his illegal phone goes off. Off.
You go, who's back to back to prison? I mean,
you know when you go learn you know you mentioned
(11:33):
sometimes it might be okay for parents to snoop, like
what are we looking for? I think you're looking at things.
You're looking for things that would indicate communication with someone
you don't know. And remember the key here is when
you talk to kids, you shouldn't be talking to people
online who you don't know in real life. I mean, yeah,
when when when adults are looking to meet people online,
(11:55):
that's different. There's still a danger level for adults meeting
on dating website is many background checks are involved here,
but you really have to approach it as if you
don't know that person unless you actually know them in
real life. Because the person who says to you they're
fourteen year old good looking kid in Malibu, California could
(12:18):
be a fat fifty six year old sitting in his
underwear in a basement with the computer, surrounded by empty
pizza boxes. And that's reality. And we've seen cases where
kids have been trigged by those posing as age appropriate people.
And so, how do you feel about kids with social media?
Do you have an age suggestion for parents? I think
(12:39):
each parent knows their child best. I think one of
the most disturbing trends I see now and one I
think that's deserving a more reporting some parents who are
exploiting their children on YouTube and other social media platforms
in an effort to make money. I mean there are
some outrageous things, right, and I mean there are the
cute things too that are shared amongst family members. You know,
(13:00):
little so and so did this today, or we had
a third birthday for so and so. There's a cottage
industry today with some parents exploiting some children, and it's
very disturbing and it's vastly unregulated and it's gonna it's
gonna do damage down the road. Yeah. I mean, I've
thought with my kids. My daughter's fourteen, my son is
now eleven, and they have a say whether or not.
(13:22):
But I do have a very public following, especially on Instagram.
You know, I'm on a nationally syndicated radio show every
morning and I tell stories about them, but nothing's like
visual and there's no direct like contact. But I did
make a choice to put them on my social media
when they were younger, after we had just we adopted
them from Haiti. Now they're a little more vocal of
(13:44):
like I don't want to be on there, or I do.
My daughter has no social media of her own, but
now we just got a cat, and she thinks, well,
it doesn't yet, but she wants to set up a
page for the cat. But she's also she's sneaky and smart,
and I'm like, is this her way of trying to
get her own Instagram account but telling me that it's
(14:05):
going to be for the cat. So you know, I'm
hesitant to let her do that, and maybe I do
let her run something like that, but from my phone. Look,
you know, I'm on the other side of it for
the most part. I mean, you know, my oldest is
our guys ranged from almost thirty to nineteen. But still,
you know, in the case the kids are in college,
(14:26):
you know, if they want to face time me in
the middle of the night because they're at a party
and and somebody wants me Christiansen. That's fine, but I
don't tag them in an Instagram post on something journalistically
related to anything else because they need to have their
private lives and I don't need to advertise to the world.
(14:48):
You know, where these kids are, where they go to
school and all that sort of thing. Now my older guys,
who are you know, they have public images. One works
in this business behind the scenes and as a camera
guy and a production guy, and the other is on
camera for a television station Oklahoma City. So you know
that's different. They're grown ups. They're twenty seven and twenty
nine years old, but that anybody younger who's still in school,
(15:08):
niece's nephews, you know. And I'm very careful with do
we have a number of how many predators are out there?
You know, it's a very difficult number. Years ago, at
the very beginning, this number fifty thousand at any given
time was battered around and it came to me through
a speech made by the Attorney General at the time.
(15:29):
And when I traced it down and came back to
something that was actually on the show that came from
another speech by a local Attorney general. And and we
don't really know is the answer a lot? But if
you give it an account that the you know, the
ubiquitous nature of the Internet worldwide, I mean, there's no
telling who's out there at any given time. There's no
telling how many are on any individual social media platform.
(15:54):
So it's almost worthless to try to drive a specific number.
It's big, and it's an issue, and we've got cases
to show in the National Center from Missing Exploited Children
will tell you that in the peak of the pandemic, specifically,
there was an explosion in verified reports to Nick Knack
of predatory contact online focusing on children and and and
(16:18):
so you know, when I think about statistics, I go
for the National Center from Missing Exploited Children. I think
it's very reliable. Some of the other groups are very
reliable law enforcement obviously when they're verified reports, and that's
what I deal with. But nobody can say honestly that
there are ex number of predators online at any of
the time. We just don't know. So we just need
(16:39):
to know that there is a lot. They do exist,
they are out there, and it did pick up during
the pandemic. It's not going away. I think the most
important things that we do with this franchise, with this
kind of reporting, is that they we create a dialogue
that didn't exist before in an awareness, and I think
by just the very very true of you and I
(17:01):
having this discussion and parents having this discussion with their kids,
just the awareness automatically brings a level of security that
didn't exist before. So it's really just talking about it.
Let's use me as an example, since I've got I mean,
you know, fourteen eleven, they're similar. Like you mentioned, it
starts with a conversation, you know, age appropriate. So let's
(17:24):
say I'm going to sit down with my daughter tonight
and start this conversation. What would your advice be for me?
Each kid is so individual specific. So growing when my
boys were the oldest guys were growing up, you know,
one would tell me almost too much and one you
had to drag stuff out of them. So, you know,
every every approach is different. But you know, if you
(17:44):
toss a subject out there, or you tell a story
about something you read or in my case, something I
reported on, and let them mull it over, simmer on
it for a minute, and usually it sparked some sort
of a conversation I saw this today, or did you
guys see this deal with TikTok or did you hear
about this new social media website? Or explain to me
(18:06):
how snapchat works and let them go on and on
it so and usually kids will open up and tell
you about it, and from there you can take it
to who are you talking to on Snapchat? And I
just want you to be where I don't want to
scare you blame it on me. I was talking to
Chris Hansen today or I saw something or I heard
his podcast, and you know, I know that you wouldn't
(18:28):
do this on purpose, but I just want to make
sure that you're that you're all good here and you
know who you're talking to. You know, I've always said
a good interviewer is a better listener. You don't sit
down with a list of questions. You sit down with ideas,
and then you try to get in somebody's head and
let them tell you the story. And if there's a
silent moment, that's okay. And sometimes the best question is
(18:49):
just to say explain that. Do you think it's okay
to explain to them exactly what grooming is? Yeah? I
think so, And again, I'm not pretending like I'm here here.
I have no degree in therapy or anything like that.
I you know, I'm exposed a lot of therapists and
people who have information because of what I do for living,
and I try to glean something from everybody who I
(19:10):
think is A is a good point where A is
smarter than I had. But yeah, I think you know. Look,
you don't want to turn them off, right, and you
don't want to be the parent. I think you know,
like my dad would just create such a loud noise
anytime somebody did something he didn't want that we just
hit it all from him, right, And you don't want that.
You can't be your kid's best friend because that's not right.
(19:32):
You're the parent. And so someplace in between, you navigate
a comfort space where you say, look, if anything weird
happens to you, you can come to me and tell
me about it, and I'm not going to get mad
at you. It's sort of like, you know, when they
get older and they're at a party, you know, if
people are drinking, including you or the person driving, let
(19:54):
me know and I'll come get you. If I've been drinking,
I'll send an uber. But do not ever get in
a car behind the wheel after you've had even one
drink or anything else, and you know you'll get a
you'll get a free pass just by letting me know.
So we don't have this dangerous issue. And I think
that applies to a lot of things in parenting. And
(20:15):
you know, you gotta have rules, there's got to be
some sort of you know, a consequence for bad behavior.
But if you create an environment where they can come
to you and say, you know, it's weird, this happened today,
and you can say, all right, great and run it down,
and if it is trouble, you can report it. I
(20:42):
think that's half the battle right there. I have young
people that listen as well, and I guess what would
you tell them if maybe they know a friend is
in a i'll call it a sticky situation, like they
know that the friend is chatting with someone that they shouldn't,
but they don't want to be a tattletale, but they
really are worried. Well, I think they should come to
you first and you can make the decision as to
(21:04):
how dangerous the situation is, and you can reach out
to that parent. And we had a case, you know,
and I did it a show on it on the
YouTube channel I have a seat with Chris Hansen. We
had a mother whose fourteen fifty year old son was
on social media and was contacted by somebody who identified
themselves as a very attractive, age appropriate girl who sent photos.
(21:26):
He sent photos back. It ended up it wasn't a girl,
it was scammers. We then used his photos as a
form of child pornography on the Internet and used him
to blackmail him. And he's not a dumb kid, He's
not a you'll behave child. He got tricked. He finally,
you know, on the verge of suicide over this, told
his mom, you know, thankfully, and the mom got involved,
(21:48):
and you know, they stuff is being these photos are
being swapped and transmitted all across Twitter, and they contacted
Twitter and they said, well, we see no violation of
our terms of service here, and they went back and
fourth and finally they got the FBI involved, and you know,
they pushed and pushed and they took him down. But
there was a lot of damage done in the period
of time between the report and the time something was done,
(22:11):
and there's a there's a civil lawsuit against Twitter seeking
damages on the end right now. But you know there's
a situation where you know, if your kid came to
you and said so and so was in a jam here,
you know, then you've got to navigate that with that parent.
But I think you're you're better off offending somebody by
contacting them. I would rather know then they had this
poor kid go through all this. I mean, it's it's
(22:33):
really hurtful to the kid who gets trick and they're
barressed and they're shamed and they don't want to come forward.
It's got to be so hard to be a kid
with all the technology and everything. We had Playboy magazines
in the woods, you know, that was it. That was
as bad as I got when I was a kid,
And now it's it's the wild wise stop there. You know,
(22:53):
you mentioned that it was someone posing as a woman,
but I'm assuming that really was a man. But are
are there any women predators? You know, that's an excellent question,
and we have never seen a woman show up in
one of our investigations. I write about a case in
the book I wrote some years back on the whole topic,
(23:14):
and the experts will tell you that in the case
of female predators, you're more likely to see the teacher
student scenario. That female predators don't like the anonymity that
a male predator does. A male predator feeds off of
it sometimes, and so you see this, you know, fantasy
life being played out online, and then they literally the
line between fantasy and reality and they act out and
(23:36):
some of this guy's knocking at your door in the
case of the female predator, usually see the teacher student.
And so out of all the years we've been doing this,
and um, all the sting operations we've conducted, we have
never once, out of hundreds of predators seeing a woman
going surface seeking a young man or young woman. Yeah,
(23:57):
you bring up a good point though too. I have
obviously some of the teachers that make the news, but yeah,
they just haven't shown up on the show. But that
is a situation where I guess in a way, but
I feel like a society we were this is not right.
But I'm going to say it that when I see that,
I don't gasp nearly as loudly as I do if
it were a male teacher with a female I think
(24:20):
you represent a lot of people like it's still not right. No,
it's wrong, and it's damaging, armful and all that, and
the laws should be applied equally to men and women,
but it doesn't have the same visceral response for whatever
combination of societal reasons. But then back to the hundreds
of men you've seen show up at the door, is
(24:40):
there something they have in common that got them there?
What they have in common is they don't stand out
of a crowd. Yeah, we get our fair share of
range e looking predator like characters who you might as
well have the word predator tattooed on their forehead, But
the vast majority are run of the mill guys you'd
(25:00):
see walking down the street, standing next to you in
a grocery store or dry cleaners on a Saturday morning.
And they come from all walks of life. We've seen
doctors on the cutting edge of cancer research, We've seen teachers,
we've seen you know, as I mentioned, law enforcement officers,
people from all walks of life. I guess I mean
(25:21):
more so like do they have a background or psychologically
or have they experienced trauma as children themselves that then
lead to this, Like I don't know if there's like
a consistent not that every single person is going to
have it, but there's a common thing or theme that
shows up. I think there's all that. And again, you know,
(25:41):
I'm by no means a therapist or or you know,
a prosecutor, law enforcement investigator. I just play them on TV.
But you know, it strikes me that there are three
different categories. They're the hardcore predator who would be doing
this with or without the Internet, you know, the bad
little league coach, the guy lurking about at the food
court of them all, the guy probably around the theater.
(26:01):
Bad guys, and maybe they had something happened in their
life that made them this way. Maybe they're wired that way,
but they're bad no matter what. They're the younger guys
who are maybe socially in apt to see this as
an opportunity to finally meet their girl or guy, and
they can probably be given probation and some sort of
restriction for a while on the Internet, and you know,
(26:22):
probably goes straight. And then there's this more complicated category
in the middle, guys who think this way, who have
fantasies but would not act out upon them without the
Internet and the addictive nature to it, the anonymity and
the seven access. And I think they get to a
point where they work themselves up into this possibility of
(26:43):
having this underage boy or girl and they blur the
line between fantasy and real and suddenly they're knocking on
our door. And they often say, I knew this was
going to be you. I knew this was a sting.
I knew it wasn't right. And then it goes into,
you know, the excuses I was just here to you
and I am the girl, or wanted to alert the
boy's parents, and you know, you go on into the
(27:06):
crazy excuses that we hear. But but I think those
are the basic three categories, at least in in our
experience what we've seen. You know, you mentioned you know
you're not this this and this US play that on TV.
But how did you get into this specific role? Well,
you know, I've always been a reporter, you know, from
my my later teens. I was in radio and print
(27:27):
and it was lucky enough to get into television when
I was still in college, and so along the way
I had an interest in crime reporting. I grew up
a mile and a half from where Jimmy Hoffa was
last seen, and as a teen I was fascinated by
I used to ride my bike up there and check
out the crime scene and all the reporters and correspondensor
(27:47):
and so I guess I get bit by the bug
back then. But as I progressed from Lansing to Tampa
to Detroit to the network, you know, I just sort
of focused on this crime investigative enterprise reporting and done
all of it over the years. And when I heard
about this online washdog group called Preferreted Justice, I started
to think, well, maybe if we combine their ability to
(28:09):
pose as kids in chat rooms with our ability to
wire a house with microprohones and cameras, it could be
pretty compelling. So I pitched it, and a lot of
smart people weighed in on it, and we did it,
and that's how it started. It was the wildest thing
I remember when it first came out, and then even
just I was on air on the Morning Show back
(28:29):
in its prime in some of those years, and I
mean that's what we would talk about it. We'd be like,
oh my gosh, to do I mean, that was our
part of what we were speaking about while people were
on their morning drive. I mean, it did it blew
our minds that, like people were still showing up my mind.
I mean, you know, and again we're out doing it
(28:50):
now and they're still showing right, And because it's not
as simple as oh wow, I just I now know
they're filming people on TV because it is it's something
that's so sick in someone that's happening. Like we infiltrated
a crime as it was being committed. I mean, if
you had the ability to put cameras in in every
(29:10):
drug house or every bank robbery or you know, you
would see this being committed. And what we were able
to do was to insert ourselves in a scenario and
watch a crime being committed in real time, watch the
chat online which in most cases constitutes the felony, and
watch them show up and be able to talk to
(29:30):
the person, be able to see in some cases the
person interact with the target, the victim in the case.
And so it is very compelling to watch. You know.
I often joke with people that you know, out of
ten Emmy's, none of them is for to catch a predator,
all for other things that the Predator franchises, you know,
five percent of my portfolio. But it is without a
(29:52):
doubt the most impactful and iconic thing I've ever I've
ever done or been a part of and you know
when my too old us were, you know, in high school,
they went to a high school on the East Coast
that you had a lot of famous dads. You know,
being on TV wasn't a big deal, captains of industry
in Wall Street and sports. But when South Park did
(30:12):
a Chris Hansen to Catch a Predator episode, suddenly you're like,
I've I've made it. I was on South Park. I
would just yes encourage some people maybe didn't watch to
Catch a Predator, or depending on what age they are,
maybe going back and listening to the podcast, or people
don't watch things, but going back and revisiting it will
(30:34):
very much make it real that that predators are out
there and we do need to make sure that we're
protecting our kids. And if you're a parent, it's our
responsibility to have these conversations. So I'm thankful to have
sat down with you today, Chris, to remind us of
that and give us any wisdom that you have on it.
(30:57):
Given that you've dedicated so much of your life to this,
the work that you do is so important and I
am thankful for it. Quickly, before we wrap, if you
wouldn't mind sharing with us for things that you're thankful for.
I typically have guests share some some things that they
you know, love having in their life, like on a
daily basis, big or small. Well, you know, that's a
(31:18):
great question. So I think if I had to name
four things, and I'm thankful for a lot of things, right,
I thankful for you know, my family, friends, loved ones
one and what I'm able to contribute to those relationships.
That I'm fit, focused, and that all these projects are financed.
So it's a it's a bit of an over alliteration
(31:39):
with you. I think focused and finance finnswers are three
and family is the fourth and most important. So awesome, Okay,
I love that. Well, thank you so much for taking
the time and all the content that you put out
there for for us that that really is making a
difference a tune, there's more to com Okay, awesome, Well,
(32:02):
thank you, Chris. Thanks Amy,
Okay, road, a little food for you. So life ain't Oh,
it's pretty Bay, It's pretty beautiful. Thanks, beautiful laughs, A
(00:23):
little moth tighten up because said he kick with four
Happy Thursday. We're gonna be doing something a little bit
different today for the four things. I'm not going to
have my typical four things imaging dividing up the topics
because I'm sitting here with Chris Hansen, who's an investigative journalist,
(00:45):
and I just feel like this topic is very serious.
You likely know Chris. He's done a lot of amazing work,
but he's at least known in my mind for sure,
from Dateline and BCS to Catch a Predator, and he
also has a pod cast where he's revisiting some of
those cases called predators I have caught. And I just
(01:06):
think this is such an important topic, and Chris, thank
you so much for joining me in this discussion and
helping raise awareness and remind everyone, including me as a
parent and some of my other parent listeners, or shoot,
even if you're not a parent, it's just good to
remember that online predators are out there and this is
very real, and you know, we need to be aware
(01:27):
of that. We don't want to believe that it could
happen to our kids, right that their rate has properly
been taught some rules. But think about this amy. You know,
seventeen years ago we did the first predator investigation in Bethpage,
Long Island. I was unsure if anybody would show up
even for that, whether or not I had wasted tens
of thousands of dollars in the network's money. Seventeen years later,
(01:50):
just a few months ago, we're in Michigan, and again
guys show up to meet underage boys and girls for sex.
We had a Michigan State Corrections off served prison guard.
We had a guy who had done contracting work in
the Governor's mansion. This is just months ago, as we
get ready to launch a whole new television predator investigative series.
(02:11):
I honestly thought that it would be a one or
two episode event on day Line, and that by the
third time we did it, there was a very good
chance no one would show off, that people would have
learned their lesson. Now fast forward, and especially during the pandemic,
when the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children will
tell you that the the amount of predatory contacts online
(02:33):
has exploded. When we started, we merely had decoys and
chat rooms on a well and Yahoo. Well today you
can't even keep track of all the social media platforms
besides the you know, the obvious, the TikTok's, the interactive gaming,
the Twitter and Twitch, and you know that, the dating websites.
I mean, it's really difficult to keep track up. So
(02:53):
there is more potential now in terms of social media platforms,
and more potential because kids are spending more time online.
This is where they get educated, this is where they
have their social interaction, and this is where they explore.
So this is where it's happening. So it's very important
to have this conversation with your kids about being saved online.
(03:15):
And it starts with an age appropriate conversation. I think,
what would you say to a parent that's like, oh,
that's just never going to happen to my kid, wake up.
You have to start with a conversation when the kids
are young, and as I mentioned before, age appropriate and
kids respond to this. I think there are people out
there who want to trick you on the internet. Kids
(03:35):
don't like to be tricked, and you don't want to
get too heavy into explicit and too you know, deep
into it early on, because you'll lose them. But if
you start there and as they get older, use some
examples of how adults have you know, preyed upon children online?
I think you can get their attention. And the problem
(03:55):
here with this particular crime is that we don't have
an effective way of demand and reduction. We have punishment,
and there is treatment available, but it's not a sexy
part of medicine. When we talk about drugs, we can
treat it more as a sickness than the chrome addiction.
We don't have the ability to treat this as an addiction.
We don't have the understanding to delineate between addictive behavior,
(04:19):
criminal behavior, sociopathic behavior. It's just all lumped into one category,
and so it becomes very difficult to piece it out
to know who can be treated and put on parole
and be fine, who needs to be locked up for life.
You know, it's it's not a very sexy aspect of medicine.
So we have some very dedicated people who are studying
predators and pedophiles behind bars, and they're getting some some
(04:42):
honest answers from these people, but there is still no
roadmap to finish the problem, and I doubt there ever
will be, And so your best defense is protecting your children,
having that discussion, having that dialogue, and taking physical precautions,
technical precautions, with your various advices. And there's no issue
I think as apparent snooping. Sometimes you need to know
(05:05):
what's going on. What is the main platform? I know that. Yeah,
in the last few years, there's so many other different
avenues that have popped up, But is there still a
main way that that they're doing it? It shifts amy.
It can be skipped the games one day, it can
be a dating website one day. It can be TikTok
one day, it can be all kinds of things. But
(05:26):
the one thing that all of these events have in
common is that once the contact is made on the
social media platform, it changes over to communication directly on
the smartphone, and so you need to have some sort
of monitoring. When I was growing up, the advice was
don't talk to strangers. Was a good advice then, good
advice now. But the difference now is that the person
(05:46):
contacting your child online who's a stranger on a Wednesday
may be so adept at grooming at cajole, ng at
convincing your child that this person is someone different, that
it's another kid or whatever, that he's not a stranger
by the end of the week, and that's when this
guard drops and this comfort level starts to be created.
(06:08):
And that's the dangerous of Now you mentioned grooming, and
I think that it is a skill. I mean, it's
a really scary one. But some are very very good
at it to where you know, I don't know, a
kid for sure, doesn't even realize that that's what's happening.
Like if you're an adult that's aware, you're onto it,
so you're not going to fall for it. But a
kid isn't. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of transcripts or
(06:31):
thousands of pages of transcripts you know that I've read
over the years, you see a pattern. But and it's frightening,
and especially we go back now and do the podcast
where we look back at these cases where these guys
are now you know, did they go straight, did they
go to prison? What happened? And and we dig a
little deeper and go behind the scenes in these cases.
So it forces me to immerse myself into something that
(06:55):
I may have only dug into a little bit because
it was happening so quickly, and it really is disturbing
when you get deeply into it and you you go
word by word and line by line, and you see
it follows a pattern and they break down these traditional
walls that existence society between adults and children, and kids
(07:16):
fall for it. Sometimes this is a personal question for you,
just because it popped into my head when you said
you're digging deep into it and I just can't imagine
being in this particular line of work. How are you
able to shut it off in a way to where
after you were to film an episode and it's or
you're dissecting, you know, going back and looking at a
(07:38):
case or digging really deep into something, because I mean,
this is heavy stuff. I know the journalists have to
deal with a lot, but how how are you able
to compartmentalize? Well, you know, I've done it for forty
years now, and whether it's you know, the newer investigations,
the television series that we have about now on Discovery
Plus and we're working on some more along those same lines.
(08:00):
We expose you know, different kinds of editors. The Peter
Nygard's The Eisions of the World on on social media
YouTube etcetera. It does get at you because it it
becomes very personal because when you go after somebody today,
because of the nature of social media and the ability
for people to create misinformation campaigns, they sometimes come back
(08:21):
after you. And so you have to have very thick skin.
You have to be focused on, you know, the mission,
and you can't be afraid that somebody is going to
come back at you and say something, whether it's true
or not. And we have this discussion in our hosthold
all the time. It's like, look, these people are gonna
take shots, but they're like ants in a jar. You know,
they're irritating to look at, but they really can't hurt you,
(08:44):
at least in our case. So you have to continue
on and stay focused. But yeah, it it's dark material.
And I often joke that, you know when people ask
if you ever got therapy or anything like that, and
and I'm not dismissing therapy. I think it's critically important
and it it saves a lot of people. And you
talk to the Michael fell So the world and they'll
back that up. But you know, when it comes to me,
I sometimes you know, bury this stuff and I keep
(09:05):
it nice and safe under a cement camp where it belongs,
and and I have different ways of coping with it,
but you know, you just have to not let it
get you down. You know, you have to see the
big picture. At least for me and everybody, it's very
individual specific. So I realized that the material that we've
produced over the years is for the greater good, and
it educates people. It takes people on a journey of
(09:26):
discovery they wouldn't normally get to take, and they see
things and hear things they wouldn't normally get to see
in here. So if you can get in the mind
of a criminal and you can hear the voice of
a victim, you can better prevent other people from becoming victims.
And I think that's that's part of my job as
as a journalist. And so you mentioned on your podcast Predators,
I've caught that you'll do a deep dive to see
(09:48):
where are they now and have they rehabilitated and what
are you all finding as you dig a little deeper
to where they are now? Are people getting the help
they need and they're able to move past this? It's
a mixed bag. And as you can imagine, people who
have moved on with their lives. Maybe somebody who surfaced
in one of our investigations was twenty or twenty one.
(10:10):
He was trying to meet a girl who is thirteen
or fourteen, thinking, Okay, in a few years, if this
works out, the age of difference won't be illegal. It's
more of a Juliet think. I would argue that at
that age difference, it's a crime, and there's no difference
between a forty year old and a twenty year old
in terms of the harm they could cause. But he
said that there are those guys in that category who
have moved on, who become artists and business people and
(10:31):
productive members of society. It's not something they want to
talk about. It's something I want to talk about with them,
and we're in the process of trying to to. You know,
have people on the show who will talk about it.
You have an area of people in the middle where
we really don't know what they're up to. We have
some who are still in prison and we will never
figured it out. We have some, for instance, the Rabbi
(10:52):
David Kay who was criminally prosecuted in our second investigation
way back in two thousand six. He's been in o
A is in multiple times for prole violation. I mean,
here's a guy who's with his therapist and his promation officer.
Parole officer comes to talk to him and he's not
supposed to have a device that access as certain aeras
in the Internet, and while he's in the interview with
(11:13):
the therapist and the promation officer, his illegal phone goes off. Off.
You go, who's back to back to prison? I mean,
you know when you go learn you know you mentioned
(11:33):
sometimes it might be okay for parents to snoop, like
what are we looking for? I think you're looking at things.
You're looking for things that would indicate communication with someone
you don't know. And remember the key here is when
you talk to kids, you shouldn't be talking to people
online who you don't know in real life. I mean, yeah,
when when when adults are looking to meet people online,
(11:55):
that's different. There's still a danger level for adults meeting
on dating website is many background checks are involved here,
but you really have to approach it as if you
don't know that person unless you actually know them in
real life. Because the person who says to you they're
fourteen year old good looking kid in Malibu, California could
(12:18):
be a fat fifty six year old sitting in his
underwear in a basement with the computer, surrounded by empty
pizza boxes. And that's reality. And we've seen cases where
kids have been trigged by those posing as age appropriate people.
And so, how do you feel about kids with social media?
Do you have an age suggestion for parents? I think
(12:39):
each parent knows their child best. I think one of
the most disturbing trends I see now and one I
think that's deserving a more reporting some parents who are
exploiting their children on YouTube and other social media platforms
in an effort to make money. I mean there are
some outrageous things, right, and I mean there are the
cute things too that are shared amongst family members. You know,
(13:00):
little so and so did this today, or we had
a third birthday for so and so. There's a cottage
industry today with some parents exploiting some children, and it's
very disturbing and it's vastly unregulated and it's gonna it's
gonna do damage down the road. Yeah. I mean, I've
thought with my kids. My daughter's fourteen, my son is
now eleven, and they have a say whether or not.
(13:22):
But I do have a very public following, especially on Instagram.
You know, I'm on a nationally syndicated radio show every
morning and I tell stories about them, but nothing's like
visual and there's no direct like contact. But I did
make a choice to put them on my social media
when they were younger, after we had just we adopted
them from Haiti. Now they're a little more vocal of
(13:44):
like I don't want to be on there, or I do.
My daughter has no social media of her own, but
now we just got a cat, and she thinks, well,
it doesn't yet, but she wants to set up a
page for the cat. But she's also she's sneaky and smart,
and I'm like, is this her way of trying to
get her own Instagram account but telling me that it's
(14:05):
going to be for the cat. So you know, I'm
hesitant to let her do that, and maybe I do
let her run something like that, but from my phone. Look,
you know, I'm on the other side of it for
the most part. I mean, you know, my oldest is
our guys ranged from almost thirty to nineteen. But still,
you know, in the case the kids are in college,
(14:26):
you know, if they want to face time me in
the middle of the night because they're at a party
and and somebody wants me Christiansen. That's fine, but I
don't tag them in an Instagram post on something journalistically
related to anything else because they need to have their
private lives and I don't need to advertise to the world.
(14:48):
You know, where these kids are, where they go to
school and all that sort of thing. Now my older guys,
who are you know, they have public images. One works
in this business behind the scenes and as a camera
guy and a production guy, and the other is on
camera for a television station Oklahoma City. So you know
that's different. They're grown ups. They're twenty seven and twenty
nine years old, but that anybody younger who's still in school,
(15:08):
niece's nephews, you know. And I'm very careful with do
we have a number of how many predators are out there?
You know, it's a very difficult number. Years ago, at
the very beginning, this number fifty thousand at any given
time was battered around and it came to me through
a speech made by the Attorney General at the time.
(15:29):
And when I traced it down and came back to
something that was actually on the show that came from
another speech by a local Attorney general. And and we
don't really know is the answer a lot? But if
you give it an account that the you know, the
ubiquitous nature of the Internet worldwide, I mean, there's no
telling who's out there at any given time. There's no
telling how many are on any individual social media platform.
(15:54):
So it's almost worthless to try to drive a specific number.
It's big, and it's an issue, and we've got cases
to show in the National Center from Missing Exploited Children
will tell you that in the peak of the pandemic, specifically,
there was an explosion in verified reports to Nick Knack
of predatory contact online focusing on children and and and
(16:18):
so you know, when I think about statistics, I go
for the National Center from Missing Exploited Children. I think
it's very reliable. Some of the other groups are very
reliable law enforcement obviously when they're verified reports, and that's
what I deal with. But nobody can say honestly that
there are ex number of predators online at any of
the time. We just don't know. So we just need
(16:39):
to know that there is a lot. They do exist,
they are out there, and it did pick up during
the pandemic. It's not going away. I think the most
important things that we do with this franchise, with this
kind of reporting, is that they we create a dialogue
that didn't exist before in an awareness, and I think
by just the very very true of you and I
(17:01):
having this discussion and parents having this discussion with their kids,
just the awareness automatically brings a level of security that
didn't exist before. So it's really just talking about it.
Let's use me as an example, since I've got I mean,
you know, fourteen eleven, they're similar. Like you mentioned, it
starts with a conversation, you know, age appropriate. So let's
(17:24):
say I'm going to sit down with my daughter tonight
and start this conversation. What would your advice be for me?
Each kid is so individual specific. So growing when my
boys were the oldest guys were growing up, you know,
one would tell me almost too much and one you
had to drag stuff out of them. So, you know,
every every approach is different. But you know, if you
(17:44):
toss a subject out there, or you tell a story
about something you read or in my case, something I
reported on, and let them mull it over, simmer on
it for a minute, and usually it sparked some sort
of a conversation I saw this today, or did you
guys see this deal with TikTok or did you hear
about this new social media website? Or explain to me
(18:06):
how snapchat works and let them go on and on
it so and usually kids will open up and tell
you about it, and from there you can take it
to who are you talking to on Snapchat? And I
just want you to be where I don't want to
scare you blame it on me. I was talking to
Chris Hansen today or I saw something or I heard
his podcast, and you know, I know that you wouldn't
(18:28):
do this on purpose, but I just want to make
sure that you're that you're all good here and you
know who you're talking to. You know, I've always said
a good interviewer is a better listener. You don't sit
down with a list of questions. You sit down with ideas,
and then you try to get in somebody's head and
let them tell you the story. And if there's a
silent moment, that's okay. And sometimes the best question is
(18:49):
just to say explain that. Do you think it's okay
to explain to them exactly what grooming is? Yeah? I
think so, And again, I'm not pretending like I'm here here.
I have no degree in therapy or anything like that.
I you know, I'm exposed a lot of therapists and
people who have information because of what I do for living,
and I try to glean something from everybody who I
(19:10):
think is A is a good point where A is
smarter than I had. But yeah, I think you know. Look,
you don't want to turn them off, right, and you
don't want to be the parent. I think you know,
like my dad would just create such a loud noise
anytime somebody did something he didn't want that we just
hit it all from him, right, And you don't want that.
You can't be your kid's best friend because that's not right.
(19:32):
You're the parent. And so someplace in between, you navigate
a comfort space where you say, look, if anything weird
happens to you, you can come to me and tell
me about it, and I'm not going to get mad
at you. It's sort of like, you know, when they
get older and they're at a party, you know, if
people are drinking, including you or the person driving, let
(19:54):
me know and I'll come get you. If I've been drinking,
I'll send an uber. But do not ever get in
a car behind the wheel after you've had even one
drink or anything else, and you know you'll get a
you'll get a free pass just by letting me know.
So we don't have this dangerous issue. And I think
that applies to a lot of things in parenting. And
(20:15):
you know, you gotta have rules, there's got to be
some sort of you know, a consequence for bad behavior.
But if you create an environment where they can come
to you and say, you know, it's weird, this happened today,
and you can say, all right, great and run it down,
and if it is trouble, you can report it. I
(20:42):
think that's half the battle right there. I have young
people that listen as well, and I guess what would
you tell them if maybe they know a friend is
in a i'll call it a sticky situation, like they
know that the friend is chatting with someone that they shouldn't,
but they don't want to be a tattletale, but they
really are worried. Well, I think they should come to
you first and you can make the decision as to
(21:04):
how dangerous the situation is, and you can reach out
to that parent. And we had a case, you know,
and I did it a show on it on the
YouTube channel I have a seat with Chris Hansen. We
had a mother whose fourteen fifty year old son was
on social media and was contacted by somebody who identified
themselves as a very attractive, age appropriate girl who sent photos.
(21:26):
He sent photos back. It ended up it wasn't a girl,
it was scammers. We then used his photos as a
form of child pornography on the Internet and used him
to blackmail him. And he's not a dumb kid, He's
not a you'll behave child. He got tricked. He finally,
you know, on the verge of suicide over this, told
his mom, you know, thankfully, and the mom got involved,
(21:48):
and you know, they stuff is being these photos are
being swapped and transmitted all across Twitter, and they contacted
Twitter and they said, well, we see no violation of
our terms of service here, and they went back and
fourth and finally they got the FBI involved, and you know,
they pushed and pushed and they took him down. But
there was a lot of damage done in the period
of time between the report and the time something was done,
(22:11):
and there's a there's a civil lawsuit against Twitter seeking
damages on the end right now. But you know there's
a situation where you know, if your kid came to
you and said so and so was in a jam here,
you know, then you've got to navigate that with that parent.
But I think you're you're better off offending somebody by
contacting them. I would rather know then they had this
poor kid go through all this. I mean, it's it's
(22:33):
really hurtful to the kid who gets trick and they're
barressed and they're shamed and they don't want to come forward.
It's got to be so hard to be a kid
with all the technology and everything. We had Playboy magazines
in the woods, you know, that was it. That was
as bad as I got when I was a kid,
And now it's it's the wild wise stop there. You know,
(22:53):
you mentioned that it was someone posing as a woman,
but I'm assuming that really was a man. But are
are there any women predators? You know, that's an excellent question,
and we have never seen a woman show up in
one of our investigations. I write about a case in
the book I wrote some years back on the whole topic,
(23:14):
and the experts will tell you that in the case
of female predators, you're more likely to see the teacher
student scenario. That female predators don't like the anonymity that
a male predator does. A male predator feeds off of
it sometimes, and so you see this, you know, fantasy
life being played out online, and then they literally the
line between fantasy and reality and they act out and
(23:36):
some of this guy's knocking at your door in the
case of the female predator, usually see the teacher student.
And so out of all the years we've been doing this,
and um, all the sting operations we've conducted, we have
never once, out of hundreds of predators seeing a woman
going surface seeking a young man or young woman. Yeah,
(23:57):
you bring up a good point though too. I have
obviously some of the teachers that make the news, but yeah,
they just haven't shown up on the show. But that
is a situation where I guess in a way, but
I feel like a society we were this is not right.
But I'm going to say it that when I see that,
I don't gasp nearly as loudly as I do if
it were a male teacher with a female I think
(24:20):
you represent a lot of people like it's still not right. No,
it's wrong, and it's damaging, armful and all that, and
the laws should be applied equally to men and women,
but it doesn't have the same visceral response for whatever
combination of societal reasons. But then back to the hundreds
of men you've seen show up at the door, is
(24:40):
there something they have in common that got them there?
What they have in common is they don't stand out
of a crowd. Yeah, we get our fair share of
range e looking predator like characters who you might as
well have the word predator tattooed on their forehead, But
the vast majority are run of the mill guys you'd
(25:00):
see walking down the street, standing next to you in
a grocery store or dry cleaners on a Saturday morning.
And they come from all walks of life. We've seen
doctors on the cutting edge of cancer research, We've seen teachers,
we've seen you know, as I mentioned, law enforcement officers,
people from all walks of life. I guess I mean
(25:21):
more so like do they have a background or psychologically
or have they experienced trauma as children themselves that then
lead to this, Like I don't know if there's like
a consistent not that every single person is going to
have it, but there's a common thing or theme that
shows up. I think there's all that. And again, you know,
(25:41):
I'm by no means a therapist or or you know,
a prosecutor, law enforcement investigator. I just play them on TV.
But you know, it strikes me that there are three
different categories. They're the hardcore predator who would be doing
this with or without the Internet, you know, the bad
little league coach, the guy lurking about at the food
court of them all, the guy probably around the theater.
(26:01):
Bad guys, and maybe they had something happened in their
life that made them this way. Maybe they're wired that way,
but they're bad no matter what. They're the younger guys
who are maybe socially in apt to see this as
an opportunity to finally meet their girl or guy, and
they can probably be given probation and some sort of
restriction for a while on the Internet, and you know,
(26:22):
probably goes straight. And then there's this more complicated category
in the middle, guys who think this way, who have
fantasies but would not act out upon them without the
Internet and the addictive nature to it, the anonymity and
the seven access. And I think they get to a
point where they work themselves up into this possibility of
(26:43):
having this underage boy or girl and they blur the
line between fantasy and real and suddenly they're knocking on
our door. And they often say, I knew this was
going to be you. I knew this was a sting.
I knew it wasn't right. And then it goes into,
you know, the excuses I was just here to you
and I am the girl, or wanted to alert the
boy's parents, and you know, you go on into the
(27:06):
crazy excuses that we hear. But but I think those
are the basic three categories, at least in in our
experience what we've seen. You know, you mentioned you know
you're not this this and this US play that on TV.
But how did you get into this specific role? Well,
you know, I've always been a reporter, you know, from
my my later teens. I was in radio and print
(27:27):
and it was lucky enough to get into television when
I was still in college, and so along the way
I had an interest in crime reporting. I grew up
a mile and a half from where Jimmy Hoffa was
last seen, and as a teen I was fascinated by
I used to ride my bike up there and check
out the crime scene and all the reporters and correspondensor
(27:47):
and so I guess I get bit by the bug
back then. But as I progressed from Lansing to Tampa
to Detroit to the network, you know, I just sort
of focused on this crime investigative enterprise reporting and done
all of it over the years. And when I heard
about this online washdog group called Preferreted Justice, I started
to think, well, maybe if we combine their ability to
(28:09):
pose as kids in chat rooms with our ability to
wire a house with microprohones and cameras, it could be
pretty compelling. So I pitched it, and a lot of
smart people weighed in on it, and we did it,
and that's how it started. It was the wildest thing
I remember when it first came out, and then even
just I was on air on the Morning Show back
(28:29):
in its prime in some of those years, and I
mean that's what we would talk about it. We'd be like,
oh my gosh, to do I mean, that was our
part of what we were speaking about while people were
on their morning drive. I mean, it did it blew
our minds that, like people were still showing up my mind.
I mean, you know, and again we're out doing it
(28:50):
now and they're still showing right, And because it's not
as simple as oh wow, I just I now know
they're filming people on TV because it is it's something
that's so sick in someone that's happening. Like we infiltrated
a crime as it was being committed. I mean, if
you had the ability to put cameras in in every
(29:10):
drug house or every bank robbery or you know, you
would see this being committed. And what we were able
to do was to insert ourselves in a scenario and
watch a crime being committed in real time, watch the
chat online which in most cases constitutes the felony, and
watch them show up and be able to talk to
(29:30):
the person, be able to see in some cases the
person interact with the target, the victim in the case.
And so it is very compelling to watch. You know.
I often joke with people that you know, out of
ten Emmy's, none of them is for to catch a predator,
all for other things that the Predator franchises, you know,
five percent of my portfolio. But it is without a
(29:52):
doubt the most impactful and iconic thing I've ever I've
ever done or been a part of and you know
when my too old us were, you know, in high school,
they went to a high school on the East Coast
that you had a lot of famous dads. You know,
being on TV wasn't a big deal, captains of industry
in Wall Street and sports. But when South Park did
(30:12):
a Chris Hansen to Catch a Predator episode, suddenly you're like,
I've I've made it. I was on South Park. I
would just yes encourage some people maybe didn't watch to
Catch a Predator, or depending on what age they are,
maybe going back and listening to the podcast, or people
don't watch things, but going back and revisiting it will
(30:34):
very much make it real that that predators are out
there and we do need to make sure that we're
protecting our kids. And if you're a parent, it's our
responsibility to have these conversations. So I'm thankful to have
sat down with you today, Chris, to remind us of
that and give us any wisdom that you have on it.
(30:57):
Given that you've dedicated so much of your life to this,
the work that you do is so important and I
am thankful for it. Quickly, before we wrap, if you
wouldn't mind sharing with us for things that you're thankful for.
I typically have guests share some some things that they
you know, love having in their life, like on a
daily basis, big or small. Well, you know, that's a
(31:18):
great question. So I think if I had to name
four things, and I'm thankful for a lot of things, right,
I thankful for you know, my family, friends, loved ones
one and what I'm able to contribute to those relationships.
That I'm fit, focused, and that all these projects are financed.
So it's a it's a bit of an over alliteration
(31:39):
with you. I think focused and finance finnswers are three
and family is the fourth and most important. So awesome, Okay,
I love that. Well, thank you so much for taking
the time and all the content that you put out
there for for us that that really is making a
difference a tune, there's more to com Okay, awesome, Well,
(32:02):
thank you, Chris. Thanks Amy,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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