You know why it's so hard to prosecute cases like this? Because the prosecution has no way of getting around a defendant who simply says: "Yeah, I said/did all those things. But I knew I was talking to an adult, not a child." Or in the Dave Herman case, the defense could very well have been based on a strategy that Herman knew all along that the child was fictitious.
If it sounds strange, just step back and ask yourself how a TV network can go out and set up an entire series of shows about catching child sex predators ... and yet none of the people involved in any of those cases is ever prosecuted.
But the organization that worked with Dateline has a record of getting them prosecuted (it also mentioned it on the shows at the very end)
>>Number of predators convicted due to
Perverted-Justice.com since June 2004:
588
http://perverted-justice.com
I don’t think Dateline is doing the sting operations any more but past episodes showed that certain perps did get prosecuted.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/dateline-catch-a-predator-case-223775
An acquittal, but:
>>Roisman’s is the only case that went to trial; the other 28 men pleaded guilty.
From Wiki on “To Catch a Predator” (Long Beach)
>> During this investigation, the presence of the Dateline sting operation in town was leaked online through a Craigslist internet posting. Nonetheless, 32 convictions resulted from this segment, which aired on January 30 and February 6, 2007.