NBC Settles "To Catch A Predator" Suicide Lawsuit For Undisclosed Amount

NEW YORK — NBC Universal has settled a $105 million lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed a televised sex sting by "Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator" drove her brother to kill himself.

"The matter has been amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both parties," said a statement released by both sides. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Patricia Conradt's lawsuit had claimed her brother, a suburban Dallas prosecutor, fatally shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy.

The lawsuit claimed NBC "steamrolled" authorities to arrest Louis William Conradt Jr. after telling police he failed to show up at a sting operation 35 miles away.

NBC was working with the activist group Perverted Justice on the sting, in which people impersonating children established online chats with men and tried to lure them to a house, where they were met by TV cameras and police.

In February, a federal judge issued a scathing ruling in the case, saying a jury might conclude the network "crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement."

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the lawsuit contained sufficient facts to make it plausible that the suicide was foreseeable, that police had a duty to protect Conradt from killing himself and that the officers and NBC acted with deliberate indifference.

New episodes of "To Catch A Predator" ended in December, with the future of the series uncertain.

"Right now we are working on other investigative stories focusing on national security and the economy," NBC spokeswoman Jenny Tartikoff said Wednesday in an e-mail. "If we do more, we want to make sure we are complementing past investigations not just repeating them."

Comments

[sage25]

Great story -- "Humiliating Television":

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/11/opinion/edacohen.php

[Eric8869]

It was just another diversion so the NBC news division didn't have to cover the war or the Bush white house. so sad.

[MACS]

.
Did not the NBC nemesis O'Lielly also settle a sexual herasment suit prior to the court trial???
.

[chickenhawkwarrior]

WTF?

[GrkAm]

There is such a fine line here. Any sane individual can't say that they want to see children in peril from pedophiles. But then again, the NBC "Predator" lost it's investigative edge when it became a weekly show putting money in NBC's pockets and Chris Bury's name became well known.

[NewRiver]

Chris Hansen

[eyecon]

Actually, they lost their edge when they subcontracted to Perverted Justice, If you do some impartial investigation, you may come to the conclusion that they are incredibly irresponsible, Their leader has used PJ to retaliate in personal grievances. Paid to deliver, it wouldn't shock me at all to find altered chat logs.

I am amazed that so many of the prosecutions held up to chain of custody issues on the transcript. Furthermore, NBC became agents of law enforcement.

[LiberalBuzz]

PJ itself should be investigated. They are some sick individuals.

[OlongapoEd]

It is obvious that children should be protected from predators (they also need to be better protected from predators within their own family, but that's another discussion). However, when an "anything goes" mentality takes hold, justice itself is abused, and you get cases like the Little Rascals Day Care case and the McMartin Preschool case:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson168.html
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/mcmartinaccount.html

None of this is an argument that Conradt (the brother) was blameless (although the usual suspects will almost certainly try to say that it is). However, there are right ways and wrong ways to go about dealing with predators. Sad to say, though, the "Kill them all--God will recognize His own" mentality is still far too common.

Hey, I've got an idea! How about bringing back public hangings! Better yet, televise them!

[Chalkeater]

One thing no one disputes, Bill Conradt sent these messages to what he thought was a 13 year old boy -

"could I feel your ****"

"how thick are you"

"i want to feel your ****"

"maybe you can **** me several times"

"has anyone sucked you"

"just talking about this has me hard"

NBC is the villain and this is the victim?

[NoSillyName]

Sounds exactly like that Republican senator's emails, texts, and phone calls to the Senate Pages.

[sage25]

You forgot to mention that NBC PAID to have a vigilante group set Conradt up with phony Internet chats, and paid to have a young professional actor call Conradt and speak to him at his home.

Conradt was probably gay. There's NO EVIDENCE at all, however, that he ever laid a hand on a young person. And he certainly didn't deserve to have NBC cameramen & a SWAT team outside his residence, threatening to bang the door down, and threatening to show his face in a very tawdry and unfair way solely for the purpose of good television.

Here's the excellent story told by Esquire last summer:

http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907

[xpresv]

Sorry, dude. If someone was writing to my kid in such a way, he BETTER HOPE NBC gets to him before I do.

Why defend this scumbag? $100 million is a lot of money that could be used to, say, help victims of sexual predators recover from their abuse?

Find a real cause.

[raw6464]

There's a very old saying which puts this in perspective... TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT. As much as I agree pedophiles are abhorant, but so are the slim buckets in NBC.

There's was "something" I didn't like about this show and stopped watching it after the first one. You can't go any lower in profiting on another persons misery. Especially the show in question of a man dies and NBC still airs it... FOR PROFIT! Chris Hansen your a one POS!

[matandch]

That's what always troubled me about the show too. If NBC was so interested in protecting minors from predators then they wouldn't have taken a cent in profit. Moreover, no one in the production team should have taken a dime in salary either. Rather, all the money raied by the show should have been donated to charities helping victums of predatory sex crimes.

[sage25]

You're right. Hansen is a gigantic POS!

Patricia Conradt did what was in her own interests, so I suppose I can't really fault her, but the real LOSER in this case is the public. The public really did deserve to know how NBC & Perverted Justice conspired to destroy a man's life. The man who took his life, Conradt's brother, apparently was a really good prosecutor and a respected member of the community. His death was totally needless and preventable.

http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907

[chickenhawkwarrior]

"The man who took his life, Conradt's brother, apparently was a really good prosecutor and a respected member of the community. His death was totally needless and preventable"

What is your point? A lot of Preists were "respected" too. That is why society looked the other way for years, thereby ruining generations of families... He was respected because he was molesting kids in private. Do you think he would be respected after people found out he went to hook up w/ a 13 year old?

That is why he killed himself. Can't face the piper, well good riddance.

The question is why are your sympathies with a pedophile and not the untold kids that were saved by this POS taking his own life?

[CLP]

NBC would insist that the decoys would never be the first to raise the issue of sex. Yet once the isse was raised, the decoys would continue to lie (about their identity and their intentions) in order to advance the criminal activity. And I think that is wrong.

[eyecon]

In point of fact, you have no way of knowing what transpired in the chat or under what circumstances. You only know what Perverted Justice (who had a financial incentive for "results") provided to NBC which in turn, they provided to their audience. While I am sure that NBC issued those instructions to PJ, I am equally sure that they did not adequately supervise them.

NBC had a significant financial interest as well. Law enforcement should be the province of impartial agents without an economic incentive.

[IncredulousGeezer]

What kind of sick folks watch the entrapment, verbal humiliation and finally the physical abuse of these poor pedos as they are thrown to the ground for no reason and handcuffed as their "episode" ends?

Folks just marginally less sick than the pederasts themselves. The latter are driven by a compulsion; what motivates the audience?

"Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator" got off easy, I'd guess. A show that costs next to nothing to produce & only this one settlement. Bet the NBC accountants rubbed their hands in glee.

[sage25]

Not exactly.

"To Catch a Predator" has been cancelled.

Patricia Conradt most likely got paid tens of millions of dollars. With some of that money she can now go after "Perverted Justice."

And Chris Hansen has been portrayed in a very dark light. See Esquire's brilliant story on the downfall of TCAP:

http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907

[IncredulousGeezer]

What's the "not exactly"? She probably collected much less than that, but even if she did it was a good deal financially for NBC = GE.

I watched one and a half of these monstrosities. Chris Hansen should be ashamed of himself; I doubt that any of the network honchos is at all capable of such a feeling.

[coldcanuckinwhite]

This has got to be one of the sickest shows. And to know that people are actually watching it. UUGGGGHHH!!

[sage25]

Kind of says it all:

NBC News has indicated the Predator series has ended. "It"s probably played itself out," Steve Capus, president of NBC News said to Broadcast & Cable.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/news/article_1413373.php/NBC_settles_To_Catch_a_Predator_lawsuit

[Cakey4814]

I'm shocked at these comments. Unless you've been living under a rock you know about the Dateline series and yet these men still try to set up dates with minors. And now a sister is profiting from it..only in America!!

[sage25]

You're full of crap.

The judge in New York said that Patricia Conradt's case was compelling enough to go to court. In fact, it WAS NBC UNIVERSAL that was so awfully anxious to reach a settlement. Why would a big corporation like that want to settle with someone suing them for $105 million?

The answer can be found in this Esquire story written last summer:

http://www.esquire.com/features/predator0907

[curly2]

Thanks for the link, that was fascinating--

I hope they stop The Catch a Predator stuff. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want my local police making decisions based on the information supplied by opportunistic TV networks, and I don't want networks to be able to put pressure on local law enforcement to get warrants or make arrests. It's sleezy and it reeks.

[RobotHouse]

Making people want to kill themselves is such great television. The only reason this is successful is because it gives people a common enemy, someone they can look at and think "well at least I'm better than that guy" makes you feel all that much better about cheating on your wife because "at least you're not a pedophile". It's sick either way. pedophile or not, there is no reason a person should be paraded around on television. its called compassion, and common human decency, something many Americans lack.

[Marioth]

The most startling aspect of this series is the sheer number of men we're talking about. No matter where they took this program, the men turned out like mosquitos at a bloodletting.

If one extrapolates the numbers, we find that a city such as Los Angeles has hundreds of thousands of these men on the loose.

Locking them up does no good because eventually they have to be set free. When they come out, they are concentrated together in half-way houses, and this does not address the problem, but it does increase the chances criminal behavior beyond feeing up kids.

And the problem is this: our puritanical society cannot engage in an adult conversation where the words "sex" and "children" are used in the same sentance. If hundreds of thousands of guys in LA do this, we're talking many millions across the country. And most abuse those they know in silence.

Silence = Death

We need to find a way to talk this out and find out what is really going on. The force that moves these men is clearly presently out of our control, and we remain terrified to paralysis by it.

And NO women. Not one. Not a single female. Utterly fascinating, and we do not talk about it.

Pax,
M.

[sage25]

Guess you never heard of Mary Kay LeTourneau, or any NUMBER of women teachers who illegally had relations with their MUCH YOUNGER male students.

Also, the NBC show selectively took portions of chat logs. According to numerous reports, those chat logs are not legally valid pieces of evidence.

[NoSillyName]

Sure. She went to jail for her transgression. She's now happily married to her "victim" and they are raising their children.

[True]

I hear what you're saying.

But i don't think you're seeing the whole picture. There may not be any women on "to catch a predator" but there are plenty of women having sex with minors. Look at all the teachers with their students, for example, or the mom who tried to initiate sex with her daughter a while back.
I don't think that our society views sexual abuse initiated by women "as bad as" sexual abuse initiated by men. There was even a movie called Tadpole a while back about two cougars pursuing an underage boy, but i saw no protests going up over that movie. Can you imagine if the roles were reversed?

Once again, I hear you, but let's not make this a "man" issue.

Cheers, True