They're still showing up

Chris Hansen Correspondent • Profile

FORTSON, GA. - On a stormy summer night, on a winding country road, a potential sex predator slowly approaches a house where he believes a child is waiting for him.  He’s driven a long way for this meeting- almost two hours.

But the driver won’t find a young girl inside—instead a Dateline investigative team awaits his arrival.

Why is this man making such a long trip in the dead of night? Perhaps because he believes a 15-year-old girl is alone inside ready to have sex with him.

But his journey didn’t begin that day— it began more than a week earlier when he entered a Yahoo Georgia chat room and decided to hit on a decoy, an adult posing as a 15-year-old. It didn’t take long for the 23-year-old, screenname “scoobydooat101”, to steer the chat towards sex.

He asked all kinds of sexual questions like “What positions have you tried? U like doggie?”

"Scoobydoo" says “Well if we ever have sex, I’ll introduce it to you. But I switch positions a lot, so you’re bound to learn a few new tricks.”

Now the man with the bag of tricks is walking in our house.  We hired a very young looking 19-year-old to play the part of the girl.

Decoy: Hey.

“Scoobydooat101” or Denis Coulson: Hey.

Decoy: It took you a while to get here.

Coulson: Yeah well someone can’t give good directions of where they live.

Decoy: I was taking stuff out of the dryer, it’ll take a second. I made you some sweet tea. I had to do something to keep me awake. You can take a seat, I just gotta finish taking this stuff out.

You’d never guess by the way this man confidently walks into our house that he’s seen Dateline’s investigations into Internet sex predators before—and he’s still willing to risk being exposed on national television.

Chris Hansen (walks in): You have a hard time finding the place or..

Coulson: Sure man.

Hansen: You got lost huh?

Coulson: Yeah, who are you?

Hansen: Who are you?

Coulson: I’m Denis.

In our latest hidden camera operation, this time in rural Fortson Georgia, 90 minutes south of Atlanta, it doesn’t surprise us that the chat rooms are full of men aware of our previous investigations—men who want to have sex with a minor but are concerned they might be caught on tape.

Del Harvey, Perverted-Justice contributor: It’s actually been referenced by name at this point.  Did you ever see ‘To Catch a Predator?’

Hansen: You think that this is—a deterrent in some ways of people coming over?

Harvey: They’re not showing up.  I mean, they’re not coming over because they’re afraid that it’s media.   

Del Harvey, her screenname, is a member of Perverted-Justice, the online watchdog group dedicated to catching Internet sex predators.

Dateline paid Perverted-Justice a consultant’s fee to do what it usually does, go into chat rooms, posing as 13-15 year olds home alone, interested in sex. 

Some decoys pretend to be eager about sex.  That’s because experts we’ve spoken to say young teens are often curious even precocious when it comes to chatting online about sex without knowing the potential lifelong repercussions of being molested by an adult.

While it’s encouraging to hear our investigations have scared off some potential child molesters, others like “scoobydooat101” obviously didn’t get the message. His real name is Denis Coulson, a construction worker from Atlanta. He says he’s here to meet a girl named Izzy.

Hansen: And how old is Izzy?

Coulson: She told me she was 18.

Hansen: So that’d be cool then because she would be of legal age.

Coulson: No, I wasn’t going to do anything.

Hansen: The problem with that though is that I have the transcripts of your online chat.

Coulson: Okay.

Hansen: So do you want to start again and tell the story from the top?

Coulson: Yeah.

Hansen: Okay.

Coulson: She told me she was 15

Hansen: And what did you guys talk about?

Coulson: Just a lot of different things that we shouldn’t have been talking about.

Hansen: Give me an example.

Coulson: Asked her if she was a virgin.

Hansen: If she was a virgin, why would you ask that question of a 15-year-old girl?

Coulson: I don’t know, I’m sorry I apologize, but I really do not have any plans of doing anything tonight.

Hansen: Did you bring condoms?

Coulson: No sir, I have condoms in my car.

Hansen: Well then you did bring condoms

Coulson: Yes but they are for my, I mean I have them for safety. I mean I was just hanging out, I was not gonna do anything.

Hansen: But you talk about jail.

Coulson: I know.

Hansen: You can’t go to jail for not doing anything.

When I start to read some of his chat log, he gets up and starts pacing.

Hansen: (reading from chat) ‘You know how to ride’. ‘You like doggie’ and then you ask:

Coulson: (loud) Oh God stop okay.  I understand what you’re saying.

Hansen: You ask her, “If you’d delete all those IM’s when you’re done, I’d hate to have your mom get nosy.”

Now it’s time to tell him something he already knows...

Hansen: Have you ever seen the program Dateline NBC?

Coulson: Yes, I probably have, I don’t know.

Hansen: Have you ever seen the stories where –

Coulson: yes yes yes

Hansen: Men come to the house trying and meet kids…

Coulson: Yes but I wasn’t trying to do that I promise

Hansen: Well I gotta tell you something. I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC and we’re doing a story on guys, men trying to meet teens on the Internet.

Coulson: Oh no—maybe this is stupid, I’m a stupid man, I’d like to leave.

He’s free to leave, but he won’t get very far. Perverted-Justice has joined forces with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office providing chat logs and phone records- evidence needed to make an arrest.  Here in Georgia, if a man makes a date online for sex with someone he believes to be a minor, it’s a felony.

He’s arrested and taken away.

Coulson: Please, please, oh my God my life is ruined.  Can you shoot me, can you shoot me? Oh my god, I’m an idiot.

He’s brought into a room with an investigator from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigator: How’d it go at the house Denis?

Coulson: It was awesome.  That was the best day of my life right there.   I never should have said any of that sh*t.

With men all over the Internet admitting they’ve seen our “To Catch a Predator” series, we wondered if it would stop a lot of them from trying to hook up with children.  Or will there be many others like scoobydoo still brazen enough to show up at our house?

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