How controversial 2000s paedophile-hunting show To Catch a Predator rocked US TV

“Why you see the issue of paedophilia, child predation and child trafficking [become] such an issue in politics is because it is an extraordinarily easy issue to align yourself with,” says Osit. Despite being a survivor of child sexual abuse himself, he received death threats for questioning Hansen’s methods in his documentary, as well as showing the more sympathetic raw footage of the show’s alleged predators as obtained through Freedom of Information requests – depicting them pleading, explaining their backstories which included mental illness, and expressing remorse. “It’s a pretty binary good v evil dynamic, even though societally we have also contributed massively… to a world where we, through the media, overtly sexualise young people and teenagers.” Predators touches on the hyper-sexualisation at the time of a teenage Britney Spears, for example.