CLICK BELOW TO HAER JACK HALL’S INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HANSEN, TRUBLU MEDIA
The latest of the seven suspects in the August sex sting operation in Marquette County will be profiled Thursday in the “Takedown” series, produced by TruBlu Media journalist Chris Hansen.
The seven men were arrested in early August after they allegedly showed up at a home in Forsyth Township to have sex with an underage teenager they had talked with on-line.
Problem for them is, when they arrived at the home near Gwinn, there was no teen there. Instead, Hansen was there, along with police.
This week’s episode shows the arrest of 62-year-old Thomas Soetart of Skandia, who Hansen calls a “frightening character”.
“He wanted to get this (15-year-old) girl to get into his vehicle with him, take her to the woods for sex,” Hansen told RRN News. “He was willing to bring all kinds of materials to facilitate that sexual assault. He shows up and he’s got a backpack with a whole sex kit in it! You know, he’s ready to go. Of course, I confront him and he tries to defend it! It’s shocking what he has to say to me. You’ll see all of that in the episode.”
Now, last week’s episode featured 18-year-old Hunter Trepanier, a teenager from Gwinn who tried to hook up with a 15-year-old boy, but was instead taken down by Hansen.
That episode sparked a large response from RRN listeners and Facebook readers, mostly opposing the operation due to Trepanier’s age, and the fact that he is still in high school. Hansen says that he, too, heard some of the backlash from his viewers.
“Some people who saw the story thought that it was a Romeo and Juliet situation, but in the eyes of the law, it’s not,” Hansen said. “Some of the people incorrectly pointed to a law, a provision in the Michigan statute, that it’s Criminal Sexual Conduct in the third degree, which allows prosecutorial discretion if the offender and the other party are within four years of each other. But that provision only allows for the prosecutor to not seek the person to be placed on the Sex Offender Registry. The crimes he are charged with are different, and this doesn’t apply.”
Hansen says he has no regrets on airing the episode, and in fact, he’s had other people contact him to say “thank you”.
“We heard from a lot of people who applauded the investigation,” he said.”And the difference between a 15 year-old and an 18-year-old is a big span. It’s much different emotionally, physically, and psychologically than between a 30 and 32 year-old.”
The “takedown” program is available at www.watchtrublu.com, and the TruBlu app. The cost is $4.99 a month.
Hansen began doing predator stings like this nearly two decades ago for the NBC program “To Catch a Predator” before starting his own on-line streaming venture. The sting operation in Marquette County was coordinated through the Marquette County Sheriff’s Department, with help from several other law enforcement agencies.
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