Frances Grant: 'Sting operations' uncover evils

The awful truth is out there somewhere and fearless investigator Bomber (aka Martyn Bradbury) is going to reveal it, come hell, high water or recalcitrant Police Minister George Hawkins.

The targets in last week's first instalment of Bomber's news expose show, Stake Out (TV3, 8pm), were kerb-crawling around South Auckland street corners stocked liberally, according to our host, with young girls selling sex.

The hidden cameras and Bradbury's "sting operations" were out to uncover the evils of underage prostitution and we were promised a night of shock, horror revelation: "You've heard about it but you've never seen it like this before."

One of the "victims" was filmed standing innocently in front of a butcher's shop window advertising chicken pieces, "breasts, drums, wings".

We got the point: spring chickens in a cruel meat market.

Apart from that there was plenty we had seen before - albeit not that clearly - from many a reality show: the grainy night shots, the wobbly handicam footage, the pixellated faces.

The message was clear, however. Men buying sex from young girls are an evil being ignored on our streets and "sexual predators" - a term much employed throughout the show - are out there making the most of the dark underbelly of the prostitution law reform.

To be fair, Bomber did a good job of highlighting the fall-out for the underaged of the legalisation of prostitution, and you had to admire his fearless berating of the police and social authorities for focusing on the girls but ignoring the men committing a crime with a maximum penalty of seven years' jail.

In a bizarre sidestep, Hawkins refused to be interviewed on the matter as Minister of Police but agreed to comment as electorate MP.

But in its zeal to expose villains and call authorities to account, the show ignored any deeper analysis.

Bomber kept asking: who are these men and why did they want sex with teenage girls?

What's the point of such questions apart from voyeurism? If we didn't know, we could certainly make a good guess.

Interviews with the girls themselves were rather curious. Yes, rape is a problem, "I have had some incidents happen to myself," said one.

But from this programme, it seemed it was the drag queens defending their territory who were the real problem.

You have to hand it to Bomber, however. It's a tough job being a guerrilla journo, and if someone is going to be our answer to America's foremost practitioner of the sport, Michael Moore, the former Craccum editor and radio host has always shown willing.

He would do well to study Moore's techniques of mockery and satire, but he's as game as any to go down in the dark and poke a camera in the face of some bad ass.

The most astounding thing about the show was that a couple of those caught in his underage sex "sting operation" actually hung around to answer Bomber's questions and be lectured on the evils of their immorality.

One bloke even apologised. Another threatened Bomber not to "**** with South Auckland". That's more like it.

Having being threatened by a nasty, Bomber could go off to the authorities thundering righteously that these unchecked villains had "no shame, no remorse" and implying that if he could catch these blokes in the act, why couldn't the law?

In the meantime we remained in the dark about the victims. Who are they and why are they there? Why are social authorities convinced that the way to tackle the problem is to ignore the men and get the girls off the street? And what about teenage boys, or are they not vulnerable to sexual predators, too?

That's the limitation of fighting crime with finger-pointing and moral outrage: it always tends to narrow the focus.