Chris Hansen on 22 Years of Catching Predators — and the Hollywood Movie That Makes Him Look Like a Vampire

Chris Hansen has been investigating child predators for 22 years, starting with the first To Catch a Predator sting in March 2004. But the work that set him on this path began earlier, in Cambodia, where he embedded with the International Justice Mission to infiltrate a brothel in Svay Pak, 11 kilometers outside Phnom Penh. Producers and camera operators posed as sex tourists from the US. Inside, they found children as young as five and six being sold for sex, with code words — "boom boom" and "yum yum" — that adults used to communicate. The bust saved 37 girls. Hansen tracked an American doctor who had been a customer to Guam and confronted him. The resulting NBC documentary, Children for Sale, was one of the most impactful hours of television he had ever been involved with. But it was a moment at the Phnom Penh airport that stayed with him: the girls asked to go with him to the airport, and he agreed, not realizing the only Dairy Queen in the city was there. They wanted banana splits. After saying goodbye, they pressed their hands against the two-story glass window as he walked toward check-in. Hansen still gets emotional talking about it. "It just hit me at a level that I've never felt before," he said.

How the Stings Work — and How the Threat Has Evolved