NBC Faces Lawsuit Over Dateline Special

NEW YORK, July 24: According to wire reports, NBC Universal
is being sued for $105 million by a woman whose brother committed suicide after
being caught on the newsmagazine Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator.

The AP reports that Patricia Conradt filed the suit in a
U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Monday. Her brother, Louis William Conradt
Jr., shot himself last November in Texas as police knocked on his door and a Dateline camera crew waited outside. In the suit she accuses
NBC Universal of bribing authorities to let them film encounters with suspected
pedophiles. Conradt also alleges that the police were “steamrolled” by NBC to
arrest her brother after he failed to show up at a Dateline-organized sting operation.

“The suicide was reasonably foreseeable,” the lawsuit says.
“At this time, the defendant wore the robe of a state official and Bill [Louis
William Conradt Jr.] wore the shackles of a detainee. Having trespassed and
invaded upon Bill's property to broadcast a spectacle to millions, the
defendant took no more steps toward protecting him than are received by a
gladiator or bull.”

Conradt Jr. was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit
online chat with someone he believed was a 13-year-old boy—it was, in
fact, a decoy set up by the activist group Perverted Justice.