I am left this morning to ponder the same question I deal with every time I read about another arrest involving an Internet sex sting.

What part of this don’t these guys understand?

How long will it take for them to realize that there is no way to know who that really is on the other end of that Internet chat line?

That you are literally taking a loaded gun and pointing it at your head. That you don’t know if this is really an “adventuresome” mother offering herself and her young girls for a sexual encounter, or an undercover detective trolling the Internet as part of the county’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Today’s tawdry tale comes from Steven Devlin. He is the former provost at Lehigh University. Yesterday a teary-eyed Devlin stood in Delaware County court and offered a full apology to his family and friends. More than a dozen supporters packed the courtroom. But also present were some of his Bryn Mawr neighbors who told of the effect Devlin’s arrest had on them as well, how they now are leery of letting their children play alone on their street.

To his credit, Devlin has plainly admitted what he did. He is undergoing therapy and has made tremendous progress, according to his lawyer Art Donato. The attorney stresses that Devlin has no sexual attraction to children, but became addicted to the Internet. A psychologist indicated that after a life-threatening health crisis, Devlin retreated to the Internet and “escaped to a world of fantasy.”

Except that what Devlin wound up doing was not fantasy, but all too real.

Which does not answer my question: What don’t these guys get? And one other thing, this one equally as troublesome. How many people are out there doing similar things that aren’t stung by the undercover detectives?

I hope Devlin ponders these questions as well.

He’ll have three to six years in jail to think them over.