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Five Massachusetts university students are accused of conspiring to kidnap a man they lured to the Assumption University campus under the pretense he was meeting an underage girl there for sex.
According to the Associated Press, the five suspects — 19-year-old Easton Randall and Kevin Carroll, and 18-year-old Isabella Trudeau, Kelsey Brainard, and Joaquin Smith — intended to entrap the man in a “catch a predator” plot inspired by a TikTok trend. The AP says a sixth suspect, a minor, had yet to be arraigned on similar charges. The man, a 22-year-old active service member, says the young woman with whom he met listed her age as 18 on her Tinder profile.
In the viral “catch a predator” trend, individuals, typically men, are caught in public spaces having arranged to meet a minor whom they’ve had sexual conversations with online, similar to the popular Chris Hansen NBC News reality TV series, To Catch a Predator. Like in Hansen’s show, the culprits on TikTok are ambushed on camera and compelled to explain their motives.
Brainard communicated with the man through her Tinder profile
According to Massachusetts police, Brainard, 18, used her Tinder profile to communicate with the man and invite him to the Assumption campus, a small Catholic university in Worcester. Once there, he was led into a basement lounge, and surprised by a group of students who called him a pedophile and said he was there to have sex with an underage girl.
According to Boston’s WCVB, the man said he escaped but was chased by at least 25 students and physically assaulted while the attack was filmed on cell phone cameras, which was then shared online. Brainard contacted the police, identified the man, and called him a predator. Police allege Brainard lied to the police and continued to tell them the false story throughout the interrogation.
The man, meanwhile, also contacted the police and told them about the attack. The man said he was only in Worcester for his grandmother’s funeral and just wanted to meet friends and that the students had tried to keep him from leaving while shouting accusations of pedophilia at him and then assaulting him.
One of the suspects in the case, Randall, admitted to the police the plot was inspired by the “catch a predator” TikTok trend and that those involved conspired to trick the man into coming to campus. Randall said the plan was disseminated in a group chat to the building’s residents and that they needed to help confront a pedophile and chase him out.
Police determined the incident seemed staged based on cell phone footage and campus surveillance cameras and could find no evidence the man was there to have sexual contact with a minor. Police said footage showed the students laughing and high-fiving each other once he left.
The “catch a predator” trend gets more clicks than convictions
In June last year, USA Today reported that most “catch a predator”-style sting operations — or private citizens attempting to entrap individuals as pedophiles — often don’t lead to convictions and that the evidence gathered usually won’t stand up in court unless local law enforcement can build cases on their own.
“Cyber-vigilantes, even when well-intentioned, lack the training necessary to properly and safely investigate these cases,” Orange County, California District Attorney Todd Spitzer wrote in a memo in 2023 of the “predator” trend.
Spitzer added, “The Orange County District Attorney’s Office does not condone or endorse this behavior and encourages anyone who believes criminal activity has taken place to report it to law enforcement and avoid direct confrontation.”
All five Assumption students are accused of conspiracy and kidnapping, and if convicted, they could spend up to 10 years in prison. All five suspects pleaded not guilty and are currently free on recognizance, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.