(I’m always happy when I can justify posting a Charles Addams cartoon.)
I’m sure this discouraging episode will somehow make it into the dispute over whether TikTok, which apparently gathers data from millions of Americans to put in the clutches of China’s Dark Masters, should be banned or not. The incident isn’t about TikTok, however.
Apparently there is now a viral TikTok-promoted fad in which people lure suspected sexual predators to some location, lie in wait for them, and either call the police or, for even more fun, beat them up. The “game” is modeled after an unethical vigilante TV reality show on ABC that lasted three seasons; I wrote several posts about it on Ethics Alarms’ now unavailable predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard. Starring “Dateline” reporter Chris Hanson, the show that aired from 2004-2007 would use the internet and phone calls to lure someone seeking underage sexual companionship to a hidden camera ambush. The entertainment came from watching Hanson walk out from behind a bush and make the sick bastard huminahumina his way into coast-to-coast humiliation. The pre-crime predators who were thus “caught” almost never were convicted of anything.
In Worcester, Massachusetts (that’s pronounced “Wuster,” you Bay State ignoramuses!) students at Assumption University came to the wrong assumption that the “To Catch a Predator” game was a good use of their time. Easton Randall, Kevin Carroll, Isabella Trudeau, Kelsy Brainard, and Joaqin Smith, all 18, decided that a “creepy guy” was a sexual predator, so a female student used dating site Tinder to lure him to where he would think was a meeting place for a hook-up with a 17-year old girl. They had enlisted about 30 other students to lie in wait with them, and the mob chased and assaulted him as the stunt was recorded. Oh, the views it would attract! Randall told police that the idea was to emulate “the Chris Hansen videos where you catch a predator and either call police or kick their ass,” but the incident “got out of hand and went bad.”
Ya think?
To be fair, who could have predicted that arranging to have a mob of students at a school that accepts 82% of all applicants wait to “kick the ass” of a stranger would end in violence? These geniuses also lied to the police about what had transpired when they had already made a video of what really happened. The video showed Brainard, who had pretended to be the horny 17-year-old, leading the man to a lounge area at the school’s Alumni Hall. The mob then swarmed out and did their Chris Hanson impression, except that Chris never grabbed and attacked his victims, and these students did. The “creepy guy” broke free and ran but the students chased him down, kicking him and slamming his head into his car door. Eventually he drove away and called the police.
The show was now “To Catch the Assumption Assholes.”
The five ringleaders were arrested and are facing kidnapping and conspiracy charges. Good. Ms. Brainard has been charged with witness intimidation and Carroll, who admitted to smashing the man’s head with the car door, has been charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. “The collection conspiracy and actions of (the five students) are directly responsible for the intentional and systematic mistreatment, false imprisonment, physical assault and battery, and potential character assassination,” of the victim, police said. They also could find no evidence that he was seeking underage sex.
A spokesperson for Assumption said the behavior described by police was “abhorrent and antithetical to Assumption University’s mission and values.” Without revealing what the students are facing—if they are not kicked out, we will know all we need to about Assumption—the school added, “This incident highlights the very real harm that social media can inflict when it promotes dangerous and irresponsible behavior. In all circumstances we expect our students to exercise sound judgment and uphold the principles of respect, responsibility, and dignity that define our community” The university’s statement continued, “Assumption University is committed to maintaining a campus environment where every individual is treated with respect and dignity – including guests. We strongly condemn all forms of violence and misconduct.”
Right. I hate to be hypercritical, but somehow I am confident that other schools have managed to create a campus culture in which any student who suggested luring a man to campus to beat up while filming the attack would be quickly shunned and labeled a moron.
Now, if he suggested beating up Jews, that would be different…
Ethics Alarms 
It’s also spelled “Worcester” (says he whose mom came from there and who went to college there).
Ooops! Fixed.
At Clark?
Liberal Clark? A conservative like me? No way. Think purple.
Holy Cross Crusaders?
Bullseye.
Bay State Ignoramus? Not sure to whom that refers. I unwittingly called it “War-SEST-er” to the great amusement of my college girlfriend’s little sisters when I first drove said girlfriend to her home in Grafton, just outside Worcester. (My initial first-hand Massachusetts experience other than listening to Vaughn Meador doing his JFK impression.) How was I to know “Worcester” was actually to be pronounced “WUSST-ah?”
By the way, the hilarious comedian who stars in the “Your cousin from Boston” Sam Adams beer commercials is actually from Worcester. And a neighbor and friend here in Arizona was a classmate of Clarence Thomas at Clark. Also, a fellow lawyer was a Clark undergrad who told me the guy who founded Clark was a shoe magnate and the first Clark building was constructed in a fashion such that if the school failed, it could be readily converted into a shoe factory.
I was trying to dredge Leominster out of my brain and ran across this: 10 Massachusetts town names everybody mispronounces – HelloGigglesHelloGiggles
I’d forgotten about Scituate.
Clarence Thomas is a Holy Cross alum like yours truly. He went to Holy Cross undergrad and Yale law school.
Ooops, you’re right, Steve. I confused Holy Cross and Clark. My buddy grew up in suburban New Haven. Hamden, I think.
In Massachusetts, you can get a booster shot, but it is spelt “borcester shot”
Then it must be a “buuster shot.”
I’m confused. (A few of the regulars here would suggest that this is my normal state.) Creepy Guy is not identified, but we can assume he’s substantially older. Even if that’s true, though, the worst we can say about him is that he’s creepy. Of course the police could find no evidence that he was seeking underage sex: Brainard was pretending to be 17; the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 (unless the interwebs are lying to me). So calling the police could not be a legitimate option. There is no law against being creepy, so this was obviously never anything but an attempt to beat this guy up.
What am I missing?
He was 22 and actually a soldier in the United States Army. He is now deployed. He’s not a fat balding incel. He is not guilty of anything other than bad judgment. This is nothing more than the self-righteous trying to beat up someone or maybe kill someone they think is less righteous. As someone who has been chased a couple of times by half a dozen peers who wanted to beat me up, I can tell you it’s not a good feeling. It’s also the act of cowards. It’s one thing to take somebody on in a fight, justified or not, it’s another to bring overwhelming force or have others hold someone helpless while you beat him.
I’m mostly sure that Tinder doesn’t allow profiles of minors, so there’s that.
I’ve also been told to look sideways at any person saying “My age is actually ~” in their profile because it means they lied to get on the dating app when they were younger than allowed age.
Her dating profile listed her as 18, but she was actually 17. They knew it, he didn’t. This is not the brightest bunch of people. They lured him in with a false dating profile and attacked him for responding
Her dating profile listed her as 18, but she was actually 17. They knew it, he didn’t. This is not the brightest bunch of people. They lured him in with a false dating profile and attacked him for responding
Your characterization of the targets of “To Catch a Predator” as “almost never being convicted of anything” is a little bit simplified at least according to Wikipedia. The article doesn’t mention a whole lot of convictions by detail, except one of an FDNY firefighter who pled guilty to putting obscene images on the internet. It does mention some other targets as being made to register as sex offenders but doesn’t give any details.
Where the show really lost its credibility was in Collin County, TX, where the DAs pursued none of 23 cases, because all of them had too many procedural errors, including 16 where neither the decoys nor the targets were in the county when the conversations took place, and the police department involved had done no investigation on the matter, which made the arrest void under state (and possibly Federal) law.
The thing is, at least Chris Hansen’s actions led to arrest and due process. He never considered simply throwing the targets to a mob. I don’t know why or how anyone would think that mob vigilante justice was ever ok. “Kicking their ass” was never an acceptable alternative to calling the cops.