Group of Six Massachusetts Students Allegedly Ran a "To Catch a Predator" Sting on a 22-Year Old U.S. Troop, Using an 18-Year Old Girl as Bait, Now Face Charges
NY Post - Six New England college students allegedly used a dating app to lure an active-duty service member to their campus, where they ambushed him as part of a deranged “To Catch a Predator” social media trend.
The teenage students from Assumption University appeared stone-faced and spoke to the judge through their lawyers Thursday during their arraignment for conspiracy and kidnapping charges.
Kelsy Brainard, 18, Easton Randall, 19, Kevin Carroll, 18, Isabella Trudeau, 18, and Joaquin Smith, 18, are accused of using Brainard’s Tinder account to lure their 22-year-old victim to the private Roman Catholic school, 45 miles west of Boston, in October.
I'm always conflicted when it comes to online "To Catch a Predator" vigilantes. The grown men who pose as underage girls online to arrange a date with a predator, and proceed to beat the predator with their fists in the electronics section of a Walmart. On one hand, I genuinely believe the world is a better place because of them. The people they beat with their fists, and shame publicly on the internet clearly deserve it. Anything people can do to deter that type of behavior is a net positive for society. If you've never seen the videos, they usually go something like this.
I think those guys did a good thing. Obviously. But still… I don't quite trust them. Say I met a friend of a friend at bar. We get to talking, he's a nice guy, we discuss the college football playoff, just totally regular stuff. Later in the night I ask him what he does for work. He tells me hunts pedophiles. That he spends his days posing as a 13-year old girl on Omegle, and attempts to seduce strange men on the internet. I just know from that point forward, I'm not looking at him the same way again. I'd look at him with both a healthy respect, and a healthy skepticism.
Because what are those conversations like? Are they as simple as, "Hello, I am 13 years old and a girl. Meet me in aisle 26 on Saturday, March 15th at 3:30pm."
Then the predator says, "Ok yes. I'll be the man who looks exactly like a pedophile."
If that's all it takes, then great. Nothing weird about that. But I'm guessing it's not always that easy. And for the people who are genuinely making a career out of this, I'm sure there's a certain number of successful sting operations they need to make in a month to pay the bills. So how far are they willing to go to lure someone in? How badly do they want to get TikTok famous? How deep into character do they get? What got them into this? Is there someone in their life who's been personally affected by one of these creeps, and they vowed to her that they'd get them off the streets? That would make sense. Or is it just for the love of the game? Do they get a rush from doing it? What type of rush is it?
Idk man. It's very bizarre. I just feel like some of these people should also be monitored. Just to be safe. The ends justify the means, but we should maybe keep an eye on the means as well.
The scariest part to me, if I were a pedophile hunter, is that you CANNOT fuck up your hunt. Imagine you get the wrong guy. Imagine some poor man buying a PS5 and a large bag of Skittles for his son's birthday who just happens to be wearing a blue hat and khaki jacket gets run up on by a camera crew. They do their whole aggressive, "DID YOU SEND THIS?! IS THIS YOU?! WE KNOW IT'S YOU!" confrontation thing.
Obviously the man denies it. But the guilty guys deny it too. I've never seen a video where they really give the guy a chance to explain himself. They just immediately start in on him. Sometimes the cops show up. I don't even know at what point an innocent guy would get a chance to prove his innocence. If you're doing the whole sting on some shady username only app, then what proof is there to show? That's an immensely fucked up situation. If you get the wrong guy, you're sued into oblivion, and your life could be equally as over as the predators you're out to get.
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That's a wild fucking way to make a living. But I guess it's noble thing to do. You're essentially sacrificing your life and the way people look at you for the greater good. And I'm sure the good ones have it down to a science. They must have checks in place so they always know exactly who they're dealing with, and can execute their stings in the proper manner. But it's so mainstream now that random people off the streets who want some like on the internet are just going for it. Like the people in this article. Some of them are out there hunting predators with zero experience, because somebody who knows what they're doing made it look so easy online. In reality it's dangerous as hell. They have no idea what they're getting into.
It's a dangerous game. You CANNOT fuck up. And of course, the most important part of any "To Catch a Predator" sting, which you'd really think would go without saying, is to make sure the person you're using as bait is not a perfectly legal adult.
“A group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile,” the Associated Press reported, citing a campus police report.
The flock of students accused the soldier of wanting to have sex with 17-year-old girls.
The serviceman broke free from the basement but was allegedly chased back to his car by approximately 25 people, most of whom recorded the chase with their phones. One student reportedly punched the man in the head. The victim fled before calling the cops to report the assault.
Brainard also filed a police report claiming there was a sexual predator on campus and she was frightened. She also alleged that one of her male friends chased the uninvited guest.
Officials used surveillance footage to confirm the man was invited inside by Brainard before he was chased out of the building by a group of students with their phones out.
The students were caught on camera “laughing and high-fiving with each other” in what officials called “a deliberately staged event.”
Investigators used the cellphone videos that had circulated online to disprove all the students’ claims.
Brainard’s Tinder profile indicated she was 18 and none of the messages proved the man wanted to have sex with any minors.
Three big mistakes stick out to me here. Their first was trying to outsource a predator when they attend a Catholic university. Worry about the problems in your own house before you go trying to save the rest of the world.
Secondly, they tried to reel in a 100 pound tuna in their first trip out on the boat. They tried to bag a troop. Not that troops get a pass. But again, "To Catch a Predator" is a high risk game. If you legitimately did catch a troop, it's undoubtedly a juicer story. It will get more clicks than a run-of-the-mill scumbag. But if you fuck up… oh boy. Now you've committed treason. Now the online hate has a little extra stank on it.
Then of course, their third mistake of attempting to catch a predator using a legal adult makes the entire plan doomed from the start.
I mean what on earth did they think was going to happen? Maybe they thought the police wouldn't get involved, and they just wanted to beat the shit of a guy angry mob style. Maybe this Brainard girl didn't file the police report until she knew the victim already had? Because once the police are involved, they must have known they'd follow up by looking at her fucking profile. You can't even join Tinder unless you're 18. It's an age verified app. What a terrible app to use for predator hunting. I guess she could have explicitly said she was younger in the messages, but according to the police that's very much not the case. Also, if the NY Post tweet replies I'm reading are correct (sorry I didn't really want to Google this), apparently the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16. So legally they'd be in the wrong either way. You gotta know your state's age of consent laws if you're going to play this game.
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This poor man. Assuming additional details don't come out that completely change the story, you can't help but feel awful for the guy.
Newsbreak - Worcester police, however, had said they were contacted by a man requiring assistance with an incident that happened at Assumption University around the same time. The man, who WWLP can identify as the victim, told police that he was in the area to attend his grandmother’s funeral and “just wanted to be around people that were happy,” according to a campus police report.
His grandma died, and he was chased down by an angry mob of 30 people accusing him of pedophilia all in the same week. That's a bad week. There almost has to be more to the story that we don't know yet. I have a hard time believing these students were really that fucking stupid. The New York Post article does briefly says something about a "smaller group of students", which I'm a little confused by.
NY Post - Officials discovered that a smaller group of students were the ones who allegedly plotted the “catch a predator” luring, WWLP reported.
I'm not sure if that's referencing the 6 people who were in court, or if maybe this sting was set up by someone else? Maybe the group who chased this guy down had bad information? But this Kelsy Brainard girl is the girl who's profile was used. She's the one who filed the report. She must have at minimum seen the messages. Regardless, the students maintain their innocence.
Newsbreak - A lawyer for Brainard, Christopher Todd, said, “We’re just looking forward to having the process play out.” The lawyer for Trudeau, Robert Iacovelli, said afterward that she’s innocent. He filed a motion seeking dismissal of the charges against her, saying authorities lack probable cause to believe she committed a crime.
And because I don't want to get sued, everything about this case is still alleged. Maybe there's more to the story. I can't for the life of me understand why anybody would use an 18-year old girl for a To Catch a Predator sting. It would be one thing if it were a 50-year old man she was meeting up with. Which would still be legal, but I can at least wrap my mind around the anger there. Having an 18-year old meet up with a 22-year old and thinking that justifies an angry mob. Goodness, people. Leave the predator hunting to the people who actually know what they're doing. You're going to end up ruining it for the people who are actually effective.