College students charged in 'catch a predator' assault as seen on social media

WORCESTER, Mass. — Six Massachusetts college students are facing charges after police say they assaulted a man who had been tricked through a dating app into visiting campus as part of a "Catch a Predator” trend on social media.

The group is scheduled to be arraigned on Jan. 16 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The man — an active-duty military service member — told police that he was in town for his grandmother's funeral in October and began communicating with an Assumption University student whose Tinder profile said she was 18.

He said she invited him over, but when he got there, “a group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile," accusing him of wanting sex with 17-year-old girls, according to a complaint filed by campus police.

The man said he was grabbed but was able to break free and ran while being chased by at least 25 people. He made it to his car, where he said he was punched in the head and his car door was slammed on him, the police statement said. He fled and called city police.

Campus surveillance video shows the woman escorting him into a basement lounge, and then him running upstairs, followed by a large group of students, including the woman, “all with their cellphones out in what seems to be a recording of the whole episode,” the police statement said. A few minutes later, the woman and others are seen returning “laughing and high fiving with each other.”

After the assault, the woman, who is 18, reported the man to police as a sexual predator and said she was frightened by him. She said he had come to campus uninvited. She also told police he was “creepy” and that she had texted a male friend who chased the guy away.

Campus police said they determined her report was false after reviewing the surveillance recordings and finding that “first person perspective videos” were being circulated among students.

Now she and four other adult students face kidnapping and conspiracy charges. The woman also is charged with witness intimidation. One of the five also is charged with assault and battery. The sixth student is a juvenile.

Campus police allege that some of the students conspired to “simulate the TikTok fad of luring a sexual predator to a location and subsequently physically assaulting him or calling the police." One of those charged mentioned “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen. The NBC show ran from 2004 to 2007 and involved adults impersonating underage people to catch men who contacted them over the internet for sex.

The student said that “catch a predator is a big thing on TikTok currently but that this got out of hand and went bad,” according to the police statement.

Last month, 11 teenagers in Illinois were charged in two separate assaults on men who had used online dating apps, and investigators "learned that some of the teenage offenders got this idea through a viral social media trend they saw online,” Mount Prospect police said in a news release.

Assumption University President Greg Weiner said the behavior described in the court filing “is abhorrent and antithetical to Assumption University's mission and values.”

“This situation is particularly sobering because the victim is an active-duty military service member. His service reminds us of the sacrifices made by those who defend our freedoms, including the opportunity to pursue a college education,” he added in the statement.