US students charged in ‘To catch a predator’ TikTok scheme

Five college students in Massachusetts are accused of luring a man to the Assumption University campus in a plot that police said was inspired by the television show “To Catch a Predator” and a fad on TikTok.

The students were part of a larger group who chased the man from a campus building after he was invited there by a student using the dating app Tinder, according to a criminal complaint issued in Worcester District Court on Dec 4.

Campus police at Assumption University, a small Catholic school in Worcester, said in the complaint that the group accused the man of being a sexual predator, stopped him from leaving a student lounge and recorded the episode as part of a “deliberately staged event.”

Two students assaulted the man, police said.

There was no indication that the man was trying to meet underage girls, and the woman who invited him to the campus, Kelsy Brainard, 18, said on her Tinder profile that she was 18 years old, police said. Police did not provide the man’s age.

Videos of the episode, which happened Oct 1, were shared among students and seen by police, who said that minutes after the man arrived on campus, he was watching a baseball game with Brainard on a couch in a student lounge and there was “ample personal space between them.”

Suddenly, a large group of students appeared from hidden locations, the complaint said. The students berated the man “as a sexual offender,” grabbed him and blocked him from leaving the room, police said.

He escaped, and as a group of about 25 people chased him, a male, who is not named in the court documents because he is a minor, punched the man in the back of the head. Once the man reached his car, another student slammed a car door on him. It was unclear whether the man was injured or sought medical treatment.

The students are scheduled to appear in court Jan 16.