The actions of a group of young men who posted “video montages” of assaults on gay men they had lured through Grindr have been described as “a hate crime”.
They were part of a trend of posting “vigilante” videos, in which they claimed they were targeting paedophiles.
They called themselves the “Tauranga Paedophile Catchers” and it’s understood they drew inspiration from United States TV show To Catch A Predator.
However, in their offending, they weren’t running sting operations to have people arrested.
Instead, they created fake profiles on Grindr and arranged meetings with men where they would assault them, film it and post it on social media, sometimes accompanied by music and subtitles.
The summary of facts said other similar groups were doing the same in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
In Tauranga, Thomas Bull, Ethan Jeffs and Patrick Moloney had varied roles and levels of culpability, but all faced charges of assault, injuring with intent to injure and posting a harmful digital communication. They have all now been sentenced in the Tauranga District Court.
Look.
I don’t want to judge a book by its cover, but sweet Jesus these Tauranga Grindr thugs look aggressively heterosexual, terribly repressed and a tad inbred don’t they?
I mean these are 2 straight guys who desperately need the queer eye when it came to dressing for Court didn’t they?
They look like real little cross burners from Tauranga don’t they?
How charming and brave to gang up and jump gay men at night.
The leniency in their sentencing is astounding, I think mercy should be expressed in Court when you lose the plot in a moment of stress, but these little pricks pre-planned and premeditated their hate crimes.
I wonder if they would have seen such leniency if they had been Māori?
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Younger versions of Chris Bishop and Seymour.
Yes!! That came to mind.
Cletus and the Zit
While your portrayal of these thugs is fair, I wouldn’t advise men seeking casual sex with younger men online as a wise choice either. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” did not work out well for Israel in the book of Judges, and it can only have the same result today, although it might take a bit longer.
I mean you’re rather burying the lead here Martin.
From RNZ: “One of the harmful digital communications, attributed to Bull, included naming a person on the Child Sex Offenders Register and posting identifying features that included his place of work and vehicle registration.
The man was “jumped” a few days after the post, causing him “emotional harm”.”
Was that man targeted ‘just for being gay’, then? Certainly seems to have a previous conviction for being a nonce, no?
Did these men act illegally? Yes. But come on- while there are perfectly good reasons to question these kind of vigilante ‘pedophile hunter’ operations, it doesn’t mean their ‘victims’ were innocent. The NZ Police simply have no interest in going after pedophiles, just look at how they have ignored the wider pedophile ring within the ACT Party for example. These guys have been targeted because they were using underage fake profiles on a homosexual hookup app, and to the people running the police, folks like Mark Mitchell and David Seymour, targeting pedophiles, particularly homosexual ones, is about the highest crime they can imagine.
They look like they come from Bethlehem. Not the one in Israel.
Grindr THUGS says it all. Three hate-fueled sick young men, clearly not raised with values, kindness or brains. They were all old enough to know better. So pleased their faces and names were on line. And yes the punishments definitley were pathetic and didn’t fit the level of the crimes! I would be challenging the sentences for these cruel, smug “privileged” three who have virtually ended up with a slap on the wrist. I agree, had they been of Maori or even Polynesian descent, they would be in gaol now. It all seems too lax which means we may see these young men back in the media! It is not a crime to be gay and “if”they were in fact paedophiles then all they needed to do was report their behaviour to the appropriate authorities. But it is a serious crime to beat someone up because they are gay. This scandal will follow them throughout their lives and so it should.