Five students at Assumption University, a private Christian college in Massachussets, were charged with luring and assaulting a 22-year-old man to campus and filming it all under the false pretext that he was a pedophile. The man understood himself to be meeting an 18-year-old woman, but was met by a mob of students armed with cameras and fists. Kelsy Brainard, 18, Easton Randall, 19, Kevin Carroll, 18, Isabella Trudeau, 18, and Joaquin Smith, 19, were described as the "core" of the group.
Police said the victim was communicating with Brainard on Tinder and that she initially met him on campus before the confrontation occurred. When interviewed by campus officers about the disturbance on campus and an assault and battery that had been reported to the Worcester Police Department, she allegedly reported that a sexual predator had been on campus and that he came uninvited, though the footage obtained by police determined that report to be "false and fabricated," according to the complaint.
When confronted about the falsification, she allegedly "acknowledged that to be true" and "continued to diminish her responsibility," the complaint stated. She also confirmed to police that her Tinder profile indicates she is 18, according to the complaint.
Luring and filming predators for clout complicates prosecutions and is really just social media clout-chasing from the deadest eyes in the room. But this guy had broken no laws. Consider that they didn't understand that their victim could simply call the police and get them in real trouble—context collapse came at them from the exact direction they thought gave them cover.
Yes, "Assumption University." At least they can rest assured that even a custodial sentence won't have much impact on the futures they were already destined for.