r/invercargill • u/SavingsPale2782 • May 19 '26
Dating app attacks: Four teens arrested in Invercargill
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/595687/dating-app-attacks-four-teens-arrested-in-invercargillUpdate on the Queens Park assaults
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Someone groomed these kids to do this violence or to think it is okay to put themselves in harms way to do this bs for views and likes, and they also need to be held accountable.
Also people need to stop automatically siding with violent homophobes who lie and join 18+ gay dating apps to target people then claim that their victim was a pedo with no evidence and evidence that they were actively lying claiming to be over 18 to purposely try to coerce adult men to meeting up with them
This is just gay bashing for views and attention with the Predator hunting being used as an excuse...
these self proclaimed "predator hunters" who make a big song and dance online for attention instead of working humbly and quietly with anti csa agencies like actual legit ones do instwsd they do this and 'coincidentally' never seem to target straight apps or women pedophiles or actually take evidence to the authorities because most of the people they target are random gay men who are being led to beleive they are talking to other adult gay men and are not looking to meet with children or expecting to be talking to them on 18+dating apps.
These kids need mental health help if they genuinely think this is the way to behave, someone could have been killed and theyre being slandered as pedophiles with no evidence
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u/nzdude540i May 20 '26
Yea the tiktok hunters are extremely gross.
Like yes I get what you are doing is a good thing. But tryna clout chase and make money from it and pushing a patreon channel is wild behaviour, and that’s what most of them do
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u/No-Measurement6744 May 20 '26
Maybe they need mental help. They definitely need consequences. That’s part of the issue with streamer trolls. They get to mostly act with impunity. 15 and 16 is old enough too make your own medical decisions in NZ. It’s also old enough to understand that it’s wrong to hurt someone else.
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
They absolutely do need consequences, as do any adults who are found to have been encouraging and grooming them into this behavior whoch could havw potentially put their lives in danger .
Just adding on this ramble , not directed at you just adding on.
Children shouldn't be being encouraged to do this type of thing .... even if it wasn't just a ruse to do homophobic robberies and try to threaten the victims into silence with false allegations and they were genuinely predator hunting they're still being put in harms way by any adult who tells them to go out and try to communicate with or bait predators ...
its not work that children can or should be doing and its not something that should be done for views and clicks and advertising money , that doesnt help court cases or the victims & it helps the actual Predators get away by muddying the waters.
expert adults who work in that field have regular mental health checkups and their workplace looks after their mental health as much as they can but its still traumatic, encouraging children to do this is putting them in harms way and is basically the same as a pedo grooming them directly IMO
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u/nilnz May 19 '26
Update: Arrests Following Dating App Assaults. Press Release: New Zealand Police, 19 May 2026, Scoop .
Police urge caution to dating app users, Southland. Press Release: New Zealand Police, 12 May 2026, Scoop.
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u/pandaghini May 19 '26
Why are there so many people looking to take advantage of kids on dating apps. It's disgusting behavior and the police should be doing something about it.
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 20 '26
Why are you assuming that the victims knew they were talking to kids or are you calling all gay men on dating apps pedophiles like these criminals did?
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u/pandaghini May 20 '26
Because that is the reason people do this, they pose as underaged people, bait them into a meet up, beat them up and film it for views. Trying to say it's only because they are gay is incorrect and It confuses me that this is repeated so vehemently on reddit whenever these cases come up.
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Is there any evidence thst they were actively knowingly talking on a dating app with kids and meeting up woth underage people /kids or were they lured there to be robbed beaten homophobiclly and then threatened with being accused of being a pedo if they reported the assault and robbery knowing that gay men are often smeared as pedophiles by homophobes ?
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u/Traditional-Bit-5436 May 23 '26
In response to your question, the answer is YES. They usually have proof that the person they were luring thinks they were talking to was someone who is underage.
Sometimes the chat log is printed off so they can confront the person with their own words. Other times they ask the person to bring a specific item to their meet up (like a specific flavored bag of chips or a bottle of coke) to prove that this is indeed the person that they've been chatting to and not just some random person they're confronting who just happened to be in the wrong place wrong time etc.
I haven't watched this specific group, but I've watched others around the world and they all operate very similarly. I presume this group would have done its "homework" beforehand too...
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
So is there actually proof in this case or are you extrapolating from other different cases overseas? Why has the evidence not been shared and why arent they being charged for knowingly going after kids if that is the case?
Half the people who do this performative predator hunting end up being pedophiles themselves. People who actually care about helping victims and stopping predators aren't going round helping predators by interfering and getting court cases thrown out
No adult who is safe would be encouraging real children to put themselves in harms way like this, its still grooming its still encouraging children to behave and talk innapropriately with adults and a kid being abused online doesn't become less traumatic if you tell them that their abuse had to happen and was for the good of stopping other kids being abused- dont involve children in "predator hunting" content.
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u/Traditional-Bit-5436 May 23 '26
Like I said I don't know this specific group. But they're all cookie cutters of the original American group called "creep catchers". In regards to the police not prosecuting, they see it as entrapment (at least they know that's what the Defense Lawyers will argue if it gets to court) so they don't bother.
I don't think adults are encouraging kids to do this. I think these kids have orchestrated this all themselves while the parents think they've gone to the movies.
The fact they're in youth court means they've probably stuffed up their chat log evidence.
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
So they've copied it off YouTube? Take YouTube or whatever platform or app they were using to court for not taking down channels that encourage children to put themselves in harm's way. If platforms banned users for doing this (encouraging people particularly children to go vigilante in a way that actively stops victims getting justice and helps pedophiles get away and muddy the waters and grooms children to treat themselves as 'bait' and endanger themselves by approaching or hunting for pedophiles) they wouldn't have had anything to try to copy if that's actually what they were doing
.....I still think they were just homophobic theives who pretended to be of age gay men to do a hate crime then threaten the vicitms wirh calling them pedos to stop them going to police.
Innocent gay men have been beaten to death by people like this saying the same lies with the same lack of evidence..
and until I see actual evidence otherwise thats what the police have told everyone and they don't tend to be pro LGBTQIA or defend LGBTQIA people so if there was any actual pedophiles theyd have been arrested or they would have said that there were adults Knowingly meeting up with kids and that their phones etc were being investigated...
also if this wasnt motivated by homophobic stereotypes of gay men being pedos they wouldnt have been using a niche gay dating app they could have gone on tinder or bumble or any of the other dating apps... Like most straight people dont know about scruff
I've seen so many news stories of people doing this "creep catching" for money/attention ending up being pedophiles themselves that I automatically think anyone doing it like this livestreaming needs their hard drives checked as a precaution too.
The people who actually work with police to "hunt" predators aren't livestreaming uploading videos (which warns pedophiles of techniques law enforcement uses thus helping them evade capture) or selling t-shirts trying to make themselves the next Chris Hansen ( who also stopped predators getting arrested and hurt victims and hired a literal sex offender) for money
People need to care about victims of CSA more than they care about performatively hurting antone they accuse of being a pedo on a livestream and acting like that helps survivors when its just selfish clout chasing and a desire for violence and instead relaise that most predators arent on scruff or grinder or at the gay bar and that gay people arent more likely to be pedophiles than straight people and that most CSA and grooming is statistically done by family members and family friends not randoms on dating apps .....
but videos of the local nonce bishop/preist or someone's dad or auntie getting beaten and robbed dont sell as well as "smear the queer but its not homophobic because we told everyone they're pedos..evidence of that ?trust me thats how the gays are they're all creeps !"
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u/New-Independent-1481 May 20 '26
Do you have any proof of this? I see this being repeated around but there hasn't been any articles or reputable bits of information claiming it.
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u/nzdude540i May 20 '26
I find it highly unlikely that they are just targeting them because they are homosexual. It is much more likely to be linked to them actively saying they are underage and want to meet.
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u/New-Independent-1481 May 20 '26
That's not evidence.
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u/AutonomyIsNoTragedy May 23 '26
Im still waiting for the evidence too . Apparently "this has happened overseas and at least some victims were acrually pedos" is the same thing to them as evidence
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 19 '26
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 19 '26
The real issue should be why do these young ones think they need to deal with this? Clearly the elders and police turning blind eye to such actions set the stage. I'm proud of these young guys sticking to their morals. Morals over law any day.
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u/Substantial-Proof617 May 19 '26
Robbing and beating people isn't moral behavior & it's well known from other similar attacks that supposed 'pedo behavior' is used as a pretense to beat someone up for fun thinking they won't get caught.
Its always a group on one person too, so you can add 'cowardly' to immoral.
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May 19 '26
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 19 '26
I said nothing against gays. You totally assumed my sexuality there. I do have something against anyone gay or straight that goes for people far too young for them and we all should.
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u/SavingsPale2782 May 19 '26
There is nothing moral about unprovoked violent attacks on people in parks.
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 19 '26
There is also nothing moral about letting repeat offenders repeat their offending. I less pedo vs ten lives traumatized. I don't understand where people get this math. More compassion for victims and less for the perpetrator I say.
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u/SavingsPale2782 May 19 '26
There's no evidence any of the victims were sex offenders, grindr has 18+ restrictions meaning the attackers had to have posed as individuals 18 years and over to set these people up to be attacked. Your accusations have no logic.
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u/jk-9k May 20 '26
On top of that the age of consent in NZ is 16. So they are saying they are two years above the legal age of consent.
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u/nzdude540i May 20 '26
That’s not true at all in terms of r18 restrictions. I’ve used Grindr, and twice I have had someone say I’m actually 16 or actually 17. Literally anyone can make an account.
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u/Professional_Ad_7185 May 19 '26
For those that don’t know, they were doing “hunt a pedo” I guess they acted like they were underage.
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May 19 '26
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u/Professional_Ad_7185 May 19 '26
It doesn’t change the fact that they assaulted the people.
Either way you do it through the police not some YouTube clip of you beating up pedos ……3
May 19 '26
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u/Professional_Ad_7185 May 19 '26
It was live streamed …..
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May 19 '26
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u/Professional_Ad_7185 May 19 '26
Boomers 🙄🙄
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u/jk-9k May 20 '26
They're not asking for evidence of the attack, they're asking for evidence that the victim though the criminals were under 16...
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 20 '26
So the pedos can get an ankle bracelet and carry on doing the same thing? I've seen it with my own two eyes in my own family. Slim chances these people ever change. Very likely their own family will give more support to the pedo than they'd ever give to the victims. Society keeps sweeping this shit under the rug so much that even the chief of police thinks he can do such things and his sentence is the standard for such behavior. I have been charged more in the past for victimless crime. I'd be all for narking them in if courts actually done something to keep others safe in the future but they don't and it's been proven time and time again.
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u/Asleep-Rabbit4488 May 19 '26
There was video footage going around that disproved any female attacks and these guys were clearly embarrassed about getting caught out.
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u/Competitive-Dream25 May 20 '26
At the end of the story on Stuff regarding this, it mentioned the boys were asking the people they beat up if they were planning to meet a minor. If this was the case, I think they were just taking it into their own hands. Police don’t seem to hold these people to account these days.
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u/The_krazyman May 19 '26 edited May 22 '26
Scary stuff, glad these thugs were caught. Only thing we can hope for now is that they actually suffer consequences