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.
It’s understood there were other unknown associates involved..
The summary of facts said the three were in a Snapchat group called “Freaky Group”, where they would discuss catching “so-called paedophiles” and plan what they would do on their next “hunt”.
While the specific incidents varied in terms of locations and the extent of the assaults, they all followed a similar pattern.
Fake profiles were made, messages exchanged and gay men were lured to private homes, parks and streets, often late at night.
Not all of the victims were identified, but the summary of facts details 13 separate assaults between August and September 2024.
The assaults included punches, kicks, stomps and slaps. During one assault a man was made to strip naked.
When the victims tried to run they would be chased by the group, and during some of the assaults the attackers wore balaclavas.
Videos of the assaults were then posted online, which caused the victims “considerable emotional distress”.
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”.
Judge Melinda Mason, in a sentencing indication given to Bull in June, said the victims had suffered bleeding, bruises, grazes and cuts to their faces.
She described Bull’s words, as he filmed an attack, as “disturbing”.
“That you could see people hurt like that and encourage everyone to behave in that way, which to me did look like a real hate crime, the words that you used and the behaviour that you kept encouraging, and you did it more than once,” she said.
Judge Paul Geoghegan, in his sentencing remarks to Moloney in August, said “to describe these assaults as despicable and cowardly is something of an understatement”.
Judge Stephen Coyle, who sentenced Jeffs in November, agreed with Judge Mason that it was a “hate crime”.
He disagreed with a submission from Jeffs’ lawyer Rachael Adams, who said her client’s intention was not to target gay men but to target paedophiles.
She said the Grindr app was primarily used because it was free, not because it was used by gay men.
Judge Coyle said while he accepted the comments Jeffs made were “clearly designed to imply that these people had a sexual interest in minors”, he couldn’t “divorce that from the fact that you targeted gay men”.
He said it wasn’t the targeting of men generally, or indeed women, who were seeking sex with young people.
“It was the targeting of gay men and the clear conclusion I have reached is that this was a hate crime,” Judge Coyle said.
All three defendants received discounts for youth, as they were aged 18 or 19 at the time, and for their guilty pleas.
Moloney had recently become a father at the time of his sentencing.
Judge Geoghegan told Moloney he needed to “think about what role modelling you need to provide for your son” and asked him to think about how he would feel about his child being “dealt with in the way that you dealt with the victims of your offending”.
When Jeffs was sentenced, the court was told he was soon to become a father.
Judge Coyle had earlier told him there was little in the reports he’d seen to indicate any real remorse and declined to give him a discount for good character.
“Your character is someone who enjoyed humiliating and disrespecting other people, who enjoyed watching victims squirm, be fearful, enjoyed intimidating them and have enjoyed further humiliating them by participating in the uploading on to social media of what occurred,” the judge said.
He had also gone back for multiple attacks, failing to think “what the heck have I done?” in the days that followed the first assault.
Despite the reprimand, however, Judge Coyle concluded by telling Jeffs he was young and his life was ahead of him.
If he “recognised that this was stupid, something [he] never want[ed] to repeat”, then he would be defined by “who [he] becomes”.
“You’ll be defined in life by the parent you are to your soon-to-be-born child, and you will not be defined in life by this.”
For Bull, who faced the most charges of the trio, Judge Mason told him that between giving him a sentence indication, with a starting point of four and a half years, and his sentencing date, he had become a “different person”.
Bull had been assessed by a psychiatrist and had been undergoing treatment for a previously undiagnosed “mental health issue”.
Through counselling and engagement with the rehabilitative programme Live For More, Bull had done some “really good work”.
The three received end sentences, which took into account their varied culpability, rehabilitative efforts, remorse and background issues.
Bull was sentenced to eight and a half months’ home detention, Moloney was sentenced to nine months’ home detention, and Jeffs was sentenced to 10 months’ home detention.
Judge Mason did not allow Bull to be photographed at his sentencing because of reports she had received about his mental health and drug and alcohol issues.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.