11 Teens Charged With Felony Assault of Gay Men
Police say the teens were inspired by a disturbing trend in which youths beat men that have been lured with gay dating apps.
Eleven Illinois teenagers have been charged with felony crimes for allegedly assaulting two men. The teens, all males aged 16 or 17, reportedly lured the men to two separate locations in July using a gay dating app.
On July 8, around 9:45 p.m., a 41-year-old man reported to police that he’d been beaten by a group of teenagers earlier in the evening after arranging to meet someone in the parking lot of a local gas station. Upon arriving, he was approached by a group of teenagers who confronted him verbally and beat him while also damaging his car. The man told police he was able to flee the scene in his vehicle and was eventually able to get away from the teens, who followed him in their vehicles.
Less than 10 minutes after receiving the report, officers from the Mount Prospect Police Department responded to a report of a battery. Upon arriving on the scene, officers spoke with a 23-year-old male who claimed to have been beaten by a group of male teens.
The second victim told police that he had arranged to meet a person on a gay dating app in a residential area of the village. Once at the meeting spot, he was approached by a group of teenage males, who confronted him verbally and beat him. The teenagers slashed the tires on his vehicle.
The victim was able to return to his vehicle and drive away, stopping after realizing that his tires had been slashed. He then approached a nearby home and asked them to call 911.
The victim was transported from the scene by emergency medical technicians to a local hospital, where he was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Following what the department describes as an “extensive investigation,” police were able to identify 11 juveniles as having taken part in one or both incidents. The investigation also revealed that one of the youths yelled a racial and another derogatory term during the incident, resulting in him being charged with two counts of a hate crime.
A 17-year-old from Mount Prospect has been charged with two felony counts of aggravated battery, two felony counts of criminal damage to property, two felony counts of mob action, and two hate crime charges. Five teenagers — four 17-year-olds from Mount Prospect and a 16-year-old from Arlington Heights, Illinois — each face the same felony charges but do not face hate crime charges.
Five other teenagers — another four from Mount Prospect and an additional one from Arlington Heights, all 17 — each face one count of felony aggravated battery with great bodily harm, one count of felony criminal damage to property, and one felony count of mob action.
Mount Prospect police detectives consulted with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which approved the charges against the youths. All the juveniles willingly turned themselves over to police between November 11 and November 20 and were transported to the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago.
Mount Prospect police discovered that some of the teenagers had gotten the idea of luring men on gay dating apps through a viral social media trend they saw online.
“We are asking parents to take these incidents as an opportunity to talk with their teenage children about the seriousness of actively participating in these types of trends they see on social media,” Mount Prospect Police Chief Michael Eterno.
Police did not elaborate on what that social media trend was. However, in recent years, there have been reports of gangs of youths violently attacking men whom they believe to be pedophiles.
In Australia, gangs of teenagers have been arrested for allegedly engaging in a social media trend, which is rising in popularity around the globe, known as “pedo-hunting.” Similarly, 12 students at Salisbury University in Maryland were charged with hate crimes for allegedly targeting a man on Grindr and luring him to an off-campus apartment where they brutally beat him.
The Mount Prospect Police Department was criticized by the Arlington, Illinois-based news outlet Cardinal News for omitting the name of the dating app from their press release.
Cardinal News also criticized police for failing to provide details about whether the teens disguised their age, whether the two adult male victims had intended to engage in any possible wrongdoing, and whether police had conducted an investigation into the alleged victims’ conduct — appearing to imply that the men may have been using the app to meet up with minors. The age of consent in Illinois is 17.
The news site alleged that the omission of such information misled the public about the nature of the attack, “caused unnecessary fear and concern for the general public that was not targeted by the teens,” and sowed further distrust in mainstream media outlets. It said that the missing details “left the case open to speculation, rumor, confusion, and misunderstanding.”
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