A Jersey City educator was arrested today on a sex-related charge after being lured into what he believed would be a nighttime meeting with a 14-year-old boy in Harrison.
Instead of meeting the young man he thought he had met on the internet, St. Benedict’s Preparatory School dean Didier Jean-Baptiste was confronted by “Hunter XK,” an adult and self-styled “predator catcher” who filmed the encounter and posted it to Facebook and Youtube.
Jean-Baptiste’s arrest was announced today by Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez. According to Suarez, Jean-Baptiste, 54, was charged with with one count of Luring by Attempt and one count of Attempted Endangering the Welfare of a Child.
In a 16-minute video, Hunter XK meets a man he calls “JD”on a Harrison street. “I’m going to give you two choices,” he says to JD. “One, you can have a consensual conversation with me, or two, I’m going to get the cops involved.” JD asks Hunter XK for identification, threatens to call the police, and then walks hurriedly away.
“Call the cops on me for what? You’re the one who’s here to do wrong. You’re trying to meet a kid. I got the evidence already. It doesn’t matter if you deleted your Grinder account … I still got the chat logs,” says Hunter XK.
Hunter XK follows him for several minutes, ultimately taking down JD’s license plate number and a description of his car.
Authorities subsequently identified JD as Jean-Baptiste.
Jean-Baptiste was arrested without incident at his Jersey City home, taken to the Harrison Police Department, and released on a summons based on the recommendation of a risk assessment tool, in accordance with newly enacted criminal justice reform laws. He is scheduled to appear in court on October 24.
St. Benedicts told News12 that it had fired Jean-Baptiste for “inappropriate conduct” and said “immediate action was taken to terminate the employment of this individual as well as ensure that law enforcement was apprised. Though no current of former students were involved, and the event did not occur on school grounds, an internal investigation has already begun.”