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Grindr says it is “acutely aware of this deeply troubling situation” after the kidnapping of a 22-year-old man who was lured using the dating app in Jozi.

The police say that a suspect has been arrested after abducting the victim in Kensington, Johannesburg, on Thursday, 9 November, when they met up on Grindr.

The Daily Maverick reports that the kidnapper allegedly used the victim’s phone to send threatening messages to the victim’s contacts and his mother, saying the victim would be killed if she didn’t pay R50,000.

The kidnapper had also allegedly released a horrifying video of the kidnapping, which circulated on social media, showing the kidnappers holding the victim’s genitals and tongue, seemingly going in to cut them with a knife.

Daily Maverick confirmed that the victim was released but did not confirm whether any payments were made.

Unfortunately, this is not the first and only case of a kidnapping orchestrated through the dating app.

Thami Dish of the Thami Dish Foundation, which provides counselling and other trauma services to queer victims, said such kidnappings had been going on for a “very long time”.

In February, police in Johannesburg arrested four suspected members of a kidnapping syndicate which targeted the LGBTQIA+ community. The syndicate has been dubbed the “Grindr Gang”, although the ongoing abductions suggest a number of criminals or groups are using the app to lure victims, rather than a single syndicate.

It is alleged that the Grindr Gang beat and robbed a gay Soweto man in July, while in September, seven suspects who allegedly used Grindr to kidnap an 18-year-old Wits student were arrested by a Gauteng police operational task team.

“The kidnappings appear to be increasingly common. In eight months between June 2022 and February 2023, we received 13 reports of attacks by the so-called Grindr Gang,” said Luiz de Barros, communications manager at OUT, an LGBTQIA+ organisation.

“We believe that a corporation like Grindr, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has the resources and responsibility to take steps to verify and help secure its users,” De Barros said.

De Barros says an app like Grindr is meant to be a safe space for queer people but instead, it’s turned into a “hunting ground for criminals in South Africa”:

“Grindr must actively work with the authorities to help them track down these criminals and should be more open and communicate with its users about incidents and what steps they can take to be safer.”

In a response to Daily Maverick about the “troubling situation”, Grindr said, “User safety is very important to us as a company, and we continually gather information on the safety needs of users around the world and integrate learnings into the app’s features”.

Besides several safety features on the app – like location hiding, PIN code features to stop phone access, ways to report abusive accounts, and safety warnings about areas dangerous to LGBTQIA+ folk – Grindr said it has also added a warning in direct response to the ongoing kidnappings in South Africa:

“Grindr has issued a safety warning that users in the country receive daily when they log on to the app advising the utmost caution at this time. We are continuing to explore further solutions to this crisis with local partners.

“In the meantime, our message to users is to think carefully before meeting a new person in a private setting, whether they met the person on Grindr or through other means,” the company said.

The company added that they condemn the perpetrators of this violence and call upon South African law enforcement to use the full strength of their resources to address this problem.

The SA police are barely keeping it together, so sadly, the LGBTQ+ community might be mostly alone in this one. Stay safe out there, folks.

[source:dailymaverick]