UH Adjunct Instructor Banned From Campus After Predator Poachers Confront Him on Video

The University of Houston has placed an adjunct faculty member on administrative leave and barred him from campus after a video of a confrontation with a self-described child predator hunting group spread online this week.

The university said its police department first learned of the situation Thursday after officers were called to campus for a disruption. UH police questioned the man, who works as an adjunct faculty member and is also a graduate student, and the university put him on leave and banned him from returning to any campus property.

UH said the video included discussion of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse materials. The university has not named the man, and no criminal charges had been filed as of Friday.

The confrontation was recorded and posted online by Alex Rosen, founder of the Houston-based group Predator Poachers, which sets up decoy social media accounts to identify people who solicit minors for sex. Rosen told KHOU 11 that since March, the man had been messaging two decoy accounts his team created to pose as 13-year-old girls.

"In those communications, he solicited multiple sexual acts that he wanted to perform on them, agreed to meeting them multiple times," Rosen said.

Rosen said a planned meeting between the man and one of the decoy accounts never happened, so he and his team went to the UH campus Thursday instead. Video posted to social media shows Rosen approaching the man as he left what appears to be a classroom or lecture hall and questioning him outside.

"He had a conversation with me. He admitted to all those messages that we had, authenticated the sexual messages, and he also admitted to me that for the past couple years, he'd been buying child pornography online," Rosen said. "He's on camera confessing to all of this, and we have evidence corroborating what he said on camera."

Rosen said his group turned over its evidence, including the messages and the recorded confrontation, to UH police.

In a statement, the university said it is treating the matter with "the utmost seriousness."

"The University of Houston is deeply concerned by these disturbing allegations and is treating them with the utmost seriousness," the statement reads. "The University of Houston Police Department first became aware of the situation when they were alerted to an ongoing disruption taking place on campus. UHPD responded to the location, and an adjunct faculty member was questioned. The adjunct faculty member has been put on administrative leave and banned from returning to campus."

The university added that it has "zero tolerance for child exploitation, abuse or child sexual abuse materials" and said the case will be investigated by a specialized task force within the Houston Police Department because of the nature of the allegations.

UH said it contacted the Harris County District Attorney's Office as part of its response. The university has not said whether the man remains enrolled as a graduate student or whether any academic disciplinary process is underway separate from the criminal investigation.

Predator Poachers has carried out similar confrontations across the Houston area. The group publishes video of the encounters to build public pressure and hand evidence to police, and Rosen said his team plans to keep pushing for charges to be filed in this case.

The man has not been arrested, and HPD has not released details on the status of its investigation or a timeline for any potential charges. UH has not said whether other university employees or students were involved in messages with the decoy accounts, or whether additional disciplinary steps are planned beyond the administrative leave already imposed.