Child predator hunter who busted Democrat LGBT leader says work brings him 'face to face with evil'
A vigilante child predator hunter who recently conducted a sting operation that exposed a gay Democratic lobbyist in Maryland told The Christian Post that his work has convinced him that Hell and Satan exist.
Alex Rosen, 24, who founded the Houston-based organization Predator Poachers, drew widespread attention on X last week for his video that showed him confronting Michael Knaapen, who served as the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party’s LGBTQ+ Diversity Leadership until the sting went viral.
Rosen's organization, which started in 2019, baits sexual predators by posing as underage decoys on hook-up apps such as Grindr or Tinder while waiting for the would-be predators to message them. The organization claims to have aided in arrests in dozens of states.
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According to the full video of the June 20 confrontation with Knaapen that runs for nearly an hour, Rosen grilled him about texts he sent to a supposedly 14-year-old boy named "Luke" over the course of months.
Some of the messages allegedly expressed a desire to rape the boy and implement urine during sex, which Knaapen dismissed as "fantasy" and a "kink." He also reportedly sent explicit photos and video of himself to the boy and gave him his address.
Knaapen, who had visited the White House multiple times, has since been removed from his volunteer position in the Maryland Democratic Party, which issued a statement explaining that Knaapen was no longer with them and they were "aware of a video circulating online that leveled serious accusations against a volunteer with the Party," according to The Baltimore Banner.
"The Maryland Democratic Party is aware of a video circulating online that leveled serious accusations against a volunteer with the Party. We take all accusations seriously. The volunteer is no longer affiliated with the Maryland Democratic Party," the statement said.
Knaapen has also since deleted his social media pages.
Rosen, who spoke to CP while on his way to another sting operation in Michigan, engaged in heated back-and-forth with users on X who dismissed the Knaapen video as somehow fake or doctored. He also claimed the Knaapen story was suppressed on Reddit and that many local journalists were apparently uninterested in covering it.
Rosen said he is not particularly surprised that some liberals on social media have attacked him for exposing alleged pedophilia within the Democratic gay community, though he claimed he has not seen people circle the wagons the same way when they expose a Republican predator.
"I've noticed — because there are a lot of lefties that follow our channel — they always point out, 'Oh, another Trump supporter caught, blah, blah, blah.' And I would say we do catch mostly Republican voters, for sure. But the thing is, you don't see the right-wing coming together to just say the video's fake. They disavow it."
Rosen, who said he is Jewish but not particularly religious, told CP that he believes he has seen demonic evil manifest in the behavior of some predators he has busted. He especially remembered the case of Clayton Tanner, whom Rosen confronted in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 2022.
Tanner communicated to Rosen's decoy, who was posing as an 11-year-old girl, that he desired to cut her with a knife and drink her blood, according to Cowboy State Daily. He also reportedly wanted to drink the blood of the girl's infant sister.
In March, Tanner was sentenced to eight years in prison for possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Rosen also said he recently encountered a predator they pursued in Ohio who opened his door sporting a satanic necklace. He said they investigated him after a 15-year-old girl reached out to them claiming the person was selling her nudes online.
"So we tried to knock on his door, but luckily he was already under investigation by the cops," he said. "Because he had a lawyer, he didn't talk to us. But he was wearing a black cross. He was very, very demoned-out. He was definitely a satanist. So we see that from time to time."
"Not too often, but we've seen it enough to say it's a recurring thing," he added.
"I'm not too religious," Rosen also said. "I definitely believe in God, I'm a Jew. But with how many people we come face to face with who are pure evil, I can't really not believe in a Hell and the devil. I mean, it has to exist with how evil these people are. So, I'm not religious, but I absolutely know there's a God, and I fully believe in Him."
While he has exposed some people in positions of authority, Rosen also said many of the people his organization exposes "are pretty dysfunctional," and suggested one reason they do not uncover more people in powerful positions is because such people have more discreet ways of satisfying their deviant desires.
"I think the reason we don't get a lot of federal government employees is because they don't need to go on Instagram or Tinder to go find kids, you know? But what we noticed [is] a lot of them are jobless. A good portion — probably 40% of them — are jobless; they're just very lazy. They're just dysfunctional people and are just leeches on society."
Rosen, who told CP that he always wanted to be a police officer, said he started to get into freelance predator hunting when he was 19 after being inspired by "To Catch a Predator" host Chris Hansen and others who followed in his footsteps. When he first started out, he was sometimes reluctant to post some of the videos because he pitied some of the predators, but he said he has since overcome that reticence.
"I was naive enough to think that, 'Oh, it's not evil. They're just lonely or something.' But no, all these people are evil," he said. "I do think people can be born pedophiles, but it's also a bit of a self-control thing, too. I was born to like chocolate cake, but that doesn't mean I eat it all the time."
"I think they're just truly evil. There's something in them that's evil, where they have the capacity to commit evil easier than other people do," he added.
