Police are on offense confronting teenage gangs terrorizing gay men in pedo hunts in the Sydney area.New South Wales (NSW) Police have run multiple strike forces and investigations for nearly a year into assaults across the citys northern beaches, western and south-western suburbs, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Related Gay flight attendant won his job back after getting fired for a hook-up The gay Virgin Australia flight attendant says the airline got the whole thing wrong. Nearly a dozen organized attacks have been connected to the mostly teenaged gangs, likely a fraction of the actual number, police say. Global perspectives delivered right to your inbox Our newsletter bridges borders to bring you LGBTQ+ news from around the world. Subscribe to our Newsletter today In each case, the victims were gay men who arranged to meet in public parks with someone they met on a dating app like Grindr. Instead of a consensual hook-up, they were confronted by multiple teenagers, who then taunted, beat, and robbed the victims, sometimes using weapons.Several of the victims were forced to confess to being pedophiles while being filmed, which led investigators to discover videos of the attacks online, including an Instagram account called pedohunting_syd.The attacks and videos on social, including TikTok, are part of a trend known as pedo hunting, police say.Seven attacks took place over five days in April alone, prompting police to form Strike Force Section in the areas affected. A 16-year-old boy was attacked in a public park on April 2, while four males in a car followed a 21-year-old through a square in a suburb asking if he was gay or Muslim. Four teenagers attacked and robbed the man and his friend.At least five boys, ages 14 to 17, have been charged in connection with the assaults and robberies, as well as corporal violence and possessing unauthorized firearms. Police are describing the gang as a terror group. A second squad, Strike Force Dividing, has made arrests over similar attacks around Sydneys northern beaches, charging 14 youths with assault and extortion.One gang, led by a 21-year-old, was intercepted on their way to an attack, police said. Members of another gang, including two juveniles and an 18-year-old ringleader, were apprehended as they traveled south out of Sydney.Investigators have connected a member of the pedo hunt gangs to the attempted murder of a far-right Christian preacher, who was stabbed repeatedly in front of his congregation. Extremist material was found on the 16-year-old boys phone. He and six friends corresponding in a group chat were charged with terror offenses. Gay men in the Sydney area were subject to an epidemic of violence from the 1970s to the 2000s while police looked the other way. The NSW government and NSW Police have since apologized for their institutional neglect and failure to secure justice for the victims of previous hate crime attacks.The latest attacks, a police spokeswoman said, are being treated with the utmost seriousness.The incidents are similar to those performed by ultra-nationalists in Russia a decade ago, who used social media to lure gay victims to meeting places, where they were then harassed, brutally beaten, humiliated and forced to perform sexual acts with inanimate objects.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.