Part-time biology professor confronted with pedophilia claims on Saddleback campus

Eric Brothwell in the video posted to several social media platforms by a predator-catching internet group. @peoplevpreds | X

On March 4, I was sitting on the bottom floor of the Sciences building, waiting for my afternoon astronomy class to start. With me was my friend Graham Griffin, another freshman at Saddleback that I had met during my first semester. It was only a few minutes to noon, and we were catching up before our classes started like we always did.

As the building started getting slowly more populated as students started filing in and out in accordance with their class schedules, we heard a loud yelling coming from one of the floors above. It threw me and Graham off for a second, and we looked at each other while trying to make out the words that were being said.

Nothing else came from it, until another shout of words I couldn’t make out happened and Graham said with an eyebrow raise:

“Did he just say ‘sex with little boys’?”

A man in a ski mask and black hoodie made his way down the stairs, pointing to a campus police officer as he repeatedly yelled about “the pedophile in room 224.”

“He just kept yelling the same thing over again, like this total stranger just walking around the building with his phone recording everything,” Graham said. “But I think it made everybody kind of uneasy.”

As the unknown man walked right past Graham and me, the logo on the back of his hoodie became visible: ironically, a symbol of a man in a hoodie with the name of an online predator-catching organization underneath it, People v. Preds.

I didn’t think much of the situation at first, and only ended up researching People v. Preds to see if my face had made it into one of the videos. It led me to finding out what had led to the confrontation on campus, and who it was that was being confronted.

Eric Brothwell, 44, was a part-time biology professor at Saddleback College, Cal State Long Beach, and an adjunct faculty member at Cypress College. He was confronted by Tim Johnson, the alias of the People v. Preds founder and crusader, in his Saddleback classroom.

Communication with Brothwell started on the gay dating site Grindr, when a decoy account made by @onlinepredatorintervention on Instagram matched with Brothwell. Accounts made by Johnson or other online predator-catching groups all present as 18 due to dating app restrictions, but make it clear that the catfish is underage when talking in chats.

“I’m going to catch as many as I can until the account gets banned,” Johnson said, talking about the process of catching predators on dating apps. “I run it up until it gets taken down.”

Brothwell and the catfish account interacted on Grindr momentarily before moving communications to WhatsApp. Screenshots of the interactions on both apps were posted on Instagram by the @onlinepredatorintervention account, which did not respond to requests for an interview.

The screenshots show explicit conversations between Brothwell and the decoy, including messages before and after the decoy account said they were fourteen years old. Brothwell asked sexual questions and made it clear about his interest in the decoy account, but when he stopped talking with the account and never responded to plans to meet up in person, Johnson took it upon himself to confront the professor in person.

“I went to the college to get him arrested because I have a decent working relationship, if you want to call it that, with the Orange County’s Sheriff Department,” Johnson said. “But unfortunately, the Orange County Sheriff Department doesn’t service the school, and we went to the school.”

Videos posted by Johnson show his conversation with Brothwell inside his Saddleback classroom and the subsequent altercations with the Saddleback Campus Police.

Johnson was eventually asked to leave campus and exited the Sciences building, yelling about the professor in room 224. From there, most Saddleback students, including myself and others, went to social media to find out more information on what had happened.

Saddleback College posted a statement on their Instagram account on March 6, stating that “serious allegations regarding a part-time faculty member’s inappropriate online interactions” had been made aware to them and that the individual was no longer employed by Saddleback or the South Orange County Community College District.

Cypress College and Cal State Long Beach made similar statements.

None of the three colleges had new information to share when asked for this article.

Brothwell was arrested on the charge of contacting a minor with intentions to have sex on March 10 before posting a $100,000 bail and being released the next day from the Orange County Jail. The Orange County Sheriff Department did not respond to requests for comment, so no further information is available on Brothwell at this time.

When asked to comment, Lieutenant Mike Betzler of Saddleback Police shared that due to the personnel manner of the arrest, no official statement can be made and no information on any possible investigations done can be given.

Johnson, who boasted 507 predators caught, 231 arrested and 84 convicted at the time of his March 7 interview, considers Brothwell just another name on the list.

“Did you hear him deny anything that I told him?” he said about the video posted. “The answer to that is no. The individual did not deny one fucking thing that I told to him. That is what you call guilty, folks.”

With over three years of experience, he believes — as most online groups of this nature do — that it’s up to him and other volunteers to protect kids online from potential sexual predators.

“At the end of the day, I hope that people keep their kids safe,” Johnson said. “Support people that are spending, support people that are volunteering their time to keep kids safe.”

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