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Concerning Tweaker.

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Scarred Sun, Jan 26, 2012.

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  1. Scarred Sun

    Scarred Sun

    Be who you needed when you were younger Administrator
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    Welp, this.
    Last week, the staff at Sonic Retro learned that one of our administrators, Tweaker, had admitted to molesting a small child among other felonies. When we found out, we immediately contacted law enforcement. We have and will continue to cooperate with authorities concerning the situation. Because of this, Tweaker will no longer be a part of Sonic Retro effective immediately. This does not change the way the site will operate in any capacity whatsoever. We ask that Tweaker's friends and family be left to their privacy in this time, and will not tolerate speculation or rumor concerning the situation. Doing so will result in immediate banning from all Retro-related properties. Sonic Retro will comment in a fuller capacity once police investigation has concluded.
     
  2. Xkeeper

    Xkeeper

    lgkdfvlbjepasvdjzcvpaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Researcher
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    I'd like to add that if you ignore these rules and act like a douchebag in IRC or on the forum, you will be banned/zlined/whatever more or less forever.

    Don't be a douchebag. Don't get banned.
     
  3. Scarred Sun

    Scarred Sun

    Be who you needed when you were younger Administrator
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    Welp, this.
    Tristan,

    Do you really have nothing better to do all day than to "report" on this crap? People are trying to use you as a third-party vector to spread shit and it's really not worth anyone's time, aside from those who think they can get some sort of power play out of it. Frankly, I'm appalled that you are willing to take these things at surface value with no evidence beyond a few people who have decided to make a nicely-rehearsed story. However, since you asked, I'll oblige. I will note that I am greatly reluctant to do this, because I honestly wanted to let the subject drop and allow everyone to get on with their lives as best they could after the incident. I don't wish any ill upon people, even if I strongly disagree with what they did, and the fact that they're dragging you into this is pathetic and not fair to you. Whatever. Let's go. If you cut any of this, I will repost this e-mail in its entirety on my own site. Don't do that annoying thing where you think you're summarizing things for a narrative and chop off relevant details.

    I had been friends with Tweaker for many years—at least back to 2006, if not earlier, and after we met, we became fairly close as far as Internet friends go. We talked about quite a few things, and were usually in contact on a near-daily basis, whether it was for Retro-related things or just to bullshit about our daily lives. I always saw him as a younger brother type, and at one point even gave a serious offer to let him live with me for free in exchange for going back to school or furthering his education. We got into fights, but all friends do that, and it's not like we were ever mad at each other for more than like, an hour tops. I was genuinely happy for him when he moved out of his house and was glad that it seemed like he was finally getting his life together after a long spell of confusion and frustration.

    During the last half of 2011, Tweaker's behavior started being markedly changed: he started featuring more "cub" pornography on his furry art sites, he would talk more about shotacon, he would brag about his Tor use, he would go into our Skype chats and start to defend child molestation. I'll admit that I wasn't super-comfortable with this, but I do believe that people have the right to say things that I don't agree with, and as a weird a Devil's advocate position as defending child molestors may be, I'm willing to let that go. However, it did set a precedent of odd behavior around children and sexuality.

    In December, I had taken an extended vacation from Retro and the Internet because of some things happening in my real life—in fact, something happened with the site while I was away on holiday and had to just be like "sorry guys, I'm at Seaworld." If you want to put on your super-detective hat on, I'm sure there's something in our announcements or site affairs about it. It was near Christmas. I say this to say that I was relatively out of the loop and not on Skype nearly as often as I usually am. However, I had been witness to a call where there was a minor fight over Tweaker using the term "autistic" disparagingly, which was annoying an autistic member of the call. There had been some bickering about the issue, but there was nowhere near a revenge plot or any other stupidity that has been accused, because...it was just a normal spat. These happen. Not a big deal. Because of this, I was surprised to get a phonecall later that week saying I needed to get on Skype immediately. Given how...odd that was, I went ahead and got on. At that time, I was presented with the log I have attached. Given how...incredibly disturbing this log was (and frankly, is) I had to ask a lot of questions: why is this log backdated to December? (the other party was ashamed of having the conversation) How do we know whether this is a fabrication? (As much as Tweaker, and now his friends, obsess about someone's "typing style"/"voice", it matched his, and it was later confirmed by Skype that the text had been transmitted) and most importantly, should we tell his roommates? At the time, two of his three roommates were part of our normal call and we didn't know how they would react to this news, so I chose not to say anything. This is the only regret I have ever had concerning this situation, because they are wonderful folks and I should have had more faith in them. I announced to a small number of folks in a call I was in that I intended to notify the authorities of the contents of this log, including a non-staff member who often joined our calls, Peter/Tongara, who acted disgusted by the contents of the log and agreed the cops should have been called. However, he later turned around and told Tweaker, who was not in the call, that the authorities had been notified.

    When he was notified, Tweaker went into one his roommates' rooms, visibly upset, and claimed that he "was going to jail." As the roommates were not fully aware of the situation, they were confused. Previously, Tweaker had confessed to viewing child pornography to one his roommates, and the assumption was that the charges were related to this. Because of the moral ambiguity of the situation, they assisted Tweaker in leaving the state he was in at the time. Before leaving, Tweaker sent one message, saying only "do you want to see the other half of that log?" By the time the roommates found out about the situation, Tweaker was already on a bus to the airport and they could not stop him.

    After he flew back to the state he is originally from, Tweaker called his roommates and asked them to lie on his behalf to the authorities during their investigation. They, in turn, reported this statement to the police. My understanding of the situation from there, based on conversations I have had with the authorities, is as follows: the local police in his home state were notified of his departure, went to his mother's house to interrogate several parties, and they were uncooperative. The case had to be dropped due to this lack of cooperation and outside corroboration aside from the Skype log. I personally believe the innocent do not fly cross-country and ask people to lie on their behalf, but I do realize people want to take this ambiguity in the end as a way of saying nothing happened. In fact, during writing this I just happened to be talking to one of Tweaker's former roommates, and his own words were "Honestly I don't care about what's true about Tweaker anymore, if that makes sense. I think he's a huge ass hole whichever way is true because in either case he lied to me and it really fucking hurt and affected my life." I understand the strong desire to believe a friend is not capable of something, and it's something I had to wrestle with more than any single person. I did not sleep well the first few nights after I notified the authorities, not because I had doubts but because I sincerely did not want to ruin the life of my former friend who was finally starting to get his life together. The fact that he wants to drag this out in public both confuses and saddens me, honestly. I was hoping he would seek help and move on with his life, but his actions have shown otherwise. I have been careful not to use his name in public for that very reason—even if he was arraigned and/or convicted, I do believe people can change and everyone deserves the chance to start over fresh. I hope you too will respect that.

    In fact, it's ironic, because I know with near-certainty it's not Tweaker who you likely spoke to. He expressed to me privately the desire to have me update the topic, and I gave him a couple of compromises, and he decided it was better to let the subject drop. I suspect that instead you spoke to Peter and Matt A. Tobin. Both of these non-staff members were occasional participants in a...semi-staff Skype call, for lack of a better description. It was more just a loose collective of friends that included a lot of Retro staff. After the call was made, they basically went nuts and started spamming the board and otherwise being obnoxious, so I removed them. They have taken this to mean many millions of things that it didn't, but that's really not my problem to deal with. They, along with a former banned member, Wetflame, have decided that making drama over this is somehow conducive to...God knows what. I guess it's fun to have an enemy to grind on and feel like you're fighting the man. Because the other half of the log had an unrequited crush on a member of Retro staff, they were targeted for harassment, and the logs of this are pretty public: I believe there's a SFGHQ topic with some of the audio logs, and I assure you there are far more where that came from. Because we know people in the Skype call where such things were organized, I know they tried to spread a false rumor concerning domestic abuse of the staffers among other things due to their involvement.

    In regards to InstantSonic, he did indeed make a video in poor taste concerning the situation, but this is where it's kind of funny. See, I can't really stop anyone from doing anything or thinking whatever the fuck they want to, so the idea that I somehow could say NO YOU MAY NOT QUESTION OR COMMENT ON THIS is kind of laughable. Do you know how much easier my life would be if we all just agreed? Fuck, we can't even agree as a staff if Sonic Colors was a good game! How the FUCK would we agree about something like this? I mean, I didn't hear anyone on staff who knew about this say anything negative or questioning, so I really don't know who you're talking to, nor did I ever say anything along those lines. What I -did- say was that I didn't really want it talked about publicly, but that was because I didn't even want to bring up the topic publicly...because I didn't want to embarrass Tweaker. The only reason I brought it up at all was because a few outside rabble-rousers kept spreading surreal stories in an attempt to goad me to say something! It's kind of mind-blowing to me that they're trying this now.

    InstantSonic did do several things that I don't approve of, but here's where the facts lie: his primary role for Retro is to mix podcasts and, when possible, participate in them. This is not a huge responsibility, and frankly, we're sitting on several hours' worth of content that he hasn't mixed. I'm pissed and just waiting to get the files back from him so I can move on. He himself will tell you "my actions were my own and I own that." HeroChao, one of my moderators, left the community entirely several months ago due to harassment from Peter and Tobin and I have only left her on out of courtesy. By that same token, another moderator unrelated to ANY of this left several months ago as well and I haven't removed his status, either. Making some issue out of that is just stupid.
     
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