#in case it is unclear he is LYING about the parameters of his relationship with dean!

[moocha-muses]

"Ethical. Right. That, uh, does sound like the kind of thing Duncan would fill you in on. But, you know, hon, not every sim is as open about that sort of thing as he is, and Dean and I did agree that we'd be discreet if you and the twins were around and we ever wanted to kiss anyone else-"

"Uh-huh?"

"And I'd hate for us to fight about it, if you could not mention to Dean that Jojo and I got a little carried away in front of you-"

"Sure? Is that all? Because I'm supposed to be meeting Grey for a raid-"

"That's it. Thanks, sweetie. Love you."

"Love you, too, Dad. Okay! Um, the lich king's not gonna slay himself-"

[forestwater87]

OK. So idk if something is wrong with me, I'm naive or just missing something but I really really don't understand how these girls are Victims? I'm not saying they aren't, I just don't understand. As far as I can tell they all consented, and were never pressured or coerced into doing anything. I'm not trying to troll or be contrary or judgmental I'm just struggling to understand. Sorry, you seem to be quite well thought about this whole mess. I hope this ask is okay and doesn't cause any offence, it genuinely is not my intention.

I understand why you feel that way. I wasn’t comfortable calling them victims early in this whole situation (which has only been about a week long, Jesus), and it wasn’t really until I started to put all of them together that patterns began to emerge and I could really understand the scope of what Ryan did. I’ll lay out my thoughts here, referring to the individuals by their first initial following the example set by r/RyanHaywood, and hopefully we’ll be able to piece together why so many of us are willing to call these women victims.

(To be clear: I’m not trying to call anyone a victim who does not consent to that term. I don’t believe any of these fans have come forward expressing that they don’t want to be considered victims, but if that’s the case then I have no interest in forcing that label on anyone. I’m using it as a descriptive term, not a prescriptive one, if that makes sense.)

First off, we’ll start with the easiest stuff to agree with:

1. At least one of them was a victim of statutory rape, and potentially just plain rape. I’m not sure what the laws on removing a condom during sex without consent are, but M’s story makes it clear that he did not do due diligence in making sure she was of legal age -- the same can be argued for T, though her lying to him about her age makes that a tougher putt for some people; I’m pretty sure legally speaking he’s still in the hole -- so he just straight-up had sex with a minor. Technically with two minors. 

So that one’s pretty easy. However, there have been something like 9 people have come forward and only 2 of them were minors. Certainly not a winning record -- to be abundantly clear, the number of minors you should be having sex with is 0; if it’s possible to have sex with negative numbers of minors, that should be the baseline for everyone -- but one of them lied about her age and the other one seemed really enthusiastic, and what about those other women? They were adults and they consented, so they shouldn’t be considered victims, right?

Well, that’s where it gets a bit trickier. I’ll put this all under a cut for length, but while the following isn’t illegal, it’s definitely immoral, and part of what led to me being more comfortable calling these women victims:

2. They were victims due to his celebrity status. Your mileage is definitely going to vary on this one, but the fact that Ryan is a popular internet personality means that his fans are more likely to be starstruck, intimidated, flattered, or otherwise willing to do things to make him happy that they otherwise wouldn’t do. T, M, and L have all said that they were influenced by their admiration of him as a fan to do things they wish they hadn’t, and there are definitely ways that influencers or celebrities can ethically date fans (Caiti Ward was a huge RT fan before she and Jack married, and by all appearances they’re the most wholesome couple in the entire world), but encouraging them to send you naked pictures in exchange for positive validation from someone you idolize definitely seems like a bad use of celebrity status. L indicates that Ryan claims he didn’t realize the impact his status had on fans, but considering he was seemingly exclusively choosing sex partners from within the fanbase -- as opposed to, say, Tinder or something -- he must’ve on some level gathered that fans were easier to convince to do what he wanted.

3. They were victims of dishonest behavior. All of the women who’ve spoken up so far have said that they believed they were the only one Ryan was having an extramarital sexual relationship with, which indicates at best that he was extremely vague on establishing the parameters of their relationship and arguably suggests he was misleading them. This put them at risk for STDs (especially considering his apparent comfort with unprotected sex) as well as just general emotional harm. He lied about them as well, indicating to anyone who found out -- from his mods in 2017 to his statement a few days ago -- that any relationship was an isolated mistake.

It’s also unclear how honest he was about his marriage; all of the women who discussed this aspect have said that he told them a similar story, and at least M was led to believe that she was actually helping his marriage by satisfying his sexual needs so he wouldn’t have to leave his wife. It’s naïve and perhaps delusional to an outsider, but that and a lot of other stuff seems to be explained by . . .

4. They were victims of emotional manipulation. What’s really telling about lining all of these accounts up is the pattern that emerges: Ryan began with friendly conversation, often dispensing advice on personal and mental health issues (virtually all of the women who’ve come forward have expressed that they have some sort of mental illness), before testing the waters with a sexual comment that could be read as a joke or escalated further depending on the response of the fan, then alternating between showering them with compliments and attention and ignoring them for days or weeks on end. In at least one account he appears to have lied about a fan behind her back, which intentionally or not resulted in her losing most of her friends and being bullied on his own server, which he dismissed (again, behind her back) while treating her sympathetically to her face. That particular sexual relationship didn’t begin until after all of the above, and it’s not much of a stretch to note that he found a fan, isolated her, and then escalated the relationship into a sexual one.

And again, it comes down to spotting a pattern. Even if you don’t feel like a particular woman here is a victim, it’s important to take a look at all of their commonalities:

They were huge fans of Ryan, and followed him on at least one form of social media. Words like “idolized” and “loved” are used a lot in these testimonies.

They struggled with mental illness or personal issues (including bullying, depression, insecurity, marriage problems, etc.) that Ryan was informed about and seemingly supportive of.

They were younger than him by at least 8-9 years.

Their conversations gradually become more and more sexual. Sometimes this was initiated by Ryan, sometimes by the fan; if the sexual comments were rebuffed, they were immediately dismissed as jokes.

Nudes were sent and received, and they all stress how desired and valued Ryan made them feel.

If they were told about his marriage, it was a story that made him look highly sympathetic, and made cheating seem like less of a big deal or even the lesser of two evils.

He would push for in-person meetups, even offering to pay for the flight and hotel (using money he received from stream donations, which he claimed were being sent to his children's’ college funds).

He appears to have been uneven with his attention; multiple fans mentioned that he would “get bored” of them and not reply for days or even weeks at a time, and M mentions that he’d continue to “check in” even after their sexual relationship had ended. (Putting these together creates an image of a constantly-rotating list of potential partners that he’d cycle through, but admittedly this is just speculation.) One of the fans -- not sure which, but I linked them all so go hunting if you feel like it -- mentioned that he seemed bored or dismissive of non-sex talk after their relationship got sexual, essentially rescinding the very thing that made them want to talk to him in the first place.

So here we have a pattern of Ryan seeking out fans, especially those who were young and had personal issues making them vulnerable, drew them in with charm and friendly advice, then escalated the conversations to a graphic sexual nature, attempted to hook up with them, and made them feel special and unique (when that clearly was not the case). There are justifications for all of these on their own -- he’s not obligated to tell every sexual partner about all the others, some of the fans were the ones who took it further, etc. -- but when you put them all together, it’s pretty damning. This isn’t the behavior of someone who made a few mistakes with equally-consenting adults, but someone who had his strategy down to a science. 

To finally sum this up, anon: you don’t have to feel like any of these individual women were victims (well, except M; I don’t think there’s any other way to read that horrible story), but taken together I hope you can see Ryan’s predatory behavior. At the very least, I hope we can agree that they were all victims of lies and emotional manipulation.

Maybe it was unintentional . . . but with such consistent accounts, I find it hard to believe.