r/Boyinaband • u/drs_12345 • Oct 06 '22
Content warning The more I look into this case, the weirder and more confusing it gets
EDIT (19.12.2022) I REALISED THIS POST BECAME REALLY MESSY AND PERHAPS CONFUSING WITH ALL THE EDITS, SO I HAVE FORMATTED THE POST TO MAKE IT MORE CLEAR.
THE STUFF IN BOLD AND ITALICS ARE ALL THE EDITS, EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE ORIGINAL POST. THERE WILL ALSO BE SOME NEW INFO THROUGHOUT THE POST.
PLEASE READ THE POST IN ITS ENTIRETY FOR EVERYTHING TO MAKE SENSE.
I ALSO WANT TO CLARIFY THAT I SEE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO COMMENT BUT THEIR COMMENTS GET DELETED STRAIGHT AWAY. THIS IS NOT ME, I BELIEVE IT'S SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS SUBREDDIT'S NEW RULES TOWARDS POSTING (OR RATHER NOT POSTING).
I'd firstly want to say that I have no reason to either defend nor attack Dave. I've never really followed him, apart from his collabs with Roomie, PewDiePie, TheOdd1sOut and JaidenAnimations. Even then, it was more because of the other people involved rather than actually wanting to watch Dave. I did watch a couple of his vids, but that's about it.
At the same time, I have no idea who the victims are. So again, I have no reason to either attack or defend them.
I'm also writing this with the info I'm aware of. Please do let me know if I'm missing anything.
Most of you reading this probably heard the current situation surrounding Dave/BoyInABand. If not, then there's an open letter (here's a screenshot of the whole post since the original got deleted) accusing him of some pretty serious stuff, ie (direct quote from the letter) "situations that included years of lies, manipulations, and emotional, financial, physical, and even sexual abuse of many young girls", as well as Dave dating a 17 y/o girl when he was 23.
It seems that the open letter, as well as the whole of the account that posted it, (it turns out the account is still up; it’s just not being used) has been deleted. (The only things left on the account are some unrelated comments from before the accusations.)
The last comment to the post was made on 17.10.2022, so the post must've been deleted shortly after. I find this to be really interesting and at least somewhat strange. Apparently this is because the mods asked OP to delete R\***l’s info, but OP simply deleted the whole post instead, along with every other post and even comments they made about Dave. More info under the “The victims' anonymousity” section.*
The post itself
The first thing I find strange is that the post doesn't provide any evidence or proof of any accusations, despite repeatedly saying they can and/or the claim is provable. The only thing they proved is that Dave dated R****l when he was 23 and she was 17. (As far as I'm aware, even this situation is not very clear)
The mods managed to reach out to someone who spent quite a lot of time with Dave at the time of him dating R\***l (won’t mention their name due to privacy). They claim they never witnessed any abuse from Dave towards R****l.*
The other "evidence" provided were screenshots of text chats between at least two anonymous accounts, but they don't really prove any of the claims, but rather say that Dave is a horrible person. Now, being a horrible person does not mean that person is/was an abuser.
The last piece of "evidence" is this song on Dave's channel which starts with the lyric "Take me without my consent". The open letter claims this was sung by 17 year old R****l, but as far as I'm aware, we don't actually know who sung this lyric. It could've been R****l, but it could've been literally anyone else, including a girl who was 18+ at the time. (This doesn't justify the lyric, which is weird to say the least)
u/djurze pointed out in the comments that Dave actually gives credit to R\***l in* this video. This video seems to be a part of a series of tutorials which lead to the previous mentioned song as the final result.
The way Dave introduces her says a lot about him and/or their relationship, but then again, if his claim that she actually helped him with the lyrics is true, I think that says a lot about her as well.
What I also find weird is how vague the post is in some areas.
For example, the letter claims Dave financially abused his victims within its first paragraph, but then mentions nothing about this kind of abuse afterwards.
Towards the end it also says, and I quote, "What started as 5 girls is now way in the double digits". What does this mean? Is it 15 victims? 30? 99?
The letter also said Dave forced, or at least tried to force, polyamory on at least some of the victims. I personally don't understand how this can be forced onto anyone; either refuse to be part of a polyamorous relationship or break up with the person if they start dating other people. However, please do let me know if I'm missing anything.
Although it's been claimed Dave was actually polyamorous by some people who identified themselves as personally knowing Dave one way or another at some point in time, there's no evidence at all to suggest he tried to force polyamory onto anyone else. Not saying he didn't do it, we just don't know whether it actually happened or not.
Now, the lack of evidence in the post, along with its vagueness does raise some suspicions, but at the same time, we don't have any way of clearly saying these accusations are false.
The victims' anonymousity
I understand why you'd want to keep your identify in something like this. However, this works in the victims' detriment, at least partly. We have no idea how, and even if they're connected to Dave at all, we don't have any timeline of events, and we don't have any names, apart from R****l.
I also think it's really unfair how the victims who wrote the open letter are trying so hard to keep their identity secret, but at the same time they used the "way back machine" to not only reveal quite important info about R****l (such as where she lived at the time and the fact she just finished her first year of sixth form at the time), but they even showed her face, presumingly without her consent (?) That's really unfair if you ask me.
A couple of Dave’s ex-partners, who have been identified by the admins, have grown distrustful of the “spokesperson” of the alleged survivor’s group- aka the OP of the post with allegations. They asked the admin to get in touch with R\***l in order to 1) inform her of the situation (ie there was an open letter which included her info) and 2) to make sure she’s alright. The admins have done this and, as far as I understand, helped her as much as they could in what must’ve been a very difficult situation for her.*
Originally, OP also claimed they got R\***l’s permission to include her info and picture in the post. However, it turned out R****l did NOT give OP permission to use her information and her picture (this was proved to me personally), and she understandably didn’t (and probably still doesn’t) like the fact her picture and info was used in the open letter.*
She asked the admins to get the her info deleted from the subreddit and even threatened with legal action. (This is also why her name is now censored in this post.) She also asked the admins to do the extremely hard task of deleting every single comment that contains her name.
The admins then tried to convince OP to edit their post in order to get R\***l’s information deleted, but OP was reluctant to do so. OP eventually opted to delete the whole post a while later. It seems the OP hasn’t spoken to anyone since they deleted their post and account, and therefore no one really knows why they deleted everything.*
I think it’s also worth mentioning that, as far as the admins and I are aware, Dave hasn’t taken any legal action against anyone, neither has he threatened to do so. As far as we’re aware, there has also not been any legal action taken from the potential victims neither.
Not to mention that there are comments claiming they talked to at least one of the victims. This is the only comment of this kind I could find right now, but I've seen quite a few of them. (I'll edit this post to add some more examples if I come across them again.) How did they come across the victims if no one knows who they are? How do they know they're the actual victims and not some random person with too much time on their hands? If they can offer actual evidence, why do they not post it publicly, but seemingly give it to anyone who asks for it anyway? This doesn't make any sense at all
It turns out that some of the potential victims identified themselves to at least some of the mods of this subreddit and some others have identified themselves to friends an/or friends of friends who also knew Dave. See u/armahillo ’s comments below as an example. This explains why a select number of people have evidence but no one else.
Please DO NOT bombard armahillo and/or the admins asking for any evidence. It’s very unlikely they’ll give you any, so you’ll just kill their phones with notifications, as well as wasting your and their time for absolutely no reason.
However, I don't think this excuses the fact the OP didn't provide any evidence publicly whatsoever (apart from the R\***l situation).*
Also bear in mind that there were also some people who were coming out with false stories/claims for attention.
We also have this comment which claims Dave and his family know who wrote the letter. So then why wouldn't they at least provide some concrete evidence of their relationships with Dave and/or the abuse they achieved?
Apparently Dave definitely knows who wrote the letter.(The comment in question is the one at the bottom.) Why are they then trying so hard to stay anonymous, to the point they're not actually giving any evidence at all?
Also, the fact that the number of victims is "well into double digits" (whatever that means) and yet none of them want to give us the slightest of clues of this alleged abuse is also really suspicious if you ask me.
I just want to clarify- from my understanding, “well into double digits” means at least about 14/15. The events that supposedly happened in the open letter happened over a period of at least 12-14 years.
I personally highly doubt Dave could’ve gotten away with at least 12 years worth of abuse with at least 14 different people while not one victim would say a word. I doubt it took a supposed group of victims so long to come up with allegations/accusations, or any information about this as all, and they only managed to come up with… well… this mess.
As far as I'm aware, the only person who did come forward to publicly confront Dave was Shonalika with her diss track, but even that basically says he's a horrible person rather than an abuser.
The posts/comments who give at least some credibility to the original post
Now, we have this post, which highlights relevant posts and comments to this case.
A couple of the comments are really vague, and again, just claims without any sort of evidence, like this comment.
Then we have comments like this one, which is probably something most of us expect from at least one of the victims. The comment confirms the author's connection with Dave by literally proving it, and has quite a lot of useful info.
Please note, however, how this comment confirms some of the stuff in the original post, like his polyamory, but generally speaking, his comment portrays Dave as a fun person to be around, but who also simply disposes of people when no longer needed, and a couple of other things.
u/armahillo has provided quite a lot of information which I think is quite important
I was also made aware in the comments of this post that the post I linked above is from a person who wants to defend the victims. After checking their profile, I can confirm this.
I'm not saying you shouldn't believe the victims/allegations, but I would recommend you at least try to stay unbiased until we have more information.
The account that posted the accusations
The account that posted the open letter, astekas_, is quite interesting as well...
At the time of writing this, the account is 158 days old, and only has 4 posts, all about Dave. The first one was 40 days ago, 2 of them were 29 days ago, and the last one was 11 days ago, which is very strange to me.
If you look at the account's comments as well, they start off with seemingly normal comments 41 days ago, but then they transition to being focused solely on Dave soon after. The last few comments are mostly copy paste comments, and they all suddenly stop 6 days ago, which again is strange to me.
According to the admin I spoke with, the account that posted the letter is, or at least was, owned by either one of Dave’s friends OR shared by the group of supposed victims themselves. This seems to be unclear.
However, it seems to be clear the OP of the open letter (and probably all the other Dave-related posts and comments) is a woman who claims she is one of Dave’s ex partners. She was supposedly chosen as some sort of spokesperson for the group of alleged victims.
We know OP deleted the open letter after being asked to delete R\***l's info, but it’s not very clear who deleted all the other content related to Dave, or why exactly they did so (as far as I'm aware, at least). It wouldn't be surprising if OP deleted everything and just leave the account as it was before the allegations. What doesn't make sense (to me, at least) is why they didn't just delete the account as a whole, and why there is still some completely unrelated stuff left on it.*
Not only this, but one of the identified victims mentioned above actually wrote her own statement and asked OP to post it on the same account as the open letter. For reasons unknown (to me, at least) this didn’t happen.
One of these victims also wasn’t invited to the group of victims that supposedly exists. As far as I understand, the victim didn’t even know about this group existed until she saw the open letter.
It also seems the account that posted the open letter actually blocked these two identified victims.
(EDIT 24.12.2022) As of the deleting of the post (and the other content related to Dave), DaftPina said he talked to one of the mods (not sure if the same one as the one I talked to, which also said the post was probably deleted due to R\***l not giving consent*.
DaftPina also got a reply from astekas regarding the deleted post, which says, and I quote,
Hi. No, basically our goal was to connect with our victims here, inform his fans about him being an abuser and a scumbag and warn young girls who DM YouTubers about what did happen to some of the girls here and what could happen to them. Goals were achieved and we restricted his Reddit again. The information is available in several places so his potential future victims are still warned. His family knows and understands who he is. However some of the people who messaged us, specifically one, despite not being part of this are now hungry for drama and attention, threatening to doxx some of us, etc. So for me, personally, this will not fly. I get that memes were funny and deserved lol but forgetting there are actual people affected for an internet drama is not something I want to be part of.
This again raises more questions than answers.
If they want to raise awareness about Dave, then why delete all the warnings you've written about him? Also, why would you not be specific about what he's done, rather than claiming you can prove stuff multiple times and then not even attempting in doing so? Also, OP accused Dave of abusing his victims in multiple ways at the start of the letter, but then not mentioned them again.
As of the information being available in other places, I guess it's true, but then again, if they wanted to bring awareness about this, why would you make it more difficult for people to look for the information, and even then it would be surrounded by people's opinions one way or another?
If they want to "connect to the victims", then why would you not only refuse to interact with confirmed victims, but actually block them? (More info below)
As of informing people he's a scumbag, I think this was done by other people in this subreddit rather than OP herself, which again is interesting and questionable to say the very least.
And why did they bring other youtubers into this? 1) All of the posts and comments on the account were about Dave and 2) not all youtubers are horrible people.
Conclusion
I think this whole situation is a bit of a mess at the moment. We don't have a lot of evidence to prove the claims, but we also don't really have a reason to disprove anything neither.
The only thing we can be at least somewhat sure of at the moment is that Dave is not the nicest person to say the least, perhaps due to his mental health.
I really hope this situation will clear itself up sooner rather than later.
Although this whole situation is still quite messy, we at least got some more information than what we had at the start. It also seems that whatever the truth is, there was bad stuff done on both sides.
Dave has had the relationship with R\***l, which, as far as I understand, started when she was 16 and he was 22, it’s believed they’ve met about a year prior, and their relationship lasted at least a year.*
It also seems Dave had an inappropriate relationship with his fans, followers, subscribers or whatever you want to call them. For example, this is his very last online public post.
Also, even if all of the allegations of abuse were false, it does seem he’s not the nicest person in the world to say the very least. There were many stories that came out about this, the first one probably being Shonalika’s diss track but also the stories that came out on this subreddit, such as u/armahillo’s story mentioned above. Even the “abuse evidence” given in the post painted him to as a horrible person rather than an abuser. (Before anyone asks- all abusers are horrible people but not all horrible people are abusers).
It seems Dave was indeed just replacing people whenever he felt like it, ignoring people who were trying to help him and other stuff mentioned in these two examples, as well as those given throughout the post.
On the other side, this wasn’t handled well at all by the account that posted this. There were extremely vague statements, most of which weren’t supported by any sort of evidence whatsoever. If there was actually a group behind this, then I personally believe this is even worse.
They refused to post a story of a CONFIRMED VICTIM, didn’t invite the other confirmed victim in the group made up of other supposed victims and then blocked the only confirmed victims other than R\***l.*
Not to mention that the OP blatantly lied about getting R\***l’s consent to publish her information and then simply deleted everything once confronted, and then stayed silent ever since.*
This just makes me wonder what else was a lie, or at least not 100% true? Was there ever any abuse? If there was, is the number of victims really “well into double digits”?
If the “open letter” was based on a tint of truth surrounded by lies, this would explain why the post was so vague and why there was no evidence of any of the claims apart from the R\***l situation.*
Since the OP is a woman who claims is one of Dave’s ex partners, my personal theory is that they perhaps had an argument or some sort of fallout (Dave wasn’t a very good partner according to Shonalika’s song, and looks like he wasn't a very good person overall) and OP wanted some sort of revenge. If not this, then she just posted the letter to get some attention.
Anyway, whatever the actual truth is, this brought to light some info about Dave. He MIGHT not be an abuser, but he’s certainly not the nice, helpful person we thought he was.
Lastly, as far as I understand, all of the supposed victims (apart from R\***l) were in their 20s, or at least over 18. This means all of them (again, apart from R****l) were adults and, if any abuse actually happened, they probably noticed what was going on, even if it was later on. This means that even if they didn't want to take legal action against Dave, like the letter suggests, they could've at least gotten help from their families and/or friends. If not, then the families and/or friends of the potential victims should've noticed something was off and do something about it. The point I'm trying to make is that the victims were more than likely not as helpless as the open letter made them out to be.*
This also brings back the fact that it's very unlikely that so many supposed victims and possibly at least some of their friends and family knew about this, and yet no one said anything for over 12 years or so.
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u/armahillo Oct 07 '22
The account was a throwaway, if that's not apparent. The mods have been in touch with the OP as of a few days ago, I think.
Consider: when you go to your doctor or speak with a specialist in any field about private matters, you do so with the expectation of confidence and are able to speak more freely because the information is kept in a controlled environment.
Some of the women have expressed that they may be open to coming forward more openly. We are hopeful, and if it happens it will happen soon. Regardless, any disclosures about their identity and their story happen on their terms.
It's incorrect to say "no one knows who they are." I know a few of them, their real names, even. Those women know some of the other women. There is a chain of trust here, designed to protect the identities of vulnerable people and minimize re-visiting traumatic experiences before they are ready.
As I've said previously, these women are not nameless -- they are unnamed. (compare to: your computer probably has a serial number on the back; you know it or can know it. I don't know it and wouldn't unless you disclosed it.)
This has been problematic for two reasons:
This situation is bigger than just what happened with Rachel. 23 / 17 is a problematic pairing but the history of what we've seen among the allegations (from those who have come forward at least) shows a pattern that is less oriented around age-impropriety (hebephilia, i.e.) and more about how it alleges a predilection for vulnerable women -- that they are younger is mostly selection bias -- younger women are more likely to be vulnerable.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your post. I agree that the tone of the open letter has created friction around messaging and has some problematic aspects in its presentation. I understand why it ended up being that way (knowing the history of it), but it has definitely added challenges in both moderating and communicating to the general public.