I was in bed, relaxing and preparing to go to sleep, and as I was doing so, I was listening to Vic Mignogna' s deposition video. When I got to the part where Vic was being asked about KiwiFarms and Lynn Hunt, I stopped the video immediately and did a Google search, leading me to this thread. I've read a bit, and I immediately tried to register. Had to actually leave my bed, because the video you need to watch wouldn't play on my iPad. That's fine, though, because I need the keyboard for this.
When I first went into the Vic situation, I did so with open eyes. I've been harassed by a popular person I thought could do no wrong, and I was also the victim of dozens of people lying in an effort to slander me. I'd been on both sides. As part of this, I checked out the thread for ANN's first Vic article. That's where I saw the name "Illia Sadri", and I knew it looked familiar. Then I googled it and saw HER name. I couldn't believe it. All that hypocrisy about women needing to stick together, and the voices of victims needing to be heard... I believe Vic after everything I've seen, but it's certainly possible she was victimized by him. All the same, I really want to tell my story, if that's okay. There's no proof left now, unfortunately, but I'm sick of keeping quiet.
That incident I mentioned earlier, where dozens of people slandered me similar to what Vic is going through? Lynn Hunt spearheaded that.
I have attended every Tekkoshocon since the first one. For the first two years, it was great. I've always been very anxious, was bullied at school, and things were bad at home too. Tekkoshocon was wonderful. It was the first place where I wasn't treated like a freak for liking anime. Fast forward two years. I was sixteen. A few friendships within the forum community for the con had turned sour. It happens. But Lynn was friends with those three, though I wouldn't make the connection for years. A friend of mine showed me a livejournal group blog, where my former friends and Lynn where saying nasty stuff about me. Everything from saying I should be shot dead for a bad fanfic of mine they'd found, to talking about hurting and even killing me and my family at Tekko. They were possibly just joking, but it freaked me out, and while I was just sixteen, these were all grown men and women. The youngest was, like, 21. Within a few months or so, they were all staff at Tekko, so I reported them to the security head. Their LJ accounts were linked to their forum ones, but they refused to take action.
The harassment got worse. Two of them were a married couple, and they began spreading rumors I was a stalker who was obsessed with one of them. Another claimed I'd stolen money from her. Lynn helped to spread these lies, along with more, and repeatedly used her position as head of the AMV Department to mess with me(at the time, I didn't know the fourth person on the LJ was the AMV Head). People I didn't even know started slandering me too. Tekko still refused to help. I finally learned Lynn was responsible for my other harassment by finding a Cosfu thread that gave it away. In said thread, she was talking about my chest and saying really disgusting things about my body, and that of my fourteen-year-old sister, whose sole crime was being with me at an AMV viewing at the con.
This went on for about ten years. The three former friends all left the con, but Lynn still kept harassing me. I never knew why she hated me before I learned she was their other friend from the LJ group, and she would always deny hating me when I tried to ask her. Finally, at one Tekko, she publicly humiliated me. It wasn't the kind of thing that would be a big deal for a normal person, but because of my anxiety, the large group made it much worse. She had harassed me in the weeks leading up to the con, banning me from the AMV contest, the AMV room, and telling me I had to beg her forgiveness to be allowed back. The con chair at the time, Jim Gogal, kept telling me he'd handle it, but he never did. Same thing after the con, when I reported the incident to him. Then she started attacking me publicly on the forums, after I mentioned the incident, with no names or details that would identify her, in the negative feedback thread.
If Lynn's right about one thing, it's that Tekko doesn't handle harassment reports properly. It was only after the forum incident that Gogal finally took action, because people were starting to notice. He banned me for harassing the staff, and I only got unbanned because the guy that took over for him helped me, seeing that he had lied to the other staffers about what had really happened. Lynn finally having left the con no doubt helped too.
Those ten years were hell for me. On top of everything else I'd already been dealing with, I had to deal with slander and online bullying. And I didn't have a bunch of fans. I was a scared sixteen-year-old. Lynn was a Department Head for one of the most technical positions. She was one of the few staffers at what started out as a very small con. She was friends with a lot of people. She used that power to avoid ever getting in trouble. She shamed and harassed another girl to a disgusting degree. The lies of her and her friends even got me targeted by a predator. I'm sure that seems like a lie, but it's the truth. She did all this, and now she has the gall to preach like she is?
And I have to love the irony. For years, Tekko ignored me about her. They put the safety of the attendees over their own personal interests. And now she's trying to destroy them.
Sorry for rambling, but...I've wanted to say all this for a long time.
archive.fo
