The Unit of Caring

Community politics; fallout of the last few posts

I’m still emotionally exhausted and not up for writing a full postmortem of the Brent thing, or honestly even for writing this, but there have been some developments that deserve the same circulation as the original content. I spent a while agonizing over how to order these bullet points so people didn’t feel like the most important ones were buried; please just read all of them if you care about the details of this situation/are making decisions based on it, and go do something more enjoyable if you don’t.

- Everyone involved is safe. Generous people offered to arrange for the writers of the Medium posts to stay in a hotel for a few nights if they felt that they needed this for their safety; they decided not to, and everyone is safe.
- [there was a link here] is another ex of Brent’s who is willing to talk with people about their experiences; the things they said match with everything I already knew about Brent’s relationships before he joined our community, including details like names, so I’m sure they’re the real thing. [update: they have removed this offer.]
- The author of the third post about Brent’s manipulation is married to the author of the second post; I don’t think this is nefarious or anything but it’s context people deserve to have while interpreting the posts.
- As far as I know, no one has contested any of the things put forth in any of the Medium posts. My understanding* is that Brent agrees they are true. 
- Some people have reached out to verify peoples’ stories of Brent lying, and in particular of Brent lying to keep his new partners away from people. I continue to have a chat log of Brent telling me he hadn’t been on a date in two years. 
Person A, who I described in my last post as ‘heard from Brent that Brent’s friends B and C were responsible for looking out for Brent’s new girlfriend, but learned that B and C didn’t know about this’, dug up chatlogs and found that they’d misremembered - they heard from Brent’s friend B that B and C were looking out for Brent’s new partner, and C didn’t know about this. This is not Brent’s fault, and shouldn’t have been listed as an example of Brent’s deceptive behavior. 
- The REACH panel is conducting an investigation. I was on the REACH panel before everything went public; I’ve stepped down, because it is important to me (and was important to the Medium piece writers) that I not have to decline comment on this until the investigation concludes, but also the REACH investigation needs to be impartial. This seemed like the best way to balance those. 

* I have not seen or heard him say this; my understanding comes from other people sharing statements they say Brent has contemplated making, and from statements in defense of Brent.

• 20 September 2018
• #abuse cw
• 56