If someone says “you’ve probably heard things about me”
Content warning: this writing references sexual assault.
It’s been repeatedly brought to my attention over the last couple of years that a person in Berlin (who I’ll refer to as Person X for the remainder of this post) has been approaching people within the rope community to say things like, “Gestalta’s probably told you bad things about me.”
Sometimes it’s phrased more vaguely as “you’ve probably heard bad things about me,” which, predictably, prompts the person to ask around until someone in the know eventually ends up referring them back to me.
This behaviour keeps putting me in a position I didn’t ask to be in — having to explain what’s actually being referred to. It’s emotionally exhausting to have to keep revisiting this. So here’s an outline of the facts:
The “bad thing” in question is rape — not a misunderstanding or “grey area.” It was a clear case of non-consensual sex, involving someone who had explicitly, verbally said they did not want to, who was also asleep at the time of the event.
Person X has admitted to this in both writing and voice recordings.
After repeated unwanted contact, all communications from Person X were redirected to a criminal lawyer.
The lawyer reviewed and confirmed the authenticity of these communications and issued a formal cease-and-desist letter. The letter makes clear that Person X’s own written and recorded statements describe a criminal offence under §177 StGB (rape), punishable by at least 2 and up to 15 years’ imprisonment.
The letter also instructs Person X not to contact me again, by any means, and not to come within 100 metres. It states that further contact will result in criminal charges for stalking (§238 StGB) and the aforementioned sexual assault.
Since that point, there’s been no direct contact — thankfully — but Person X has approached people they believe to be my friends or associates (we assume based on observing social media connections). Those people have described these encounters as uncomfortable, and have been confused about why they were being approached at all.
Friends have told me that person X has contacted them after being explicitly told that they didn’t want contact, to explain “their side” of the story.
I’ve also been told that Person X has described this as a “misunderstanding” or that consent was given or could have been “perceived.” That is absolutely untrue, and I have the written and recorded proof to demonstrate that.
I have also been told that Person X is claiming professional experience working with me or at my studio. I’m open to give references upon request, both positive and negative, for anyone who has worked with or for me.
I’m still very deliberately choosing not to name Person X—but I do want to set the record straight.
When this first happened, Person X urged me to stay quiet, saying that because of my “social power” in the rope community, any disclosure would have serious consequences for them socially.
And for nearly two years, I have stayed quiet. Aside from a very small number of close friends, I’ve only ever spoken about it when approached directly and asked to do so. At this point, it honestly feels like more people know about this because they keep raising it, rather than because I’ve gone out of my way to tell anyone.
This tangentially brings me onto a broader point.
I’m aware that I have a certain amount of visibility in this community, which is why I’m normally quite careful about what I say — especially in writing. But I also notice that this perceived “social power” has ended up being one of the things keeping me silent. Perhaps I’ve worried about backlash, or about the professional consequences of being seen as “too dramatic,” and — perhaps naively — I’ve had too much compassion to want to inflict said social damage on anyone, even when it gets to this point.
And yet, this isn’t an isolated thing. It’s worrying how often people (generally men) in this scene have expressed concern about what someone in my position might say about them — which seems to imply one of two things:
they assume women / femme-presenting people are inherently unreliable and prone to lying, or
they know their behaviour might not stand up to scrutiny, and they’re careful to only cross lines with people they assume won’t be believed.
Either way, it reveals something uncomfortable about the culture we move in.
Right now, I’m posting this because after nearly two years of “managing this quietly” — whilst simultaneously juggling the immense workload of opening and running Daruma almost single handedly, spending the majority of my disposable income on therapy and lawyers to help me “deal quietly” with it, and absorbing the impact it’s had on my fundamental ability to trust relationships, on my social battery, even on my ability to do rope outside of a technical/professional context — I have to admit, I’m a little exhausted.
This isn’t a case of me using whatever “social influence” I have to “cancel” someone. If that was my intention I’d have done that long ago. It’s been almost two years, and I’m still, very deliberately, not naming names.
I just want it to stop.
I don’t want to keep being reminded of this when I least expect it. The indirect contact, the feeling my friends are being monitored, the way they keep inserting themselves back into my life through others. Living with the knowledge that someone who raped me is seemingly going out of their way to spread misinformation and rumours to everyone from my closest friends, to random people in the community that I don’t know, whilst I am keeping silent so that I’m not “abusing my position of power.”