Abuser, misogynist… A fraud who lied about being a PhD candidate who worked for the Large Hadron Collider.. That’s the ‘kindest’ way to describe him.

I’m not his only victim. Others are too afraid to come forward publicly. A ‘pathological liar’ and ‘sociopath’ they call him. A ‘freak’ who gets turned on when he sees others in pain.

I call him a man who cannot face accountability and who destroyed who I used to be, because I said no to him. I’m here to bring you the receipts and to warn you.

Pie’s testimony

I personally have not stayed silent about my former work-partner, who ignored for years the police was looking for him and who only turned himself in when the Dutch authorities finally in 2019 said they would file a European Arrest warrant if he wouldn’t show up for interrogation. Only then, in October 2019, Alex flew to The Netherlands finally: to be heard about the 2016 sexual abuse case against him. During interrogation, he used his right to remain silent.

You can read about this and why it all has become a 4 year hell for me, in the reconstruction of the case which was published in over 9 Dutch newspapers. (Algemeen Dagblad, De Limburger, BD, BNdestem, ED, Gelderlander, PZC, De Stentor, Tubantia)

On December 12, 2020, newspaper De Limburger published about the serious mistakes the court made in 1 part of the criminal case against Alex (the crimes that happened in The Netherlands), after which the Dutch Public Prosecution Service finally recognised he sexually abused me while I was a hospitalised patient under the influence of doctor’s prescribed medication.

The case is still ongoing due to it all: after 4 years of legal hell and countless mistakes the police made (of which luckily they recognised some in an interview with the media), a full competent investigation into all the crimes Alex committed against me, still hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, Alex has access to a group of people that might be vulnerable and he could victimise.

This is why I’m writing this post: to warn people, and to clear my name, since Alex has been trying to manipulate and sabotage my life, my mind as well as my work, since we met in 2016. This won’t be a short post, and I do understand it will probably hurt a lot of people who are a fan of his that I write this. I just hope when you get to the end of it and have read all the conversations and watched the videos, you will understand my reasons for making this all public.

UPDATE JULY 8, 2021:
A YouTube documentary about Exurb1a’s ‘experiment’ is in the making.

UPDATE DECEMBER 12, 2020:

On the day De Limburger brought the news that the prosecution service recognised Alex sexually abused me, he had 4 videos shown (mirror) in this article deleted from YouTube. These videos prove the Skype conversations shown in this article are in fact between Alex and myself and support my testimony. I made them public to defend myself from his lies.

Exurb1a is the stage name of author Alexander McKechnie, who previously published the book ‘Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars’. Exurb1a’s youtube name was Exurbia, before he changed the ‘i’ into a ‘1’. Exurb1a changed his name to get around a vide… — Exurb1a is the stage name of author Alexander McKechnie, who previously published the book ‘Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars’. Exurb1a’s youtube name was *Exurbia*, before he changed the ‘i’ into a ‘*1’.* Exurb1a changed his name to get around a video-ban on the subreddit /r/videos on Reddit, due to vote-manipulation.

Introduction

My name is Pieke Roelofs. I’m an autistic artist and Dutch whistleblower.

I’m the former work partner of Alex McKechnie (youtuber Exurb1a), and the person he has been spreading lies about since January 2017. He started spreading lies about me after I filed a police report against him for among others sexual assault. Due to his lies, I felt and still feel forced to speak out against him.

Between 2018 and 2020 I testified against my own government in order to blow the whistle on how the Dutch Prosecution Service does not investigate (and at times even covers up) sexual abuse cases in The Netherlands. I testified about my experience in the police case concerning Alex, which caused political discussion in my country when questions in the Dutch House of Representatives were asked following a reconstruction of the case, which was published in a number of newspapers here.

In March 2021, moderators of Alex’ own Reddit community (/r/exurb1a), recognised some things he did to me in a statement they published:

“In the past this sub was moderated by the creator before he was banned following poor moderation choices which targeted and defamed his former work partner Pieke Roelofs. These poor moderation choices were made by him after she stopped their work together and filed a criminal complaint against him for among others abuse. This sub condemns the creator’s past moderation choices and recognises it caused an ongoing defamation campaign for Roelofs, as well as that the prosecution service states he did in fact abuse her. To stop further damage, we kindly ask you not to discuss this situation here.”

The beginning

Alex and I were working together in 2016 on among others a documentary, script for a movie, podcast and experiment.

We met through YouTube in March 2016. Below, you can see how he subscribed to my (at the time named) photoandgrime channel, when he had 2597 subscribers. We were both 26 when we met online; him being a few months older than me.

Alex was an unknown youtuber who painted himself as a depressed man with no self-esteem who wanted to learn from me. He told me he was a PhD student (candidate) in Philosophy at Sofia university in Bulgaria, and that in the past he worked as a scientist at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN; keep reading). He said (I’m paraphrasing here) he had left science behind to focus on writing and philosophy. These very calculated lies - that he was a PhD student and former CERN scientist - he told me to make me trust he had some kind of authority on topics such as science and philosophy.

We became friends, and while we started collaborating together, I also started helping him with his channel because I wanted him to succeed, as he considered quitting YouTube.

Below, a video example with Whatsapp messages, where he recognised the above too.

I was an internationally working artist at the time who occasionally did UV reactive experiments for fun on YouTube since I had an interest in strange science.

Above and below, you can see some examples of the work I was doing. Why I’m showing it? Because I’ve not worked in the creative sector anymore since 2016 due to what Alex did to me (and as a result now live with post-traumatic stress disorder) and before I tell and show you what he did and all the conversations and videos that show my experience, I want you to see what this man took from me. He dimmed the creative light in another artist and I want you to be fully aware of that.

Pieke Roelofs photoandgrime photography 02.jpg

Pieke Roelofs fashion photography photoandgrime 02.jpg

Pieke Roelofs fashion photography photoandgrime 03.jpg

Pieke-Roelofs-for-Dark-Beauty-Magazine-03 (2).jpg

photography photoandgrime pieke roelofs 05.jpg

Pieke Roelofs fashion photography photoandgrime 05.jpg

Around the time I met Alex, I often collaborated with other creatives, so when he wanted to work with me, I was up for it. An example of one of many projects we worked on, was the podcast ‘Half Drunk and Curious’.

The plan was that I would film a documentary on our collaboration. Below, an example of a video where we discuss the documentary.

Experiment A

Another project we worked on was an experiment he proposed. Alex called it ‘Experiment A’. It’s probably the most controversial topic when it comes to my experience with him and something I was advised to stay silent about for years until the prosecution service recognised he sexually abused me. Since they recently did in November 2020 (which was published about in the news in December 2020), I can now disclose this other layer of the story.

Long story short: Alex actually manipulated the experiment and wasn’t doing it with me like I thought - he was doing it on me. It concerned ‘capturing synchronicity’ (meaningful coincidences, see Carl Jung’s concept on them) everywhere in order to find out if there was a science behind them.

Experiment A escalated into Alex making up ‘synchronicities’. For example, he lied and said he ‘coincidentally’ met another scientist from The Large Hadron Collider (CERN) at a party in Bulgaria who had worked there around the time he worked there, but on a different experiment.

At this point I don’t know how many ‘synchronicities’ he ‘pointed out’ that didn’t actually happen - the CERN one was the most bizarre and easiest to give as an example in this article as a lie and synchronicity he made up. You see, CERN actually confirmed to me via e-mail that he never worked for them (see video below, which also shows a Skype video of Alex talking to me so you can verify the conversations in this article are between him and myself).

IMPORTANT: On December 12 (2020) Alex forced YouTube to delete the video below. He does not want you to see it. See the video here regardless in a Dropbox link.

The more ‘synchronicities’ (strange coincidences) happened, the more Alex made me feel like the experiment was successful and we were ‘on to something’. Eventually it caused me to become completely unstable to the point where I had nightmares and panic attacks about synchronicities (example below from August 2016), and even then, he didn’t bother to tell me he had made up a bunch of them.

He let Experiment A go on.

For the time being I decided to release these conversations on Experiment A so people can see ‘Experiment A’ isn’t bullshit and actually happened. Journalists are looking into it and I suspect soon more will be disclosed on it - but for now, I’m leaving it out of the next chapters of the story. Because even without the second layer - Experiment A - it’s horrible enough as it is. Below on the left, a video where you can see me scrolling through old Skype logs between Alex and myself with show some text conversations on Experiment A. Most conversations happened in audio calls or in person (eventually), so I’m pretty lucky enough was captured to share this side of the story with actual evidence. Below on the right also a conversation with a friend of mine about the experiment.

The betrayal in a nutshell

Months after we began working together, not long after we met in person in Bulgaria where Alex lived, he and I also started dating, until he got sadistically violent. I broke up with Alex immediately after this. Little did I know that two months later while I was suicidal in a hospital (keep reading), he would visit me and sexually abuse me again while I was unable to defend myself, and that after this happened he started spreading lies about me on the internet out of revenge for breaking up with him and having gone to the police, causing people to target me who told me to die by suicide, and that the police could do nothing.

For example, after Alex sexually abused me while I was hospitalised, Alex spread the lie (someone who indirectly knew him warned me about this) that I was a ‘crazy fan’ locked up in a ‘mental institution’.

Alex repeated the ‘crazy fan’ lie to the founder (who testified about this in 2020) of his Reddit fan club with thousands of followers, and the founder added to it that Alex claimed to him I was someone who wanted to ‘date him’.. As if Alex didn’t know me and hadn’t worked with me, hadn’t introduced me to his parents, never wrote me love-letters.. And hadn’t raped me while I was hospitalised and unable to fight him due to the medication I was given.

He not only humiliated me. He made out like I didn’t exist.

All while I’m actually the person who broke up with him (and there’s video evidence of it) and stopped our work together, after the first abuse that happened during an October work-week in Bulgaria in 2016.

It has pretty much been impossible to stop Alex’ lies - who now has 2 million subscribers on YouTube and a whole lot of his subscribers started repeating them - because we both live in different countries and police in The Netherlands can do very little in complex targeted harassment/stalking cases like this, especially when it concerns an offender who lives abroad and hundreds if not thousands anonymous accounts targeting you. There’s little to no funding for proper police investigations (let alone prosecution) - the only option essentially is suing him myself through civil court, which has been estimated by my lawyer would cost over 20.000 euro to just ‘start’ the case.

After years of reading lies about myself, I decided to release the images and videos in this article to prove the truth and made the break-up conversation public about the abuse (which I recorded because I was terrified of him as you will read later on), as I’m sick and tired of reading the same lies all over again on the internet: that I’m a ‘crazy fan who wanted to date him’, ‘psychotic’, ‘never worked with him’, etc.

IMPORTANT: On December 12 (2020) Alex forced YouTube to delete the 3 videos below. He does not want you to see them. See the first video here, the second video here and the third video here regardless, in Dropbox links.

‘Attracted’ to women who see through ‘his bullshit’

How on earth Alex had the guts to spread the lies I mentioned about me, considering I have countless of messages, images and videos that prove what he said wasn’t and isn’t true (including audio messages with all his love confessions, such as the one below), I don’t know, but I can guess.

I think he’s either grown used to the idea he can get away with anything - especially because he trusts his fanbase will do his dirty work and target me (he even warned me about that in 2016) - or maybe he just wants me to call him out on his bullshit and it’s in a weird way ‘thrilling’ for him. I know that sounds like pop-psychology, but it’s not when you know more about Alex and actually read what he wrote to me in 2016.

Alex told me in 2016 in person he liked it when ‘women called him out on his bullshit’. I had no idea to what extent he meant this (until later I found out how much he lied to me). In old Skype conversations between us, you can find him talking about his ‘thing’ for women who call him out out his bullshit. In one conversation he mentions he liked it when a girl he was infatuated with called him out on his ‘bullshit’. In another conversation, he mentioned it was also ‘terrifying’ when someone ‘can call you on your bullshit’ and that ‘ironically, that’s the only thing I can actually be attracted to now’…

When you know the above facts about Alex, you might see where I’m coming from when I say: this all seems like a game for him. My life, my mental health, everything he did to me, including when he spread lies about me. A lot of the things Alex has done are absolutely bizarre and have been incredibly hurtful (he even allowed people in his Reddit fanclub to frame me by claiming accounts pretending to be were me) and unfortunately I had to give up my privacy and still have to give up my privacy, in an attempt to undo the harm he’s been causing me. And the worst thing? I have a huge feeling that while I feel forced to do all this, he probably is sadistically enjoying this all. Watching me from afar, trying to fight the lies he spread about me.

As if the fact that he dedicated his first book ‘The Bridge to Lucy Dunne’ to me (Pie is short for Pieke) wasn’t evidence enough I’m not some sort of ‘crazy fan’.. It apparently wasn’t to a lot of people originally, who started targeting me for him. I was called a ‘whore’, ‘psychotic’, a ‘pathological liar’, people even doxxed me on websites and brought up my family members.

Not psychotic, but definitely autistic.

For the record: I'm autistic, not psychotic. There seem to be an awful lot of people who don't understand the difference:

Autism is a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behaviour.

Psychotic disorders are severe mental disorders that cause abnormal thinking and perceptions. People with psychoses lose touch with reality. Two of the main symptoms are delusions and hallucinations.

I'm medically proven not psychotic, but I am autistic. Meaning, telling my story and experiences with Alex, has been and is quite difficult for me. The last 4 years I've been learning how to communicate more efficiently; which is why I updated this article with the help of an amazing group of people who’ve been helping me these last few years.

As some of you know, I felt forced before to publish my medical records (which ended up on Reddit and if you look for them I’m sure you will find them) due to the lies that were spread about me. I wish I didn't have to do that but unfortunately it is what it is and I've come to realise that all that didn't matter for some people anyway and that for the rest of my life I will probably be targeted, lied about, and have stalkers 24/7.

My privacy disappeared due to what Alex did to me in 2016 and the beginning of 2017 and I want you to understand how that happened and how I tried to keep this all private but felt forced to speak out, due to what Alex did.

I also want you to know that my medical costs so far, as a result of the abuse, have been over 80.000 euro and that I'm damn lucky I have health insurance which covered the majority of the costs. I don't think I would've survived all this without health insurance, and I hope you take a moment to realise that - what this means for victims in countries that don't have good health care. If anything, I hope you will learn something from me speaking up. My story is public anyway so my mindset goes like this: if my privacy is gone forever, I might as well make sure it didn't disappear for nothing.

Love-bombing

Leading up to the abuse, what’s important for you to understand is that this friendship with Alex escalated very quickly: meeting online in March 2016, instantly we started collaborating and Alex started ‘love-bombing’ me with affection. He wrote me poetry, made music for me, dedicated a book to me, said I was his ‘creative soulmate’, etc. Before I even met him in person in Bulgaria, we became ‘best friends’ and he already became my ‘Facebook legacy contact’ in case something would happen to me.

After we met met in person and I started filming the documentary I was supposed to make, not long after we started dating. He could be incredibly kind, but also manipulative. Even in the beginning already.

A small example: he tried to shame me for being upset because he regularly called me names such as ‘bint’, ‘bitch’, ‘cunt’, ‘whore’, ‘hussy’, even though he knew I didn’t like it and I had asked him to not do that.

He was very possessive and afraid I would leave him or find other men more interesting, which I initially thought was an expression of love. If he was a bit worried about men who had communicated with me publicly on Twitter, I thought it was ‘cute’. I didn’t see it for what it was: that he kept an eye on what I was doing online.

He knew the passwords to my phone and Ipad, which for me at the time felt like ‘being open’ with each other and showing you have ‘nothing to hide’ for your partner. However, as months passed, he became more hostile if I wouldn’t drop everything immediately for him and wasn’t available the moment he wanted to talk to me. I started to feel more uncomfortable about this as time passed. But: he would admit to it also. To being selfish. Cold at times.

So in the beginning, I kept forgiving him, even tried to make out his behaviour hadn’t been as bad as it had been, because he could get pessimistic about himself when he admitted to these things, and I wanted to make him feel better.

‘It's worse with you because I actually feel serious about this for the first time in my life.’

Before the violent night in October 2016, there were a few weeks of Alex being psychologically abusive towards me. During ‘apologies’ for these incidents, he confessed his love over and over again and spoke about his worries.

He said ‘some rather deep down childish part’ of him assumed he couldn’t be ‘loved on account of being a piece of shit’ and that he would get ‘very defensive’ and use this as ‘justification to start getting hostile and distant.’

He said he ‘noticed it before to a lesser extent’ but ‘it's worse with you because I actually feel serious about this for the first time in my life’ and that the irony was ‘that there is a complete double standard. Sometimes I don't let you in. I don't support your work much but expect you to support mine. I try to keep personal space while still invading yours. I consume all of your nice messages and photos and give very little back.’

It made me incredibly sad because at the time I really cared for him and constantly tried to show him how much he meant to me: writing him poetry too, love e-mails, sending him pictures of my day (it was a long distance relationship), helping him whenever he needed advice on his videos. I was worried about this ‘confession’ so asked him if his fear was based on not feeling loved enough.

He then said something which given what happened a little over week later was terrifying. He said he wondered if knew the ‘darker sides’ of him, saying that he assumed I couldn’t love him if I did.

I told him that if you commit to someone you take those dark moments too, as long as they don't outbalance the good. Well, the good? It was very soon outbalanced by the bad.

October 19/20, 2016

Then the work week of October 2016 in Bulgaria (where Alex lived) happened.

Alex was - in person - manipulative and psychologically mistreating me again, and had been dishonest about things. This last thing really put me off and I made it clear to him that I was considering breaking off the romantic relationship because I didn’t want to date a liar. This escalated into him manipulating me for hours and me eventually leaving his apartment on October 16 (2016), while searching for English pages on things such as airbnb’s and a taxi’s. You can still see all this in my Google search history.

Alex was not happy about me wanting to break-up and came after me, begging to come back. He tried to ‘mend’ things. I eventually did come back and again listened to his apologies. Early in the morning (October 17, 2016), when Alex was sleeping, I tried to find help online because I wanted to talk to someone. Again, this all can be found in my google history.

I tried to stay cordial during the next days since we were working together and tried to focus on the work instead, and again, tried to forgive him. This might seem strange to you after so much manipulation happened, but what’s important for you to know is that Alex can be quite charming and ‘convincing’ when he ‘deeply apologises’ for his behaviour. His apologies were always followed by deep love confessions. And I was in love with him, and always wanted to give him a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh chance. Should I have? No. I should have left him already when he crossed my boundaries by repeatedly calling me names ‘for fun’ even though he knew I didn’t like it. I should have left him when I found out how possessive and controlling he was. I should have left him when he confessed to me he became ‘hostile’ because he believed he ‘couldn’t be loved’ on account of ‘being a piece of shit’. There’s a Maya Angelou quote which I think of a lot when considering all the red flags I ignored:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

After I tried to find help online at the 17th of October (2016) and again tried to forgive Alex, then the night of October 19 to October 20 (2016) happened.

Alex and I had visited a pub with one of his friends that evening. He started drinking a lot, picking intellectual arguments with people at the bar. His friend eventually managed to convince him (after I had asked this friend) to go back home. We took a taxi back to Alex’ apartment and after saying goodbye to his friend, at home, Alex kept drinking, looking for booze all over the apartment.

That’s the night Alex got extremely suicidal and angry. It came out of nowhere and completely caught me off guard. I had never seen him like this. He started shouting ‘nothing meant anything’ and that we were ‘all going to die’ and that everything was ‘meaningless’ and that I was ‘meaningless’ and he started demanding me to prove ‘what this all meant’ and I don’t know how much crap he shouted that night at me, but it was horrible. He put classical music on full blast while this was going on and refused to turn down the volume and it was all noise and screaming. It’s a night that has been branded in my mind with so many details, many of those details can cause PTSD episodes these days for me: orchids for example. There was a pot with dead orchids on the window sill that night and I remember seeing it during his screams and until this day I cannot see a single orchid without immediately getting flashbacks.

Spit also. If someone accidentally during talking spits in my face, I’m right back in that apartment in Bulgaria, because Alex spit me in my face that night while screaming centimeters from my face while I was crying.

He took out his emotions on me and abused me when I tried to get away from him. He sadistically penetrated me while I was crying and said no. He did it in such a way, that it was very obvious to me it was a power thing to humiliate me and ‘let me know’ he owned me and that it had been influenced by our quarrels days earlier and his feeling of being rejected and meaning ‘nothing’.

I spent hours bleeding on the toilet as a result of what Alex did, because it had been so violent. I called it abuse, attack and assault, because it wasn’t ‘just’ him penetrating me, it was sadistic. It caused me to bleed. To be in severe pain. It had been about humiliating me, and that’s why I used those words to describe it.

Due to the police case I cannot state how he penetrated me. You have to understand that if Alex abuses someone in a similar way in the future (or has in the past and a victim would come forward) - such a similar way could lead to him being classified as a ‘modus operandi’ abuser (an abuser who has a particular way or method when abusing someone). Meaning, if I would make public exactly how he penetrated me, in another potential case where a victim was abused in the same way, Alex could use as a defence that such a victim ‘copied’ my experiences. That’s why I cannot clarify how exactly he penetrated me.

Below some conversations between Alex and myself about the abuse.

While I was on the toilet bleeding that morning after the abuse (see one of the conversations above where Alex and I discuss it), I found out through Facebook and ‘disclosure witness 1’ (see the next chapter) a friend of mine had died by suicide. He walked in front of a train.

It was trauma after trauma at that point.

After ‘disclosure witness 1’ and I spoke about the death of this friend, I told him what Alex had done. I was in an absolute, distraught state. The man I worked with and loved had abused and humiliated me, and treated me like a piece of meat. What the fuck. I didn’t know how to cope with it. I tried to find excuses for it to be able to forgive him: he was drunk. He was upset. He was unwell. He needs help. He will apologise for it. Like he always apologised for his behaviour.

Only the next few days, Alex refused to talk about it, became hostile, initially claimed he couldn’t remember what happened, called me a ‘feminist victim’ (???), and it all turned into hours of discussions where one moment he would recognise the abuse, then deny it again, then recognise it again, deny, make out it hadn’t been that bad, recognise it again, deny it again, recognise, deny, recognise, deny, and after so much gaslighting, I just mentally ‘zoned out’ and tried to survive the last few days while I was in Bulgaria, until I was on the plane back home, heartbroken.

On the 23rd of October 2016 I published a blog called 'The Final Fuck You', an abuse story behind metaphors which I wrote on the plane home. Essentially, it was a cry for help. It’s a story where I recognise that I was abused by someone I was in a relationship with.

Disclosure witness 1

At that point I had already spoken to my friend Andy (Andrew) about the 19/20th October abuse, and described it to him. Andy kindly provided a witness statement to court about what I told him within 24 hours and the days after the first abuse. Luckily I can make his statement public because he doesn’t detail the rape (rape here refers to the Dutch criminal code of rape, which defines rape as any kind of sexual penetration while using violence or threat) - unlike other witness statements (again, not making those public because in such case if Alex abuses someone else again in a similar way, he could claim the victim copied the story from my experience).

Considering I never met Andy offline (we've been internet friends for over 15 years - I met him through an art community, the same community where I met my friend Jørgen who’s disclosure witness 2 in the case), him providing a testimony in the case was all very weird. Everything was weird. Everything has been weird about this case, from the beginning, until now. I want you to understand that. You cannot understand - and I know many of you do want to - what happened between Alex and myself easily. There are days when I don’t even understand it. There are days when I can’t stop crying and wonder how I could have been so wrong about this man - and why he did everything he did to me. Days when I wonder what the hell happened. How it could all come to what it eventually escalated to.

When I got home safe after the Bulgaria abuse, I broke off (mirror) the relationship with Alex in a Skype conversation. I recorded it because I was terrified of him and I had read online somewhere it was wise to do considering his abusive behaviour - so I had evidence. I had already told multiple ‘disclosure witnesses’ about what Alex had done, who all provided testimonies to court (Andy is just one of many).

Days later I tried to break off the working relationship also. I obviously didn't want to work with Alex anymore.

Disclosure witness 2

After I had a positive pregnancy test (while I kept bleeding severely, I knew I couldn’t be pregnant anymore), I drove in a state of distress from The Netherlands to Norway, and visited my friend Jørgen whom I had also told about what happened. That was actually the day Jørgen and I ‘met in person’. I originally drove to Norway with the plan to see the Northern Lights and to then jump off a fjord. So much for healthy trauma responses huh? If you’re reading this because you found this blog as a result of being a victim yourself: please don’t end your life. I know the emotional pain can be unbearable, especially if someone you loved abused you - but that’s when they win. Don’t allow them to drive you to suicide through the pain they inflict(ed) on you.

Good thing that while I was in this suicidal state I decided to visit Jørgen - who I had never met in person - because he did exactly what I needed that moment: he listened to me, showed me kindness, and him and his roommates managed to keep me at their place with their long talks for a few days, until I had calmed down a bit. I’m not sure if they realise what they did: they saved my life. I will be forever grateful that a group of Norwegian students (most of them men) were there for me in November 2016, who all realised I was not doing okay.

Jørgen was kind enough to write a testimony to court (see this video too) about what he knew and had seen. Again, I can only release it because he doesn’t describe the abuse in detail, unlike the other disclosure witnesses.

Jørgen has seen in person what happened to me since November 2016, knows the evidence in the case and as a result of the lies that were spread about me online, he even went as far as waiving away his right to anonymity, just like Andy. This obviously meant a lot to me since the majority of witnesses want to remain anonymous and not risk being targeted by Alex. Jørgen gave me permission to publish his statement publicly and even discussed what I told him in October and November 2016, in a Skype call, which you can see below in the video at the end.

Back to Bulgaria

After receiving support and encouragement from Jørgen and his friends as you can read in his testimony, I decided it was a better idea to confront Alex and go to the police instead, than end my own life.

I drove from Norway to Dortmund (Germany) to take a plane back to Bulgaria, to get my camera equipment back from Alex (which he had borrowed for his videos), to confront him, and to try and file a criminal complaint against him.

I had been on the road for days: between October 31 and November 6 (2016) I drove from The Netherlands to Germany to Denmark to Norway to then back to Denmark and Germany to only then take a plane to Bulgaria.

Do I need to mention I was not doing okay? Because I was not doing okay. I drove half across Europe and barely slept, but for some reason I managed not to crash my car and arrive safely in Dortmund to take the plane.

Below you can see my flight ticket from that time.

Once in Bulgaria, after I confronted Alex and got my stuff back.

I visited Sofia Police Station 04. The police couldn't take my criminal complaint due to a language barrier. While I speak a few languages, Bulgarian isn’t one of them. (Tip: don’t start working with someone in a country of which you don’t speak the language…)

My Google history even shows search results from this period: that I was trying to find out how to report abuse there. There are also conversations between Jørgen and myself about it too.

A kind Bulgarian man tried to help me initially at the police station who could translate, but once he left when he thought the police understood they needed to get a translator, the police didn’t get a translator after all. Instead they called the ‘women’s emergency line’ and gave me an English speaking woman on the phone who got angry I called because this ‘wasn’t an emergency’ because the abuse didn’t happen that day.

Long story short: after being in the police station for over an hour trying to communicate with the police (in English, German, French and even Dutch - I tried anything), Alex started calling me and I had a panic attack due to everything that was happening. I left the police station in distress and answered his call.

A huge mistake

Alex begged me to talk to him which I unfortunately did.

During this talk he pretended to be sorry about the abuse and then (in hindsight) manipulated me to not go back to the police to again attempt to file the criminal complaint. He among others told me a tragic story that made me wonder at the time maybe could be blamed for what he had done. I was unsure but I wanted to be able to forgive him so badly I took the risk to believe him - and this, in the whole timeline of events, was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I EVER MADE.

Did I mention big mistake? Big mistake. Huge mistake.

You can even read how I discussed it with Jørgen at the time in Facebook messages. Jørgen was very sceptical of Alex and tried to warn me very carefully. But Jørgen being who he is - he also respected my assessment of the situation at the time. Maybe he should have told me I was a gullible and naive idiot instead - but he’s an incredibly kind person who probably thought I was more clever than I actually was.

I told Jørgen about the things Alex told me to (in hindsight) manipulate me to not file the criminal complaint:

“I hope it’s all true. And that I’m not making a mistake. Because if the opposite is true he’s one hell of a liar and manipulator.”

I flew back home again on November 9 (2016) - and Alex’ psychological violence started to increase.

He jumped between confessions of love and affection and paranoid accusations and coercion (the majority happening in Skype calls) - trying to manipulate me to keep me silent in every way possible.

Alex was furious I wanted to stop working with him. He was terrified I would make public why I didn't want to work with him anymore - and especially was concerned about the documentary we were making, since it suddenly had become something horrifying.

Below, a video example from 2016 before the abuse happened, where we discuss said documentary.

The jumping of Alex between all these emotions constantly made me even more confused and scared. I had been trying to forgive him for what he had done, but it became increasingly harder: one moment he was hostile, the next moment he was nice. He even tried to butter me up by proposing to dedicate his second book partly to me (The Prince of Milk). I didn't want to get back together with him however, and I didn't want to work with him anymore.

It escalated. While he knew I was suicidal.

It felt like he was trying to drive me to suicide. What sickened me the most about it was that it seemed like he enjoyed what he was doing to me - the more I became unstable as result of his behaviour, the more he seemed to enjoy it. It gave me a new perspective on something he once said which I at the time thought was a joke (until I spoke to his ex girlfriends who told me they knew about this ‘fetish’ years ago already): that he was attracted to women with ‘severe mental issues’.

It suddenly put his previous verbal derogatory remarks such as calling me ‘cunt’, ‘bint, and ‘bitch’ randomly, in a different light also.

I felt so scared and didn't know what to do.

I then had an ultrasound which showed I suffered a miscarriage.

‘You abused me and then left me to rot’

I underwent the ultrasound on my own. Alex didn’t come with me to see the damage he had done or to support me. Instead, he told me he was going on a holiday.

Yes. You read that right. He told me he was going on a holiday. This man who wrote me poetry, dedicated a book to me, who pretended I was his ‘creative soulmate’, after he abused me and manipulated me to not file a criminal complaint against him, said he was going on a holiday.

While I had strangers examine my womb, Alex did however have time to stalk my Netflix account and to Tweet on Twitter.

I was hospitalised on the 24th of November (2016) for acute stress disorder and being suicidal, as has been extensively covered by many Dutch news papers.

Meanwhile, Alex psychological abuse kept going.

When I called him out for the abuse and said he had ‘left me to rot’ after it, he didn’t deny he abused me. He did question if he had left me to rot since we had spoken on the phone. He claimed he said he’d come to the hospital - which he absolutely hadn’t said. He tried to gaslight me, claimed I had been ‘yelling too loud’ to hear it. I became angry, because he was trying to make me feel like I was crazy. If you read over the following conversations - do notice how ‘cool’ he stays during all these lies, and how hopeless it made me. As a result I started capslocking. (I do not recommend to do this, regardless of how much someone lies to you, because they want you to respond like this to paint you as a crazy person.)

So this all - these conversations above and below - happened on the day I was hospitalised for being suicidal.

And then: pure insanity.

It escalated to something absolutely insane: when I called out his stalking and abuse (and the positive pregnancy test) when he started harassing me with false statements, Alex started falsely claiming I was ‘blackmailing’ him because I called out his abuse (?!) and that he was going to quit youtube.

It was so absurd. Insane. Paranoid. Untrue. False.

I instantly told him I wasn’t blackmailing him.

You can probably imagine how insane this all was and terrifying: I was in a hospital as a result of his abuse and this man who had manipulated me to not file a criminal complaint against him weeks earlier, was now falsely accusing me of blackmail, a criminal offence, all because I was calling out his abuse and manipulation.

He took me ‘emotionally hostage’, because at that point it became dangerous for me to file a criminal complaint for the October abuse: what if he would claim I had blackmailed him (which I hadn’t)? I realised the situation I was in: I was a psychiatric patient as a result of his abuse. I knew nobody would believe me if he would repeat his false allegations. Had nightmares about it too.

In the conversation he started manipulating me again and eventually he said he ‘apologised for everything and anything’ (after he had just falsely accused me of blackmailing him..), and claimed he had ‘asked me to take the legal route’, while he had manipulated me weeks before to not file a criminal complaint.

He claimed he would never be a writer and would end his career, again gaslighting me and trying to make out like I had asked that of him - while I hadn’t. It was another manipulation method to try to keep me silent.

I was so scared this man was trying to frame me as someone who was blackmailing him while he abused me, I had constant panic attacks and nightmares. This has all been recorded in my medical record which journalists investigated and wrote about.

The doctor said: 'We're going to numb you so the pain will stop'.

I accepted all the pills because not feeling anything felt better than feeling something, because that something felt like it was killing me inside. The days became a blur and I started filming hospital diaries to keep track of them.

‘That implies you have a brain, so obviously a lie then?’

The psychological abuse kept going. The more Alex started to lose control over me, the more aggressive he became, constantly repeating I was ‘blackmailing’ him in his ridiculous attempt to frame me for something I hadn’t done. I felt like I had no choice but to speak to him. He screamed at me over the phone on Skype in multiple calls when again I brought up the abuse and the police and him not properly making an effort to apologise for what he had done but that he instead was trying to frame me in an absurd attempt to turn me into the abuser.

In text he continued to bully me, implied I had no brain. I said he was manipulative and that I would call him out if he was like that, which he then called a ‘threat’, because apparently to Alex, saying the truth, is a threat.

When he screamed at me during those conversations, when he kept trying to frame me as someone who was threatening him, I called him out publicly on Twitter. Oh boy, was that another huge mistake. Alex started blackmailing me (see the following parts). Coerced me to delete the tweets. I was stupid enough to do it, but I did take a printscreen of the Tweets before I did, (example below left). A Twitter friend responded at the time, asking if I was okay. Based on the response of Janos you can roughly see the timeline of events.

Alex - after just having screamed at me for hours on Skype and falsely accusing me of blackmail due to which I responded publicly on Twitter in a cry for help - messaged me on Whatsapp asking ‘not to do this publicly’. He said he wanted to talk face to face in an audio message. I responded by saying “Face to face”, when it’s about something that concerns you, but when I’m in the fucking hospital and just miscarried you don’t give a fuck. I have to listen to you?”

I tried to ignore him, hoping he would come to his senses as to how absurd his behaviour was and how psychologically abusive, but he kept calling me and the quarrels went on.

He said he would put out a statement to thousands of his fans online about me if the tweets would stay online, saying he would among others make public I was on a psychiatric department in a hospital (due to him!) and that I hadn’t gone to the police concerning the abuse (which I had, but they were unable to take the complaint due to a language barrier, and after that he manipulated me not to go again!), and that he would tell THOUSANDS of his fans that I had BLACKMAILED him while I hadn’t!

You can probably imagine how suicidal that would make a person who’s already suicidal: the idea that someone was about to frame you for a crime you didn’t commit, to THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.

At that point I knew I had no choice but to delete the Tweets because Alex the ticking time-bomb was about to dox me to his fans and spread lies about me.

I recorded a Skype conversation between us from December 7 (2016) where you can clearly hear how terrified I was of him, repeating his plans, and where I’m crying ‘You’re gonna lie! You’re gonna lie!’ and ‘are you gonna like tell my medical history to the world too?’. It truly is awful. I’ve not made this conversation public, because I want this to be dealt with in court. I’m only making enough public to warn people about Alex and to clear my name given all the lies that have been spread about me. And frankly, anything incriminating of Alex concerning the criminal case, where you can hear his voice, he’s had deleted from YouTube - so even if I would make it public, big chance he would file another privacy complaint immediately and have my channel taken down eventually. Also, if I would make this specific conversation public, he could prepare for a case - so it’s better if I not.

I also made phone notes about what was going on that were uploaded with timestamp to my Dropbox account. Below, one of many from December 8 (2016).

Alex knew I was terrified of him and felt threatened by him, since I communicated it to him in a number of messages.

He also knew I was hospitalised and prescribed ‘hardcore medication’. There’s absolutely no ground to state (given what I will describe next) that he didn’t know I was mentally not doing alright, that he didn’t know I was afraid of him let alone that he didn’t know I was unable to consent to anything sexual since I was ‘drugged’, given he read all the messages as you can see below.

The day of December 21, 2016.

While I was hospitalised and drugged, Alex used coercion so I would meet him and speak with him. He lured me out of the hospital using blackmail and threats.

On the 21st of December (2016) we met outside the hospital. I thought I was safe since we met in a bed- and-breakfast that was across the hospital’s hostel and I thought I could go to the hospital’s hostel immediately if something went wrong. Since Alex knew this, I never anticipated he would try anything. I asked two people I knew living at the hostel, to stay at home that day, who even ‘met’ Alex before I attended the ‘meeting’ with him alone. I thought I was safe. I thought I had done everything in my power (have witnesses meet him first, meet across a safe location, etc) to make sure I was safe.

When I told Alex I couldn’t be his friend anymore, Alex then threatened me in that bed-and-breakfast. A witness (who testified) saw us screaming on the street to each other, when I left the place.

Alex started apologising eventually, begging me to come back inside because he wanted to 'apologise'.

He always wanted to 'apologise' and unfortunately I wasn't a very clever person in 2016. Also, I was drugged due to the hospital medication, but to ignore my naivety at the time would do no justice to the warning I want to give people:

Please don't agree to meet someone who's threatening you. No matter how scared you are of the repercussions and how many ‘safety’ measures you think you’ve taken to protect yourself - such a person violated your trust already. Meeting them will not stop the threats. It will only teach them they can abuse you, and it will make you feel even more hopeless and puts you in a dangerous position.

Inside the bed-and-breakfast, on December 21 (2016), I started having a panic attack. Long story short: Alex tried to calm me down, took me to his room upstairs, and while the Xanax started fucking me up even more, while I was crying, during this panic attack, he sexually abused me, again. I only remember the beginning of it (including the penetration) and how it seemed to turn him on that I was crying. Next, I am on the street banging the door of the hospital's hostel that was across the street, asking for help. Two patients I knew from the hospital then looked after me. Apparently I screamed at them what happened and was really, well, in shock. I can barely remember this either. Just bits and pieces of that day. It's what makes what happened after even more terrifying.

I didn't see Alex again after that day. (trust me, that's not the terrifying part)

On January 9 (2017) while I was still in the hospital, I e-mailed Alex and cc’ed the message to my business lawyer at the time. I requested Alex to turn himself in for ‘physical and sexual assault, harassment and blackmail’ against me and formally made clear I would not work with him anymore. I hoped he would spare me to go through the process of filing a criminal complaint since I was committed to the hospital and given the evidence in the case.

However, Instead of responding to my e-mail, Alex started harassing and calling me.

I recorded Alex harassing me in a Skype call on January 13 (2017) in multiple videos where he talks about sexual acts that happened on December 21, 2016, while I was drugged and hospitalised. At that point I just allowed him to talk and scream at me because I was recording the call and I knew he was incriminating himself and that I was collecting evidence of his crimes.

In the conversation (telephone) he tried to convince me I wanted it, what he described happened when he visited me (using coercion and threats) in December 2016. He said he would 'help me remember' what happened and started to describe in detail, sexual acts. Sexual acts I couldn't remember. Sexual acts that supposedly happened after (which I knew) he threatened me, and after I saw him getting turned on because I was crying.

At that point in the conversation I felt so, disgusted, that this man wanted to 'help me remember' what he did to me, a drugged psychiatric patient, I became so upset (crying) and tried to break off the conversation - a nurse eventually had to intervene, this is literally recorded too: how one moment Alex is screaming at me and the moment a nurse intervenes, he gets incredibly polite.

Alex kept trying to speak with me afterwards and I told him I was ‘over the top mountain moon’ done with him and that he had only brought ‘chaos, hurt, betrayal, lies and pain in my life’ and that this was me saying ‘no more’.

After that conversation I called the Dutch police myself.

I never published the January 13 (2017) video where Alex described these sexual acts - which is a confession of a crime as described in Art. 247 of the Dutch Criminal Code and most likely even a crime as described in Art. 243.

Alex ignored my e-mail cc’ed to my lawyer and multiple messages where I told him I was done with him. Instead he started calling me and attempted to try stop me from going to the police, using threats and coercion.

Disclosure witness 9

I picked up Alex’ Whatsapp calls (see below) from January 16 and 17, 2017, the latter in the presence of others who listened in. I didn’t pick up the calls after that anymore but printscreened them instead.

On January 16 (2017), after I hung up, Alex called me again (37 seconds call) and I told him to leave me alone. The next day, on January 17, he called me again. Again, I told him to leave me alone (20 seconds call). When I hung up he called me back and started threatening me. This is the call I had others listen in on it.

A Dutch ‘disclosure witness’ (the 9th of 11 in the case) testified about one of the calls. This witness also testified about the December abuse (he was one of the first people I spoke to on the day it happened.) Again, I cannot release the full testimony because the witness discloses details of the abuse and also mentions the names of other people, but I’ve added his censored testimony below, which was written in Dutch.

While Alex tried to coerce me to not file a criminal complaint against him, he had started taking measures to defame me: Lies started appearing about me in his subreddit, r/exurb1a, which was under his control.

This happened while I was still hospitalised. While I was suicidal.

The man who had abused me had gone so far to defame me towards his fans in an attempt to cover up what he had done to me.

Years later (in 2020) the founder of the subreddit testified about the lies Alex told him, as mentioned earlier in this article. They did so after I released a testimony from someone else who mentioned Alex had spread similar lies about me.

I became a victim who spoke out due to coercion, threats, slander and defamation, and then the abuse got even worse.

People online wrote the most disgusting lies about me; that I would use drugs around my son for example. People wrote that I was a prostitute, whore, someone even tried to claim I was part of the Illuminati (?!) and another person claimed I was a person without a job trying to make money off Alex (???).

Let me tell you this: feeling forced to speak out as a victim has caused me to lose all my savings. My mental health. My good name. My privacy. Would not recommend to do it.

I tried to end my life in the summer of 2017. Then #MeToo happened in October 2017. People started listening suddenly, to the story I had been telling for months, and look at how I had been forced to defend myself publicly from the targeted harassment.

People with influence. People with power. People in media. Soon, journalists started investigating the criminal case and how the police and Public Prosecution Service had mistreated me, refused to investigate any evidence, refused to hear any witnesses and had put the case ‘on the shelf’ when they couldn’t find Alex. The court case against the Prosecution service became even more bizarre.

This is horrible they are sadistic bullies ..know your sisters support you. we will be sending prayers.
— ✌🏼rosanna arquette (@RoArquette) September 24, 2018

As a result I became a whistleblower in my own country when I testified - multiple times - about the mistreatment of victims by the Dutch police and Public Prosecution service. I testified about my experience multiple times. The case against Alex turned into a national scandal here, because the police and Public Prosecution Service messed up on so many points, I could write five books about it. It took journalists investigating the case to prove how much evidence the Prosecution Service hadn’t investigated and how they had mistreated me - and even until this day, the majority of evidence in the case has not been investigated by the Prosecution Service.

Now, the Dutch government is violating my human rights to the point that multiple foreign journalists have been following me in silence - for months.

Eleven witnesses testified against Alex (me being the 12th) - half of them testified knowing about the first rape (October 2016) before the second rape (December 2016 while I was hospitalised) happened. Again, the majority of those testimonies I cannot make public, because they detail what I told them about the abuse, and making that public could harm a case of any potential future victim who is raped by him in the same way.

Alex used his right to remain silent during the police interrogation. Still, after almost 4 years, I don't exactly know what he did to me on December 21, 2016, except for what I still remember (the beginning). The case is ongoing and so far has already taken 4 years of my life. Only in November 2020 (which was published about in the news on December 12, 2020) the Dutch Public Prosecution Service finally recognised Alex sexually abused me.

It’s been a heartbreaking experience receiving recognition after all these years for what someone has done to you, by an organisation who doesn’t know you and actually mistreated you. It’s painful to admit this, but I wanted that recognition from Alex. I wanted him to take responsibility. I wanted him to acknowledge what he had done to someone he claimed he loved. I wanted him to recognise that he abused that love, and also my love, and turned love into something terrifying for me now. I wanted him to seek help. I wanted him to be a better human. I wanted him to ask for forgiveness - for everything he has done: the abuse, the psychological torture while I was in hospital, the lies he spread about me while I was in an extremely vulnerable state and suicidal.

When I say that it felt like he tried to drive me to suicide, I mean it. Saying that alone - considering this man claimed he loved me - makes me sick.

He never asked for forgiveness. And until this day, that’s what feels like is slowly killing me. The fact that he never asked for forgiveness. Because I want to be able to get the chance to try to forgive him: for his sake and for my own sake - but he’s never given me the chance to even try to forgive him. Instead, he’s emotionally ‘kept me hostage’ for years already, and I am constantly reliving 2016 due to it. I have flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, all as a result of the PTSD and constant online attacks. I wish I could’ve just ‘walked away’ from this all and lived my life, but when you get death threats and see your name smeared online, it’s difficult. I decided to not take it, and fight. It’s cost me a lot. I want the pain to stop, but at this point I don’t know how to stop it.

Every time I try to make public what he’s done in order to fight the lies that are spread about me online constantly, Alex has the videos deleted. When he has the videos deleted, the online harassment instantly explodes again, because nobody can find those videos anymore. At this point, he’s not only censoring me, but also his fans, and is preventing me from effectively defending myself against the lies he spread about me. As you can see in the video below: one of the last videos I made public, received a huge amount of support from hundreds of his fans who called him out. He had it deleted on the day the news article came out concerning his abuse.

Alex is also - in 2020 and 2021 - indirectly making other youtubers indirectly complicit in the defamation. For example, youtuber ‘Knowing Better’, who started collaborating with Alex and allowed his fans to smear me in his subreddit and didn’t rectify my name when I requested him to stop the smears.

There are hundreds of pages online filled with lies about me and the criminal case. Comments all over YouTube and Reddit smearing me, urging me to kill myself, or that I should be killed, etc.

It’s one of the reasons why I started speaking to the Dutch media when journalists got in contact with me: I have a very unique name, and my friends, family, even clients, found all those pages smearing me. In 2017 and 2018, if you googled my name, the first thing you would find were Reddit pages calling me a liar, psychotic, etc. Speaking to the news (first article was published in September 2018) and allowing journalists to investigate the case has stopped this fortunately; now people first find media articles.

Fighting an online defamation campaign for 4 years, well. It’s absolute crap, I can tell you. Seeing people make out like your abuser is some kind of victim of you, is dehumanising. Alex knows he has the power to stop it but he’s not using it. I just hope that any of his fans reading this, realise the power they hold, to hold him accountable. If you are a fan of his: please consider your position and that you can help undo the harm he’s caused. For example, report any misinformation you find about the case online, and actually refer people to news articles. You can still enjoy the artist but also hold the artist accountable.

This is the first layer of my story, and everything in a nutshell.

I’m sure I will update in the future with more receipts (people have been helping me with this) - but please understand that I cannot release all evidence in the case as of now, because it’s ongoing, and that I especially cannot detail the abuse (see reasons mentioned before), because both happened in the same way (the first being the sadistic violent one) which already indicates a modus operandi.

To close this..

After everything that happened, with the help of I don’t know how many people over the course of 4 years, I started investigating Alex. I found out after I cut contact with him how much he had lied to me about who he was and how he manipulated me exactly to gain control and power over me.

Below you can find some information that has been recovered or uncovered about Alex - with notes from myself and commentary. Use it wisely and to learn.

Pieke

Bits and pieces about Alex McKechnie - Exurb1a
- thank you to everyone who has helped put together this list -

Alex claimed he worked for CERN. CERN says he didn’t. Alex also said he was ‘writing a script’ for Stephen Fry. There’s no evidence of it however.
IMPORTANT: On December 12 (2020) Alex forced YouTube to delete the video below. He does not want you to see it. See this video here regardless in a Dropbox link.

Alex made up he worked at the Large Hadron Collider also known as CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as you can see in the video above. CERN is one of the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific research in the world. CERN was the place where the existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed. In 2017, I e-mailed CERN myself, to ask whether Alex had worked for CERN. They stated in an e-mail he never worked for CERN.

Alex also claimed Stephen Fry wanted to work with him and he was writing a ‘script’ for Fry. There’s no evidence of it however.

2. Alex claimed in 2012 and 2016 he suffers from ‘hallucinations’ and is also a ‘sleepwalker’ who sleeps in a ‘sleeping bag’ and wears ‘mittens’ at night, which is something that comedian Mike Birbiglia does, who is a sleepwalker and spoke about this already in 2010.

A recovered Reddit post from Alex (which he deleted) shows a ‘confession’ where he claims he broke into a house while he was drunk due to being intoxicated and ‘sleepwalking’. In the Reddit post, Alex states the police found him. In another deleted Reddit post, he discusses the same event. Alex mentions that his ‘sleepwalking’ happens when he is ‘stressed’ or as a result of ‘drinking’ and that he sleeps in a sleeping bag and wears mittens to make sure he can’t undo it.

In conversations between Alex and myself, he shared the same story. I don’t know if the ‘hallucinations’ and ‘sleep-walking’ story he apparently has told a number of people, is true. I’ve never seen him sleep walk. Former friends of his said they don’t believe it and said he made up all sorts of ‘fantastic lies’.

In the deleted post on Reddit, Alex describes how the police found him after he broke into a house due to being intoxicated and sleepwalking. He also mentions his ‘sleep-walking’ is triggered by stress or alcohol. He describes how terrified the family that lived in the house was. Any person suffering from a mental illness such as psychosis, who knows they might get dangerous when abusing substances, can face tougher punishment in court if they do not take any prevention to stop it from happening.

On the first night Alex abused me, he was drunk too. This makes the crimes he committed more severe if he indeed suffers from ‘sleep-walking’ and ‘hallucinations’: in such a case in a criminal case, he cannot hide behind being ‘mentally ill’, because he purposefully didn’t take any measures to make sure I was safe to be around him (such as not get drunk).

3. Alex said he ‘jacked off’ into toilets at his former job.

In another deleted post from Alex’ Reddit account, he describes how he deceived his employer and pretended to be working while really doing other things. He also mentions how he masturbated at work on the toilets.

4. Alex was active in the controversial ‘Seddit’ Reddit community, compared people to turkeys, gave advice on how to manipulate women to like you and recommended the books ‘Psychology of Persuasion’ and ‘The Book of Pook’.

It might not come as a surprise when I mention to you Alex was active in the ‘RedPill’ community - which people warned me about. RedPill has been described by some people as an internet subculture of “angry, thirsty, mostly white, conservative males who blame all their romantic and social failures on women”.

We managed to recover a deleted post from Alex, where it shows he was at least active in the /r/seduction subreddit (which some people consider as low-key RedPill), giving advice to other men about seducing women and recommended the book ‘The Psychology of Persuasion’.

In the Reddit post, Alex compares humans to turkeys. He also “strongly” recommends a pdf called “The Book Of Pook”. Online, The Book Of Pook has been described as a result of the PUA (pick-up artist) movement. The PUA movement has been described as “a collection of psychological techniques for pressing women’s buttons in order to get them to be attracted to you”.

In the page below, The Book Of Pook’s message was that “PUA techniques were too simple, and focused on external manipulations (…)”.

“Nag her. Prove your worth. Looking kind of chubby in your beach photos hehe. Yeah, eat that, I’m alpha bitch.” ”

— Exurb1a, 2016.

5. Alex was a moderator of his own fan club and censored it.

6. Alex used images of singer-songwriter Devon Mayson without asking her consent and ‘fat-shamed’ her, in a now deleted YouTube video.

Alex published the video ‘How To Pick Up Girls On Facebook’ (mirror) in March 2016, when he was an unknown youtuber. In the video, Alex stole images of Devon. He made a fake persona based on her images and called this persona ‘Heather Fowler’, a girl he ‘communicated’ with in the video. Alex describes how he tries to ‘pick her up’ by demeaning her and calling her chubby.

When I found out Alex had stolen the pictures (which he told me), I told him this was illegal. Alex laughed and said he’d be “pretty fucked” if the girl found out and later said it was ‘all fixed’ and that she was ‘okay with it’.

Apparently Devon Mayson had not been okay with it. She found out about the video. Alex didn’t respond to her until she threatened legal action. She demanded the video to be taken down. Alex, who was making money due to this first viral video, refused to delete it according to Devon. Instead, Alex credited her and coerced her to keep it online this way. Someone found out by reaching out to her and sent me a message about it, after which I spoke with Devon myself.

The video went viral, causing Alex to gain fame, subscribers, views, and donations. It was uploaded on third party websites as well.

When you match Alex’ youtube statistics with ‘How to pick up girls on Facebook’, you will find he did indeed started to gain a following as a result of mistreating another artist (Devon). That’s the foundation of his career.

7. Alex has never informed his Patrons on Patreon about the criminal case concerning his former work partner (me), while his fans paid him to collaborate with me. His fans have - without knowing - paid his lawyer in the case. He also has published the names of his fans in his books without warning them about the criminal case.

Essentially, he has trapped many of his fans who have been mentioned with their first and last names in his books. All these fans obviously want him to not be convicted now, considering then their name would be linked to a convicted rapist forever. This, is part of Exurb1a’s tactic, to force people to keep supporting him (and to have people target me). By linking people to him without telling them the truth, he’s making these people loyal to him.

I’ve received some really upset messages from his fans who found out about the criminal case after he had their names published in his books. They felt betrayed and humiliated they were now linked to this man forever.

Until this day, Alex still has not informed his Patrons of the criminal case. Some of his Patrons are children.

8. Alex and his friends have regularly (publicly) joked about rape/abuse since he became a suspect in the criminal case.

In the thread below, in the group Foreigners in Sofia & Friends, Alex mentions to a woman “I’ll see what I can do”, to which his friend Foxx replies: “Does it rhyme with grape?” After I addressed these jokes on Twitter in February 2018, Alex uploaded a video a month later, in March 2018, where he features a joke to which the answer is ‘grape’. You can see Alex pinned the top comment mentioning ‘grape’.

My guess? Alex tried to cover up the rape joke between him and Foxx, by creating a joke surrounding ‘grape‘, so he could refer to this in the future.

9. PhotoandGrime.com regularly gets IP visitors from Sofia, Bulgaria - where Alex lives - that have been marked for downloading child porn. One IP address was linked to someone who knows Alex.

10. Alex is a self-proclaimed alcoholic and drug abuser. Apparently he feels no shame about how he abused me while drunk (the first time) given he keeps joking about his addictions. Out of spite (after I cut contact) in 2017, he even started using a picture I took of him in 2016, where he’s shown with a drink.

If Alex doesn’t do it in your face, he will let you know covertly or subtly how much he disrespects you.

In the Facebook post below, where Alex started using an image in 2017 (definitely not to piss me off), you can see his friend Foxx (whom Alex at one point said was ‘waiting to kill me’) and his own mother joke about his alcohol addiction.

For the record: I met all these people, who didn’t reach out once to check on me, after Alex abused me and started spreading lies about me. The only person of his family who did was his sister: A 30+ woman with two kids who harassed me publicly on Twitter after she found out I filed a criminal complaint against Alex, and via e-mail threatened me and said she would ‘ruin me’. I filed a criminal complaint against her too, but obviously the police here did nothing with it because Alex’ sister lives in the UK.

Alex also ‘jokes’ his fans should fund his addictions. Below, in the description of this video, he says: “Help me do this full-time (and by “this” I mean drugs).

11. Alex’ sister ‘turned into an absolute fox’ according to Alex.

Alex spoke very strangely about his family members, with no sense of boundaries at all.

12. Alex is ‘not attracted to men’ or bisexual (at least he told me he wasn’t), but had sex with a man regardless due to being ‘horny’.

Now, experimenting a lot of kids do, but given the darker sides I’ve seen of Alex, I do feel like I had to disclose this one to paint a picture of the man. It seems that to Alex, people are just bodies for his sexual gratification. Now there’s nothing wrong with casual sex if all parties consent - but this is a man who also is an abuser, so I feel like making clear he’s the kind of man who can have sex with anyone ‘just because’, would be right to point out in this situation, so not only women are warned about him, but also men.

13. Alex got very friendly on Reddit when someone called him out for trying to get freebies.

Alex attempted to get free things from artists on Reddit by promising them profits if they would ‘collaborate’ with him.

In this deleted Reddit post, he is called out by one of those artists. By matching the different timezones, we were able to put them in the correct order, and show Alex’ ‘friendly’ response when someone is ‘sorry to disappoint’.

“Dude, if you were a multi-million dollar business...and you were guaranteed to turn a huge profit from yet another book venture cranked out by the monkeys that you hire to man your typewriters, and you were planning to greedily take more than your share, you might be “exploiting” someone. As it stands, you are just a writer attempting to collaborate on a book that may or may not garner a profit. I was merely suggesting a different split for the money you haven’t made based on experience from both sides of the book creation process...sheesh. I guess you were just expecting only positive feedback on your proposal...sorry to disappoint.

- Reddit user toxicpretty, 2014.

That’s okay. Don’t do it again.
- Exurb1a, 2014.”

— /r/illustration

13. Alex has been endorsed by the following men/channels in the past, who have not taken any measures to warn the youtube community about him after they were warned about Alex, but decided to stay silent instead.

Kurz Gesagt - In a Nutshell

CGP Grey
Casually Explained
Wendover Productions
Real Engineering
Knowing Better

I encourage every person/channel who has ever supported Alex, to not stay silent anymore.

PhotoandGrime.com is where Art meets Activism.

We will not stay silent.

Nov 25 The sad truth about Alex McKechnie (Youtuber Exurb1a)