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Pieke Roelofs: Story of an autistic whistleblower

Friends of Pie

Photoandgrime.com was created by Dutch artist and whistleblower Pieke Roelofs - also known as Pie. Since November 2021 the website has been managed by her friends, so she can focus on her healing journey and projects that revolve around connecting survivors and holding governments accountable for covering up abuse cases.

This is Pie’s story.

Pie is an autistic artist from The Netherlands who has complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD). She’s an autodidact. School-systems never ‘clicked’ with her. Pie prefers to learn and explore things on her own terms without pressure; preferably while listening to the same song on repeat for days which helps her focus. As a result of the way she learns she only finished high school and taught herself the trades she uses now to creatively communicate with others.

Pie as a child

Through metaphors, visuals, words and ‘moods’ Pie shares her inner world and experiences in a conceptual way to provoke others to think beyond the first layer of what one might see, hear or read.

Sometimes she speaks through poetry and spoken word videos, other times through writing or photography. Pie has a special interest in things that glow or are UV reactive and specialised in blacklight photography and light painting for some time, until her mental health declined and she had to seek professional help following a collaboration with another artist.

Pie developed cPTSD after a series of events that happened since 2016, when she became a ‘Subject’ in a pseudoscientific experiment called Experiment A. This so called ‘experiment’ was conducted on her by sci-fi author and YouTube influencer Alex McKechnie (also known as Exurb1a); Pie’s former work-partner whom she met online in 2016.

When Pie met McKechnie, he pretended to be a former CERN scientist and PhD student at the Sofia university to lure her to Bulgaria to meet him to collaborate with him. During the ‘experiment’ that happened, she was psychologically tortured and abused by McKechnie.

As a result of Experiment A, Pie was voluntarily committed between 2016-2017. She spent 7 months on an open psychiatric ward in a hospital for being suicidal due to what McKechnie did to her.

Days after McKechnie found out Pie had contacted the police about his crimes, he initiated an underground defamation campaign to discredit and target Pie; while she was still hospitalised and suicidal. At the time he had over 200.000 followers on YouTube. The defamation campaign escalated in people who would threaten Pie and spread lies about her saying she was a ‘whore’, ‘liar’, ‘psychotic’, part of the ‘illuminati’ and other bizarre claims. People would encourage Pie publicly to kill herself and shared her social media pages in the comment section of McKechnie’s videos, encouraging others to target her. It wasn’t until 5 years later in 2021 when a reddit fanclub of McKechnie recognized this defamation campaign happened, that started in their club.

In September 2018, Pie became a whistleblower when she felt obliged to testify against the Dutch police and Public Prosecutor’s Office for how they have been handling rape cases in The Netherlands. Specifically: how they mistreated her in the criminal case concerning McKechnie and refused to investigate evidence and didn’t interrogate witnesses. Pie was discriminated by her government in the case and a number of Dutch newspapers published about her journey since 2018 and the mistreatment she faced at the hands of the police and Public Prosecution Service.

PhotoandGrime.com has actually been watched by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Safety since the first time (September 25, 2018) Pie criticised her own government in the media. She has continuously criticised them since, even though she knew she was being watched.

Many national and international journalists started following Pie in silence and in private collected evidence of her experiences to verify her testimony when it came to McKechnie. Multiple international journalists already wanted to write about her experiences since 2017 but were blocked by their respective papers for a variety of reasons, such as the at the time vulnerability of Pie and the ongoing case. Due to this, for years misinformation spread about Pie didn’t come to light through the (international) media - but it finally did eventually.

Pie started interviewing other survivors and investigating their abuse cases. This eventually led to her publishing among others an investigative interview with French model and filmmaker Karine Isambert; an interview through which Isambert and Pie addressed how two women in France had their names leaked to the public after they filed a criminal complaint against a person in a position of power.

At the time, out of frustration due to being ‘watched’ by her government because she became a whistleblower as well as facing a defamation campaign her government refused to investigate too, Pie sent an ‘opinion letter’ to Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in January 2019 too titled ‘Lego Doll’. In it she remarked how the Dutch police was occupied ‘protecting lego’ but not victims of rape. Algemeen Dagblad then forwarded her letter to investigative journalist Tonny van der Mee.

Subsequently, Tonny van der Mee got in touch with Pie and found out she was in possession of incriminating evidence against the police and Public Prosecutor’s office which proved serious mishandling of rape cases (as well as rape victims). Pie had documents proving her experiences and had secretly recorded conversations with the police, which she handed over to the journalist. She also gave the journalist access to her medical records, witness testimonies and evidence in the criminal case which showed McKechnie coerced and threatened her after he abused her: conversations which the police had refused to investigate.

Pie started investigating and sending statistics of the low rape conviction in The Netherlands to the journalist. She stated given the conviction rate in rape cases (In 2015 in The Netherlands for example there was a conviction rate of 6,71%), it appeared rape was only criminalised for the sake of appearances. She said she hoped Algemeen Dagblad - who was now investigating her case - could bring attention to the reality of rape cases.

While the Algemeen Dagblad investigation was going on, in June 2019, Pie helped a journalist writing for The Washington Post to fight the misinformation that was spread globally in the media about the death of Dutch rape victim Noa Pothoven. Pie provided resources and translations to the journalist so the true story of Pothoven’s death could be covered and spoke out against the mistreatment of psychiatric patients. Having seen the mental health system from the inside out while being told to die by strangers, she felt very strongly about the subject and the discrimination and mistreatment especially rape victims face after they seek mental health care.

Then, in July 2019, Dutch newspaper De Gelderlander published an opinion article of Pie after she attended the rape court case of 3 victims. Pie attended the hearing after the father of one of the victims got in touch with her after reading about her experiences in the news. Pie criticised the treatment of ‘Jane Gelderland’ (Gelderland referencing the province where the case took place) and the 2 other victims: Jane Gelderland wasn’t taken serious when she reported her rape. Subsequently, the offender victimised two other girls. Only after 3 girls reported the same man, the Dutch government decided to prosecute him.

In February 2020, as a result of working together with Algemeen Dagblad for 1 year, a reconstruction of Pie’s own rape case was published in a number of Dutch newspapers (Algemeen Dagblad, BD, BNdestem, ED, De Gelderlander, De Limburger, PZC, De Stentor, Tubantia), both digitally and in print. This was the first time when the defamation campaign Pie was subjected to got fact-checked and recognised, as well as that she traced McKechnie for the police because they ‘couldn’t locate him’. Recorded telephone conversations with the police were quoted in the article, proving the unprofessional treatment the police subjected Pie to as well as the lies they told her relating to the case. Politician Kathalijne Buitenweg asked questions in the Dutch House of Representatives as a result of the investigation of Algemeen Dagblad and after speaking with Pie personally.

In August 2020 Amnesty International referenced one of the articles which mentioned Pie’s case in a video. As a result of fighting her own government and former work partner, Pie founded Stichting Cassandra, an international foundation that defends the interests of victims of sexual and psychological violence.

On August 12, 2020, Pie blew the whistle on the dangers of Dutch Art. 12 Sv. procedures (complaint about the non-prosecution of a suspect). These procedures are forced behind closed doors in her country, even when a complainant wants a public court hearing. Pie had requested a public hearing in the procedure about her former work partner which was published about in a number of media articles due to this unusual request, but she was denied an open and fair procedure.

In a news article published by newspaper De Limburger, Pie called out the Public Prosecution’s office as well as the Court of Appeal in ‘s Hertogenbosch for violating the law in the procedure and for the ‘clerical errors’ they had been ‘covering up’ according to her. De Limburger brought the news after having followed Pie’s case closely for 2 years - having been in touch with her since they published the first article on the case in 2018 - being one of the newspapers who were denied access to the court hearing by the Court of Appeal, regardless of having Pie’s written consent to be present.

After Pie called out the Dutch Public Prosecution service for their ‘clerical errors’ in the case and refusal to prosecute the offender in August 2020 regarding the crimes that happened in The Netherlands, they intimidated her with the threat of a lawsuit and demanded Pie to delete specific Tweets within 48 hours which remarked details of these ‘clerical errors’. The Prosecution service also falsely accused Pie of writing a Tweet that wasn’t written by her but by a former prison warden and whistleblower who testified about prison atrocities in The Netherlands, and demanded her to delete said Tweet.

After Pie temporarily de-activated her Twitter account, the Public Prosecution Service thought she had deleted her Twitter account (and the Tweets). Only then, in a letter from November 11 (2020), the Public Prosecution service recognised 1 ‘clerical error’ in the Art. 12 Sv. procedure. And also something else.

Subsequently, on December 12 (2020) online and on December 14 (2020) in print, journalist Annelies Hendrikx of De Limburger brought the news, and quoted what the Dutch Public Prosecution service had said in their letter, concerning what the former work partner of Pie had done:

“the sexual abuse has happened”

Journalist Hendrikx also brought more news: The Court of Appeal wrongly had stated in the Art. 12 Sv procedure’s decision to not prosecute, that the former work partner of Pie had denied the accusations. He had not, confirmed by the Dutch police and even the Prosecution Service: he used his right to remain silent instead. The court had made a grave mistake in the complaint procedure, which was forced behind closed doors, and no appeal was possible.

After the Public Prosecution Service recognised Pie was sexually abused by her former work partner, she released a video on November 21 (2020) showing 2016 Skype conversations with him about the experiment he proposed in 2016, titled ‘Experiment A’. Experiment A is the final layer to her story that has yet to be told in detail. Pie was advised to stay silent about ‘Experiment A’ given the controversy surrounding the experiment, until the abuse she experienced at the hands of McKechnie, was recognised.

After Pie disclosed the first information on Experiment A, youtuber BulletBarry started investigating the experiment, the defamation campaign Pie was subjected to as well as McKechnie, with the help of witnesses and British journalist Mathilda Mallinson and American journalist Kat TenBarge.

In March 2021 journalist Katia Patin - after investigating Pie’s experiences for a year - disclosed that until this day, Pie gets death threats as a result of speaking out against McKechnie; some of these threats are accompanied by photographs of dead bodies. Patin wrote about Pie’s experiences for CodaStory; a journalistic platform that covers disinformation, authoritarian technology and the war on science. In the article, McKechnie was publicly named after he refused to comment on the defamation campaign Pie had been subjected to that CodaStory confronted him with.

In September 2021 an employee on the Sofia university in Bulgaria testified via e-mail that McKechnie was never a PhD student at the university - even though McKechnie had told Pie in a numerous of messages he was in 2016.

In August 2020 and October 2021 journalist Mathilda Mallinson - who has been investigating Pie’s case since the summer of 2020 - managed to get in touch with two ex-girlfriends of McKechnie. Mallinson was able to get testimonies from these ex-girlfriends that pointed out a modus operandi when it came to how he ‘picked’ and abused Pie. It turns out among others that Pie fitted specific characteristics her former work partner had a perverse sexual attraction for which these ex-girlfriends knew about. Both ex-girlfriends testified the man was a pathological liar and one of them also testified she had been sexually abused by him too and that he had encouraged her to die by suicide and mistreated her to the point of self-harm and a suicide attempt.

In November 2021, both testimonies of the ex-girlfriends of McKechnie as well as the testimony of the employee of the Sofia university were submitted to court in a new Art. 12 Sv procedure given these testimonies provided ‘new circumstances’ in the Dutch case. Given there was also a Bulgarian case that had never been brought forward in an Art. 12 Sv procedure, a new procedure was started. The procedure was started by foundation Cassandra. In it, Experiment A was brought forward to court and (new) evidence that was never investigated by the police. In the procedure the foundation has argued there is substantial evidence that needs to be investigated that according to the foundation proves that McKechnie, through taking on 2 false identities, lured Pie to Bulgaria to meet him, and that ‘Experiment A’ was his ‘abuse method’ and used in an attempt to drive her to suicide.

In March 2022, the Dutch police advised Pie to take down her social media accounts, website, change her phone number and to no longer publicly discuss her abuse experiences, as a result of the stalking and harassment she experienced that had started escalating into being aimed at underage children in her family too.

After a year spending offline essentially, around July 2023, Pie started prompting an AI to create ‘Shitty Barbies’.

These AI Barbies among others like to spend time in space growing pot or smoking it on earth. They enjoy commenting on current events and social media posts to bring attention to the sometimes strange and ridiculous state of the world, discussions and questionable morals humans sometimes have.

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Pie in the media