UPDATE April 13, 2020:
I sued and got an apology and cash out of one of the harassers already for repeating Mandy's accusations.
EDIT:
Nowhere in Mandy's legal defense is anyone saying they were sexually assaulted.
If you're wondering why it took so long, it was because I was making sure I tried everything else first to reverse the harassment campaign Mandy launched: I put out statements from witnesses and evidence disproving her claims, people familiar with the case took on the accusations all over the internet, Mandy's own family even sent letters to the companies that had sanctioned me saying that Mandy wasn't telling the truth, and the witnesses made themselves available to the public to be questioned. Especially within the game community those responsible for spreading Mandy's false accusations ignored the evidence, actively took steps to cut off communication and refused to investigate. Litigation was the only effective option left.
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Below are the statements I made on the subject before filing, there are two sections here:
First: The Original Statement
This is a statement made as quickly as possible after talking to lawyers, pointing out the accusations and laying out the actual facts.
Second: The Details
This is a more detailed statement made on March 2nd collecting new evidence and statements from eyewitnesses backing up everything I said in the first statement, going into all the issues involved, and making clear how many witnesses were prepared to talk to anyone curious along with giving their contact info and with an FAQ about questions that've come up since then. Anyone wanting to get into the weeds of the accusations should skip straight to this section.
EDIT April 9: It's been over a month since that was posted and despite tens of thousands of hits on the page, none of the accusers have used the contact info to get in touch with the witnesses to check their stories. That's basically a total admission on the accusers' part they know the accusations aren't true and there's nothing to check or investigate.
The Original Statement
Sorry for three days’ silence—Mandy’s post included serious accusations and our friends told me to talk to a lawyer.
It’s strange to have to defend myself against the charge of not loving Mandy. She was the absolute center of my life during the best part of it, and I always did everything I could to try to give her the life she wanted. She is the very last person in the world who needs any more pain than she’s already been subjected to.
Mandy was wonderful and smart and beautiful and fierce and sharp. I loved her blindly and totally, and sacrificed everything and defended her to people she had angered or written off. It’s genuinely painful that she thinks – two years after we separated – that I never loved her. Looking back on all the well-recorded hospital visits and medical bills and snapshots and ticket stubs and the people we met and the songs we listened to together and all the stories attached to every old photo and book and game and bandage and prescription bottle I had to carefully pack up and put away when she left and all the things I had to do and say and make to give her some semblance of a full life, I guess I don’t know what else love could’ve looked like. And I guess I didn’t just fool myself, I fooled everyone else since until the end everyone kept telling us how shocked they were that the longest-running couple they knew was over. She spent years saying no-one was allowed to push her in her wheelchair but me.
Of course, when I refer to “everyone”, I’m not talking about Jennifer who never was in a position to observe our day-to-day lives, or Hannah, who mostly knew us at the end of our relationship, after Mandy had already secretly decided to leave me. I’m not talking about Viv, who we have been on bad terms with since she broke up with us (more on this below) and I think is still mad at me for not including her in a published photo shoot soon after she left us. There were plenty of others who were actually in a position to observe our relationship every day, who lived with us for months and even years—often in the same room ... those people tell a very different story than the people Mandy has enlisted in her campaign. Here is the person—Michelle Ford (“Connie” to gamers)—who knew us best, from a response Mandy deleted from beneath her Facebook attack post:
“Maybe this will fall on deaf ears, but I have to say something. I have publicly stayed quiet when I see these things, Mandy, because I love you and I have held onto this hope that I could stay neutral and you could try to heal from this matter privately. But every time I see one of these one-sided dogpile posts it turns my stomach. I literally threw up after I read this. You know from that whole gaming ordeal how easy it is to gang up on someone and publicly destroy them online, and that is what you’re doing now, as you claimed you would in the past.
“It breaks my heart to see these things said about someone I love, by someone I love. And then from someone who was around for ‘months’ and then someone who hasn’t been in contact with Zak in ‘about a decade’. I knew you two as a couple for 8 years, lived with you for around 5 of those years, as a friend for some, as a girlfriend for most, and the abuse you describe just doesn’t add up to what I experienced. You’ve even agreed with me, saying that most of this occurred in the year after I left. If I’m being generous I could say the mistreatment went both ways. You spoke down to, belittled, controlled, and even physically attacked Zak in front of friends. I understand that things got ugly when your relationship fell apart after over a decade; things usually get ugly at the end of intense long-term relationships, but what you’re doing now isn’t fair and it isn’t in good faith.
“I would just like to add my perspective — that I have never been afraid of Zak. We have fought and exchanged some mighty unpleasant sentiments, as is bound to happen occasionally in any relationship, but I have never felt that he is willing or capable of physical violence against myself or any of the women we know. He has lifted me up and shown me compassion and patience in some of the lowest points in my life and that is why I can’t just sit here and ‘try not to get involved’.
“We had/have many female friends who also trust and believe in Zak, who have stayed friends with him through this, and they have been cut off by Mandy and removed from this conversation, and that is why everyone here is only hearing the “Zak is a monster” side of the story. I expect that I’ll be next.”
(Pictures of Mandy and Michelle that Mandy posted on her blog:)
Michelle—our friend and sometimes girlfriend—lived with us for 5 years, and saw everything, and is saying that Mandy’s allegations are false, that I treated Mandy well and that I took care of Mandy. Michelle saw Mandy’s personality issues and heard Mandy explicitly say she wanted to tear me apart and ruin my career. Michelle saw the hole Mandy kicked in the door to our apartment that made us lose our security deposit. Michelle knew us and is saying I was never abusive to Mandy. She is saying Mandy and I had normal relationship issues but nothing out of the ordinary.
Mandy, on the other hand, punched me in the eye in front of a carful of witnesses.
Likewise, our mutual friend Charlotte Stokely—who’s known us intimately for the past 13 years, observed us at our home, work, at play and everywhere else—says that I dedicated my life to Mandy while we were together. Charlotte saw me carrying Mandy up the stairs to her bed when Mandy couldn’t move. Mandy never spoke of anything even close to abuse to Charlotte and Charlotte was the one who drove Mandy to the airport the day she left and says in all that time she never saw me abuse anyone.
Michelle, Charlotte, and many other people who lived in Los Angeles while we were together had much closer relationships with Mandy and me than any of the people Mandy has mentioned in her version of events. Michelle lived with us in one big room for years – her bed was only 25 feet from ours and there were no walls, doors or dividers between us. She saw everything.
Michelle even contributed to the tattoo listing all of Mandy’s pre-existing medical conditions on my right forearm. It was practical—for when I had to fill out the clipboards they gave us during our (increasingly frequent) ambulance rides and hospital visits. I never expected to have to get a cover-up.
I hope that speaks to the general concerns. Many of you reading will want to know about each specific accusation and I owe you a full explanation, these are serious charges:
A great example of how contorted Mandy’s statements are is the part where I supposedly said something like “if you don’t want to have sex what’s the point of you?” – this is a joke reference from Martin Amis’ 1984 novel, Money. Mandy and I read these books together all the time, we even had two identical copies of Moronic Inferno (so I could read one on a trip and she could read one at home)—I think The Information was the first one we read together. Now that joke in that book is purportedly something I used to attack the love of my life. If that’s abuse then what are we supposed to do with Mandy saying things like “Good dick will imprison you”?
Mandy’s description of how I supposedly judged women is inaccurate and not just taken out of context but placed into a new, imaginary context. First, we were a couple in an open relationship who openly and frankly evaluated people we might both be attracted to and wanted to have sex with. Mandy would sneer at women she didn’t like and attack how they looked (“too fat”, “sloppy bitch”, etc.) to express how they weren’t her type (and would point them out especially if they were my type—which is the exact opposite of following my lead.) As to the purported comments about women’s breast size, all you have to do is look at the relationships we’ve had to know what I think of small breasts. I guess I have invested a great deal of effort and affection on women who Mandy suggests I somehow think are “worthless”.
On a more solemn note, just as misconstrued is the accusation that I am some sort of sexual predator, which is downright false. I have never forced myself on anyone or taken advantage of anyone.
Mandy was not a passive bystander in our sex life. She was not a cult member and not naive and anyone who knew her will tell you she took orders from no-one. The only time Mandy ever saw me sexually involved with anyone was after she herself had already taken the lead in initiating it. She was extremely aggressive and sexually forward with women. She once interrupted my birthday party to tell everyone there—including her sister—that anyone who didn’t want to have sex needed to leave. I had no idea that was coming: I awkwardly stood at the door and shook hands with guests and received gifts and went “Uh, thanks for coming…” Lots of people saw this and things like it all the time. More than once we’d have someone over and I’d come back from the bathroom, or the store, to find Mandy making out with them—or I’d just hear her yell “Come fuck us” from around the corner.
Mandy had an intense sex drive but, due to her illness, usually could physically only have sex once per day, so our sex life worked in a simple way: I’d be working at my desk or on the couch and Mandy would tap me on the shoulder or simply yell from bed— “Come fuck me”. She was the one who initiated sex—with me and with everyone else and everyone who knew us intimately has seen this happen. If Mandy ever didn’t want to have sex or couldn’t, all she had to do was not walk over to my desk or not yell at me from bed. I’d finish my work at 4am and crawl into bed. The most aggressive thing I had to say about the situation was “I don’t ever want to be one of those old couples that never has sex”.
There were also long periods of time (months at least) where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness; I sat and worked and tried to keep her healthy. This is confirmed by both Michelle and Charlotte. It makes no sense that she’s claiming I would threaten to “kick her out if she didn’t want to have sex”, I’d call it ridiculous considering all we’ve been through together but at this point it just makes me sad that she could even claim that, let alone believe it. As for the purported statement about having sex with a girl was like “raping a 12 year old”, there’s a reason why hearsay is excluded in courts – it’s unreliable.
It’s unfortunate that effectively working in games required interacting with the sometimes volatile online gaming community. Pretty combative comments and threats appeared online against me, and even Mandy. Mandy voluntarily wrote and recommended responses to people online. Mandy’s letter refers to a Tumblr post she wrote and says that I wrote it, yet it’s her voice, her thoughts, her statement. Michelle will confirm that that Mandy wrote that herself and said at the time she worried people wouldn’t believe she wrote it. It wasn’t the only one she wrote.
As for Hannah’s allegations – what I say now is not an excuse but to simply point out I had no idea and no clue about any of this. She said that I slapped her and choked her “out of the blue” and in public – this was during a day when Hannah and I were talking and making out in broad daylight near a wall and Hannah said something about BDSM and I said something like, “do you like to be choked and hit?” and she smiled and said, “yes”. If I’d known there was anything to apologize for I would’ve immediately. Nothing Hannah did then or in the many years after, ever suggested any discomfort with the situation or with me. In the years after, we flirted online and talked a lot about sex. Afterward we had sex many times whenever we were in the same city at the same time and she asked to get spanked and choked etc. Years later we invited her to live with us and she agreed—moving from another state. When she stayed with us I asked if she wanted the second bed or whether she’d just sleep in ours and she told me to throw away the extra bed. I never saw or heard a single complaint and it is tragic to only learn of this now.
As for Jennifer’s allegations – Jennifer never saw me have sex with anyone she wasn’t also having sex with at the same time. Jennifer never watched me talk anyone into a bed that Jennifer wasn’t already in. We had many enthusiastically consensual encounters, including with one of her friends and many with Mandy. Jennifer lives in Europe and it’s hard to visit—and has obviously stayed in touch online with Mandy more than me. Before these allegations, the last I heard from Jennifer she asked me to get her a “Bernie for President” sticker and some collectors’ item sneakers for her partner—though I hadn’t seen her in ten years, there wasn’t a shadow of anything uncomfortable in our relationship until this.
The only times Jennifer ever saw me in any kind of “kink spaces” or “BDSM” situations were:
-Jennifer took me to a nearly-deserted sex club where her friend worked the first time I went to Berlin. I played chess with some guy and we left.
-Jennifer met Mandy and me at a sex club for the Berlin Porn Festival—Mandy and I left early because it was too smoky and Mandy has asthma.
-Jennifer asked me to spank her when we had sex. So I did—she didn’t complain.
When Jennifer and I had sex with other women, in all cases nobody complained and I spent time with the other women for years afterward and we talked and laughed about these encounters afterward. There was nothing remotely BDSM-y going on with any of them.
As for Viv… I never bought her breast implants. Mandy did, and I was not happy about it because it was a lot of money to splash out on someone we’d only known for a few months. Mandy’s signature is on the payment. I never “forced” Viv to move in with us from another state - she got a job in LA and Mandy asked if she wanted to stay with us. How could I force her to move? She had lots of other friends in LA and chose to move into our house, and stay in our bed rather than the couch, even though at the time we had a big living room. These things didn’t happen the way Viv describes them, but I understand: it was a break-up, there were hard feelings.
Mandy published her attack with the obvious intent to hurt me and turn people away from me. Looking at it from the inside, it just hurts, but looking from the outside, it’s another one of her unpredictable outbursts, this time an attack on me…; broadcasting lies about me; formulating a smear campaign in an effort to cause me pain… years after we separated. She always loved that Courtney Love line “Some day you will ache like I ache.”
I gave Mandy everything I could and tried to show her every way I knew how much I loved and adored her. If I didn’t love her I wish she’d told me sooner. I gave up everything for that “not-love”. I gave up a good portion of my life, time and effort for her and, even now, I still don’t regret it because the woman I knew then deserved it. This new Mandy hasn’t ever talked to me: the last texts I have from her are basically amicable ones about picking up her stuff, and she said she wasn’t angry, just had to move on.
Even though she obviously wants me to suffer and cause me pain, I still hope things work out for her. I hope her illness is under control, I hope she feels loved by someone, I hope she finds peace, and I am sorry if she feels that I caused her any pain. All I ever wanted was for her to be happy. She was very sick, but I tried my best to build a world for her to be happy in.
One last thing: I don’t have anything to hide about Mandy, Jennifer, Hannah or Viv—if any of our friends have concerns, feel free to get in touch. I can clarify anything.
-Zak
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Addendum: March 2, 2019
I've attached this longer and more detailed supplementary statement from later in case anyone just links to this page...
Ok, this is going to have a few parts:
1. Details and Receipts:
More and new detail on each specific false allegation made and on the reasons they're false, including documents, e-mails, texts, etc I've collected since the accusations were made and since my opening statement.
2. Statements from Witnesses:
Signed statements from various witnesses who've come forward to go on the record speaking out against Mandy's story including Mandy's family and closest friends at the time. These are new and provide more detail.
3. Frequently Asked Questions:
An FAQ addressing questions that people have asked since this all started on February 10th.
The short version is: everything damning in both posts is contradicted by eyewitnesses and the accusers' own statements.
1. DETAILS AND RECEIPTS
My earlier, shorter statement still stands but in this section I'm going to go through every single accusation in more detail and with records of correspondence from the time. If there's any important issue that you think isn't covered here: ask. zakzsmith AT hawt mayle.
Jennifer
I was introduced to Jennifer in 2005 in New York by a mutual friend and we immediately got along--and started sleeping together. She spent a big chunk of her trip with me and then she invited me to come visit her where she lived in Berlin. I spent a month with her and other new friends I met in Berlin and we all stayed in touch. She visited the US again in early 2006, shortly after I'd met Mandy--when I told her Mandy was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, she said "Oh everyone is, so am I" and she rattled off some of her own checkered mental health history.
Later in 2006 Mandy moved in--Mandy and I visited Europe later that year and Mandy and Jennifer became friends. We stayed in touch over the years and we usually all had sex together when we met up, but the expense of flying back and forth across the Atlantic plus Mandy's health made traveling harder. The last time Mandy or I saw Jennifer before we broke up was 2009--she came to visit us in LA, we went to Disneyland--we were on good terms and she'd had sex with me and Mandy.
Since then, Jennifer's moved to a different country in Europe, started a family, settled down, and given up on the wild lifestyle she had in Berlin. 2019 Jennifer is a very different person than the Jennifer I knew.
Here are 2019 Jennifer's specific accusations:
"He will aggressively pursue sex and rely on the fact that most women are hesitant to reject a man in a quasi-sexual situation due to safety concerns and social conditioning. Especially when he has presented himself as caring and trustworthy. But I've also seen him physically take women and start fucking them, ignoring their lack of enthusiasm or freeze of shock. He will navigate kink spaces and take someone's presence there, of general involvement in bdsm as implied consent to assualt them"
Before we go into just who these women she saw me with were, I want to talk about our relationship--I dug up the last recorded text exchange I have with Jennifer before Mandy and I broke up in 2017. It's from 2014, and completely harmless, its an interview, it starts...
So it's 5 years after the last time I saw her and there's no discomfort in the relationship between 2014 Zak and 2014 Jennifer. She's promoting my work and Mandy and I are helping with her magazine.
In her statement, Jennifer doesn't say I ever assaulted her, as far as I can tell, she's talking about other women:
Jennifer only ever saw me in sexual situations with three other women--and Jennifer was only ever there to see because she was having sex with them at the same time in the same bed or on the same couch. She doesn't mention this--because even she realizes that asking you to believe that somehow she enthusiastically joined in a threeway where somehow the only responsible party is me stretches credibility.
One of these three women was Mandy--and every time Mandy and Jennifer had sex, Mandy aggressively pursued it, and enthusiastically joined in. Mandy or Jennifer often initiated it--for example, the two of them organized a hotel fourway with me, them, and Jennifer's boyfriend in New York without me or the boyfriend even knowing it. They just decided together at a restaurant on Delancey and then went "Zak, get us a hotel room". Mandy talked and laughed about it a lot afterward because her grandfather's ashes were sitting on the nightstand the whole time--we were about to take them to Europe to bury them. The only person who seemed remotely uncomfortable with this was Jennifer's boyfriend--who said he was having trouble getting in the zone in this strange situation without music playing.
Believing Jennifer here means two women can enthusiastically and completely soberly scheme to initiate sex with a pair of guys, happily engage in it, date the men involved for years after, then retroactively blame one of the guys for it a decade later because one of them's mad at her ex-.
As for the other two women Jennifer saw me with, we're still on good terms--here are exchanges with both of them from after the last times we had sex...
Woman One--we had a threeway with Jennifer in April or May 2006 in a hotel room (this was all extensively planned with lots of flirting and talking about how we'd watch Cartoon Network on the hotel tv afterward) and this is the only time Jennifer saw us together. This is a message from the following November from the same woman, a direct message from a social site we were both on:
When we met up later that year we also talked about me maybe making porn for a company she worked for. We haven't had any kind of conflict or falling out.
Woman Two--this was one of Jennifer's longtime friends in Berlin. We had a threeway with Jennifer late in 2005 on Woman Two's living room couch, then Woman Two invited me to stay there for a week, (I also had sex with this woman again at her apartment in October 2008). Here is Woman Two in 2012:
We then went on to e-mail back and forth about this show. Again: we haven't had any falling out or anything since then.
So, the only people Jennifer could be talking about were people who were in enthusiastically consensual encounters, who got in touch afterwards, and then, respectively, suggested I make out with them and show at their new gallery, and who I'm still friendly with. Jennifer didn't have to volunteer to put me in her magazine, Woman One didn't have to volunteer the fact she was in LA, didn't have to volunteer her phone number, didn't have to propose we make out, didn't have to offer me work, Woman Two didn't have to tell me, from thousands of miles away, that she was starting a gallery or that I should be in it.
Jennifer's abuse story has a gaping hole: no victims.
There are people have "unfriended" me since Mandy made her accusations--not them.
Jennifer claimed "almost every mutual female friend has similar experiences" -- but other than Mandy, none of our mutual female friends has said anything of the sort or severed ties. Two of them of them just invited me to stay with them in their apartments in the last week, another one signed one of the statements below and has defended me on Twitter since this came up.
The only dodgy consent situation I ever saw around Jennifer was during one of the Berlin porn film festivals (I think 2008)--when Jennifer and Mandy had sex with a completely wasted female friend in Jennifer's bed.
The woman had been drinking Singapore Slings, beer, and absinthe and doing cocaine with Jennifer in the bathroom at the bar where Jennifer worked. They made out in the bar, then went back to Jennifer's place and all had sex--along with Jennifer's boyfriend at the time. I was creeped out by the whole situation, especially Jennifer's boss standing there in his underwear, so I ignored it and tried to sleep in the corner. Then Jennifer's bulldog bit the other woman in the face, which started a fistfight between Jennifer and her boyfriend while I got the friend out of there and took her back to her hotel.
As I said in my original statement:
The only times Jennifer ever saw me in any kind of “kink spaces” or “BDSM” situations were:
-Jennifer took me to a nearly-deserted sex club where her friend worked the first time I went to Berlin. I played chess with some guy and we left.
-Jennifer met Mandy and me at a sex club for the Berlin Porn Festival—Mandy and I left early because it was too smoky and Mandy has asthma.
-Jennifer asked me to spank her when we had sex. So I did—she didn’t complain.
So how did this happen?
Mandy spent much more time on Facebook than me--and that's the online platform Jennifer hung out on. Over the ten years we didn't see each other, she and Mandy became close online and Jennifer pretty much only saw our lives through the lens of whatever Mandy was telling her in DMs. Once Mandy decided to break up with me, Jennifer was someone she could confide in for two reasons:
-She was far away, so it was less likely to get back to me
-She was far away, so, unlike her local friends, Jennifer couldn't disagree with Mandy's version of events
The Jennifer I knew from 2005-2009 and I had sex together with people--everyone involved clearly consented and showed no regrets afterward. Maybe 2019 Jennifer regrets her past behavior and her past enthusiastic consent--but that doesn't retroactively criminalize the people she enthusiastically consented to have sex with. 2019 Jennifer is pretty obviously rewriting not just my history but her own to back up her friend.
Vivka
We met Vivka Grey--aka Vivid or just Viv--in 2009 or 2010 when she stayed at our place during a modeling trip. She was into us but thought I didn't like her at the time--we soon straightened that out and Mandy, Viv and I were having sex by at least November 2010...
...she was living with us by February 2011 and had moved her stuff into our apartment in late March--early April.
Viv's accusations came after Mandy's original Facebook post--while on the surface they appear to support Mandy's claims, they completely contradict Mandy's own narrative since they describe a number of things Mandy (the supposed victim) was responsible for as "abuses".
Here are Vivka's specific accusations:
1. I got her breast implants and carried on a campaign of verbal humiliation about how she looked.
None of this is true: Mandy bought the implants out of our joint bank account and I was upset with her for doing it because we hadn't known Viv that long and it was a lot to spend on someone we'd basically just met. Viv talked about getting implants (she was getting them around the same time as her then-boss and the two fo them had talked about it long before telling me) and how she wanted to look and I basically just encouraged her to do what she wanted.
Mandy and I went to the doctor with her for her first consultation, I was following Viv's lead. I liked Viv and liked her body (and that's one reason why I was having sex with her and invited her to live with us). I didn't have any reason to complain about a body I liked a lot or plump for implants I didn't want to buy.
As with everything about Viv, as far as I know, no-one has bothered to even ask Mandy about this. She won't be able to deny it--Mandy signed the paperwork.
For context of how we talked about this--here's Viv talking to me about how she wants to get implants, the nude selfies she sent are redacted...
...then I told her that you can't have sex for about a month after getting implants, she replied:
2. "He knew I was in a rough financial situation, and he forced me to move in with them so he could 'Keep me close'".
Again none of this is true: Viv had gotten herself a job in LA. She was planning to move from her home state before anyone suggested she moved in with us and I know the name of the couple she was planning on moving in with--because it's the same pair of people she moved in with after we broke up. Mandy and Viv planned Viv moving in months ahead of time--she was moving in as other roommates were moving out.
No-one has explained how I could "force" her to move to LA or "force" her to sleep in our bed. We had two bedrooms and a living room at the time, and if she wanted to just crash on our couch as a friend, she could've done that--as she'd done a year earlier before she began a relationship with us.
Here's an email to me as I'm "forcing" her to move her stuff in:
3. I was "pressured to have sex with other people of his choosing"
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Viv had sex with me and Mandy together and that's it. We were going out and she was living with us.
The only time I said anything to Viv about who she should or shouldn't have sex with was:
One time (after she'd moved in) Viv and I went to a friends' comedy show in the upstairs room of the House of Blues on Sunset. I think Mandy was too sick to go. Viv wanted to have sex with me in the bathroom and I told her I couldn't because it was early days and I didn't know if Mandy would be ok with that. That's it.
4. I ignored her "No", her crying, and other expressions of discomfort with sex
The only time I ever had sex with Viv was with Mandy also having sex with her. So there's a witness--if Viv wasn't happy, she never said anything, even when we eventually broke up. And Mandy managed to launch her Facebook attack without bothering to mention any of this disturbing detail. If she had "I saw Zak ignore a woman say no" in her quiver, why didn't she fire it?
I remember once we were having sex and Viv said "Yow! Cervix punch!" and I just apologized. That's it. She rolled her eyes and said "Go easy, cowboy, it's been a while". That's it.
Here's how Viv and I talked to each other while the three of us were going out:
Viv complained a lot more about having to take care of Mandy's dog and the difficulties of moving her stuff out than anything I ever did. She didn't mention any discomfort with anything I did sexually, even when we were breaking up, which happened on May 24th or 25th. The last recorded exchanges I have with Viv were, again, completely harmless, we're joking about the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up"--from five days before we broke up:
So what happened?
Like I said in my original statement--when we broke up, Viv really wanted to be in a photo shoot we were doing of the D&D group in Maxim. She's a model and having Maxim on your resume is a big deal. Mandy and I weren't comfortable with it since she was our ex- and wasn't in the group anymore. She got much angrier than the situation warranted and there were hard feelings after.
Regardless of her motivations: it's really hard to square her accusations with anything that happened in the real world, especially because of how involved Mandy was at every stage.
Hannah
Hannah was originally a fan of Mandy's and mine. We first flew to where Hannah lived and had sex with her in 2010, in a hotel. After seeing each other several times over the years (sometimes our visits were platonic, sometimes they weren't), she moved to LA and moved in with us in May 3, 2016. She decided to move out a week later--May 10, 2016--after deciding she was still in love with a boy back home. As far as I know this also happened after Mandy had secretly decided to move out.
Hannah stayed friends with both of us during the following year, but mostly saw us from a distance. After Mandy finally moved out in February, 2017, I saw her less and less. In short: though she knew us before, Hannah was mainly around while things were falling apart.
Hannah's specific accusations:
-Repeating Mandy's general complaints about how Mandy was treated (will deal with that below in Mandy's section).
-"There was also a strange incident when we were first hanging out together during which he asked if I was into kinky stuff, to which I replied yes. He proceeded to slap me and choke me against a wall, in public. Now, in a bedroom setting, with clear boundaries and consent, it would have been fine, but out of the blue and in public, it was not okay at all"
As in my original statement I'm not at all denying something kind of like this happened (although it wasn't when we were first hanging out, which was in her home state in 2010, it was afterward when she came to visit us in LA) here's how I put it in my original statement:
" She said that I slapped her and choked her “out of the blue” and in public – this was during a day when Hannah and I were talking and making out in broad daylight near a wall and Hannah said something about BDSM and I said something like, “do you like to be choked and hit?” and she smiled and said, “yes”. "
Obviously if Hannah had a problem with it then I made a mistake and that's not good and I'm sorry. I don't want to in any way minimize the fact that this was a real mistake and that if I could go back I wouldn't have done it--I did it mostly because I liked Hannah and thought she'd be into it at the time and ten years later I'm finding out I was wrong.
However, the issue in this context is whether it's part of some larger pattern of abuse and it's not. Hannah didn't complain at the time, kept making out with me, never mentioned it to me and it didn't stop her from trusting me in a wide variety of situations--sexual and otherwise--for the next six years.
Here we are talking the next year, and I'm casually mentioning her kink...
....and again in 2016...
...she asks for some advice in 2016...
...again in a group text including Mandy in April 2016...
...aaaand the next day...
So: Hannah only saw something more deeply sinister in that 2010 make-out session long after the fact, when Mandy had begun to complain to her.
If someone wants to pull the "Haha! You're admitting to assault! Case closed!" card, then remember Mandy punched me in the face in front of several witnesses in a far less ambiguous situation, got a far less ambiguous reaction to it from me, and more than one of the women who knew about it saw it as definitely part of an abusive pattern.
Now, finally...
Mandy
Mandy and I met in Spring 2006 and we were together until February 28th, 2017. Mandy's accusations are the most complex to untangle:
-She claims I saw her not as a person but a sexualized object.
-She claims I mistreated women around her.
-She claims she saw my behavior around sex as threatening from early on and unconsciously and I "programmed" her to do what I want sexually.
-She claims didn't like my interactions with the gamer community and was dishonest/manipulative about her involvement with it.
Aside from what I already said, the best way for me to address the first three claims is to ask witnesses: the signed statements from the women who knew us best below--especially from Michelle, (again: friend and sometime girlfriend who lived the same room as us for years, ending around January 2016) --speak more directly to the first three accusations than I can. All I can do is be an accused person saying it isn't true--they saw it all. If I mistreated women, a lot of women who saw a lot of me and Mandy and are willing to put what they saw in writing under pain of perjury seem to disagree.
The most eloquent witness against Mandy, though, is Mandy.
Here is Mandy writing to me in May 2016, just before Hannah moved out--and one year before Mandy finally left for good:
For clarity's sake I've cut-and-pasted the text:
Mandy Morbid <email redacted>
Mon 5/9/2016 11:52 AM
I feel like I'm losing you.
I feel like this year has been incredibly traumatic for me. I feel like I've changed and grown.
I feel like we have nothing in common anymore. I feel like we've grown apart. I feel like we want different things.
Love is supposed to change over time but I don't like where I am at with mine anymore. I am uncomfortable. I do still love you tremendously. But you have become a source of anxiety.
I don't know how to talk to you anymore. I am terrified of hurting you. I feel heartbroken and lost. I thought Hannah would help, I thought she would be fun and easy and something we could share again. Michelle was a disaster, Michelle hurt me, and us I think.
I feel like you put me up on a pedestal. Like I always have to be the hottest girl in the room. "What do you need to see for, don't wear your glasses" my needs come after the need for me to be this perfect little sex doll. I need to be a normal human. "Chin up" over and over and over again. "What are you even here for if you're not fucking me" all seemingly harmless in the moment but in the long run it got under my skin and it's rotting, I feel this pressure because of comments like those to be something special for you and I don't know who I am anymore in relation to you because I got so sick and I'm just not the hot little porn slut anymore. I don't know if we can find a new way to be together, what we've been doing isn;t working. I'm not happy. I don't want to lose you but I don't know how much you can change who you are and what you are doing with your life for me---I know you try so hard to make me happy, you've become more nurturing over the years despite it not being natural to you. I hate LA right now. It's full of memories that hurt me.
That's all I wanted to say for now.
What's most important about all of this is the complaints in it closely resemble her recent Facebook attack, only rendered not as accusations of systematic abuse, but rendered just as normal (if very sad and distressing) end-of-marriage complaints.
Here's how she summarized the situation to a group text full of female friends including Charlotte Stokely (one of her closest friends at the time and an occasional lover--and the woman who drove her to the airport when she left) twelve days later:
In order to show how Mandy got from describing her dissatisfaction like this to the disturbing accusations she Facebooked two years after leaving, it helps to put together a timeline:
Here's Early Mandy (her real name and hometown have been redacted) organizing my first trip to see her, asking me--spontaneously, with no prompting, and before we ever met--how to get into porn:
This does match the story of a changing Mandy that 2016 Mandy tells in her email. It doesn't match the story 2019 Mandy tells of me manipulating her.
Again, here she is, much the same two years later, once we're living together--several proper names have been redacted, including the woman in the first and the last redacted sentence that Mandy was organizing a threeway with:
Again, this can be made to square with 2016 Mandy's story but can't be made to square with 2019 Mandy's story. If this Mandy was not a willing, enthusiastic, active and independent participant in her own sexual escapades then she didn't tell me, her friends, her family, or herself. For a decade. This matches every statement collected below...
But what about over time? While she got more and more physically ill, she was still Mandy. From Twitter DMs:
Again, this Mandy does not match 2019 Mandy's description of a Mandy whose sexuality was puppeted by me:
While 2019 Mandy (who, again, hasn't spoken to me in two years) may claim that I was somehow responsible for coercing or intimidating her into sexual encounters, not only does 2006-2017 Mandy tell a very different story, so does literally every single person who knew us in our daily lives together. And while Viv, Jennifer, and Hannah say a lot of things about me, none of them suggest Mandy wasn't in control of what happened sexually or that I coerced or manipulated her into anything.
The only "sexual pressure" situation I ever saw Mandy in was Mandy abruptly interrupting my birthday party in 2015 about halfway through to say to the entire room (including her sister) that anyone who wasn't there to have sex had to leave.
The only dodgy consent situation I ever saw was her soberly having sex (she couldn't drink much usually because of her medical situation) in the Berlin orgy with Jennifer described above.
-------
So what exactly happened here?
Aside from Mandy's general eternally-declining health and occasional flare-ups in mental-health issues--especially around 2009-2010--things were basically ok with us from when we met in 2006 until 2015. We were happy and in love. We didn't have (as some people have imagined) one of those tempestuous back-and-forth mutually-destructive chaotic relationships--we were a pretty stable couple and people relied on both of us in different ways.
2015
According to friends, in Spring 2015 Mandy starts to develop feelings for another guy--a friend of mine. We have always had an open relationship but this is something different. At the time I have no idea this is going on.
Spring 2015 was also the last time Mandy and Michelle, our live-in girlfriend, had sex--Michelle eventually moved out the following winter.
She also is increasingly complaining about all our friends in LA (in her words, "the sluts" have been pissing her off)--this would continue over the coming years. As she gets sicker, she becomes more of an observer and less of a participant in the life we once lead. Conversation from Summer 2015 during one of her (increasingly frequent) hospital stays:
Especially while she's in the hospital, I have to keep reminding her about how much she likes-, and relies on-, her friends as she keeps blowing up at them and dismissing them and complaining about them.
As Mandy sums up in her Spring 2016 email above "I feel like this year has been incredibly traumatic for me. I feel like I've changed and grown. I feel like we have nothing in common anymore. I feel like we've grown apart. I feel like we want different things."
All things considered: Fair. We're growing apart.
2016
Not knowing about this other guy, and having been through the same rocky patches as anyone might expect in a decade-long polyamorous relationship with basically one breadwinner and a partner diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I got that email that kicks this section off in Spring 2016 and was like "Hey, we'll get through this! If you're not happy with me I can change." I tried.
Again, unbeknownst to me, around the same time she wrote that email, she called up the other guy from a mutual friends' kitchen and asked if she could move in with him. He declined at the time--I don't know why.
As all this is going on, Hannah's moving in. Things quickly go downhill: only a day or two after reiterating that I can go ahead and throw away the second bed because she'll sleep with us, Hannah is discovering she still has strong feelings for a guy back home, Mandy's withdrawn because she's either getting sicker or is fed up with the whole situation or both.
A week (and two wholly consensual sexual encounters) after moving in, Hannah moves to another place in LA and Mandy heads back to Canada indefinitely. We hover on the line between "breaking up" and "spending time apart". Hannah and I still hang out in LA and are friendly but everyone in our social circle's freaked out that Mandy and I have split up.
Summer-Winter 2016
Around here, while we're semi-broken-up, Mandy starts complaining about me aggressively to her close friends. The dozen or so friends in her circle who have seen us together for years either smile and let her vent or actively disagree, but people like Jennifer (who hasn't seen us since 2009) and Hannah (whom until her week living with us had only seen us together during brief visits) have only Mandy's accounts of our life together to go on.
Being supportive, Jennifer and Hannah start telling the kinds of stories people tell their friends after a big break-up: the kind where you tell your friend who is hurting and having a difficult time that the other party is to blame and They Always Suspected Something.
Around this time, lots of people were telling me stories like that about Mandy--in fact, while she was away for Christmas in 2016 two of Mandy's closest female friends took me aside at a party for a long talk and said "Zak, you're an abused spouse". Kimberly Kane had told me much the same thing years earlier.
In fact, this was kind of a common theme: when Mandy was away, friends would treat me like someone on leave from a warzone. They constantly told me I looked exhausted, asked me if I was ok, whether I needed help, brought me food, asked whether anyone was taking care of me, etc.
Anyway, when told I was an abused spouse I answered that yeah, I knew that, and that I knew that I put up with stuff (like being punched in the eye and being constantly blamed for things that were basically the chronic illness' fault) because I had long ago accepted that as the price of having Mandy around. Because I loved her. What they knew and didn't tell me is how she'd tried to secretly move in with this other guy months ago. I guess they were trying to say it but not in so many words--without violating Mandy's trust.
I don't know if I'd have used the word "abuser" to describe Mandy. I would say she was a person in an incredibly frustrating situation due to EDS that would test anyone's patience--she'd wanted to be an artist but her joints wouldn't let her hold a pencil long enough to finish a drawing, she enthusiastically threw herself into being a porn actress and a stripper and then kept bumping up against her physical limitations there, and each year there was more and more physical pain--and I would say she frequently did things to me that, if I had done them, would be called abuse. At least by 2019 Mandy. The least loaded way to describe it was: she could be really really mean.
Mandy's story to people who know us is that I'm a completely different person than the one they know. My story is that Mandy is exactly the person they know. That's one reason no-one who knows us well has supported her statement.
Anyway, back to 2016--even now, near the end, Mandy is still Mandy:
Cedar's is short for Cedars' Sinai--the hospital.
Even hooked up to tubes and about to leave me forever, Mandy's way beyond enthusiastic consent: she's the one bringing up sex, she's the one initiating, she's the one thinking about the mechanical details ("the door locks").
2017-2019
In February 2017 Mandy moves out for good, saying she's not angry and I can get in touch if I want to talk. At the time, I basically figure: the things she was worried about in her 5/9/2016 email haven't improved, this was a foregone conclusion, that sucks. The main thing for me to do is decide whether to kill myself or not.
Mandy, meanwhile, has permanently left LA and cut off contact with nearly all our friends here --they're still talking to me, so she wants nothing to do with them.
This is important: all the accusations you see Mandy marshalling against me are not from the cast of characters who'd actually watched and participated in our life.
This is also dangerous: people with Mandy's mental health issues have a tendency to rewrite events to shift blame away from themselves or onto targets they can get to, and the only way to prevent it is if there are other witnesses around to remind them how things actually went. Everyone who knows Mandy has been through a situation where she's angrily criticizing someone until she gets reminded "You know, you did that too--on Tuesday, remember?".
There's a reason all the people who were around for years have kept in touch with me and stood up for me and only people who only see us through the keyhole of Mandy's posts have lined up to support her.
Once away from LA, Mandy no longer has a circle of friends with firsthand knowledge of what her life with me was like--she only has people she mostly talks to online whose only information source is what Mandy decides to type. By pushing away everyone who still spends time with me she effectively starts creating an echo chamber. For two years it echoes.
Mandy's friends these days come from, basically, online support groups. And they call them support groups for a reason: they support each other. Online friends gathered essentially for the purpose of sharing pain can't call you on your bullshit--that isn't their role.
A combination of:
-The many sad but common things that can push married people apart after a decade
-The fact she's getting sicker and sicker and in more and more intense pain
-A desire to assuage guilt over leaving someone who she was repeatedly told by friends, family and even the media "kept her alive for ten years" and who was (in her words) basically just living the life she'd told him she wanted
-The fact that the people in her echo chamber are trying to support her narrative
-The fact she's found another guy who wants to support a narrative that makes her (and maybe him) feel less guilty
-The fact that she has Borderline Personality Disorder and probably PTSD from physical health issues from like being at a 9-10 on the pain scale for years on end, having to be in a wheelchair intermittently, eating through a tube, etc, and is only getting worse
...leads Mandy to reinterpret her life. Her story stops being that she's changed and I haven't (a pretty common story in divorces) and her story changes to I was always forcing her to be something she wasn't for a decade (that is: it changes to an abuse narrative).
At some point Mandy tells Michelle (who is also no longer in LA, and who she was still close with until the Facebook attack that started all this, but who is too scared fo losing Mandy to argue) that she wants to tear me apart and ruin my career. She says similar things to other friends.
This kind of extreme reaction is not unusual for Mandy-- she's told me at one time or another that she hates everyone she knows, her solution to RPG trolls (despite what she said in her post) was consistently "Sue them all" up until the day she left and she'd talk about elaborate revenge fantasies she had about specific trolls.
She was the one who made the legal threat to sue Arthur Chu on twitter when he joined the harassment mob. In real life, I was always the one who had to dial her back.
Mandy's ability to hate on her friends fails when she has to look them in the eye--many times over the years she's railed against people in private and then fallen to pieces as soon as she actually has to see them. But she hasn't seen me in years--so there's nothing to check her desire to destroy my life.
Luckily for her she knows a relatively easy way to start the process--owing to her own years of being harassed for being a sex-positive voice in RPG circles, Mandy knows:
-...that there are hundreds or thousands of RPG trolls who did things like send me death threats and send her rape threats who really do want to tear me apart and ruin my career,
-...that these people are shameless enough to do things like cry "Believe women!" while ignoring female creators, to accuse Jewish creators of being Nazis, and to accuse transgender creators of creating transphobic games, and that none of them have suffered any consequences for it, so they'd see no danger in carrying her signal even if it was from a former "enemy" and even if it later proved false,
-...that there are also lots of allegedly more responsible people in the RPG community who, whether or not they have any animus toward me, are anxious enough about how the RPG community looks to outsiders to immediately credit any accusation of sexual abuse without asking any questions or doing any investigation,
and
-...that though her circle of close friends has dwindled to mostly gamers she met online, the ones left are fiercely loyal.
So she pitches her appeal specifically to the online RPG audience by distancing herself from her own years of railing against prudery and harassment in the gamer sphere. To stick the knife in, she even claims she didn't write a post defending/agreeing with me (though she doesn't say which post, because there's many)--though she forgets Michelle saw her write it, or doesn't realize Michelle's not going to lie to sign on to her story.
Although to most people the game-related accusations seem like a minor detail, to the trolls Mandy's targeting, this is gold: one of the D&D With Porn Stars women has finally switched sides. It's the detail that makes it ok for them to unambiguously support her after ignoring and doubting her for so many years. That gives them permission to take her seriously.
And then she relies on a tactic she saw used herself a million times:
1. Make a provocative attack
2. Refuse to answer questions or clarify, citing mental health reasons
3. Let the online mob do the rest
...and here we are.
I can't be sure what 2019 Mandy has decided to believe because it's emotionally convenient and which parts of this she's fully conscious of having made up. I do know, thanks to Michelle and others, that she did intend to destroy my life with it.
Mandy had a life. It may be a life she's now denied by Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and it may be a life she now regrets--but helping her live it doesn't retroactively make me a felon.
To Review:
Jennifer: The alleged victims don't agree they're victims.
Hannah: Her story is only important (even to her) in the context of an abuse that wasn't there.
Vivka: Completely contradicted by the bare facts, and--if they was true--paints Mandy as an abuser.
Mandy: Contested by every witness who was there and by over a decade of her own previous statements and actions.
2. Statements from Witnesses
These aren't people who've just consented to make statements--these people saw what Mandy was doing and contacted me to ask how they could help. They'll swear to all of this on penalty of perjury and so will I, while the people accusing me via Facebook posts and harassing them with conspiracy theories online won't swear to anything.
All of these folks have made it clear they are willing to answer further questions and talk to people about any of this. They can clarify or provide detail and have a lot to say besides just what's we collected here. Again: if you have any questions about these statements, their validity, the details around them, etc, get in touch with the people who made them, they have agreed to make themselves available for good-faith inquiries.
Since Mandy's attack and the harassment campaign that followed are calculated to cast anyone who disagrees with her as a party to abuse, nearly all of these witnesses have been harassed for speaking up. So: this took bravery.
Mandy's family--despite being very close, with no divorce or estrangements--has not supported her accusations. This is from Mandy's father, who has decided he's willing to speak to the public about this. He's said he's willing to be contacted for inquiries at mad_chemist58 AT hawtmayle dawt calm and said he'd be willing to set up phone calls to people making good-faith inquiries.
I just got the statement this morning but if you doubt its veracity, contact him.
Mandy's real name's been redacted:
Frankie got in touch with me out of the blue to make this statement and is herself an abuse survivor. Since all of the women speaking out against Mandy's attack have been accused of not existing, they've provided photos:
I am Mandy Morbid’s father. I would never have thought that I would be standing against my daughter in a disagreement with her ex husband, Zak Smith. I love my daughter and I will always continue to love and support her even when I don’t agree with her. Both I and my wife ((Real name redacted)’s mom) could never stand Zak’s Lifestyle or the fact that (Real name redacted) seemed drawn to it. I remember asking (Real name redacted) early in her marriage, many years ago if she was being forced to do anything against her will that she didn’t want to do. Her answer to me at that time was “No, I am having fun”.
In spite of the fact that as parents we hated their lifestyle and Zak’s arrogant attitude, for (Real name redacted)’s sake we accepted him into our family as a part of our family. And in my opinion, he seemed to truly care for her in spite of a costly disability that would put a strain on any relationship.
I want you all to understand that we have a very close family. (Real name redacted) and her sister did not keep many secrets from us and in fact my daughters would tell me things before telling their mother simply because they could trust me not to “over react”. Sometimes they would leave it to me to inform their mother and then fill them in on how she reacted to their “news”. Sometimes (Real name redacted) would tell me things that as her father, I sometimes really didn’t want to know about. I would force myself to stay calm and supportive because to react in a negative way would result in my children feeling that they could not come to me with any news and rely on my calm and supportive benevolence. How many girls (or guys for that matter) would feel comfortable enough to tell their fathers that they were involved in the porn industry? Now there’s something a dad really wants to hear about their daughter! Throughout the years we would talk frequently through phone, text and skype. Even though she was far from home she always kept close ties with her mom and I. She would talk to us about any medical issues she was suffering or any other things (good or bad) that were happening in her life. I find it hard to imagine that she could be abused and mistreated and we would have no idea or clue. I also remember a story she told me about how she attacked Zak one day in front of several of their friends when she misheard something he said. Apparently, (Real name redacted) became extremely angry, attacked him and even punched him in the mouth! Would someone who is being abused actually physically attack her abuser like that in front of witnesses? For ten long years even though we kept in close contact with our daughter, we heard nothing to indicate that he was abusive. In fact, (Real name redacted) and Zak (and sometimes Michelle) would come and stay for Christmas almost every year and we did get to know Zak (and Zak and (Real name redacted) as a married couple) over the years. Once we even went to Los Angeles and stayed with (Real name redacted) and Zak while we attended the funeral for my brother. Zak was always pleasant and friendly with us and in spite of their odd lifestyle, I truly believe that he loved my daughter.
(Real name redacted) has suffered for most of her life from EDS which caused her severe pain for much of the time in addition to many other disabling medical issues. It is also extremely isolating to be disabled and in pain for so long when you cannot live a normal life and are forced to give up many of the things most people take for granted. In order to deal with that isolation she has gathered a network of people on the internet, some who like her suffer from EDS and some who she has met through gaming or friends in the porn industry, but they all keep each other company and support each other, sometimes they support each other blindly even though they may not know each other all that well.(Real name redacted) has been extremely courageous and she has demonstrated a toughness that many soldiers would envy but make no mistake, a long-term disability that brings severe pain can cause issues that I do not claim to know or understand.
I know that towards the end of their relationship (Real name redacted) fell out of love with Zak and it was around this time that she started to talk badly about him. I believe that since she no longer wanted to stay married to Zak, she convinced herself that he was abusing her so she could justify and rationalize her leaving him. With her health and her marriage falling apart, she moved home to (Redacted) and tried to get her health care situation under control.
There are a few salient points that come to mind as I think over the past 10 years. We saw her turn against him towards the end of her time in Los Angeles, which I felt was in part a result of their “open” marriage. How do you protect and nurture your love for each other when you are constantly letting other people into your heart and bed?? I suppose I have old fashioned ideas about relationships but to me there are some practical reasons for those old ideas. In addition, even after escaping and coming home to (Redacted) , she commented several times to her mother that she wondered if she had made a mistake by leaving him. There is also one other situation that concerns me deeply about her accusations toward Zak. In 2014, just 2 or 3 years before leaving Zak, (Real name redacted) had a female visitor who came to support her while she was getting her first TPN PICC line installed and started on TPN feeding. (Real name redacted) left this visitor at her home alone with Zak without even warning her that he could be dangerous. If Zak is as horrible, abusive and manipulative as she claims, would (Real name redacted) have left her close friend at home alone with Zak without warning her of Zak’s behaviour?? And one last point that I would like to make is that over the past couple of years (Real name redacted) has developed such a deep-seated resentment and hatred towards Zak that she does not see him or his actions in a normal, rational way. The other day when I mentioned to her that I had spoken to Zak she immediately reacted quite strongly and accused him of trying to manipulate and pressure me. I had to reassure her that first of all when I choose to speak with someone voluntarily that is not being pressured in any way, and secondly even if I was intimidated by Zak in some way it would be pretty hard for him to pressure me from over 3,000 miles away.
I have come to learn that no one is all good or all bad. I am sure that Zak is arrogant and overbearing just as I am sure that (Real name redacted) was demanding and overbearing as well. In this situation I have to ask myself if I believe everything (Real name redacted) said in her statement and for some reason, I am sorry but I do not!!
I know (Real name redacted) well enough to know that she will hate the content of this statement while respecting my right to make it. I always taught her to stick to her beliefs and I so I too have to respect her right to stick by her statement even if I disagree with it. I just hope and pray that our relationship can survive even this disagreement.
-(Real Name Redacted)
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Frankie has also made two longer statements, addressing Mandy's accusations in detail:
I, Frances Fernandez, declare:
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If called as a witness in any action, I could and would testify competently, under oath, from my own personal knowledge, to each and all of the following facts, except for those facts that I have stated under information and belief and those that I believe to be true.
- I sometimes use the name “Frankie”, including on “I Hit It With My Axe”.
- I’ve known (Real name redacted) aka Mandy Morbid (“Mandy”) and Zak Smith (“Zak”) since 2009 and lived with them for a few months.
- I observed Zak to be very devoted and caring to Mandy.
- While they disagreed from time to time, like any couple, I never saw anything out of the ordinary. In fact, if anything, Mandy was the one that was more controlling of the two.
- Mandy was prone to aggressive verbal outbursts against the people around her.
- I was afraid of upsetting Mandy due to these outbursts.
- Mandy frequently insulted other women’s bodies and appearance.
- Mandy was an enthusiastic partner in Zak’s sexual pursuit of other women.
- I myself have suffered the kind of abuse Mandy describes in her statement, nothing in my experience of Zak matches this.
- I have never seen Zak be abusive to any woman. I have never heard him talk about raping or hitting anyone. Until these accusation, I’d never heard anyone suggest Zak was anything other than completely devoted to Mandy.
- I have never been afraid of Zak and never heard of any woman who was.
I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed at Los Angeles, CA, this 19th day of February 2019.Frances Fernandez
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Frankie gave me permission to publish her original DM to me:
Hi. I am Frankie. I played DnD in I Hit it With My Axe. I lived with Zak and Mandy in LA. AMA.
I know most people here have already made up their minds on how to feel about this public and now ugly divorce.
CW/ abuse
I never wanted to publicly talk about my own experience with my abuser, and I won’t go into detail. Only that I was severely gaslit, verbally abused daily, raped and reached a point of being suicidal. I hate having to even say as much, but I feel like this is important. I reached out to anyone I could whenever I couldn’t take it anymore. I started with family members, screaming crying into the phone not knowing what to do, not knowing what was even really going on. I was told by family “This is abusive, you are in an abusive relationship you need to leave.” I couldn’t leave. I wondered how to, wondered why I wasn’t enough. I stayed. I called KK one out of several days, crying. Screaming telling her I couldn’t take it anymore, that I wanted to die. She was there for me, she knows what I went through. This went on for years until actually, he left me. He left me after I demanded we go to therapy together, the therapist insisted he take responsibility for himself. After that he said fuck this and left. So I went to therapy. Then I understood deeply, how to heal and how to understand what had happened. To understand the strength it took to set boundaries, the strength it takes to see how I let it happen and how to make sure I never let it happen again.
I have to open with this because, nearly everyone who has been close with Zak and Mandy, who have actually lived with them, know that Mandy is essentially full of shit in her post. I know this because not only did I live with them, I have been through years of the horrifying experience she claims to have survived.
First of all, you have to understand that Zak and Mandy as a couple were almost identically the same person. They were each other’s other halves. Their past times included reading the same books and comics, gaming and threesomes/various lovers. Yes people outgrow each other. This happens. But what she writes about him is a new narrative for her, and is completely unwarranted in it’s attempt to assassinate his character to justify the person she’s grown to become.
I met them at Canter’s for a friends birthday party. I liked them because they were both charismatic, looked cool and seemed intellectual enough to hold a conversation about Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time. We connected on the fact that I was obsessed with Oblivion/Skyrim and they insisted I’d enjoy a tabletop version, which was DnD. I went over to play an 8 hour campaign. I remember thinking to myself “god damn everyone here is unusually sex driven/horny.” Which is funnily the moment Zak introduced me to the fact that they were mostly all sex workers.
I played d&d with them, we watched movies together, drank together, they asked me to be in pornos with them I said no every time. I remember the time being super fun. I also remember when they were preparing for I Hit it With My Axe, they said I couldn’t be on the show because I wasn’t a sex worker. Somehow I got on the show anyway because we had all become friends.
In getting to know them I learned some things. When I asked Mandy how they met she unabashedly let me know they met on the internet and that they “fucked within 20mins of meeting”, in an elevator. Zak says Mandy had a powerful sex drive, I was there to witness what happened if Mandy’s needs were not met. i learned very quickly that Mandy ran the show, she called the shots and she was absolutely the matriarch. This is important because in an abusive situation, one’s voice is completely silenced. I was so silenced I was unable to even speak for myself in simple public circumstances like ordering food. This was a very slow process that I have come to take full responsibility for allowing because I had no idea how to keep it from getting to that point.
Mandy claims that Zak had “idolized” her body and not her as a person. In my experience with them, this is unequivocally untrue. Zak definitely idolized Mandy, and it -was- about who she was as a person. Remember they shared the same interests, read the same books, read to each other, essentially felt the same about most things. Zak constantly held Mandy up as someone who wholly understood him in ways many others could never and vice versa. I was there when he showed appreciation toward her capacity for intellect and understanding, her interest in books not many other people were interested in. In her desire to know and understand minute details of Star Trek ships and references. If Zak only idolized her body, then Mandy must have fully fabricated a personality to fit Zak’s pleasures. Let’s look for personal accountability here.
There was a lot of stress to deal with. Mandy was constantly sick, constantly going to the ER, she had no insurance so most of Zak’s earnings went straight to ghost symptoms and a seemingly endless array of medical difficulties. Despite this, I only really ever saw Zak get truly angry when my dog Nico bit his toe, drew blood and I was incredibly unapologetic about it.
I speak about Zak’s demeanor here because there are signs to look for in an abuser. Loses temper quickly and easily is one of them, and I mostly saw Zak coast. He was incredibly supportive and capable of emotionally connecting to our ideas and aspirations and regularly offered positive encouragement. This is not something an abuser would be even remotely capable of. I also interacted with Mandy a lot. Zak always wanted to debate and I always refused, and I feel like I did this because I sensed it would make Mandy uncomfortable. I was not in their rotation as a lover, she was unable to dominate me, and so I was a free human who could converse with Zak without her control. Yet I sensed her need for the control and I naturally set boundaries knowing I did not want to set her off. I mean even in living with them if I was going out I’d ask if they thought my outfit was cool and Mandy constantly told me I was insecure and needed to get a grip on that. I felt secure, I thought asking friends about outfits was a thing friends did when they lived together but I mostly ignored those projections.
Mandy and I talked about babies, and never wanting them. Mandy had mentioned it wasn’t possible for her to get pregnant, because of the nature of her many medical issues, her arthritis and her small stature. She said it wasn’t even possible for her to get pregnant and that if she did she could possibly die. I set out to understand Mandy’s medical issues and in knowing what her body went through and how physically fragile she was, I believed her. I have to add that when I moved in and was car shopping I purposefully bought a car that would fit a wheelchair in the back. I truly felt for her and her medical issues and always wanted to help.
Whenever I was out with Zak and Mandy, Mandy would point women out to Zak for him to check out and they would assess them together. It wasn’t a thing I saw that Zak offered up or did on his own. In the time I knew Zak and hung out with them this doesn’t even align with who he is as a person. This whole breast humiliation narrative just doesn’t make any sense at all. If anything Mandy was a scathing breast critic in the claim that hers were perfect and above all others. God how ridiculous to even think about. When I was living there Gia had come over to get photos taken for a painting. She wildly complained about the size of her breasts during the photoshoot (it was in our living room) and Zak did nothing but compliment her, put her at ease and tell her she was perfect and even when Gia mentioned wanting to get a boob job Zak encouraged her to do whatever would make her feel her best but that she was wonderfully perfect the way she was. He was painting her for crying out loud!
This is a couple who very regularly had lovers, enjoyed threesomes and had multiple sister-wives over the span of their relationship. Some of the discomfort or abuse Mandy addresses is simply dysfunction and not actual abuse or it is dramatized and worded to seem heavier than what it actually is.
As far as Mandy grooming women for Zak. No. There was a girl from the midwest Mandy begged Zak to fly out here so she “could fuck her”. They had a friend visiting from NY that Mandy was very excited to “fuck”.
In writing this I understand that people change, that people grow into new and different humans. But a lot of what’s written in the post are vague renditions of severe abuse and a need to experience a healing process through exaggerating or downright making up trash nonsense and gather people to feel sorry for her.
In my life I have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and have spent years trying to understand what my body was going through. I learned about fibromyalgia when my father passed while I was still living with Zak and Mandy. My grief wholly consumed me and took a debilitating tax on my body. I was fortunately definitely not as sick as Mandy but when I dealt with the grief of loss from my father, Mandy was not nearly as understanding or present as she was when it was clear she would not be able to manipulate, control me or take advantage of my kindness. This is when things hit a heavy point and I moved out. I swore they were both totally out of their fucking minds and as the years passed I remember saying to friends: Mandy will get sicker. She absolutely fetishizes victimhood.
I don’t like to refute or question when women come forward with their stories of abuse. Since the MeToo movement started it seemed a safe way to express solidarity for something that happens to women regularly. However since then I have also seen a slew of false accusations, riding the wave of women who have actually endured long standing abuse for whatever wild ass reason and I don’t stand for that shit so this is my perspective of life with this couple for whatever it’s worth.
Michelle has been mentioned here many times, she has more firsthand knowledge of Mandy and my life together than anyone else. Mandy had no filter about complaining to me, arguing with me, or having sex in front of her and did it for years:
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I, Michelle Ford, declare:-
If called as a witness in any action, I could and would testify competently, under oath, from my own personal knowledge, to each and all of the following facts, except for those facts that I have stated under information and belief and those that I believe to be true.
1. I sometimes use the name “Connie”.
2. I’ve known (Real name redacted) aka Mandy Morbid (“Mandy”) and Zak Smith (“Zak”) for about eight (8) years and lived with them for five (5) years.
3. I love both Mandy and Zak.
4. For three (3) of the five (5) years I lived with Mandy and Zak we lived in one big room together. Their bed was only 25 feet from mine and there were no walls, doors or dividers between us. the other two (two) years were spent in a regular apartment.
5. I observed Zak to be very sweet and caring to Mandy. He was always staying up with her when she was sick, reading with her and putting off his work to keep her company and help her feel better. He took care of her. He would even carry Mandy up the stairs and pushed her wheelchair (Mandy wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it) when she was really sick.
6. I helped tattoo some of Mandy’s medical illnesses and ailments on Zak’s forearm. He wanted to have everything written permanently so he could convey information in cases of emergency, to the personnel at all of Mandy’s medical appointments and any hospital visits.
7. While they disagreed from time to time, like any couple, I never saw anything out of the ordinary. In fact, if anything, Mandy was the one that was more controlling of the two.
8. One time I saw a hole kicked into the apartment door. Mandy told me she was the one that did that. I later heard that they lost their security deposit because of the damage done to the door.
9. There were also long periods of time (months at least) where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness. Zak sat and worked near her to keep her healthy.
10. I have never seen Zak be abusive to any woman. I have never heard him talk about raping or hitting anyone – that would not sound like him. Every sexual encounter that I had with Zak, or witnessed Zak having, was consensual.
11. I have never been afraid of Zak. We have fought and exchanged some mighty unpleasant sentiments, as is bound to happen occasionally in any relationship, but I have never felt that he is willing or capable of physical violence against myself or any of the women we know. He has lifted me up and shown me compassion and patience in some of the lowest points in my life.
12. I was there with Mandy when she wrote a statement on Tumblr saying Zak’s not the person people in the gaming community were accusing him of being. Mandy even said at that time she was worried people would think Zak wrote it when I know Mandy had written it.
13. Towards the end of their relationship, Mandy told me that she wanted to tear Zak apart and ruin his career.
I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed at (Location redacted), this 15th day of February 2019.
Michelle Ford
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Again, Michelle will substantiate that she wrote the response to Mandy's original attack post in the original statement above and that it was quickly erased.
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Kimberly Kane was Mandy's closest friend and confidant during the time I Hit It With My Axe was filming and for several years when we first moved to LA. She was also a witness when Mandy punched me:
I, (Real name redacted), declare:
If called as a witness in any action, I could and would testify competently, under oath, from my own personal knowledge, to each and all of the following facts, except for those facts that I have stated under information and belief and those that I believe to be true.
- 1. I use the name “Charlotte Stokely” as my entertainment name.
- 2, I have been close friends with (Real name redacted), aka Mandy Morbid (“Mandy”) and Zak Smith (“Zak”) for 13 years. I’ve seen Mandy and Zak interact at home, at work, at play, and everywhere.
- 3. I’ve seen Zak dedicate his life to Mandy. I saw him be very nurturing and caring towards Mandy. He dedicated all his time to Mandy. Mandy was loved by Zak. Zak took care of Mandy when she was sick. He carried her up the stairs when she couldn’t move.
- 4. There were also long periods of time where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness. Zak sat and worked next to her and tried to keep her healthy.
- 5. I never saw Zak be angry at Mandy or be aggressive. She was his number one during the period of time they were together.
- 6. Mandy never spoke of anything even close to abuse to me and I was the one who drove Mandy to the airport the day she left.
- 7. I have never seen Zak be abusive to any woman. I have never seen Zak take advantage of any woman, or have sex with any of them without their consent.
I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed at Los Angeles County, California, this 15th day of February 2019.
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EDIT: March 2, Kimberly wrote this statement:
I, (real name redacted), declare:
If called as a witness in any action, I could and would testify competently, under oath, from my own personal knowledge, to each and all of the following facts, except for those facts that I have stated under information and belief and those that I believe to be true.
- I use the name “Kimberly Kane” as my entertainment name.
- I have known (real name redacted) aka Mandy Morbid (“Mandy”) and Zak Smith (“Zak”) since 2007. I’ve seen Mandy and Zak interact at home, at work, and at leisure.
- I spent seven years seeing Zak and Mandy every week, almost every day. During this time I drove Mandy to many of her doctor and therapist appointments. I spent a great deal of time alone with Mandy alone during which she confided a wide variety of personal problems to me.
- We were so close that when I was buying a new car I chose a specific SUV so that I could fit Mandy’s wheelchair in the back.
- When my little cousin needed a place to live in LA, I felt comfortable recommending that she stay with them and work for Zak. She did.
- I saw Mandy punch Zak in the face in the back of a limosine in 2009, in front of other witnesses. This was not during an argument—Mandy apparently misheard something Zak said and immediately punched him.
- In 2009, after this, I told Zak to break up with Mandy. I was concerned about her mental health.
- Mandy was prone to aggressive verbal outbursts to people around her, including against Zak.
- I’ve seen Zak dedicate his life to Mandy. I saw him be very nurturing and caring towards Mandy. He dedicated all his time to Mandy. Zak was completely devoted to her on every level. Zak took care of Mandy when she was sick.
- There were also long periods of time where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness. Zak sat and worked next to her and tried to keep her healthy.
- I never saw Zak be angry at Mandy or be aggressive. She was his number one during the period of time they were together.
- Mandy never spoke of anything even close to abuse to me despite the large amount of time we spent together and the close nature of our friendship.
- I have never seen Zak be abusive to any woman. I have never seen Zak take advantage of any woman, or have sex with any of them without their consent.
I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed at (location redacted), this 28 day of February 2019.
(Real name redacted)
I cannot attest to how Mandy’s feels about her relationship with Zak, I can only attest to what I saw and how I felt during the 7 years I was their close friend. Here are a few memories I have during my time with Zak and Mandy.
To give my story context, I have known Zak and Mandy for over a decade and spent 7 of those years seeing them almost every day. I played D&D with them and appeared on their internet series ‘I Hit It With My Axe.’ I traveled with them, I made movies, content and art about them/with them. When I was considering a new car I went with an SUV because it was easier to fit Mandy’s wheelchair in the back. When my little cousin needed a place to live when she moved to LA she rented a room from Zak and Mandy. I wrote an article entitled ‘Zak loves Mandy’ featured in Vice Magazine along with the photo of Mandy’s medical history tattooed on Zak’s arm.
Looking back at that time I can say they were high functioning codependents. Hanging out with them was like hanging out with twins. They were always together, they read the same books, played the same games and shared the same lovers. I was not one of their lovers, just saying that for context.
Zak can be an offensive person which makes him hard to defend. He’s pissed off a lot of people in the rpg world as I have now learned. He is also a textbook exhibitionist which can also throw off people who are used to social norms. I can say the same about Mandy, they complimented each other in many aspects and she was the matriarch of their world.
In 2009 I told Zak to break up with Mandy…
Zak had rented a limo for Mandy’s birthday and I was invited to come along for her big birthday excursions. Zak blindfolded Mandy and Jennifer so it would be a big reveal when the car pulled up at Disneyland. Jennifer and Mandy were dressed like fairy princesses and security almost didn’t let them in. Apparently adults can’t just show up in handmade fairy costumes. Zak talked to security and we were able to get into the park. We went on a bunch of rides and it was a really great birthday.
At the end of the night we all piled back into the limo and by this time Mandy was drunk. We were all chatting and Zak said something about the color of the limo. I’m not sure what Mandy thought he said but she punched him in the face. I was shocked because he just put all this effort into pulling together an awesome birthday party for her and she assaulted him. Even though this was completely out of the ordinary for her I was really upset.
The next day I called Zak and I told him he shouldn’t put up with that shit.
Mandy never had health insurance. This was before the Affordable Care Act and no insurance company would touch her. Zak paid cash for doctors appointments, medication, ER visits and hospital stays. At one point when Mandy couldn’t get a serious treatment in the states Zak relocated with her to Canada so she could get the medical care she needed.
This is a breakup story. This is a complex decade long relationship tell-all crammed into one Facebook post and a blog update. It has gotten nasty, twisted and regrettable. Does Mandy have the right to reflect on her past with regret? Hell yes she does. Do we all wish we could change our narrative to suit the life we are trying leading now, to be redeemed? Yes, we do.
I will say this, I witnessed a relationship that had a lot of moving parts, lovers, friends, illness and codependency but not one of dark chronic abuse. I believe Zak and Mandy are two very complicated and highly intelligent individuals who were equally matched more than anyone I have ever met and I wish them both peace and health in their lives.
-Kimberly Kane
Another statement, this one taped:
Quinna Darling has been told to kill herself by Mandy's harassment mob "somewhere in the ballpark of 40 times in the last 48 hours".
She also knew me when I met Mandy, she arranged my first trip to see her.
I didn't know she was making this video, she didn't tell me about it, but here it is:
EDIT: June 26th
The lawsuit's been announced and more witnesses are coming forward.
Elana Hill was our personal assistant at home for six of the ten years we were together. She was there regularly from 2008 to 2011 and did odd jobs until 2013. Like every other witness, her story directly contradicts Mandy's, in detail:
As the artist Zak Smith’s assistant, for the first year and a half, I did whatever was necessary to allow Zak more time to paint, write, and draw. I calculated his taxes, communicated with his gallery and bank, made travel arrangements, dictated his writings to aid in editing, organized his apartment, ran errands and prepared food. Since completing graduate school in 2011, I no longer work for Zak full time but I did side jobs and research projects for him when needed through 2013.
In October 2008 I got to go to New York for the opening of Zak’s show “Midnight in the Empire”. I stayed with friends in Prospect Park and when we arrived at Zak’s opening I met Jennifer (Temper) outside. She was rushing to try to change because she had some complicated story of missing her flight and being delayed. I showed her to the back room of the gallery where I had stashed my purse and she changed as we chatted a little. Jennifer was very excited about being at the opening and had come there by choice. I had seen pictures of her before from the reference pictures Zak used to paint, where she was sitting, smoking, looking comfortable. Nothing about her behavior suggested to me that she was being forced to be there or forced to have an ongoing friendship with Zak and Mandy.
My time spent working in Zak and Mandy’s home gave me a candid and intimate perspective on their relationship. Zak spent countless hours trying to make sure Mandy was happy and comfortable, which she often responded to with apathetic behavior. Because I was a part of the art world as well, and had friends in the Los Angeles area, I often invited Zak and Mandy to art openings which Zak would only attend if Mandy first approved. As years went by and Mandy had more trouble standing and walking for long periods of time, Zak would only attend if Mandy wanted to go and I remember an occasion where Zak and I struggled (almost comically) loading Mandy’s extremely heavy electric wheelchair into the back of my Subaru Forester so we could go to openings in Culver City. At that time Zak and Many lived in Little Armenia next to Hollywood. Shortly after that Zak moved to an expensive loft in Downtown Los Angeles so Mandy had more mobility to get around in the wheelchair. I use these examples to show I saw endless circumstances in which Zak did everything in his ability to be considerate of Mandy’s feelings and accommodate her needs. As someone who was in their home daily for years, I observed their relationship more than most and I believe as someone who had a strictly professional relationship, I have a clear and unbiased impression of their life together. I cared about Mandy’s comfort and feelings greatly as well because she often found reasons to try to attack Zak and complain that he didn’t do enough for her, like when she said she was hungry if he couldn’t guess the best dish she wanted from a take-out place she wouldn’t eat it and would complain to him about it until one of us got or made her something else. This, I believe was done intentionally so she would have his attention instead of him focusing on work. Zak is incredibly straight forward about his preferences to the point of being blunt, but he never forced Mandy to do things she didn’t want to do. Zak was always very level-headed and extremely routine-oriented. He was a night-owl so he would often wake up in the early afternoon and work on paintings or writing until late at night. Despite his counter-culture visual appearance, Zak does not party or have an aggressive attitude. Zak is very intellectual and has an incredible work ethic, constantly listening to lectures and books or articles out loud while painting. Mandy usually put on headphones and played video games until she needed something from Zak. Zak completely took care of Mandy, paying all medical bills and rent as well as for food and household items. I know this because I was often responsible for checking the mail and writing checks for Zak to sign. I also helped prepare his taxes so I know he paid his and Mandy’s living expenses as well as travel costs. Any money Mandy made herself went to wigs or toys or something only for her. In my opinion Mandy was making decisions independently and constantly asking Zak to take care of all her needs. Numerous times I witnessed Mandy suggest that she would like to act in a pornographic scene with another girl, explaining to Zak after the fact that she was in communication with the girl and informing which day Zak had to get them a taxi (Uber wasn’t around yet) to meet the girl Mandy had been talking to, or which day she was coming over. I also know that if a girl was interested in Zak and asked to fuck him he would say “You have to talk to Mandy first.” And he would leave it at that. The two times in 11 years of knowing Zak that we hung out at art openings without Mandy he never said a word about other girls in a judgmental or suggestive way and never tried to connect with or hit on women.
Zak undeniably loved, respected and cared for Mandy. Mandy choosing to attack Zak like this is appalling, which is why I am writing this. I am shocked and horrified by Mandy’s actions to destroy Zak’s reputation, social life and career. Zak and I text when we get a chance and he was supposed to come to my wedding in Napa (where I now live) last April. At the last minute he said he couldn’t come and admitted after the wedding he was going through a hard time, which is when he finally told me about all of these terrible accusations led by Mandy and her desire to ruin Zak’s life. I immediately offered to write a statement because I think it is scary and sad that such untrue rumors can be propagated and spread so quickly. Mandy is taking advantage of the fact that Zak lived a fairly private life. Private because he was always working so hard to support himself and Mandy, but their life was not private to me. I was there. Daily. Among other tasks I paid their bills, washed their clothes, met their friends, interacted with Zak's gallery. I saw their lives from the inside and the only abusive behavior I ever saw was by Mandy towards Zak. As Zak worked tirelessly to support her, and cared for Mandy as she became more ill (mentally and physically) she often treated him like shit.
-EDIT: July 16, 2019, Caroline Pierce's statement
If called as a witness in any action, I could and would testify competently, under oath, from my own personal knowledge, to each and all of the following facts, except for those facts that I have stated under information and belief and those that I believe to be true.
- I use the name "Caroline Pierce" as my entertainment name.
- I first met Zak Smith aka Zak Sabbath ("Zak") on the set of a movie in 2006 and first met his then girlfriend Amanda Nagy aka Mandy Morbid ("Mandy") on the set of a movie in 2007.
- We have been friends since they got married here in Las Vegas.
- I have observed Zak and Mandy as a couple at work, at leisure, in private and in public. Being from out of town, I didn't see them often but we'd see each other when I was in LA or they were in Vegas.
- I used to drive Mandy around on errands and to doctor appointments when I was in Los Angeles when I had a free day to do so. I have spent time alone with her, in which she never spoke of anything negative happening in her relationship with Zak.
- I have spent time alone with Zak. I stayed over at their apartment on a Los Angeles work trip, during a time when Mandy was in Canada visiting her family. I have never once even remotely felt uncomfortable being alone around Zak. I have never witness Zak mistreating or being abusive towards a woman.
- I did not witness any signs of abuse or manipulation between them. What I saw were two people incredibly well matched for each other. The Mandy I knew was in control of her own thought and own actions. She has a very strong personality.
- From my observation of their relationship, I am of the opinion that Mandy's needs were the priority in the relationship, be it medical/health needs or sexual, and that Zak wasn't begrudging about that in any way. I saw respect and love. The relationship I saw between them was very much about compatibility and their personalities fitting so well together.
- I did not see Zak treat Mandy like a trophy wife as she claims, and I did not see Zak treat her as an owned object as she claims.
- Mandy and I have had talks about not wanting children and how it was unfair that young women aren't usually able to make that medical choice and have tubal ligation. Her accusation about pregnancy/abortion makes no sense in the context of the Mandy I knew because she would never have wanted to, or been able to, carry a baby anyway
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3. Frequently Asked Questions
Two bundled questions:
Why would Mandy et al make false accusations?
and
Isn't your response the classic DARVO tactic: ""Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender?"
You literally can't answer the first question--that is, you can't give a plausible explanation for a false accusation--without being accused of doing the second thing--deny the accusation and pointing out that the accuser is doing something bad.
Once someone makes a false claim, they become an offender and the person they accused becomes a victim of their false attack. That's life. Nothing I can do can turn back the clock to make Mandy un-punch me in the face or de-launch the harassment campaign she started, so if I didn't point out she had committed offenses I'd just be lying.
Sometimes people make false accusations and it's bad, if you're on the internet you probably already know that's true.
But making these accusations brings negative attention to the accuser, why would someone risk that?
Four reasons:
-In her current situation, Mandy in the most literal sense hasn't got much to lose and has very little business online, Jennifer and Hannah don't have any public online profile at all and didn't even use their last names and Vivka only jumped on board with her accusations once the mob was decidedly on Mandy's side.
-Mandy didn't realize that key friends and family close to her were going to jump ship over this--they'd been keeping quiet because they assumed her railing against me was just therapeutic and didn't realize she was going to attack me publicly.
-As the records above suggest, all of the accusers were prone to impulsive risky behavior and none were ever very worried about the long-term consequences of their actions.
-For almost ten years, Mandy watched members of RPG community accuse me and each other of everything under the sun, be proved wrong, and suffer no consequences at all. People made up fake accusations about rape, about threatening peoples' children, about the authors of vampire being secret Nazis--she herself was even periodically accused of not playing D&D or not existing. Over and over there was no accountability for the perpetrators--so this may have influenced her view that nothing bad could happen to her if she made a false accusation.
Isn't this gaslighting?
There's no way to explain that a factor in someone's bad behavior might be the actual and genuine and serious mental illness they have been diagnosed with without someone claiming you're gaslighting. Unfortunately: mental illness is a real thing with real effects.
I remember one particularly bad stretch in 2009 or 2010 where Mandy was desperately trying to get help, calling every psychiatrist she thought we could afford in LA and being refused by every one because it's an insurance risk to deal with Borderline-sufferers. We ended up sitting for at least six or eight hours in a skid row public assistance waiting room only to be told nobody could give her any medication. She cried herself to sleep for days. Mandy has ongoing issues and is in therapy for them--as are other folks who've accused me. They've all been very o
If a person is making accusations about feeling threatened, then the fact they have an illness that makes them sometimes read ordinary situations as threatening in ways nobody else understands is relevant to those accusations. Likewise, if they have an illness that makes them rewrite situations to downplay their own agency, the fact they do that is relevant to those accusations. They have all been open about their mental health issues, including when we were in contact (i.e. long before I could've been the cause of said issues) and after.
You don't want to be deplatformed--but aren't you a vocal advocate of deplatforming? Turnabout is fair play, haha!
I think people who have done bad things should be deplatformed. People merely accused shouldn't, that's silly--there needs to be thorough investigation before consequences are inflicted on people. And if you didn't ask any questions, you didn't do an investigation.
I've always made efforts to contact people before calling them out, I've always done everything possible to make sure I haven't missed anything, and I've always taken steps to make sure the person actually did the thing I'm calling them out for. You need to take care and caution before inflicting serious consequences on anyone.
Why don't you just sue people?
People in my position aren't supposed to talk publicly about possible legal action but if you genuinely don't know why, show this whole post to a lawyer and ask them "Assuming everything this guy says is true, why shouldn't he just sue?". I'm sure they can explain why it'd be difficult for anyone involved to get very much that was productive out of a lawsuit filed under at least the current circumstances.
I would like to definitively solve the problem of the false accusations, but do it in whatever way causes the least disruption to the lives of the many people this touches. I don't think Mandy realized how much chaos this would cause and for how many people, including her own close friends and family.
EDIT: Having pursued every other option, suing people is now on the table.
Ok, but everyone in the online RPG community hates you anyway so who cares if you actually did anything wrong, you suck?
The way the online RPG community prefers to deal with any disagreements (from Is There An Objectively Best Edition Of a Game? to What Counts as Online Harassment? to Did This Guy Commit A Felony?) is:
1. Refuse to answer any questions or directly address the other side of the disagreement
2. Call the other side names
...people who tend to dislike me don't like the fact that when I see this behavior I point out that it's childish, counterproductive, morally bankrupt, and leads to less good stuff getting made.
Even worse: I do it a lot. I do it because I'm activist about it. The next generation of game designers is coming from the online RPG discussion environment and I think that environment doesn't have enough accountability going on and I think the Overton window needs to shift on that. I think you get a way better and fairer creative community if you answer questions, ask questions, engage, and investigate. And I think the current harassment campaign is a great cautionary tale about what happens when you don't do that.
Ok, but all the people close to you in the RPG sphere have abandoned you because they recognized the same behavior patterns so you definitely did it?
First of all, pretty much nobody in the RPG sphere is "close to me". Most of them I've never met in person and the ones who I have met have interacted with me in an extremely limited way "I'm an elf!""Great!" "Do you like this layout?" "Beautiful! Rock on".
Of the people who I've worked with who have jumped ship over this: literally every single one who is a major RPG creator, publisher or voice has gotten in touch and explicitly said they're doing it because of external pressure and fear for their own careers if they don't.
As for the lesser lights, their arguments have all boiled down to:
"He criticized me instead of agreeing with me, therefore he is a sociopath"
or
"He liked me and tried to help me and promote my work, therefore he is a sociopath"
If there's some specifically "close to Zak" person you're thinking of as terribly credible who's come out hard against me--talk to people who've done actual business with that terribly credible voice, and see what they have to say.
What about all the RPG entities like the companies and awards and whatever that've dumped you?
They did it after literally no investigation. Like they didn't ask question one--they were just responding to the harassment mob demanding they do something.
Ah but I've heard rumors of this before on 4chan and stuff! That proves it happened!
Mandy apparently made a post with similar accusations about a year ago to private circles. Like I said: people who knew better assumed she was venting and/or were scared to disagree with her.
EDIT, new question:
What about all the disturbing jokes you allegedly made?
EDIT: New Question
Why aren't you showing any contrition for the harm you've done Mandy?
Mandy and I made the kinds of apologies spouses make to each other at the end of a relationship two years ago, in private. This is a whole other thing. I am not going to apologize to someone who physically attacked me, libeled me and then helped launch an internet harassment campaign against me. As so many people have said before "You do not need to apologize to your attacker."
Asking for an apology under these circumstances is just saying "Ok, but, lowkey: you did it, right?" and I didn't.
I don't care what you've done, you do good work man and I'm going to support it
Ok, no: you should care. If women really were abused that matters--and if I was falsely accused that matters, too. Have a moral compass. Realize your purchase is a vote.
There are only two possibilities: Either I did something wrong and you should never buy my work (unless, maybe, I apologize) or the people accusing me did and you should never buy theirs (unless they apologize). Do everything you can to find out which of these things is going on. Ask questions. Investigate. This is a big deal.
What are you going to do now?
Pretty much the same as I was doing before. There are so many people in our real lives who know the truth and so much evidence that anyone working on a remotely good-faith level will eventually realize the accusations aren't true. In the meantime I've got lots to do.
This is just you and your friends' word against theirs
Mandy and her friends' statements don't have any specific incidents of abuse corroborated, conflict with each other, and their claims don't match their own statements at the time. It's impossible to construct a narrative where they make any sense and no-one can explain these discrepancies or has even tried.
Everything from people disputing Mandy and co's story, on the other hand, is wholly consistent regardless of who said it or when. You're free to talk to any of the witnesses and they're willing to answer any questions or point to evidence to back themselves up.
I don't believe anything you say, I believe women
Then get in contact with women: Michelle was an eyewitness to pretty much our entire relationship and was close friends with Mandy until February 9th and nobody who as talked to her has come away skeptical. Missfiend AT gmail Dawt calm. You can also contact all the other women (and other people) who were closest to Mandy and me. Frankie, Kimberly, and Charlotte are all available on twitter. Other friends of ours who haven't made public statements because they fear harassment will still likely talk to you in private. Hit them up and ask and see what they say.
But you are known to control women like puppets
This is your theory: I have some unknown power to control women who live in different states and different countries, some of whom I haven't had contact with in years before this and many of whom make way more money than me, yet this same power is useless against random RPG nerds.
But if you don't believe women: talk to men, talk to Mandy's dad -- ( mad_chemist58 AT hawtmayle dawt calm ). How am I supposed to be controlling him?
Think about this: in her early 20s, your chronically ill daughter runs off from the small city where you live to go be with some jerk with a weird haircut in New York and then LA and do porn and live in various poly relationships with weird people you never meet. You are extremely worried about the idea that your daughter might be put in a position to do things she doesn't want to. Despite this, you remain very close and have a good relationship and talk every week, sometimes every day. Then she eventually comes back with tales of abuse from the guy you hold responsible for all this and you take his side as does the rest of your family. That's how obviously false Mandy's story is.
Repeat: there is literally nobody who had extensive firsthand knowledge of our daily lives who believes Mandy. All of them are pissed at her or, at best, mystified. Ask literally any of them for details or clarification.
And if you don't want to ask and don't want the details: please stop pretending you care or are taking abuse at all seriously.
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