Content Warning: Rape, Abuse
Hey guys, gals and non binary pals. Are you ready for some mush? Are you ready for some Truate mush? Well here we go.
Lets rip the band-aid off first. I Truate Bearden was falsely accused of forcing myself on another human being back when I was in college.
It was a terrible experience from start to finish. I lost many of my friends, gained a lot of enemies, and generally was treated like a piece of shit by the people that I had bonded with and trusted. I had a lot of people that had previously told me that they would have my back, not have my back anymore. I had friends tell me that if they saw me at their house they would "Shoot first, and ask questions second". I was also homeless during all this, so I went from a lot of couch hopping to a lot of sleeping in my car.
During this time I kept myself busy with work, school (while I could afford it) and hanging out with the few friends I had left. If someone asked me about it or confronted me about it, I would tell my side of the story and nothing more. If they didn't believe me, then I didn't push to try to get them to believe me. Over time, the other person's story unraveled as it constantly changed and was inconsistent. This slowly proved my innocence. I lost a lot of friends during that experience. The relationship with my friends who took the other person's side and apologized to me afterwards was never the same again.
Why do I bring this up, you might be asking?
As many of you may have seen through various forms of social media, there is a prominent discussion happening about a few select individuals, in other LARP communities, and their actions against people in the past and present. We as employees take any of these claims very seriously. Our dedication is to our community first and we look at the situation and judge how it affects our community. With that being said we do not tolerate sexual misconduct and will take action to protect our community when necessary. (This is why we encourage the community to get to know us, so that you all can become comfortable and trust our judgement.)
When these situations come up we investigate every claim as best we can, but in the end we are a survivor-oriented business when it comes to these complaints. As someone who was the victim of a false accusation, I can say that I support us protecting this community from these kinds of people. I understand that our stance has the potential negative of protecting our community from someone who did nothing wrong, and I still support our stance.
- Truate Bearden