My name is David, and I was abusive.

TLDR: I was problematic and harmful, Worcester Politics is messy and this will be brought up likely repeatedly. If whoever is telling you about me didn’t have that energy when Binenda was campaigning with Monfredo then maybe for them it’s more about my current politics than my past behavior. If they aren’t angry about Worcester’s response to the DOJ report, or disgusted by the report itself then maybe it’s not about protecting communities. Believe Victims. Also believe people can learn and change.

People told me not to “fall on my own sword” and “Don’t give Bergman ammo” but I’m going to be asking for a lot of public support soon, and it’s important that I’m able to honestly and accurately address this.

But, I need to say - it started here, with Tyler Durden, Dexter, V, Heath Ledger’s Joker and snakes - even Scrooge Mcduck - in my profile pics from 2011 and 2012 - I was memeworthy cringy and glad I didn’t turn out worse.

I’m already starting a dangerous trend, commenting on Jose Rivera and Robert Pezzella (Notoriously problematic people who have announced their run for district 5 and 3)’s Facebook posts with questions they won’t answer like their support of police and affiliations with problematic developers. Local conservatives are not creative, and will quickly do back unto me what I have done unto their beloved candidates. There’s gonna be a lot of attacking me and my integrity because people can’t actually refute or discuss my political points.

Plus, people seem to hate it that I’ve blocked them, which makes them talk about me elsewhere, and this is only gonna happen more. And we’ve already reached exactly what I was afraid of when getting political - good people having my problematic past held against them.

So among all that, I’m sharing my statement again, more publicly and in a way that can be linked to and referenced in the future because of this where former District 4 Candidate Maria Montano attempted to guilt/shame people into discussing their experiences with me, saying “the kitchen sink has been thrown, so people need to come out and speak up”, lumping me in with “sexual assault and the centuries of women being mistreated”.

This post was part of her series of rants in support/justification of transphobia against Councilor Nguyen amidst supposed claims of “reverse racism”, which I think might in this instance be what she calls it when another person of color tries to hold her accountable, but here’s a longer breakdown of how claims of reverse racism are problematic.

Or this commenter on reddit, who apparently considers being from an unmentionable suburb akin to alleged rape. Reddit is such a weird place.

This kinda thing isn’t new, it’s a continuation of what Red Metro started during the last election.

People like Red Metro (Whose real name is apparently Jay Given, as written about in Worcester Sucks) and Maria Montano are taking advantage of this ambiguity and using it as a power play against people who have always been good, and I need to make a statement (again) so that they do not have to. Because I don’t condone or stand by my past behaviors - the opposite, I am ashamed of them.

I know I’m doing great work now - people keep telling me. But I have not always been good.

But we are discussing this now - not because of anything that has come to light (to my knowledge) but because local political forces are using that shame to try and control me, to try and quiet me down - and further trying to use it against other people working hard in this city, trying to get them to engage on this discussion instead of the many current issues.

So to be clear, aside from my previous social media posts on the matter which I doubt “The Great Worcester Social Justice Warriors” read, I don’t have any reason to believe that the progressive councilors have any more clue than Maria does. Either way, people are forced by this whisper campaign to make a stand, to side with or against me, and I haven’t asked for people’s support yet largely to mitigate this. I know how Worcester politics works, so I haven’t done the standard political thing of selfying with all the prominent people and posting, tagging them, to prevent it being held against them in the future, in part so people don’t have to publicly separate themselves from me.

While I’m ashamed of who I was and how I treated people, hiding it only serves myself and other men behaving the ways I did. I realize I was not a safe person, and that acting in my own self-interest without significant consideration for the other party was harmful. I am now aware of power dynamics that were at play, and I know I was problematic.

I’m not a rapist or pedophile. But I’ve said and done a lot of things I’m not proud of, and knew they’d be held against me when I started doing good things but did not let that stop me then, and cannot now. Letting them stop me now defeats the purpose of standing against injustice and getting loud in the first place. That being said, even if I will not engage with them in comments. I don’t want to ignore these discussions - they’re important to have for many reasons.

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“Be someone else and everyone will like you or be yourself and the right people will love you.”

It sounds great, and can be a good quote but I justified staying medicore and inconsiderate, and so many self-centered ideologies under it. I believed I had successfully surrounded myself with people who liked me as I was, but in fact had largely surrounded myself with people who needed me, and couldn’t afford to speak out against me.

This post was from the night a friend explained to me that I was missing “Soft no”s, and it clicked retroactively how many people I had made uncomfortable when they expressed disinterest by rescheduling. Inversely, I realized how many people had only eventually said yes to dates or hooking up because I kept asking.

The Golden Rule requires insight and compassion, neither of which I was practicing.

I eventually realized that anyone with healthy boundaries recognized my red flags and kept their distance from me - but often didn’t communicate their disinterest/discomfort which created a validation loop where the only people I was getting feedback from and developing relationship patterns with were people who were either willing to tolerate my harmful behavior, or not in a position where they could give me honest feedback without fear of upsetting me.

I am proud of who I am. I am proud of the work I’ve done. And do believe that work is a large part of what makes me so good at the work I’m doing these days.

However I am not proud of who I was. I’ve had to unlearn a lot of ideologies and stop doing a bunch of different behaviors. Among other things, I now know that if someone else says I hurt them it’s my responsibility to step back listen and believe them about my impact, something I didn’t do earlier in life. One of the reasons this statement at the bottom of this post was initially delayed because I was leaving the air clear for “Me too”s. I didn’t want to try and control the narrative, or make a statement that might come anywhere close to undermining someone who was about to come forward.

But there are so many reasons people don’t come forward - as we all just saw with Worcester spending almost 260k for a lawyer to preemptively call Department of Justice findings “unfair, inaccurate and biased”, and both Police Union’s show of force at city council, the first thing people typically do is demand proof which most people never have and is then just debated if they do. Then there’s the victim blaming and societal stigma often from the same people who challenge their story in the first place. People ask why they didn’t report it to the police, never really thinking through the significance of the DOJ report.

In the same ways I didn’t realize I’d harmed people, some people don’t realize they were harmed until it’s processed later, or something similiar/worse happens, or they casually mention it to a friend or therapist who says “Wait, what?”. Sometimes they considered it normal among other experiences at the time. Often they’ve just repressed it. People don’t get to choose when they are in a safe enough space or have the energy to figure these things out.

Part of why I’m so good at what I do as a wannabe-journalist is because if I hear one person tell me that someone did something or treated them a certain way, I know they’re probably speaking for ten others who are afraid to speak up for fear of repercussions, or who don’t have the energy to tell their story. I’ve figured this out from ousting a lot of bullies. Which is part of the problem.

On top of me being a cis white man whom the police and general public are generally more likely to trust, I have only become more powerful and prominent in the past few years. I’ve developed a reputation as someone who is honest, keeps extensive records, and is a force to be reckoned with. I have a weirdly huge platform considering the relatively low number of followers, and have made a name locally using it to take down various bullies and harass politicians. I regularly contradict the most powerful men in this city, It’s reasonable not to want to put yourself in a position against me.

So, to mitigate that, I am going to let this to serve a reference point, so that if someone wants to claim they were hurt by me, they don’t need to be concerned about my response. This post is my statement.

If someone tells you that I hurt them, believe them.

Please take the 7 Hills Facebook group and anonymous reddit comments with a grain of salt but I will not be making a further statement in regards to my prior problematic behavior and encourage you to believe anything anyone tells you about their own personal experiences with me.

You should anyways. People don’t generally lie about being hurt.

Believe victims, times ten.

I briefly addressed this with Travis Duda of Hunchback Graphics in one of the last episodes of my Podcast in 2023 and then live on Manny Jae Media October of 2024. We had already planned a video the week before to discuss my own attack, but then someone started commenting a screenshot of me being racist in a local group and we needed to discuss that too. It’s a really good episode and we discuss a lot of different important things. It’s very worth the fortyish minute watch/listen.

Here’s my Statement originally posted on my personal Facebook November 27, 2024

There’s a lot to discuss here, and it’s probably not going to make it all into one post.

In a post about accountability and my lack of response someone said they were deeply disappointed and that it was additionally disheartening that I didn’t think it was important to address it. She’s right. This is important.

It’s not just hard for me to write about, it’s a lot to address. I know there have been multiple allegations, I want to acknowledge them and take accountability but am acutely aware these discussions are happening right now because of politics, rather than people coming forward with experiences they had with me.

This statement is very, very long overdue, and I haven’t made it yet for many reasons. These stories aren’t necessarily mine to tell, and will drag in other people who probably don’t want to deal with this right now either. I was harmful in a few different ways, and I don’t want to dismiss or minimize one by responding to general allegations rather than discussing my impact.

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In that screenshot, I was being racist to my exgirlfriend who already had made it clear she didn't want to talk to me. I was being manipulative, using racism to be hurtful. This was violent, harmful, and my intent was to get a reaction from an ex, to hurt her and make her have to think about me. She was right that I was a perfect example of issues in this country.

I want to be clear, because I have described some of my relationships as “mutually abusive” which I now recognize is “codependent and toxic”, it wasn’t anything like that here - she had been nothing but kind and respectful to me, this was months after we'd last talked. She did post about it then, I got it reported to FB and removed.

The first protests I attended were over Roe V Wade, which means I wasn't around for the first round of BLM protests. When The streets were filled with people rioting and screaming that Black Lives Matter, I wasn’t just not listening, I was perpetuating violence towards black women.

I didn’t actually recognize my white privilege until after a conversation on Facebook, after someone took the time, energy and effort to explain to me how comparing BLM protests to tantrums was problematic.

I swung hard the other way, and took multiple classes, cohorts, workshops on how to use my white privilege to engage in antiracism work and that is what has resulted in my efforts the past few years

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Sexual Misconduct is unfortunately the right term for a lot of my harmful behaviors.

I acted entitled prior to learning about explicit consent, and then got heavily engaged in the swinger and kink scene where I sought specific consent, but did not realize that most people aren’t actually comfortable saying no to people, and was with a lot of people exploring new things. I hadn’t created an environment where they felt like they could communicate safely with me. I was mean and emotionally abusive in varying levels to my partners and friends for a lot of my 20s.

In 2018, I was taken aside by a friend at the time, and it was pointed out to me that I was missing soft-nos from others in the community. It was pointed out to me that many people wouldn’t outright reject me because of how most men respond to rejection. At that point, I realized how many people I’d made uncomfortable, how many different times I’d pushed or sought an opportunity and asked again and again until they eventually said yes to dinner. I had taken their answers as reasons for unavailability, not as disinterest. They explained that due to this dynamic it was my responsibility to ensure they felt like they could say no. In retrospect, I realized I had been systematically creating power dynamics in addition to the actually negotiated ones that complicated this.

I did seek coaching, about navigating these discussions, and have gone to a significant amount of therapy to discuss these dynamics. I special interested into power dynamics, various frameworks of negotiating consent and alone, it wasn’t enough. I also needed to ensure people I was interacting with had already identified their own boundaries and were comfortable enforcing them.

I don’t want to diminish or dismiss this as a communication issue. These violations, this harm happened because I wasn’t acting with compassion - because I was not thinking about others, only myself.

I also want to note that in instances where guy friends had talked to me about the way I treated my partners, I lashed out.The concerns of people not communicating rejection to me were of course valid.

You're right to be disappointed. I’m disappointed in myself.

I'm ashamed of how long it took me to care about hurting others, and others being hurt. In processing, I’m accepting that being raised in institutions didn’t help, and undiagnosed autism played a role, but plenty of people with those conditions learned to respect others and not be racist or abusive.

The reason I say shame is a catalyst for change is because it’s what was required for me to recognize my own behaviors were harmful. I didn’t truly care about the negative impact of my actions until I felt shame for them - until I saw that the people whose opinions I cared about cared about not being around my behavior.

I haven’t individually reached out to people to apologize for a few reasons, namely that initiating contact at this point may likely be a further violation of their boundaries. I assume people I’ve hurt don’t want to hear from me, and I keep my distance. I have reconnected with a few people I harmed, and talked with some of them. The person I sent those racist texts to, I actually apologized to years ago, but I know it doesn’t make a difference to the harm from sending them. Acknowledging that I didn’t listen to or care about her, that I tried to hurt her, doesn’t undo the disrespect, doesn’t undo the harm.

I’ve reconciled that I can’t unharm people, I can’t untraumatize anyone, so I have been making a concerted effort to have a positive impact. I regularly use my own past problematic ideologies and situations as an example to address and identify toxic patterns I see in others, and have broken down the power dynamics I was abusing to explain to people I see in them on many occasions. I am trying to use my insight and experiences to empower and help others, and discourage abuse when I recognize it.

I didn’t respond to this as quickly as I should have because it’s a lot, and I was already in the middle of a lot. These things are important, and I could have addressed them in the past few years, but I thought that would be trying to control the narrative, rather than accepting accountability.

I didn't want to set a precedent with this post but am navigating accepting responsibility for what I have done wrong while not giving credence to other allegations thrown in at the same time.

There will probably be more screenshots of me being hateful, problematic or just mean that come forward. I have not sanitized my social media, you can likely scroll back and find problematic posts of a few different types. I know how screenshots and Facebook messenger works, and have seen how Worcester politics goes, so I knew it would be only a matter of time until we were having this conversation publicly.

I see my practice of using my power to be helpful to others as that, a practice - this is an ongoing willful decision I make every single day. I am choosing to live my life in consideration of others, not myself. This is driven partially by now having an understanding of how the world is problematic, and partially by a drive to do more good than harm, knowing I’ve done a lot of harm.

I can outline and address what I have done differently to not be the person who sent those texts, to try and be a safe person, but cannot pretend I was always good, kind, or compassionate. I wasn’t. I had a lot to learn, and a lot more to unlearn. I don’t know what accountability for my harm looks like, but I am trying to make the world a better place.