Direct contact information will be provided at the end if you have connection to this story. As is mentioned, a piece with most evidence will be released, following the events mentioned at the start of this piece.
If you have access to PACER, to help us obtain court documents, please email me. Thank you. x
Tomorrow, Sunny is being sentenced. I am releasing this piece as a preliminary to the one coming with swathes of evidence for release from six plus years of documentation. Thank you to all of those who helped in this work, even though I won't be naming anyone other than those it's confirmed safe to until the subsequent piece.
Since Sunny is being sentenced tomorrow, on the fourteenth, I will be soon able to share more details but plan to wait until then for full release of evidence as to avoid certain risks. I hope to teach lessons in that piece from this fully story, today, I will be sharing the barebones events due to inform people of the bringing of a case & our story where otherwise may only be charges.
Update: Sunny's sentencing should have occurred yesterday, I have not been able to see the outcome on the PACER docket preview. I am waiting for a press release from the federal prosecutor, one has not appear to have been released. At time of writing & researching, around eighteen hundred hours in the time zone of court, I haven't seen the outcome; I will keep this site updated. Please send me an email or message me on the BlueSky account listed on the right side of this page. Take care.
2018.
Early into the year, a situation would occur that I can't delve fully into here, but will likely write a full piece on in the future. This situation triggered my health to spiral & I lost a friend/mentor to suicide that spring. I became disabled & isolated as I lived in a home-bound state best comparable to what people experienced in lock-down while managing several health issues & preexisting conditions I'd not yet been understood to have.
I was also dealing with being a closeted, queer, trans person who was of early high school age. I'd lost one of the only friends & people I knew who understood my struggles & then become entirely isolated physically beyond my family & was soon driven to solely online interaction.
Skip ahead a few months, I was becoming a further regular in the main community of note to our story. This community was one that was based off a series named 'Durarara!!', or DRRR, a story originating in a series of Japanese light novels that began in 2004, then came to the English speaking world in a simulcasted Japanese & English anime starting in 2010.
DRRR has a set of groups in it's story, including one named the Dollars that organizes on a password protected BBS site — something similar to an early internet forum. The group is called a 'colorless' color gang in the story, unlike the traditional young adult gangs in it. It's also an early depiction of online collectives & movements, comparable to what we would see Anonymous do in protest & direct action a couple years after the first serial's release.
Eventually, fans created grassroots community spaces based off the Dollars. Across different languages, fans came together & developed things such as BBS sites designed the same way as the one depicted in the series, requiring the same in story password & all. Later, chatroom sites & groups/communities on other preexisting platforms were made & grown often to large sizes due to the existing user base.
At one point, I found my way into these communities & became a regular over the first few months. I came to be somewhat well known in some sections & subgroups of the community, but not too incredibly involved due to still being as young as I was. The community had a somewhat wide age range, the social media groups & communities following the thirteen plus policies with restrictions against adult content or inappropriate discussions. The sites were somewhat less successful in this, being managed by the few developers & staff able to be trusted. It's notable that they would report directly to organizations that could handle cybercrime cases & such if it got that far.
With that out of the way, we'll get into this story specifically, with some brevity for this first piece.
One day in the latter half of 2018, I was messaging in the main chat for one of these spaces. This was at a point in which I was vulnerable & isolated, stuck struggling with a large amount of issues without ways to properly, or safely, cope with them.
Soon, a person would enter that channel where I was talking. This person was Sunny, someone from the community who appeared to be respected or at least have a good reputation within this community hub. The Dollars are not a monolith, as this space within the group had several thousand members; but Sunny was well known among active users & a regular, long time member in these parts of the community.
Sunny appeared nice & we had a positive conversation, followed by her sending me a friend request. I added her with no expectation of talking much more in that moment, personally having many members added who I wouldn't interact with outside of Dollars groups. This, sadly, was not how things proceeded; Sunny would soon begin chatting me up regularly. I was in early high school, a disabled minor stuck home-bound & alone due to health reasons — Sunny was of US drinking age (twenty-one) at the earliest points I knew her.
Our early private conversations were marked by Sunny's use of manipulation tactics like love bombing. She would overwhelm me with, at first, care, then kindness, & then affection. I thought she meant or was simply expressing things she truly felt & that it was how she acted to everyone she met. Whether or not that's true, more worrying if so when you hear of what we came to learn, my naivete let me think this was okay & simply someone being sweet or kind to me. Due to my vulnerable state, I was more at risk for this kind of manipulation when I was lacking the support systems I needed to get it safely.
This would lead to her trying to flatter me & enter more & more questionable, worrying discussion. Inappropriate topics would follow, starting off with ones surrounding her having seemingly known of my struggles/helping others with self harm issues. She began asking me about these things, eventually clear to have been in a sadistic manner. At the same time, she would've been asking me for, what started off as wholesome, photos & then began progressing into her requests for photos showing scars from said self harm. This lead into her asking me to take photos when I self harmed & send them to her, then asking me to cut her name or such into my body — something I, thankfully, knew was far past my limit & did not do for her. Nonetheless, she still engaged in this massively inappropriate discussion & requesting of what I can only now recognize is from a sadistic place.
These things would turn on the heating of the water she'd placed me in. I didn't, at first, notice or question all of it; & when I began to, I believed I'd deserved no better than or it was all I could get, due to long term manipulation.
The next upping of the heat came in even more worrying discussion she started or pursued. This would be when she began bringing up adult, sexual, topics & doing things like expressing affection in increasingly horrid ways. It would start with what I believe was pushing to do erotic roleplay with her over messages. Then it moved to her sending NSFW media, slowly but surely trying to get me acclimated & open to each subsequent thing.
Next came asking for more suggestive photos, then eventually explicit ones. Each time she would reward this with support I lacked elsewhere & incentivize these things she wanted from me. This was all, generally, before the end of that year & as I was struggling with each day feeling twice as long for me at the time. She was in her twenties, while I was still in my early teens.
Sunny was also a queer, trans person — as am I — & she had a responsibility to not abuse my looking up to her as a person showing I had any chance to keep going. She was the closest thing I had to a elder queer in my life after my friend/mentor took her life earlier in the year. This situation is mostly due to power Sunny had over me, & the dynamic being one with such an imbalance inherent to our relationship. In the Dollars, it seems like Sunny had some kind of relation to/part in the staff of the hub we shared. She was, or at least presented herself as being, friends with almost all of the staff team. She had so many contacts in different spaces that it felt like she had that power & control in many places in which I didn't have such. A lot of these things included lies, but early on I had very little way of knowing what was or wasn't.
Over the next few months, I became dependent on her for the support I wasn't able to get elsewhere. She'd turn me against people in my life, taking problems I had with them & turning them into divides between, for example, my family & I. This lead to a toxic loop, an abusive relationship with the dynamic of stress & relief coming from the same place. I came to seemingly be something for her to use, extract emotional labour & for her sexual ends. I had already been through a similar 'relatioship' & was at risk because of that, something Sunny came to exploit.
For the next year, I would deal with this toxic cycle of abuse & even though I'd recognize the manipulation, I still felt there was nothing better out there for me. My health continued to suffer, & I continued to struggle to cope with the pain it was causing me — both in a physical & mental sense. So, the little relief I felt I was getting in the form of the 'relationship' was something I felt would be a giant mistake to let go of when I had so few other sources for it. This, sort of, gambit I was playing was what Sunny relied on being decided in her favour for her to be allowed to continue exploiting me. Towards those ends, Sunny would say things in the vein of her having no reason to live if not for me.
We'll be skipping over much of 2019's events' specifics for this first piece, I'll speak on a few though. At one point, Sunny would engage with & discuss drugs with me while I was still, in practical terms, a kid — who hadn't done any. She would talk about her love for certain drugs & the feeling of them, pushing or at least incentivizing me to become intoxicated around her. You can imagine how potentially dangerous & abusive that could become, as she was generally sober, & still enabled such things. Thankfully, I didn't go deep down that rabbit hole, nor have access to the means to do so.
Enabling of harmful behaviors was something she engaged in quite often with me. Whether it be self harm as was mentioned earlier, or things like engaging in sites that were their own kind of self harm. I don't particularly view it as one, due to being unable to consent, but she & I considered ourselves as in a relationship. She would pressure us into being polyamourous eventually, even though I didn't want to particularly be so & wasn't gonna, fully, have another relationship. Sunny was clearly going out & roleplaying with people or such things, something I tried to stay somewhat unaware of due to how much it felt like it hurt. There were people who we mutually got close to at points, & also faced similar harm, but we didn't do so for extended periods.
As we approached the end of 2019, I started to recover in some ways. Not thanks to Sunny, I began being active in other communities to avoid the pain I felt in the Dollars hub due to her. Next, I began to better manage my health — slowly but surely — as well. I was still struggling with it, but better coping. These aforementioned communities provided me support systems outside of those Sunny had molded for me, & friends in those would have to fight for me within. Those friends meant a lot to me, but I'd now gotten additional support as well.
By the end of the year, I'd begun going out again to places like the library & places I could go to play some games I lacked the ability to at home, for example. This raised the floor for me, letting me better get by again. I began to stop talking to Sunny as much, though a lot relative to times to come. This became regular for me, getting to go out again after being home bound for a long time. Soon, I would become so again, though so did everyone else.
Lockdown hit me hard, though the new perspective of a self which had better recovered came with me.
Upon being stuck at home again, I began to examine the things causing me the pain I was continuing to feel. It would still take some time before I could fully conceptualize it, but I began to make progress. In the meantime, Sunny pushed for me to let her into the communities I'd found & become a regular in, I believe because she wanted spaces to go while in isolation. I'm sad to say that I gave into that pressure & let her join, but these spaces had a couple thousand members themselves & I didn't expect much to come of it. Time passed though, I began to fully recognize the harm & by early summer I started to figure out how I could get out of the relationship.
That early summer, I made the decision to do something, anything, to understand the cycle I was in & do something about it. It came in the form of me reaching out to her & saying, over the course of a conversation, that I needed a break from things for the moment. This conversation was immensely rough on my emotions & saw me breaking down as Sunny expressed seemingly also breaking down, while I was already carrying the weight of her saying she'd likely take her life if I left her. This situation would lead to me relapsing into self harm & breaking my couple month, at least, recovery I'd been in. Thankfully, I've been able to not relapse at all since; a fact which should show you how the harm I was enduring affected me & was the major contributing factor pulling me down.
The day after I asked for a break, one I expressed as being for even only a couple weeks; Sunny changed her profile/+bio to show her being in a relationship with some person I'd not been told about nor aware she was close to. Suddenly it was quite clear how little I meant to her, being replaced so immediately. This added to the perspective I'd been gaining over this situation, pushing me to accept & move forward once I'd mourned it.
To explain the subsequent events, we'll have to go back to one of those communities I joined.
In that space, I met someone who I became friends with over a few months & someone who became a valued member of the community. I met her before the breakup, when I was still in my mid teens. During the events of this story, she would've been between thirteen & fourteen or so & was living in a split household that had large issues of neglect. She was an artist who did art for the community & such, something that meant a lot to us. I became friends with her, partially because I related to her having been dealing with trauma at that young age in a way I had as well. Her home life often lead to her having no food in the house, no money or such to buy any, & so on. My Mom & I, along with other community members, would send her money & support to afford food at this time while she was in that situation. She was appreciated & not expected to pay any of it back, we knew it was something she needed & we could help provide some relief from.
This vulnerability was something I had gone through, even if different in the specifics. So, we did what we could to help; even if unable to fix the underlying issue, we all wanted to do what we could. Then we came into the period where Sunny was active. At first, things were alright & Sunny became a semi-regular person in chats. After the breakup between us though, things began to change a bit.
I was talking to friends from the Dollars at the time who'd been close to Sunny & I, beginning the long discussion of what Sunny had done. As we entered the beginning of those talks, something happened.
Abruptly, I got a message from that young friend of ours, one day. Sunny had been seeming become more unwell, something we'd pushed her to get help for. I don't think any of us expected what came next though, in that shocking message.
Sunny had known this friend of mine & I believe they'd talked a bit over the few months Sunny had been there. On that fateful day, Sunny cold messaged my friend. It started with a message saying something along the lines of I need to tell you something, I'm sorry in advance, & you'll probably hate me for it. I got send these messages, the next one being what was nearly as shocking as it was disgusting.
Sunny had sent a confession to her, confessing she had feelings for & would've wanted a relationship with her, if not — thankfully — for this friend's response. She immediately sent the messages to me, along with a couple high ups in the community, I believe. Next , I passed the information to the friends I'd begun discussing it all with prior, & suddenly things had changed completely. Sunny was over twenty-two, doing something as disgusting as this, it was not something that could allow inaction.
After this, I immediately realized it was bigger than me, & began planning what those mutual friends & I could do to act. They confronted Sunny, & she was removed from most of these communities while I began documenting all I could. Seeing her willingness to pursue harming someone that young/vulnerable opened my eyes & I documented all she'd done to me as a start. This situation showed me that I needed to save all of this for some route of pursuing justice. We documented the rest of the events & harm I went through, something I'd started earlier on but now needed to do quickly.
We'd confronted Sunny, pushing her to change, earlier on & that had only amounted in a situation with serious potential for abuse. So, once this happened, we began to think. I would document everything & discuss with these two friends about the situation & what to do about my other friend getting those messages. After some thinking, I realized I might have something kept in my back pocket which I'd not thought about.
For a long time, I'd had Sunny's dox — her legal name, address, & so on. This was all given to me by her. Sunny had created or used many accounts she had us share, for a variety of reasons, & one was a PayPal that had said information she'd put in. I never particularly abused this at all, but suddenly this became another piece of what we may need for action. I'd realized that our shared Google account was likely to have information important here. Google has a large suite of tools, importantly here, Google Passwords.
This tool saves passwords you enter, since it was a shared account, it seems she saved hers there. Upon checking, I found logins for the platform she used most & where she talked to me & sent the confession. With that, I went in with help documenting it from the two friends helping act on this.
When I got in, checking her private messages, we found conversations with over ten minors. This information clearly showed a lot more at risk than we'd known & a lot more predation than we had imagined. We decided to, from there, work on documenting evidence it was safe to share, when it came to victims & direct action taken. I spent the next while redacting & organizing evidence for whatever we chose to do next.
Learning this, we knew we had to do something more, not simply try to get her further excommunicated, for example. This came in the form of filing a report. One of us sent an anonymized report to an organization who focuses on this & could take it from there. We also got recordings of admission to these actions, & pushed her to get psychiatric & legal help. It seems that she didn't do that, we didn't see her do so & she eventually dropped off the map for me.
Due to having her full info though, I was able to see her on a YouTube account as she updated public playlists regularly. We had made reports, & people I helped do #OpChildSafety work with, I'd ask them to help get some kind of action if they could. Despite trying & talking with such people, we had no material action seem to have been pursued by people other than us.
This past holiday, I was in a conversation telling this story one night. It reminded me to check for any news. So, that night I searched up her name & was shocked with what I saw.
Sunny had been arrested & charged, having a federal investigation result in a total of twenty charges, half possession & half distribution of CSAM; these would seem to change to only possession charges due to her accepting the plea agreement or such.
As mentioned at the start, Sunny is being sentenced tomorrow on the fourteenth. The case brought against her appears to be consistent with what we reported & learned. It is quite worrying to think about the fact that it took three to four years for this to go from reporting of a predator to a criminal case, but I
I will be releasing information on the particular case & evidence, with it included, once this comes to pass. I share this information for the sake of public/community interest, otherwise only the charges being the context people would have. Thank you for reading, & if you are interested in investigative pieces in the vein of open source investigative journalism/research; I'd appreciate you checking in for my future essays & projects which will be released soon.
I will be making additions to this piece, & likely adding onto it, but for now this is what I'll be sharing, take care of yourselves & your communities. Cheers, & stay safe.
If you have some kind of connection to this story, know people from it, were victimized yourself, & or are looking for related support, I will be organizing a space for connecting with others & talking about it. In the meantime, you can reach me if you'd like to chat about or share your story — for publishing or only privately sharing. To do so, email me at underneticist@proton.me; if you use a Proton/Proton Mail account to reach me, it will be encrypted, if you can & need the privacy for your communication.
To those who have knowledge of the specific people in this story, for all of our safety — I ask that you respect the privacy of all of us. I have removed the names in this story until I get consent for use in the next piece. That piece will use names or handles for those who consent to such, & pseudonyms for those unable to be reached, who do not consent, or so on — & no name as needed.
Please refrain from sharing the legal name of Sunny, I will be sharing case information in the future piece, but we need to let things play out first. I ask that you also don't share past details about victims, including myself, but I will support any who come forward with their stories here — email me if you want to talk about or send me it.