#aaron strider

Originally, I intended to craft this final part to you, the reader, as an emotional appeal. To be wholly honest, there’s only so much evidence that can be utilized without either forcing Jill to relive unnecessary trauma or exposing deeply intimate or personal parts of her life. Until now, everything I’ve told you and everything I’ve shown you is what was enough to convince me when Jill first reached out to me. If you, the reader, don’t believe the factual information that’s been presented so far, then I don’t think that you will. If you, the reader, believe Jill and her story, then no further evidence is going to magically make her story more true.

However, I don’t have to. Instead, I can let the friends-- the family--that Ren created on his website speak for themselves, and show you with their own testimony just the kind of person he was. Jill wasn’t the only person that Ren hurt. Jill wasn’t even the only person Ren preyed on as a sexual predator. Many people on staff, and many people outside of it, knew Ren and grew to have what they thought was a close relationship with him. People regarded him as someone to look up to, to find comfort in, to aspire after, to lean on; people thought of him as a friend and a hero in his community.

On April 12, 2021, at 9:57 AM Greenwhich Mean Time, the current administrators of Advanced Scribes issued a statement addressing Ren’s actions and his faked death. An additional announcement was made the following day. While the announcements themselves and the replies (including moderator statements) are publicly available, I have saved a print-to-PDF versions on Google for you to browse at your leisure. 

I intentionally waited until the initial panic and outrage died out a little to let the most important statements come to light. Included in the PDF are sentiments that I personally thought were the most important sentiments; edits have been made and pages have been deleted, so you can see the current state of the conversations by visiting them directly. You can find the first discussion at https://advanced-scribes.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=42100#p1454263 and the second discussion at https://advanced-scribes.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=42107#p1454361.

Before you continue reading, please look over the statements and replies. The words of former staff former friends say more than I can ever hope to about Ren and the kind of reality that he stood for. Additionally, Jill herself has added to the conversation (username Rakuen), so you can read a bit from her perspective by looking into these announcements. After you’ve taken a look, continue below and I will sum up my final thoughts on this predator and his legacy.

Advanced Scribes • Our Statement (PDF)

Advanced Scribes • Change (PDF)

The Act of Grooming, Part 3: Entrapment

One of the reasons that predators get away with their crimes for so long is because they trap their victims. When they gain access to and successfully lure in their prey, they then engage in entrapment behavior to separate victims from other people and build reliance. The reason why kids are so prone to predation is because of how vulnerable they are. Young people just want to belong. They just want to have community, security, and affection. When they can’t get those things in their lives, they seek it out and take it where they can get it even when the situation is obviously bad. Kids can’t be held accountable for being smart because they’re kids. Jill was vulnerable. She wanted belonging and support. She fell into Ren’s lures, and he trapped her. He used his affection as a tool to solicit sexual favors and pictures from her, but never shared his face with her. She was always chasing his love, and all the while he was simultaneously preying on other individuals in the community. For God’s sake, this man had a selfie thread where underage girls would send pictures of themselves publicly on the site for him to look at, and he even intentionally disabled the website’s COPPA features.

Before Jill, there was Buttercup. Buttercup was also an admin, and she was also 13 when she met Ren. While Ren was a minor during he and Buttercup’s relationship, his behavior with her was just as predatory and Buttercup attempted to warn Jill via PM before she ended her relationship with him.

The picture he sent Buttercup wasn’t even him.

The entire time that Ren was convincing Jill that Buttercup was evil, and jealous, and a spiteful, hateful person, he was manipulating her the same way he was manipulating Jill. Ren is a predator who knows what he’s doing; he always has. He draws in his victims and makes everyone hate them so that he’s the only person they have. He makes them so desperate for his approval that they let him screw them over time and time again, and for what? Just to see his face. Think about what you read. He didn’t just do this to Jill and Buttercup. He did this to every person he cheated with or got close enough to get a grip on. Even if he didn’t sexually exploit someone, he emotionally did. An entire community of people suffered through this over and over and over again. Read the statements again. If you only read the live version, read the PDF. 

I also want you to bear in mind that everyone on staff was equally a victim as they were an enabler. It doesn’t erase their responsibility, but their roles in this story or more nuanced than “moderator bad, burn the witch!” Some of Ren’s supporters were as young or younger than Jill when they met him. The two people most notorious for standing at his side right now were both “rewarded” with a relationship with him in the fallout of his faked death.  

At some point, this man looked at his behavior and not only decided that he didn’t need to take responsibility, but that his victims daring to try and claim some kind of ownership over their own story was a personal affront to him. 

Ren is a monster of his own creation. He chose to be that monster again, and again, and again.

What makes his enablers equally to blame is when they became adults and made a conscious choice to ignore what was happening, which brings us to the next topic.

Finally... How Old Was Jill?

Despite everything I’ve said and shared so far, I still get this question in my inbox.

How old was Jill? Did she lie about her age? Is she free of guilt because she was a kid? Did he know how old she was? Was she legal in her country?

I gave you all everything I had. There were some things I just couldn’t confirm because there was no proof either way. However, all of that changed when the announcements were released. I now know exactly how old Jill was when they began dating, exactly how old she was when people knew about their relationship, and even that Ren was public with all of this information. I also know that staff knew everything, and chose to do nothing.

As you can see in the screenshots above of Buttercup’s message, it was sent on Jun 17, 2015. At that time, Jill was 14 years old. By Buttercup’s estimation, they had been dating for around a few months, which is how I was able to discern the previous exact age of 14 years old at the time they began dating.

However, Ren himself refutes that fact in a Valentine’s post for Jill. As pointed out in the “Our Statement” thread, the post that user amnesia. references includes very sexual and disgustingly graphic descriptions of Ren’s activity with her. It also says this:

As per the timestamp of this particular post (as seen below), Jill was 16 at the time. Ren, a man claiming to be twenty-five years old at the time, was proud to admit that he had been with Jill since she was 13.

You can view the full PDF of this post to see what else he said here, but please be warned that his descriptions are NSFW and absolutely disgusting. 

Warm Fuzzies Post (PDF)

No adult should talk about a kid like that. In the statements, several staff members admit that they knew that the two were dating when she was 16, and that it grossed them out. But none of them did anything. To amnesia.’s credit, they claim they tried to pursue legal action but found no viable routes. 

From the discussions and statements, we can discern five things:

1. Jill was 13 when she started dating Ren. 2. She did not lie about her age. 3. Ren did not lie about her age. 4. Ren knew how old she was. 5. Staff knew how old she was.

Jill’s feelings and her opinions on staff and their behavior are separate from my own. She does not share my beliefs here, and I need to make it very clear that what I’m saying next is entirely my own opinion.

To everyone who was staff at that time: shame on you. It’s one thing to be a victim yourself and to not understand how or when to stand up for what’s right, especially when you’re young; it’s another to become an adult and to have let something like this permeate your legacy and your community for all this time. From what I understand, none of you are completely innocent in this. Ren wasn’t secret, he was loud and proud and he didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. Everyone who was an adult then and is an adult now shares some responsibility for that. Those of you who mean your apologies, thank you, but those of you who are using this event as a stepping stone to make that website into your own personal playground know who you are. Stop. There’s an entire generation of kids between AS and CS who have lost years of their childhoods to this shit and the only right thing at this point would be to turn the site over to the police so that Ren can answer for his crimes the right way.

To everyone else: protect the people around you. People like Ren don’t think about how other people think or feel. They don’t care who gets hurt or who they trample under their feet. Look around at your community, and ask yourself if those who interact with you know that you are safe. Inevitably, someone is going to get hurt. Are you the kind of person that they can come to when it happens, or are you the kind of person who will turn your head away? 

Aaron brings Lian into a tiled room, bright in comparison to the room they had just left. He’s laid down on a table with curled up edges, and the jarring of his shattered elbow claws a ragged scream from his throat.

Aaron’s warm hand smoothes over his forehead, cooing softly, knuckles brushing away the tears that spring forth.

“Shhh…” he soothes, and Liam shudders, breathing fast and unable to calm. “Master has you, darling. You’ve been good, so Master gets to care for you now, no more punishment, hmm?”

“H-hurts-“ Liam gasps out.

Aaron clicks his tongue, smoothing back the blood clotted hair from Lian’s eyes. “I know darling,” he croons, voice warm and buttery. “Now just lay still, Master has you.”

And then Aaron’s warm hands are gone, and Lian shudders, staring up at the ceiling.

His nose burns, a dull agony to add to the rest of the symphony of pain his body is in, and it hurts to breathe in. He doesn’t know if his ribs are broken or just bruised, but it hurts all the same. He can taste the blood in the back of his throat, coppery and bitter with every inhale.

A shadow blocks out the harsh glare of the ceiling lights, and Lian flinches back from Aaron as he plucks up the hem of Lian’s bloody tshirt.

“N-nnno, stop—” Lian gasps out, and his shattered hands scream as he tries to put weight on them to push himself up.

He’s slammed down by the throat again, and his broken fingers spasm, unable to claw against the choking grip even as he brings them up to try.

“Ah-ah.” Aaron’s voice is singsong even as his gaze is cold, hand tightening in warning. “You don’t have those words in your vocabulary anymore, darling.”

The man’s other hand slides under Lian’s shirt, across the smooth skin of Lian’s stomach, causing the skin to tremble as the young man shivers, choking. His legs kick out in vain, trying to strike and kick at Aaron, but soon grow weak, faltering.

It’s with a hoarse shuddering breath as Aaron allows Lian to breathe that his shirt gets ripped off, and he coughs, lungs ungrateful for the air they inhale.

“So greedy.” Aaron tsk’s, hands curling around the bruises blooming along the right side of Lian’s ribs, admiring the splotches of red, purple and dark black already forming.

Lian flinches, squirming but the raised sides of the bench he’s laid on keep him from rolling off. Those hands press into the bruises, and Lian can’t hold the scream, back curling.

Aaron soaks the screams in like a man stranded in a desert drinking water for the first time in days, his eyes glimmering. He strokes Lian’s sides, gently coaxing him to lay flat again. “Good boy,” he praises, hands smoothing over Lian’s chest and running circles against his sternum. He presses a kiss to the shivering skin, tongue licking up a stripe to Lian’s clavicle. “You make such good sounds for me…”

Lian sobs, skin crawling. “S-stop—!” He begs, crying out as Aaron bites his neck, right over the cooling burn and still waxy warm plastic, jerking as pain sears up his neck and whites out his vision.

Aaron laughs, catching Lian’s flailing hands and squeezing broken bones, grinding the shards together and relishing in the scream it draws out from Lian’s lips.

“P-please, Master!” Lian finally wails, sobbing and Aaron detaches with a pleased hum, stroking the bite wound crisscrossing burnt flesh with the hand that has let go of Lian’s.

“Why didn’t you ask earlier, darling?” He coos, chuckling as Lian gives the man a tearful look. “Aww, baby, don’t look at me like that… like I said, making demands isn’t in your vocabulary anymore, sweetheart.”

Aaron’s green eyes grow cold and he picks up a knife from a nearby table, just out of Lian’s view. “Now, I can’t have you fighting me, darling, so Master is going to ensure you’ll be good for me, alright?”

Before Lian can protest, or say anything really, the man has forcefully grabbed Lian’s right hand and pierced the blade through, pinning it above Lian’s head.

His throat tears from the force of the scream and he jerks, seizing as the metal jars and grinds up against broken bone.

“N-nnnno, n-no, p-lea-se—!” Lian shrieks, begging as Aaron nonchalantly picks up his other hand, twirling the second knife idly in his free hand.

His voice shatters into a million pieces as the knife comes down, and the noises he makes are gutteral and agonized as his arms are pierced through the gap of the ulnar and radius bones, each knife digging deep into the table below.

And then Aaron returns with a thick mallet, and Lian’s eyes widen. “N-no, no, Master, please-!”

But the begging falls on deaf ears and Lian’s voice gives out as his throat tears once more from the force of his scream, each strike jarring and stirring up intense agony as the knives are struck one by one until the hilt brushes up against bloody flesh.

By the end, Lian is a sobbing bloody mess, old blood mixing with new, trembling and keening low in his throat. He doesn’t notice Aaron stripping him of his jeans, too busy trying not to choke on his own tears and snot.

He does notice the ice cold water that splashes down on his ankles and throat, and he jerks, dragging out another shattered scream as the movement pulls against the knives impaled in his skin.

Aaron hums, running his hands along the melted plastic embedded in Lian’s skin. “There we go… all cooled off. Now we wait for it to fall off in the next few days, mkaayy? I can’t have you picking at the wounds so we’ll just let you rest right here, hmm?”

Lian sobs, brokenly. “P-lease, d-don’t leave m-e—“

Aaron gently places a finger against Lian’s trembling lips, smearing blood. “Shhh… it’ll just be for a few days, sweetheart. You’ll be fine!”

His hands drag down Lian’s sides, kneading the bruises on his ribs and relishing how it causes Lian to flinch and whimper, fresh blood trickling down his arms.

The slight slope of the table causes the blood to drip down at the end of the table, into a nice neat drain.

Lian startles again as Aaron’s warm lips meet his, moaning in pain. Aaron takes the opening and Lian can only gag as Aaron’s tongue explores every crevice in his mouth, and Lian’s tongue trying to shove his out just makes it worse, slimy and warm and he can’t breathe—

Aaron finally pulls back, a thick trail of saliva connecting them as Lian coughs and splutters for air.

“Mmm, I knew you would be perfect from the moment I saw you.” He murmurs, his tongue darting over his lips and severing the trial to let it fall onto Lian’s bare chest as he shudders.

“See you tomorrow, darling~!”

Lian spends the next days pinned to the table like a butterfly, blood thickening to rough scabs that tore everytime he shifted and sent trickles of fresh warm blood trailing down. It was agony amongst a sea of other agonies, melding into a mind numbing symphony. He drifts.

He thinks about Ben. Taking his hand in his own for the first time, shy and hesitant. And the walk they had had, during the summer months, through the fields still ripe with flowers and dew in the sweet mornings before the heat scorched them both, but Bentley most of all with his fair pale skin.

Lian just tanned, growing darker as Bentley turned into a red peeling lobster, groaning on his couch and he couldn’t help the fond laugh at the sight as he got the aloe vera and other ointments out, gently rubbing it into burnt skin.

By the time Aaron visits on the third day - is it the third day? Lian can’t tell the time past the amount of times he’s been awoken to being fed spoonfuls of a watery but pungent broth that tastes vaguely like a boiled chicken with a hint of green onion, the plastic around his throat and ankles has long since cooled and has started to flake, leaving behind rings of shiny red bands of scar tissue.

Aaron smoothes a hand against his quivering chest, running up to his neck and Lian can’t help the flinch as those pale fingers touch the tender skin, a broken whimper leaving his throat.

“Shh…” Aaron soothes, “You’ve done so well for me, darling.” His hand traces the burnt circlet around his throat. “You aren’t going to make me punish you so soon, hmmm?”

Lian’s breath hitches out on a sob. “N-no…”

The man’s glancing touch becomes firmer, slamming his palm up into the hollow of Lian’s throat and causing him to choke. “No, what, darling?”

Lian wheezes, voice breaking apart like shards of glass in the sunlight. “N-no, M-Master m-m s-so-rry—“

And Aaron is back to gentle touches, letting Lian suck in a thin line of breath, coughing. It’s not enough air. Hasn’t been enough since Lian felt something give inside his trachea that first night. Not a full collapse, otherwise he thinks he would be dead, but enough that he can’t even fathom running a mile, let alone escape.

The man is still touching him, with gentle touches that are featherlight and almost tickle, nails gently scraping against his skin. Not hard enough to leave welts, but enough to leave red marks trailing after.

He twitches as those fingers reach sensitive spots on his sides, just above his ribs and near his exposed armpits, and it makes Aaron pause, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“Aww, is my darling ticklish?” The man coos, green eyes glinting with amusement as he watches Lian squirm under his fingers just lightly skimming against sensitive flesh.

Lian whimpers, gasping in pain as his movement jars fresh blood to trickle down his arms. “Mmn—“ he whines, and it’s cut off by Aaron dipping down and kissing him, stilling his wiggling with his hands firmly on his hips.

It’s deep, and again has tongue, and again Lian tries to fight that foreign tongue out of his mouth with his own, but it just causes Aaron to caress Lian’s tongue with his, slimy and wet and warm, pressing it down as Aaron invades further, stroking the roof of Lian’s mouth and the back of Lian’s throat as he chokes, a muffled noise leaving him in protest. He swallows down Aaron’s laughter, mocking, even as his throat threatens to rebel and send bile up.

It ends before Lian can actually retch, that warm mouth latching onto the sensitive burnt skin and it’s like he’s on fire again as he goes rigid, the heat and wet burning him right through the skin and he moans, a filthy weak noise as Aaron pulls back with his teeth, nibbling at sensitive flesh.

“You make the sweetest noises for me.” Aaron sighs, stroking a hand down to Lian’s lips, leaving his thumb against the flush flesh and forcing Lian’s lips to pruse up into a kiss, tilting Lian’s chin up. “And that neck… I just want to keep you breathless. Lock you up into a tight collar…” he sighs, hand trailing down Lian’s chest. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? You don’t need to worry about breathing and other silly thoughts that cloud your mind needlessly.”

Lian stares up at Aaron in horror, fear in his eyes. Aaron laughs softly and kisses Lian deeply. “All you need to worry is being good, darling.” He murmurs against Lian’s lips. “Master will let you breathe. What a good motivation, hmm?” He nips at Lian’s lower lip until it’s flushed and puffy, red from the attention.

He pulls back and there’s the sound of shuffling items, something heavy being dragged out. And then Aaron is back with a thick collar that he spreads out around Lian’s neck and synches tight, cutting Lian’s already thin air supply down to half of that, the collar burning against his burn. .

He chokes, weakly rasping a protest he doesn’t have air to express, and Aaron smiles, pressing his lips against Lian’s. “There we are, already so much better… we’ll let this settle in and then see about getting you into new bandages and a shower, hmm?”

Lian could hear the ambiance of the night pouring in from the rolled down car window as he waited for his boyfriend Ben to finish closing up the restaurant, the car parked behind the back of the building with the rest of the employees’ cars. The sweltering summer heat caused sweat to bead up on his tan skin, and he wished desperately that the AC hadn’t died as he felt it trickle down his neck. He rested his forehead against the window’s base, huffing quietly.

When he raised his gaze, his blood went chill as he caught sight of the man meandering towards him, their eyes meeting. Green to golden brown, and it slams him back into high school, senior year, so fast it leaves him utterly terrified as he shoots upright, quick enough to give himself whiplash when his head hits the top of the car window.

He’s blinking away stars, but he swears that the man outside his car smiles, small and amused like he’s watching a funny parlor trick.

Lian’s hands scramble for the keys in his lap, fingertips brushing against the cool metal in search for the right key.

In the time he’s looked down, the man has moved. Footsteps crunch against gravel - where the fuck is his key - and he feels a hand gripping black hair, and he’s reeling, struggling against strong fingers as they force his head smashing into the window again with a resounding smack! He’s too stunned to scream, blinded by the whiteout pain brings, and his hands fumble with the keys.

The man plucks them out of his grip like he’s a unresisting doll, turning the car on before unlocking the car door and dragging Lian out by his hair.

He dimly hopes that the man just wants his car, but that hope is dashed when he’s forced to the back, the man easily popping the trunk. By this point, Lian has regained enough sense to start struggling, his mouth open to scream and it’s only the man’s hand slamming into his throat that keeps him silent as he chokes and pitches backward into the trunk, his back smacking into the large spare tire like a small altar. He weakly kicks, squirming, trying to get out of the man’s grasp but he’s shoved further in, back arched across the tire as his head is forced down to the floor of the trunk by his kidnapper’s - this is what it is, he’s being kidnapped - hand.

His nails scratch ineffectually at his assailant, clawing and struggling to get free, to get air, and all the while, his assailant is silent, choking him with a pleasant expression. He wheezes painfully, as he feels something collapse inside his throat, as he feels his world narrow down to this split second of agony, crisp and clear despite the haziness of oxygen deprivation.

His eyes flutter shut, his hands falling slack against the hands strangling the life out of him.

Ren met Jill sometime between December of 2013 and January of 2014. At the time, he was dating another staff member of the website who will be referred to as Buttercup from now on. Jill was vulnerable in some of the most classic ways a CSA survivor often is. Her home life was chaotic and difficult. She was just finishing middle school. Depression had started to surface, and, worst of all, she had just been diagnosed with a life-altering chronic disease that would require her to change significant aspects of her daily life just to survive. She just wanted a place to fit in and be welcomed, and fell into Ren’s lures without ever considering the danger that lurked behind the screen.

Up until now, it could be understandable to argue that Ren may not have been purposely grooming young girls. Creating a mature themed website might be creepy and inappropriate, but that doesn’t necessarily make someone a predator. No, what made Ren a predator were his motives, his goals, and his solicitation of vulnerable youth into grossly exploitative relationships. What remains the most disturbing to me is that his behavior consistently fits with the profile of an egomaniac desperate to have power over someone dependent on him, fitting textbook descriptions of the methods abusers employ in order to coax their victims in and trap them there.

The Act of Grooming, Part Two: Approach

Even though common luring methods of child predators are well-known within advocate and legal communities, the average person typically has neither heard of them nor is likely to recognize them as they happen. Some behaviors attached to common lures are easily identifiable: a stranger somehow uses a young child’s name to create familiarity and abducts them, or convinces a child that there are prizes to be had if they come along. Methods like these have names, and Ren is guilty of utilizing at least four to his advantage.

The Authority Lure

When Jill first told me about her first interactions with Ren, she was quick to note how starstruck she was with that fact that he wanted to talk to her at all. “I was surprised that admins even RPed down with their peasants on this site,” she told me. Interacting with staff on the site made her feel special and seen, and Ren was quick to start chatting with her. He had a particular interest in her character. Someone of great importance and authority on the site, going out of his way to interact with her out of all people. He held power over her (over most users on the site) and that was something he was keenly aware of. More sinisterly, not only did Ren himself have power over younger users, but he increased his reach and control through the creation of alternative identities. Ren’s main identities were Aaron, Seth, Carter, and Lauren, all of whom he used to form relationships with and manipulate different individuals on the site.

Seth and Carter’s accounts have since been deleted, so unfortunately I was not able to see what kind of people Ren made them out to be. However, he clearly made users believe that these were all existing people, and used their identities to build his authority. When everyone on staff is the same person, it doesn’t leave very much room for dissent.

As for Lauren? Lauren was Ren’s real identity, and the mastermind behind all of it.

As you can see in this post, as of November 11, 2013, Ren was 17 years old. Not only that, but he was in a position of power over children in real life, too. There’s no reason that Ren would not have known better; no one in that position would be able to have a relationship with a small child as a “mistake.” Frequently, Ren claimed to be a babysitter for kids as old as 14, which means that children were fully exposed to him on all fronts. Ignorance is not a viable excuse for him; there’s no way he didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong.

A person might argue that there’s no substantial proof that these identities are fake. That would be a valid question at this point. One of Ren’s supporters (and self-proclaimed partner) has admitted themselves that these “alternate personalities” did not exist. In an attempt to explain away Ren’s toxic behaviors, they offered up a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis as a defense:

However, there’s one glaring issue with this claim. According to the DSM-5 classification of mental disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, amnesia must occur for a diagnosis of DID. Amnesia is defined by the DSM-5 as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events. Ren never experienced amnesia associated with the “switch” of an alter; in fact, he claimed that he and his friends would regularly do activities together, and would even communicate back and forth online with each other during the same lengths of time on AS as he switched between accounts.

I understand that everyone has different experiences with mental illness, and that illness does not have the same symptoms for every person. Regardless, Ren was clearly aware of his actions and the way he used his other accounts to lure/hurt users. Mental illness is not an excuse for hurting children, ever. Ren knew it then, and I can guarantee you he knows it now.

The Affection Lure

Another way predators appeal to their victims is with affection. Pedophiles take advantage of rocky home situations or difficult experiences to abuse the trust a child has placed in them. Jill came to know Ren well through their role-plays. They talked often. Ren made himself available to her, gave her comfort that she desperately needed, and even offered other friends who could be an ear or a shoulder to her. When Ren learned of Jill’s chronic illness, he connected her with Seth, another of his personalities. He coaxed Jill into trusting him, and their relationship became inappropriately intense. Most children are exploited by people that are close to them, by people who they trust and rely on.

At the time, Jill may not have realized how difficult her situation was for her. To her, the chaos of her family life may have seemed normal. Having to compete with siblings and neighborhood kids may have seemed normal. Falling into severe, deep depression may have seemed normal. The truth of the situation is that a vulnerable young woman was falling through the cracks, and Ren saw an opportunity to place himself as the most important person in her life. She needed to belong, so he made sure that she felt like she belonged with him. She needed to be heard, so he made sure that she felt like he was the only one who heard her. She needed friends, so he made sure that all her friends were him. 

Not only did he use her trust in him to groom her for a relationship, but he used it to isolate her. If everyone she knew was him, then he would be the only positive feature in her life. If everyone else was an enemy, then she would have nowhere to turn to but him. If he convinced her that she was his world, and that he was hers, she would never believe anyone trying to warn her about him and his behavior. Ren took advantage of a 14 year old child’s insecurities and sickness to insert himself as the most important aspect of her life.

There’s plenty of evidence that this wasn't the first time he’d thought of something like this, either. Ren had an obsession with themes of abuse, torture, and child slavery in his stories and role-plays. Much of his content centered around taking advantage of vulnerable people.

It wasn’t just his role-play ideas that crossed the line. His behavior toward other members of the site was hair-raising at best. His supporters try to paint him as someone affectionate and well-meaning, but he had habits of talking to young users in a manner that borders on profiling.

These aren’t things that someone a few months short of their eighteenth birthday should be saying to children on the internet. His behavior also delved into the realm of victim blaming, too; when a minor on the site was posting about their father going out of his way to make custody as complicated and as disruptive as possible, Ren had this to say:

A man, who would have been 18 at the time, with the audacity to imply that a child was to blame for the controlling behavior of their father. That their father only loved them, and that they might have done something to make a grown man act like a petty child during a divorce.

Ren’s idea of love was as toxic as his need for power.

The Hero Lure

This is, perhaps, the lure that Ren is mostly guilty of. An egomaniac soothed by his own words, Ren saw himself as a hero. In his own mind, he was a faultless deity who deserved no less than the complete and undivided affections of his subjects, but who fabricated false identities at every opportunity. In Ren’s mind, he is the hero. The survivors of his abuse are turned to abusers, those who dare question him are nothing but petty liars, and anyone not completely enthralled by him is nothing but an extra in his story. That’s what Ethren was created to emulate.

Ren has not grown. Someone who has grown would take ownership of their mistakes and apologize for the pain they had caused. Someone truly sorry, truly changed, wouldn’t dare to trample on the feelings of people they had hurt. Ren is no different now than he was six years ago, when he made the decision to change Jill’s life. Instead, he’s turned a survivor into the villain of his world. Instead, he faked his own death so that he could start over with his reputation on AS intact. He never accepted what he did, and instead continues to paint Jill as someone who needed to be “fixed.”

Wanting to be with someone because it feeds a need to “fix” or “help” someone isn’t love. It’s an adult man putting the weight of the world on the shoulders of a little girl. A girl already struggling to adapt. A girl already struggling to fit in. A girl who spent her second week of high school hospitalized because of a sickness that would change her life forever. Jill is a person; she’s a person who’s had to learn to live with restrictions that mean the difference between life and death. She’s a person who’s had to walk alone through the past six years battling depression and trauma completely unheard and unseen. She’s not a character in Ren’s world. She’s not some fixation to help him feel better about himself. 

Jill is a real, living, breathing human being with thoughts and feelings and a future: a future that Ren has done him damn best to make about himself for the past six years.

Ren never wanted to help anyone. Ren needed to feel important to other people to have some kind of meaning to himself. His obsession with playing hero went so far that he would torment his victims just so that he could swoop in and be what they needed. He would pretend to be sick or injured. He would go from having a cold, to strep, to pneumonia in under a day.

He would suddenly need a nebulizer for breathing treatments for his false illnesses.

His friends and loved ones would suddenly have life-threatening medical conditions and need to be taken to the hospital.

He pretended to have cancer.

He would use his identities to threaten self harm or death. He used Seth to tell Jill that he was going to send someone to kill her, making her scared for her own life. He made her a part of a world where he was the only one who could help her to satisfy his own sick need to be the most important thing to someone else.

When life caught up to him, he pretended to die.

He knew what he was doing was wrong. He asked Jill to lie about her age and told her that if anyone ever found out about them, he would get in trouble. He used his status as her hero to solicit sexual content online. He knew her age, knew how vulnerable she was, and knew how desperately she needed to fit in. He took advantage of that to fill his own desperate need to be the hero.

The legal age where a person can consent in Jill’s country is 16. When they officially began dating, she was 14. Ren was 18. He was an adult four years older than her, who would have faced charges of child abuse in his own state for their relationship. They had a sexual relationship online, which would be equivalent to soliciting child porn in his state. She never cheated on him; he was her world, because he made every effort to make sure that he was.

She never even saw his face.

She never even knew his real name.

She grappled for years afterwards with trauma, and he wouldn’t even give her the decency of having peace when they finally split. Instead, he came here with his stories. He wrote up fantasies where he was the hero, and she was the one who abused him. Jill was still a minor at the end of her relationship. When I asked her if she’s gotten help, she didn’t think a therapist would take her seriously. Ren took her ability to trust her own voice from her. He took her ability to believe that her own problems were valid. He took six years of her life and made it hell for the sake of his own ego and vanity. Pedophiles will often lie about their age, but most of them make it clear that they’re adults. Their true age might vary by four to five years (like in Ren’s case of claiming to be 21 at 17), but they always make it very clear that they’re adults. Predators know what they’re doing. They’re master manipulators. They’re adept at communication. They seem innocent on the surface, until everything they’ve done is laid out where it can be seen for what it is. Predators rely on persuasion, not coercion (Abrams 2016).

Someone I know asked me if I ever considered, even briefly, that Jill wasn’t telling the truth. I answered back without hesitation that I never did, not even once, because I hadn’t even touched one of the most important parts of my research.

Like other predators, Ren had a type. Buttercup was his first victim. When she and Ren met she was only 13-- Just like Jill.