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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.

During the summer before fourth year, Judith accidently broke a glass frame of Jamal and their mother while she was cleaning. Sade snapped and lashed her bad with a belt. 

Sade yelled the only reason why she didn’t abort her was because of her father. 

Nobody but a dead man wanted her alive.

Judith couldn’t move without wincing in pain for days.

Sade grew crueler with each passing year, the scars on her skin take longer and longer to fade. This made the Hufflepuff witch very insecure. 

And Sade knew this. 

‘Who would want someone like you? Look at you! Scarred and damaged! From your unkempt hair down to your brutish appearance!’

Judith inhaled deeply, holding it for 5 counts before sighing.

‘Sticks and stones... sticks and stones...’

Nobody knew about her scars nor the story behind them. The scars on her arms and legs can be passed off as cuts she got from training or Quidditch.

Judith knew if someone were to see her back and torso, there will be questions.

Questions she never want to answer.

Caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t hear the sound of wings coming towards her until she felt a pair of talons on her right shoulder. 

She turned to kiss the Golden Eagle’s head.

“Hello, Talbott,” she said with a small smile.

The large bird cooed before flying on the ground and transforming back in to the Ravenclaw wizard.

“Hello, little bird... Are you alright,” Talbott asked softly. Judith frowned at the question.

“Why do you ask,” she answered instead.

“You’re crying.” Judith let out a shocked gasp, immediately feeling her face to find it wet with tears.

The young witch can feel her heart race as she immediately backed away from her boyfriend.

“Hey, hey. Wait a second, Judith,” Talbott said as he quickly brought her into his arms. Judith braced her arms against his chest, refusing to give into the comfort offered to her.

“Judith. Little bird, look at me,” Talbott said softly, concern creasing his features. They’ve been together for quite some time and never once has he seen her cry.

Nor pull away from him like that. It was like she was scared of him...

Talbott studied her closer and noticed at her lack of clothing and-

Red eyes widen.

Scars. All of them were old but very prominent against her skin.

“Judith-” Then there it was.

A soft sob.

The Ravenclaw boy was quick to pull his girlfriend with him to sit at the base of a tree. He held her as tightly as he could, rocking her as Judith fell victim to her tears.

Talbott knew there was story. Judith isn’t the type to burst into tears randomly.

She was strong and steadfast, rarely letting her emotions get the best of her. It hurt him to see her hurting.

“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry,” she croaked out, pushing him away a bit to wipe her face. Talbott kept a steady hold on her, so she didn’t get far.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, little bird. Talk to me, what’s wrong,” Tallbott cooed softly. Judith sniffled, side eyeing him.

“Of course I should be! Hello? For bursting into tears? For you to see me scarred like this? I don’t know, you pick,” she retorted. Talbott cracked a small smile before frowning.

“There’s nothing wrong with crying, Judith. It’s natural if you’re feeling sad or upset. And I don’t care for your scars,” he said, trying to put the pieces together in his mind. Judith rubbed her arms as if she was cold.

“That’s not what my mother thinks. Crying is a weakness in her eyes... and of course, you do. Guys expect girls to flawless and beautiful...”

‘Everything I’m not...’

Talbott’s brows shot up to his hairline. It’s rare for Judith to mention her parents. Only those who are close to her would have an idea about them. They, including Talbott, know about her father, Kendrick.

Nobody really knows about her mother. All that is known about her is her name.

Sade.

“Well your mother doesn’t know anything. And you are beautiful,” Talbott argued. He could see the doubt in those pale gold eyes.

The same eyes as her dead father.

“But-Mhm?!” A reply laid on the tip of her tongue before she was silenced by Talbott’s sudden kiss. She was pulled flushed against her boyfriend’s warm body as she surrendered to his kiss. She moaned weakly when he nipped her lower lip.

“Tal-Talbott,” she squealed as the Ravenclaw trailed kissed down the sensitive skin of her jaw and neck. Her body let out full body shudder when she felt him suck on her sweet spot. One of her hands pushed his head deeper into her neck as she bit her lip to hold back a moan.

Talbott pulled away, leaving a soft kiss on the love bite.

“You’re beautiful to me, little bird. From those unique gold eyes down to your scars. Everything about you shows your beauty and strength. You don’t have to tell me about how you got them, but just know I would never think less of you because of them,” Talbott said, looking into his girlfriend’s eyes.

He wants her to really hear him when he said this.

Her outer appearance may have intrigued him but it was what he saw in her eyes, in her heart, and made him fall for her. 

Nothing will change that.

Not even what that godsforsaken woman that is her mother.

Judith gave Talbott a genuine shy smile.

“Thank you, Talbott...” He pulled her closer, placing a soft kiss to her cheek.

“Anything for you, little bird...”

-------------------

I’ve done it! I’ve finally done it!

I’ve drawn a Talith picture!

And drawing Talbott in general 😂

I’ve been trying to find the energy and commitment to draw him for who knows how long. I keep getting frustrated because it just wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to do Bird Boy justice.

And now I can finally say, I did that. Whew.

And this is a true backstory. 

While she is very confident and a badass in her own right, Judith got bad self esteem issues. She hates crying, even more so if it’s in front of people. She doesn’t want people to think she’s weak. So she tends to bottle up her emotions until she’s either in the safety of her room or she has a breakdown (rinse and repeat).