AGDQ 2019 - My Response to Mari's Account

This is my original public statement : https://pastebin.com/Yyc23yc4
= AGDQ 2019 : Chad's Response to Mari's Account =

In regards to Mari's account of what happened during the first day or so of our interaction together, I'm going to provide a rebuttal as to what happened from my account. In regards to what anyone is to believe, it's obviously word against word, but I've been here from the get-go, ready to provide more information on the matter. I'm going to take her pastebin, and I'll separate it, paragraph by paragraph, and just provide my input in between each account.

(original archive of her Pastebin is here : https://archive.fo/VqJUp)
https://twitter.com/A_B_F_/status/1086368668877901825



"Leading up to the event, I did not know him at all, outside of buying some controllers off of him in the past. Although at first we talked about sexual options while sharing a bed, I changed my mind, made it clear, and I told him that I didn't consent to anything else before he ended up purchasing my flight to AGDQ. I made sure before he paid for my trip to GDQ that he knew I was not interested in having sex, hooking up, or doing anything other than what we originally agreed upon, which was just to sleep next to each other, so he could sleep. And after stating this numerous times, after the conversation of screenshots, he told me he understood."

= Chad's response : Would you say we were "friends", no, but we were closely-business(ly) acquainted. As she mentioned, she has bought multiple controllers from me in the past. We met briefly, for 5 or 10 minutes, at SGDQ 2018, it was also during that week that she had tweeted she wanted to meet me. I'm pretty sure if anyone wanted to go and dig that tweet up from the middle of the SGDQ 2018 week, they could find it. Regardless of that, she's right. We did not have any intention on ever wanting to act or partake in any act of sex, which is something I also think everyone should just stop believing; me and her have both stated that's not what our agreement or arrangement was about. As she mentions, the agreement that we made was to sleep next to each other so that I would be able to get rest, to which that was the entire point of our agreement in the first place :

	- It was for me to have a cuddle-buddy/essentially someone to sleep next to, and in exchange, I didn't mind paying for her flight and allowing her to have a spot in my room.

That was our entire agreement, and both of us understood that we didn't want anything sexual to happen the day after we had a ton of explicit conversation on Discord; she specifically said that "she felt like a hooker", to which I told her that she shouldn't have felt that way, and that if she was consenting to something, regardless of whatever the terms were that we agreed to before (in regards to our cuddling/bedding agreement) that whatever she wanted to do was whatever she wanted to do.







"He still agreed to pay for my flight and room for me because he told me he “just wanted me to have a good time.” I told him in messages, and in person, at the airport, in the hotel unpacking. I told him how I felt again and again. We were not going to do anything. Every time we talked about it, he said he understood that I didn’t want to do anything and that he didn’t want me to be uncomfortable. I believed him. Of course, that’s the detail that was so conveniently left out during this whole process. It was never my intent to trade my body for a room at a hotel. That was never the deal we made."

= Chad's response : I did still agree to pay for her flight, partially because I wanted her to have a good time, yes; but the important thing to remember here is that the intent of me purchasing the plane ticket and allowing her to have a space in the bed with me was due to the unconventional/unorthodox agreement that we had made. No one, at least not I, would have paid $500+ if I was not under the impression that I was going to be able to have a bedmate for the entirety of the week. As she stated, both of us were under the intention and impression that we weren't going to escalate things to that sexual level with each other, we were only going to do what both of us entailed was cuddling/laying down together. As she said, trading anything like that was never anyone's intent, we had one singular agreement, and then it so happened that consensual-sexual conversation was exchanged between us.







"When I went to sleep that first night, I was the only one in the room, I went to bed early and fell asleep. I woke up with his hands on me to the point where I literally grabbed his wrists and forcibly removed his hands from me. I had to move his hands off of me and stop him a total of three to four times that night. One of the times I pushed his chest with a flat palm of my hand and pushed his body away from me. This was NIGHT ONE. Then the next morning I woke up to him putting another blanket on me and tucking me in, with his hands down my body. The other roommate was awake and saw him do this. I was extremely uncomfortable and did not eat the breakfast he offered me, and I left the room. I later asked the roommate to tell GDQ staff what they saw."

= Chad's response : When I’ve mentioned in the past things “escalated” – this is where I’ll provide detail exactly of what happened. Naturally, since Mari was already in bed, I got in bed and simply laid next to her. I didn’t want to wake her up, but I also wanted to cuddle next to her as a means of helping myself get to sleep, so I touched my leg to hers to see if there was a reaction that I’d get from her. Quickly, we both reacted to our legs touching and we began to get closer to each other, it was at this time, probably about 3:45, that we both passed out after snuggling/cuddling up next to each other, but as I mentioned before, it was hot in the room, so me and Mari were constantly tossing and turning most of the morning as we were cuddling. It was around 4:30 – 5:00 am now, Mari and I were simply lying next to each other in the bed. At this time, weren’t cuddling, but there were parts of our bodies that were touching each other (such as our legs, and we were lightly pressed against each other) which was perfectly fine with me, as I had mentioned that touch was a huge thing for me and provided a lot of comfort. Half of the bedding material (the blankets, sheets, etc.) had been tossed off of us because it was so hot, but we were not actively cuddling or engaged with each other.
It was during this time, 4:30 am – 5:00 am, that while we were lying next to each other, Mari reached over and grabbed my arm and placed it over her breast-area, while she still had her shirt on. As a male, given a lot of what we had discussed between us before, I’m only able to take this as an invitation for us to engage in something further. Me, being placed in a surprised situation as this, began to simply rub her chest and do what felt natural to me, without going into the most explicit of details, it was being very clearly asked of me to fondle/play with this area of the body. After a few minutes of giving that area of her body attention/detail, she lifted up her shirt (while laying on her back) exposing her bare stomach and breast to me, to which I rubbed her stomach and bare breast for a short amount of time, before she eventually turned over onto her stomach. With her shirt still being lifted after she turned over onto her stomach, I took this as an invitation to just rub her back, since she had not pulled her shirt back down. Shortly after rubbing her back, I “tested” the waters and simply moved my hand further down to rub her butt, to which there was no statement to stop. At this point, I had considered everything to just be a mutual exchange of touch, it was a little flirty, and I had figured that if anything was going to happen, I surely wasn’t going to allow it because Cuphat was right there in the room.
After we had spent this “escalated time” together for about 15-20 minutes in bed, she stated “Alright, no more, it’s time for us to sleep” – to which, I immediately turned away from her, distanced myself from her (meaning, even our legs didn’t touch) and I didn’t want to engage with her any further because no one obviously wants to offend anyone, or proceed further with anything, if someone doesn’t want to, so that was why I made the amicable decision to disengage completely. Moments later after I turned away from her, the ONLY interaction we had after that was she lightly scratched my back (to which, I mentioned to her was something that turned me on), so after she scratched my back, I said to her, “Now you just said we need to stop… that’s not fair” and all I did after the fact was I put my arm back over her stomach, rested my head next to her shoulder near the pillow next to her, and we both passed out and went back to sleep.

	There’s actually not the most detail to go over when talking about this day, but I’ll go ahead and provide a good amount of insight, regardless. The following morning, she actually woke up hours after me, because I had gone to McDonalds and actually picked up both of us a breakfast platter that had everything on it, that’s aside the point, but I even woke up the next morning and went and got us breakfast. When I returned to the hotel room, she was still in bed and didn’t wake up till probably around 10:30 – 11:00 am that morning, during that time she was asleep, all I did was pick blanket that had been tossed to the side because it was so hot, and I tucked her back in bed. After she woke up, she got ready to go out and spend time with her friends that day and she said that “She was sorry” about what had happened that night between us, that “I woke up horny, and I just want to apologize for that”, to which I had said to her that it was more than likely a natural reaction that she had felt that way, I was shirtless at the time and it probably just felt natural for her to have those feelings in that moment. After we had a short discussion based around how apologetic she felt about the situation before, she went out as normal and spent the day with her friends, to which I told her if she needed any help with paying for anything, I wouldn’t mind helping her. The entire point of her being there was that if she needed help with anything that week, I obviously didn’t mind helping her in the case she was helping me with sleep.

		That’s it. That is what happened, and that was the extent of what happened between us that evening and the following morning. If anyone wants to try and fabricate more out of that evening than what really happened, then that is on everyone else, but THIS is what happened that evening.

		In regards to me tucking her in with the blanket the next morning, I have horrible OCD. Ask ANYONE who visited my hotel room during the visit/AGDQ week, and everyone can attest that I had the cleanest room of anyone. Me tucking her in in the morning, given that we had just had the morning that we had (from my narrative account, it appeared we had no issues), I thought nothing of me picking up all of the messy blankets/sheets and the big comforter blanket, and simply making the bed. People can take the whole "tucking" her in bed thing out of context, but I simply gathered the sheets, tucked them in at the foot at the mattress, and pulled them over the entirety of the bed, at this time, she was sleeping, and I wasn't just going to "throw" the blankets over her face. Cuphat was in the room, literally right there standing at the foot of the bed as I was making the bed while Mari was sleeping. There was nothing I would have done that would have hurt or offended anyone, that is, unless she took me moving the blankets and everything after that night to such offense, but that doesn't make sense, considering after she woke up she was apologetic of the fact of what happened.





"On stream, I don’t mind talking about sex. As a single woman, I am free to engage in any kind of conversation or relationship I want. No one should ever be shamed for this. I talk about consent on stream A LOT. Consent is so important, and I know it’s not taught in a lot of schools, but it’s something that we have to talk about more. It doesn’t matter if two people are married, are strangers, have had sex before, have dated before, or talked about having sex before, or never really talked before, or sexted a week before, or anything.  It doesn’t matter.  If the last thing they said, is no, then no is no.  You don’t touch people in their sleep.  I don’t see how some people just don’t understand this. I said no multiple times. People can change their consent. And you must respect the last thing they say, even if it’s not what you want to hear. It worries me that people see those screenshots, a week before the event, and feel that it gives him the right to do what he did to me."

= Chad's response : Obviously, no is no. I don't know why anyone is arguing this. Secondly, she wasn't "touched" in her sleep. As explained above, as someone who has OCD, things like that are impulsive. All that happened was I retucked the sheets under the foot of the mattress, and also made sure that the bed was "neat". Anyone who knows me, even in the slightest, knows that I have extremely bad OCD and things have to be neat. For anyone to say that I'm a horrible person for making the bed and not throwing the blankets over someone's face and pulling the blanket down from their face and making sure the bed is mate neatly, then that's just wrong. In regards to people changing their mind and consent, that's perfectly fine, but that's not the situation that occurred that she's trying to describe. There was nothing that I did to her, as I'm standing by my account and narrative above that happened the first night/Day 0.






"After telling him I did not want to share a bed with him anymore, and that I wanted to sleep on the floor, he said I either sleep in bed with him, or find somewhere else to sleep. So I left. From this point on, I didn’t answer any of his messages, and I did not believe anything he said anymore. After I left, he messaged me and told me he cancelled my flight home, and that I needed to find another way home. He lied to me and said whatever he needed to get what he wanted, he even came to the new room I was staying in looking for me. I felt really unsafe the entire week. It’s clear to me now that even though I made it known I didn’t want to do anything sexual anymore, that he went ahead with the purchase thinking I could somehow be persuaded."

= 	Chad's response : She never told me that she didn't want to share a bed with me anymore. As I stated, she came into the room as I was taking a shower in the middle of the night. She came into the room and already had the blanket from the bed laid on the floor at the foot of the bed. This, already made me feel very uncomfortable, because it was something that caught me more as a blind-sided thing more than anything else. She, did NOT want to leave the room, this is clearly where she is lying. It was after I asked her why she didn't want to lay in the bed next to me anymore she said "it was nothing that you did, it's just something about me that's changed",
to which I replied to her and said "then something about me has changed, too.. I think you need to find a new rooming arrangement". She said to me, "Wow.. really.. you're kicking me out?..." to which I said to her "Obviously I'm not going to kick you out if you don't have a place to go, but I do think that you need to text some of your friends and figure something out". It was shortly after this she started packing up her things and she mentioned that she had a place to go. This was a lie. She went to the lobby and the first person she had the chance to talk to, which was Greg, she mentioned that I had kicked her out of the room and that she was going to the airport to sleep. This was all in a way to manipulate Greg, to which he came up to my room and talked to me about the entire situation. I showed him ALL of the messages, and afterwards he left and went back to his room and told me that he had asked her to leave his room because she was being manipulative of the situation. Even in some of his tweets to me, you can see that he references the talk that we had in the hotel room that evening, it's not like that conversation never happened, and I'm sure Greg's roommates would mention that she stayed in his room that evening. Once Greg left, I told Mari that since she had lied about the situation, I had no interest in helping her anymore because it was very clear that she was just being manipulative of the situation at hand and I no longer wanted to be a part of it anymore.

This is a pretty important image : https://snag.gy/gU36Tp.jpg

	As you can see in my response, I was fine with Weather being in the room with us; Mari had typed on the plane when she found out Weather was still in our room that she was weirded out by the fact that he was going to be there. That, as you can see from the messages, was when I got uncomfortable about a lot of things, but I never wanted any of the bedding arrangements to change. She literally states in the last message that she's fine with Weather staying in the room, which I was always fine with Weather staying in the room, but you can tell by the pace of our messages that NOTHING happened the first night that she would be regretful of, IF she is still willing to make this arrangement, that is just something I don't see how anyone can not fathom/understand from this. Mari, then states, she's fine with every part of our agreement/arrangement regarding being bedmates as long as Weather could stay in the room, literally that was the entire exchange of our final messages. After that, that was when we had the conversations with Greg. I told her that she needed to find a different way home, to which she goes around and tells everyone the false narrative of why/how she got kicked out of the room and didn't have a way to get home. As I've mentioned, and I don't like to downtalk people, but it was a manipulation of the situation. Mari is older than me, she's 25 or 26, and has a Psychology degree; I'm very certain she knew what she was doing in this situation.

	As you can see from my messages, I was apologetic of the situation and was sorry that it didn't work out. Her flight was NOT CANCELLED until 24 hours before it departed from it's gate.

Here is the tweet with that proof: https://twitter.com/cdgexe/status/1083610598930288640

	I didn't cancel the ticket until after I was banned from AGDQ/GamesDoneQuick events. There's a lot of people who can attest/account for that, including Cheese, Copitz, and a ton of other people who saw the itinerary.

	In regards to me going to her "room" she was staying in? That's a hilarious joke; I wasn't trying to look or find her. Mari had mentioned in a tweet earlier in the week that she found out that her and EmilyMidWest had hotel rooms that were next door to each other. As my messages state, I heard that she found a room. That room, just so happened to be Emily's, that was next door to us. They will never attest to this, and it will forever be their word of mouth against me on this, but they were "shit-talking" me the entire time from their room; how do I know this? My room had a door that conjoined/connected my hotel room to Emily's hotel room, so the amount of sound that passed through the wall was actually quite a lot. When I messaged Mari about her having a room, I heard her talking next door, in that message, I mentioned that her itinerary wasn't cancelled, and that I was quite upset that she would have asked people to collect money for her without at least checking her itinerary first. Like, if you would have told me you would have had to crowdfund the money to get home; I wouldn't have cancelled her ticket regardless, but the thing is she had already lied and couldn't go back on the word of what she told everyone. Literally all I did in regards to contacting her was after I heard them talking shit through the door, and Mari said "Well, I'm just going to apologize or whatever", that was when I said the message in Discord; "You also don't have to say your sorry. Y'all spoke through the door just now loud enough to where I heard every thing damn yalls true colors shine behind closed doors.". After that, all I did was go next door, I knocked on the door, and I left her Anker portable battery pack on the ground because I was returning it to her. That was it. It's crazy how someone can twist the narrative on a story when all I was doing in the entirety of the process was return her battery pack to her and inform her that her plane wasn't cancelled.






"I almost did not report this. I almost took a train home that morning. I just wanted to run away, I didn’t want to talk about this, or tell anyone, or ask for help. I almost didn’t post this, telling my story. I felt so ashamed and stupid. But I can’t be silent.  I can’t just run away.  I have to speak up. I am stronger than this.  We are stronger than this. Now that all of this has come to light, I found out he offered this to at least one other woman in the community.  This isn’t about me. This could’ve happened to anyone. If I didn’t speak up, this could have kept happening to other women."

= Chad's response : She wasn't going to report anything because nothing had ever happened. She was only reporting it out of revenge because I had ensured that she wasn't going to be sneaking into the event with her old badge, nor was she going to be getting a free-ticket home. She didn't almost take a train home that morning, because she clearly went to the lobby after stating to me that she had a place to stay. Which, was completely a lie. Trust me, I didn't want to talk about any of it either or bring the entire story together, there's videos about it, many of which are supporting me on the matter, but I've had to speak up and defend myself, regardless of the circumstance. I've retained a lawyer, and I'm ready to proceed further if she wishes to proceed further.

	In regards to me offering this to someone else, I absolutely did.

	Here is a screenshot : https://snag.gy/4TkdOY.jpg

	In that conversation/interaction I did and said absolutely nothing wrong, I extended an offer and when that offer was negated, I didn't care to push the conversation any further. I said to Erin that if she reconsidered, to just let me know. That was it. For Mari to pick at straws to try and project the narrative of that conversation to say that this was "something" (when nothing happened) that could have happened to someone else, that sickens me.



I only hope that people can read through everything that I have posted, and know that I have gone to the greatest lengths possible to provide a detailed account of everything that has been said/offered/done, and I'm personally not ashamed of anything that has happened or come forth. I've been very happy the past couple of days, and I'm ready to proceed further with whatever is ahead of me regarding this situation and moving forward in general. I'm thankful for all of my friends who have supported me, and for those who know and believe of me what really happened this AGDQ. To all of you who have relentlessly stood by me, I thank you all dearly. <3

- cdgexe/Chad