Chris Potter · @MethodPotter
26th Jun 2020 from TwitLonger
My account of Josh / Setting the record straight
If I ever thought Josh had done anything close to what he has now been accused of, I would not have played with, befriended or defended him.
At the time of my public twitter post calling for people to not hate people on baseless rumours,
I knew only of the Anonymous, evidence-less Kotaku article accusation and a Police investigation which Josh had strongly convinced us was a false accusation.
Josh seemed to have an answer for everything, and eventually when the police investigation was dropped, apparently to no evidence, I felt like believing Josh was vindicated.
It was my failing to let myself be convinced by Josh that he had done no wrong.
Josh had told us the police investigation could not be publicly talked about because it may count as "encouraging harassment" against the accuser,
so this is why it was not spoken about publicly.
The clip in which Josh starts talking on stream without realising and we all yell at him to shut up, is partly due to the above and
also more in part that he was banned on twitch and we were at that time not allowing him to talk on our streams.
As far as his stream Ban, the information I had regarding it came from Josh, and he said he had been banned with no official reason but believed it to be in relation to his Police Investigation,
and that the accuser had gone directly to twitch. He painted a story of being the victim, and spoke a lot about clearing his name, suing for damages etc.
During my livestream on Wednesday 24th, after we had taken the decision to remove Josh following the first accusation that came out on the 24th,
I completely fumbled my words and said along the lines of "He was a questionable guy but he hasn't done anything really really wrong ",
what I had truly meant to say is "He had acted with a questionable character but I had no Knowledge of him doing anything Illegal".
What I did not know, which was quickly told to me in the twitch chat, is that since we removed him, more brave people had come forward with their accounts of Josh's abuse.
Knowing the horrific accounts that I now know, I obviously would never try to defend his character at all. I apologise for the hurt it must have caused victims, when I,
before knowing of the newest accusations, mistakenly said "He never did anything really really wrong".
My failings as a person and Officer in the Method guild are as follows:
When the Kotaku article was released, I failed in my duty as an officer in the guild to read the article in detail and investigate Josh's community in depth.
Playing video games with someone once a week doesn't mean you should trust their word enough to publicly defend them on such serious issues, I should not have rushed to defend him.
Looking back with hindsight he should have been removed from the guild while the police investigation was taking place, as an Officer I should have pushed for this.
Misspeaking on my stream and mistakenly saying he had not doing anything really bad.
I have only ever tried to act in a fair way with the information I had in front of me.
I tried to advocate for "innocent until proven guilty", I truly believed Josh was being falsely accused.
As soon as a second substantial accusation came to light (The first accusation tweet against him of Wednesday the 24th),
we instantly realised the chances of being falsely accused twice is close to none and that we had been completely fooled by Josh's claims of innocence.
He was kicked almost immediately after the tweet was seen by us.
I hope the level-headed will see there was no ill-intent from myself or the guild. Just a very poor decision to keep him in the guild while he was under a police investigation.
People like Josh are manipulators and he had us fooled. I'm sorry to everyone I let down by being fooled by him.