🔆 Aryan, Son of Apollo 🔆 · @apollo_solace
2nd Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
My experiences with @CrimsonBloood Daryeus/Mystic/NiGHTS
TW Stalking
Twitter evidence:
http://imgur.com/a/wg6QStG
I've posted about this before through a twitter thread, but I was too afraid to name the stalker before, fearing that he would become aggressive and hurt more of my friends and other community members. However, at the urging of my friends and with the desire to prevent the creep from hurting anyone else, I felt it important to talk about my experiences with Daryeus AKA Mystic.
During my first semester at UMass, I found a strange twitter user who had been interacting with some other friends I'd made in our local scene here. Curious, I responded to him asking about who he was and generally interacting with him as I would a new person. I received cryptically worded responses that had me confused, but otherwise unbothered. However, as time went on this stranger began vaguely tweeting about me, talking creepily about some person he was interested in, but I had ignored it believing that if I didn't engage with him the issue would go away. However, a friend who had been in our scene much longer than me told me that his name was Daryeus. He informed me that Daryeus/Mystic had been banned from our tournaments a year before I came to UMass for sexual harassment and creeping on other players in suggestive, physical ways. Around that time I started to notice a strange person in a mask stalking outside of our meetings and tournaments, following us to the dining hall where we gathered after meetings, constantly watching us. I was later told that this stalker was Daryeus. Something to note is that he attends a completely different university, explicitly going out of his way to stalk us and me despite being banned.
After that I started becoming more worried, trying to avoid him as much as possible, but the vague tweets came again about delivering a "package" for me. Never once had we ever talked in private or discussed anything personally. At our next meeting I had found an unsigned, suggestive Valentine's card with candy left behind for me. He snuck in an hour before our own meeting to leave it there before anyone could see him, celebrating on his own twitter that I had received "the package". I was terrified, bordering on full emotional shut down with the fear that I would be physically violated, knowing that he had done so to others in the past. I was so scared knowing that he had his eye on me, and that I would be his next victim. He continued to stalk me that day, following us around the whole time, sitting in the corner of our dining hall with his eyes on my back. The only reason I managed to make it through that day was because I told other friends I knew I could trust. One of my friends confronted him about it, but he ignored him, denying that he had been watching me. After being walked by to my room by a group of friends I locked the door behind me, barely able to breath.
Since then with the help of our club president Eli, we've put a police report on him, but he still stalks around. He's proceeded to DM me through alternate accounts insults and vague death threats. I try to write them off lightheartedly, but it still returns me to the panic I felt that day. He's claimed time and time again that this is just us trying to "cancel" him, and that he was the victim all along. He has zero self-awareness despite everything he's done. Recently he spoke up about other terrible things having happened to him when he was younger, and I believe his story as the victim, but that makes the situation so much more frustrating. Why would he inflict this pain upon others when it has happened to himself? How could he not be aware of his own blatant sexual harassment and stalking? It is so immensely hypocritical to preach about victims speaking up and believing them, only to deny his own acts of sexual harassment and stalking, to write it off as "cancelling".
I'm so incredibly angry that Daryeus hurt my friends, and that he's made them feel unsafe with a complete lack of physical and social boundaries. The last thing I want is for him to ever hurt anyone again, so I urge other TOs and communities to prevent him from interacting with anyone in your communities for their safety and well-being. Please continue to support victims and make this community a safe place for everyone.