Karen · @Nekuki_
7th Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
My experience with @/Sherwood_Red
Hello. My name is Karen/@nekuki_ on Twitter. I want to start out by saying that I understand how pointless this might seem to people. I hear it all the time. I also hear about how this is unfair and that I should be ashamed for talking about it. And about how I should just get over it already. I understand these things. But I feel obligated to explain everything, as much as I can remember, from the beginning until now. I just feel like I have to explain how I felt and how I feel now as I’ve never been able to tell my side of the story in full. I’ll go ahead and apologize for my writing since I know it’s all over the place. It is hard for me to write this in an orderly fashion as I’ve never publicly shared so much very personal and sensitive information about me before.
Some people already know but this is about @sherwood_red or “Red”. He was previously known as SherwoodLive and under a different first name during most of the time in this writing. This will about my experience with him, what I went through during our time together, and what came of it afterwards. I will only be referring to him as “he or him” during this writing as typing either of his names makes me really uncomfortable.
It’s probably best to start from the beginning then. I’ll mention now that there are some gaps in my memory. It is very difficult for me to try and remember every single thing that happened to me over the like 6 years this all lasted. The earliest thing I remember was in late 2013 or early 2014 (Honestly can’t remember now), which was when we got together. He approached me over Skype and almost immediately asked me out without me knowing a single thing about him or even knowing me. I had been told beforehand by others not to get involved with him, as previous relationships he had went awfully wrong, but unfortunately I didn’t listen. I initially rejected him but he bothered me for the next few days until I accepted, as he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. I figured I’d just give it a try due to the fact that I had never experienced a relationship before. So in the beginning it was fairly normal and a month or so maybe went by without problem. We got to know each other a bit and all was well. But sometime after that, things started to happen. Only I never realized it being like that as I was only 13 or 14 (He is a year older than I am, making him 14 or 15 at the time) then. I know the first issues was being pushy over being on video, sending pictures, talking to people, and my accounts that I owned on various sites. He had me give him my passwords to any accounts I used pretty early on and had me stop talking to any of my friends at all. He’d often check into my accounts to make sure I wasn’t talking to anyone too. I eventually got over it and figured it was normal to not talk to people when you were in a relationship (I was homeschooled the majority of my life and therefore had very little social knowledge at all) and so I went along with it to make him happy. All is well until more problems happened. He started to slowly get kind of aggressive with me. If I didn’t want to talk or couldn’t, he’d threaten me with suicide. If I didn’t want to play a game with him or couldn’t, same thing. Anything I couldn’t or didn’t want to do, I was met with the same or similar threats. Suicide. Either that or threatening to leave me, block me, etc. Sometimes he’d even “punish” me by “forgetting” about me for a day or longer until I’ve learned my lesson.
Obviously by this point I was already incredibly dependent on him and so I felt like I had no choice. I had no one else but him during this time especially considering I was going through abuse/family problems at home as well. This and I felt bad for him as well. He made me feel like his life was much worse and much much more important than my own. By this time he had me truly believing he was the only person I could trust, the only one who was here for me. No matter how bad things were or how mean he was to me, he was all I had. And I believed this for a long, long time. And he took advantage of that completely. Somewhere along the line, he started talking with different girls. By this I mean in a sexual matter, mostly. Sometimes he’d tell me about it and I really couldn’t say anything about it and just accept the fact that it happened. If it made me upset, he’d throw a fit about me not accepting what he wants and such. This was also around the same time where he decided I had to be bisexual to satisfy him. Like sexualizing it as a fantasy that had to happen and so he forced me to tell him I was when I was actually not. Sometime after this and around one of the times he decided to forget about me for a while, he decides he’s with someone else now. Just completely leaves and blocks me, while still staying on my account to leave painful messages saying “stay strong” and such. It really, really bothered me that he felt like he still had to monitor me even though he decided to leave me. And it hurt to be thrown away so easily. I had no idea what I was to do after that. A few weeks later, he decided to come back and beg for me to take him back. Unfortunately, I said yes due to how dependent I was on him. Though I was extremely wary afterwards, things were ok for a bit since he had to gain my trust again I guess . I don’t remember exactly where this bit came in on the timeline (Either before or after the previous event) but my only (female) friend at the time secretly messaged me. She added me to a group chat along with one her own close friends. They desperately were telling me that he called my friend and had her sit there and listen to him masturbate in the call and that he was cheating on me. I already knew he was cheating on me in other ways but I was entirely unaware of this and had no idea what to do. I tried helping her feel better and then we deleted every message so he wouldn’t see them when he looked through my account. We were unable to do anything about it at all. I’m unsure if it means anything but my friend was at least 11-12 at the time. Later on in 2016 she had let me know that it happened multiple times and made her incredibly uncomfortable but she felt obligated to say yes due to his relation with me and he took advantage of that. Regardless this makes her a victim of him as well.
I’m unsure of much after this point up until maybe mid-later 2015. He had started using discord and did not speak with me as much until night when he went to bed and even so we barely spoke. He purposely hid the fact that he had a discord from me for an unknown reason. I would assume it being because he did not like speaking with me as he told me that he didn’t many times. A lot of time later in January 2016, he finally allowed me to join his discord to “show me off“, as to him I was a trophy more than anything else at all. This was the both first time I had used it and first time in years being around other people. I typed in there frequently, eventually making some friends. One night, some decided to join a voice call (He was streaming at this time iirc) and I joined because I was feeling kind of lonely at the time. It was the happiest I had been in a while actually being able to talk to others. But during his stream, he messaged me. He threatened and accused me. He said I was cheating on him and called me names for being in the call with other people. I quickly left while he continued to threaten me in dms, still streaming. He told me he’d leave me if I ever did it again and that I was only allowed to do so if he was there or told me to. So after that I continued to carefully chat with others, avoiding the vc unless he allowed or made me join. This fits in sometime after that but he started talking with this much older (adult) girl in which where he and her both did sexual acts in the call and had me sit there to attend. It made me really uncomfortable but I tried acting like it didn’t so he wouldn’t get mad at me. At one point he told me I shouldn’t bother joining anymore because it makes it awkward for him. That’s about all I’d like to remember from that, I hope you can understand.
The next thing I remember is some people who had got in contact with me. What prompted this was that in a call one time he was bragging to them and had said he could "make his bitch Karen do whatever he wanted, when he wanted". This obviously prompted a lot of suspicion and disgust. And do then a server named “TCon” was created. The people in this server were mainly suspicious fans, people who were banned for no reason, people screwed over by him or victims. And it was a pretty large server at that. They tried to defend and expose my situation while also voicing their own problems with him but unfortunately it was only met in harassment towards us from him and his fans. They admittedly did a lot of things to him, things that I had no part in, and I apologize for that. The first time I tried to leave him, he begged me not to. He made me feel really bad and so I tried to fix it. I had asked to be allowed to speak with others again. He reluctantly agreed. Throughout this time, he very clearly let me know he wasn’t happy with it. I tried explaining how I wanted things to be equal between us so we could both be happy. But he told me the only thing that would make him happy was controlling me. After that I made my final decision to leave him for good. But when I finally left him, he was trying to make me stay friends with him. He was also trying to get me to do sexual things for him and talking inappropriately about himself in an attempt to further use and manipulate me. It quickly made me uncomfortable and I stopped talking to him at all. This made him extremely mad and caused a lot of harassment to happen. After I had made an attempt to share what happened on Twitter (it’s since been deleted) and was completely shut down by him and his fans, the group kind of stopped. I had explained how no matter what we do, he will do anything to silence me and that I can’t do it anymore. He was contacting my family, threatening and actually following through with sharing private things about me, and more and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So for a while that is how it was and the group disbanded. But even today I am very thankful to them for helping me get away from the situation regardless of what had conspired because of them. Without them, I could still be in that situation today. Between then and a few years he had contacted me to where I have either ignored or tried to make something up to get him to stop (messages such as wishing me a happy birthday, etc).
I’ll skip to 2019 for now. In 2019, a new group which seemed to be his old friend group began sharing our old documents and such about him. We got involved due to not knowing who these people were and didn’t like my info (screenshots of chats and more) being shared without my permission. This was not to help him like he believed but rather me. Though admittedly I played along with that and talked because I am afraid of him still and was unsure what would happen if I didn’t. After that happened he had began to message me quite a bit. He was telling me how unfair it is to him if I tell people what he did to me. And trying to make me promise I won’t tell anyone anymore. Even going as far as comparing the situation to how “rape victims don’t expose the people who did it” meaning I shouldn’t either. This was a huge insult to me and frustrated me much more than I already was (hence where we are now). I don’t really know how you can go to the person you manipulated, used, and abused for years and tell them “it’s unfair to me if you tell people and it ruins my life” after everything. I finally got him to stop messaging me after being stressed out due to my house catching on fire and telling him I wanted to be left alone.
I’m not at all trying to beg for attention or support or anything. I know I’m not going to get it. I just feel like it’s fair that I am finally allowed to explain my experience and how it made me feel. As for the damage he inflicted on me, I can explain since I apparently have to have a reason for feeling this way according to certain people. Before we got together I was an extremely different person. While I was going through abuse at home, I would say I was still fairly ok. During the relationship I developed many issues such as depression, general and social anxiety, sudden mood swings, low self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts and behavior. Other things would be how I always blame myself now due to constantly being blamed for every little thing. Even if I didn’t even do anything, it’s all my fault anyways. Or how I absolutely don’t believe anything nice anyone says to me. Or how I am absolutely terrified of people. All of these things, have quite honestly ruined my life. I am not the person I used to be. I was happy and I had hope and a future in mind. But I no longer have that hope. I wanted to draw or at least be an artist of sorts but I don’t have the will or motivation to do it anymore. I find it near impossible to work due to how difficult it is for me to be around and act towards people (and due to several medical problems that happened more recent, unrelated, that make it that much harder), I am too afraid to learn how to drive due to how bad my anxiety gets, and just leaving my house can be painful to me. It completely drains me. Everyday I feel like this. It makes just plain being alive hard for me at times. And I get it, people will continue to tell me “he’s changed”, “he doesn’t do that anymore”, etc. But you don’t understand how that means nothing to me. At all. Whether it’s or he has or hasn’t changed, I will never be able to forget what he did to me and how much it hurt me. As for the problems that developed because of him? They will stay with me for as long as I live. Though I may recover a bit over time, I will never fully recover from my illnesses as I cannot forget my trauma. So before you tell me to get over it or feel bad for him because I spoke up, try thinking about how I feel for once. Think about how much I’ve been suffering and how the harassment I receive makes me feel. Why do you feel the need to harass me for my feelings? Why do I have to feel bad because he caused me trauma? How is that my fault? Put yourself in my place and maybe you can understand what it really feels like for me.
I’ll end this by saying, I’m not trying to “cancel” him or whatever I just thought it was about time I get to talk about me for once. I’ve never been able to make a full statement about my experience, as I’ve always been silenced. There’s a some stuff I left out such as the typical threats and name calling I went through daily that has already been shared in screenshots from others. But I’m honestly happy enough if I can help others be aware of it. Not just him but just to be aware of what people can do to you and the consequences of not knowing how to help yourself if it happens. Please be careful of how you interact with others, especially if they show red flags or if you just don’t know them at all. Especially if you are young and as vulnerable as I was.
Thank you for reading.
As a side note: Though the main one, I am not the only victim and there are many others who have had experiences with him as well, but it is not my place to tell their story for them.