Port-Mortem (for now)
I will never declare Roadkill officially gone. They go through phases of harassment and will likely return in the future. But I discovered something recently that may have contributed to the recent silence, and I remembered I wanted to finally give a report on what happened with the police now that some time has passed.
Email Recycling
It used to be that if you deleted a tumblr account, you could just re-create one with the same email address. I'm not sure when this changed, but you can't anymore.
Without getting into the nitty gritty of my personal life, I'll just say I was going through some stuff in the last few months, and I'd been trying to run a very niche blog of an adult nature as a sort of exposure therapy for something I struggle with. I'd panic, delete the account, recover, and try to recreate it. Through several cycles, I was able to use the same email, until recently. As frustrating as it was for me, I realized this was something they should have done ages ago to mitigate spam and harassment accounts. There are workarounds, of course, but it's nowhere near as easy as recycling the same address over and over.
I'm pretty sure that and getting spooked by the police is why we've enjoyed silence recently.
Police Action
I didn't want to blast what the police were doing when they were likely looking at my blog, and I'd hoped to hear back from the officer I spoke with on the matter, but he never contacted me after that day.
Before I even started working on my report, an anon had sent me The Suspect's legal name while trying to get me to click on a facebook link. I didn't click the link, of course, but I did verify the name was correct.
The call itself was mostly me trying to convince the guy that I wasn't overreacting to online drama, that this person was causing serious harm and wasn't just a random troll trying to upset people for laughs. That it was intentional and targeted harassment that had been going on for over a year.
I genuinely tried to present the case without pointing to The Suspect directly. After all, my evidence is, in the eyes of the law, circumstantial at best. So I tried to present it as factual as I could. A friend of mine was being harassed following an incident with a specific person, and because I was associated with my friend, the harassment was being aimed at me as well.
Unfortunately, the officer tried to say that I should just change my username and ignore the harassment, assuming my responses were me being upset and feeding into what the person wanted. But I kept pushing that no, this wasn't that kind of harassment. But I couldn't avoid bringing The Suspect into it, because his reaction to the harasser was the key to it all. Specifically, his filing of a police report against Jade.
I gave the only information I had about the suspect: his tumblr username, the city where he lived (which he'd posted about publicly), and the full name I'd been given. With this, he was able to get The Suspect's phone number and called him directly, which I absolutely did not want to happen but the officer just went ahead and did it.
The Suspect genuinely tried to tell the officer that I was the one harassing him. I outright laughed at that, and had to explain that I've never initiated contact with him, he's the one who's been contact me. But that was what prompted me to scrub his name from everything but the evidence document and refer to him only as The Suspect.
I hope the call from out of state police spooked him into finding different hobbies. But I've not looked in on him since then, but I choose to believe he finally moved on to more constructive things in his life.
Beware the Crybully
This was the thing I originally wanted to make a post about, and perhaps I'll make a more indepth one in the future. But for now, it's my conclusion.
Crybullies are difficult to deal with. They poke and poke and poke until you react negatively in any capacity then frame your reaction out of context to play the victim.
This is why The Suspect and Roadkill love to insist I'm the one harassing them, because I've responded aggressively and confrontationally to their bullshit and because I wouldn't let The Suspect play innocent in light of the evidence.
As important as it is to trust victims of abuse, it can't be done blindly. Don't base your assumptions of guilt or innocence on brief interactions or surface level details. If you're not involved with either party, it's okay to step back and reserve your judgement of innocence until you have more details. All you need to is sit back and observe for a bit. Get as much context as you can before jumping in.
And always be wary of the person making wild accusations without an ounce of proof. Or if their proof is questionable (such as a years-old screenshot). Anyone making accusations of bigotry without being able to point to a single statement made within the last few months should make anyone suspicious of the person making the claims.
