Zoe Quinn image via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Recently, I reported on the tragic death of Alec Holowka, a troubled game developer who killed himself after Zoe Quinn made allegations about him on Twitter. My initial articles [1] and [2] covered the weaknesses in her story and the false claims of corroboration by journalists and Holowka’s despicable former business partner Scott Benson. Since then, a site called the Post Millennial has disproven at least two of her allegations based on her tweets (archive). Some have questioned the veracity of the screenshots on the Post Millennial, but I have an independent source with access to Zoe’s Twitter and have confirmed these tweets are still there and have seen them with my own eyes. Below I even include some tweets not in the Post Millennial’s article. It is their scoop, but I can totally confirm and expand on it. My source still has access so anyone with an interest in searching her tweets please mail me, contact per the ‘Tip Us Off’ page.

The Claim – ‘physically confined’

In the post below, Zoe Quinn claimed that –

• she agreed to visit Alec Holowka for two weeks only
• Holowka promised to buy her a ticket back after two weeks, but reneged
• she was physically confined to his apartment

Zoe Quinn’s allegations, now proven to be contradicted by her own words.

In fact, her tweets below prove that –

• the original timespan of the trip was unspecified (she wrote, ‘??? weeks’) and this disproves the claim it was set at two weeks (and the associated claim Alec promised to buy her return ticket)
• She repeatedly went out, even after the first two weeks during the period of alleged confinement

Continue reading →

Engadget Senior Editor Jess Conditt. Her vile and uncritical coverage of Zoe Quinn’s unproven allegations burdens her with moral culpability for Alec Holowka’s unimaginable suffering and the death of this vulnerable, tragic and disabled man.

Speaking ill of the dead has always been thought of as wrong. A thing inherently bad and a sign of poor character. So it is unsurprising that the despicable Scott Benson and Jess Conditt have been doing that to Alec Holowka in a desperate and futile attempt to salvage their ruined reputations.

Alec Holowka was a successful game developer who tragically suffered from mental illness. Despite his disabilities, he had made a success of his life until it was cruelly taken away from him by Zoe Quinn. Quinn is a controversial figure in the gaming industry. In 2014 a former boyfriend called Eron Gjoni accused her of abuse including various kinds of sexual misconduct. Another man, Wolf Wozniak, bravely came forward and accused her of sexual harassment.

Quinn applied for a restraining order against Gjoni which was granted. However when he appealed, backed by donations from the community she applied to have the order vacated and records of it expunged rather than face him in court as I reported in my article, ‘Epic Gjoni Win‘. She did not want the substance of their dispute argued.

As my previous article sets out, Quinn is presently under pressure to explain how she spent $85,000 she took in a Kickstarter campaign for a game she has yet to release. It was due in 2017. As a key anniversary approached she came out on Twitter to accuse Holowka of imprisonment, sexual assault by penetration and emotional abuse. Left wing media including the horrific Jess Conditt piled on, ignoring Quinn’s history, court failure and financial pressure. Holowka’s so-called friends at the gaming cooperative Night in the Woods cut ties, claiming that they had “[…] corroborated just about all of it […]” (archive). So suddenly Alec became a pariah, under attack from all sides by Quinn’s unthinking, thuggish followers on Twitter.

Tragically, Holowka killed himself and of course, as I pointed out in my last article, Benson’s claims of corroboration could not possibly be true. The reason? Zoe herself had admitted there were no witnesses. She said that Holowka acted “normal” when other people were arround. The awful cravenness of Holowka’s decision to sever ties with a colleague and his misleading statements about the controversy no doubt contributed to Alec’s decision to end his life.

Now however, Benson has gone further. In a lengthy, near ten-thousand-word Medium post (archive) he sets out his alleged experience with Alec. He posted a link on Twitter, retweeted by Conditt. It is a sickening and, in this context, heinously misleading tarring of his friend’s memory. The friend he betrayed.

Continue reading →

On August 31st Alec Holowka died. It is believed this vulnerable and mentally ill man took his own life after allegations of abuse were made about him on Twitter and Instagram by ‘game’ ‘developer’ Zoe Quinn, causing him to be dismissed from his job and targeted by a mob of Twitter vigilantes. The unproven accusations against him have been given enough oxygen – this article is the first in a series forensically analysing Quinn’s allegations, her unintentional and damning admissions and the wrongdoing of those reporters who irresponsibly reported on the matter. I begin with Engadget / Verizon’s Jess Conditt and her editor Dana Wollman. Credit is also due to Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan and his boss Verizon Inc CEO Hans Vestberg. In my view Jess Conditt and Dana Wollman, whilst legally innocent of murder, are morally guilty of his death. They are abusers who contributed to the vigilante mob that drove him to his death, whilst Vestberg and Gowrappan have yet to take action to condemn them.

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon, leads a company tainted by the blood of tragic Alec Holowka. Will he show leadership and make things right?

I am a UK law blogger who has passed the solicitor’s (attorney’s) exams called the LL.M LPC. I have not sought to practice as a lawyer, my day job being Director of an IT company, but I have nearly 10 years experience helping people in court, only ever pro-bono as a McKenzie Friend. In the reported case Re TL EWCOP 1 [2017] I was praised by Mr Justice Baker for my work in a case in which a man known as PL had been exonerated of abuse, a restraining order lifted and had contact reinstated with his disabled daughter. Recently I helped former MP John Hemming win two libel cases and in a third he has obtained a substantial costs order against a woman called Esther Baker who wrongly accused him of cult rape. The costs order and resulting bankruptcy petition against Baker are here. I know a lot about challenging false allegations.

It is well known that Zoe Quinn was accused of sexual impropriety by her former boyfriend Eron Gjoni here (archive) and of sexual harassment by Wolf Wozniak (archive). Gjoni accused her of obtaining his consent to unprotected sex by deceitfully claiming she was faithful to him. Wozniak accused her of ‘harassment’ although to be fair his allegations are regrettably unparticularised. One thing I hate more than people who take their accusations to social media and not the authorities is people who make vague allegations without details that can be proven or falsified.

After Holowka’s death Quinn has deleted her allegations against him and deactivated her Twitter account. However, Quinn’s Twitter allegations have been collected in this archive whilst her Instagram allegations have been collected here. A point that leapt out at me from Quinn’s allegations that has not been picked up elsewhere is that if we believe her evidence there are at least two more men, unconnected men, who have made allegations against her of sexual wrongdoing. Four unconnected accusers is a sign there is likely something to these allegations.

This is Frame 1 of Quinn’s Instagram allegations. If true, there is a man she had a sexual encounter with that she claims is sexual assault and he made contemporary complaints she had falsely accused him. This is a third unconnected accuser of Quinn. We will call him QaA (Quinn accuser ‘A’).

In this Instagram image Quinn identified a man with whom she had a sexual encounter. She frames it as assault but admits that he also accused her, contemporaneously not years later on social media, of making false allegations. We will call him QaA (Quinn accuser ‘A’). If we accept her account that he exists, he is the third unconnected male to make allegations of abuse against Quinn.

Continue reading →