Twitch banned popular content creator Cryaotic from posting videos on its site Wednesday after allegations of grooming surfaced over the last few months, Dexerto reports.
Cryaotic, whose real name is Ryan Terry, is a prominent YouTuber who tells stories based on video games to an audience of over 2.6 million followers.
Over the past few months, people have accused the content creator of “grooming,” the process by which predators prepare teens and children for sexual abuse.
On June 17, Twitter user @LadyTiabeanie wrote that when she was 16 years old, she was a fan who became a friend. She said that she just wanted “an innocent friendship” with Terry, who was 22 years old at the time.
“I’m 25 now and what I want most of all is freedom,” she wrote. “I’ll never get the pieces of me that you took back but I can never replace them with something better if I’m holding on to the hurt you gave me.”
@LadyTiabeanie did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
A Reddit thread includes the timeline of accusations against Terry and his responses.
On June 20, Terry made a video addressing the accusations titled “Cry Talks: We stopped being genuine a long time ago.” In the 4-minute video, he apologized for cheating on his girlfriend with “people I didn’t realize were underaged in the first place.”
“I promise you I’m not that same fucking person anymore, and I resent that person who I was,” he said. “And I’m sorry that I was hiding who I was this whole time.”
In the description of the video, Terry wrote that he was never with someone underaged “on a physical level.”
“It was all online, but this does not diminish the act,” he wrote. “I just know this matters to those who are concerned.”
Terry, who did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment, said he was not asking for forgiveness.
“I just feel this needed to be said before I could finally move on with my life,” he wrote. “As well as so many others.”
On Twitter, Terry wrote that it was “never the younger person’s fault.”
In an email to the Daily Dot, a Twitch spokesperson stated that the platform does not comment on individual cases but that the company has the right to “suspend any account for conduct that we determine to be inappropriate, harmful, or puts our community at risk.”
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H/T Dexerto