Dr Disrespect knowingly sent explicit messages to minor, says ex-Twitch employee


Four years later Popular gamer and streaming star Dr Disrespect, 42, has been banned from Twitch for undisclosed reasons. Rumors surfaced this week that he used the Amazon-owned platform’s direct messaging feature to send sexually explicit messages to a minor. Now, the internal response to those alleged conversations, which have long been the subject of rumor and speculation, is finally being revealed.

In June 2020, there was a #MeToo reckoning within the gaming community, with dozens of people in the industry coming forward with over 70 allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against high-profile streamers, esports broadcasters, and game developers. Twitch responded to the outcry on June 21, 2020, vowing to take strong and immediate action against credible allegations against its creators. “We take allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct extremely seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We are actively investigating accounts involving Twitch-affiliated streamers and will work with law enforcement as appropriate.”

Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, a flamboyant gaming personality and one of the most popular creators on Twitch, with 4 million followers at the time, was permanently banned from the platform five days later. Known for playing battle royale-style shooter games as a sort of alpha jockey sporting a thick mustache and mullet wig, he had signed a large multi-year contract with the company in March of that year. Commenting on his lifetime ban, Twitch only confirmed that he had violated the community guidelines. Shortly after, Discord released it from its partner program, which is reserved for the most active and popular server communities. Beahm later sued Twitch for financial losses and reputational damage, and reached a settlement with the company in 2022. Neither party has admitted wrongdoing, and the details of this legal agreement remain unclear.

Meanwhile, the cause of the ban remained a mystery, sparking years of innuendo, conspiracy theories, and questions about why neither Twitch nor gaming journalists had been able to reveal the nature of Beahm’s violation. (Full disclosure: The lead author of this article, Rod Breslau, first learned of the reason for Beahm’s ban from credible sources in June 2020, but chose not to discuss it at that time due to the extreme sensitivity of the subject.)

The rumors reached a fever pitch on Friday, when former Twitch employee Cody Conners — without naming Beahm — tweeted what many interpreted as an explanation for why he was banned. Beahm denied any wrongdoing in a tweet the next day. “I did nothing wrong, this has all been looked into and fixed, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing found,” he wrote. But after independently reviewing Twitch’s internal communications and interviewing a source with knowledge of the situation, Rolling stone learned that Beahm was kicked off the platform in 2020 for allegedly sexting a minor via a since-discontinued messaging feature called Whispers, even after learning she was underage. He also reportedly questioned her plans to attend TwitchCon, the company’s biannual gaming convention.

On Monday, Beahm was fired from Midnight Society, the game studio he co-founded, which said it investigated the allegations against him after learning of them the night of Conners’ cryptic tweet. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.) Then, on Tuesday, a report from EdgeParish of Ash and BloombergCecilia D’Anastasio matched the details of Beahm’s case with Conners’ account. Three sources confirmed Bloomberg Beahm had been kicked off the site for direct messaging a minor containing sexually explicit details. Two of these sources also confirmed that Beahm had asked her about her plans for the upcoming TwitchCon.

Beahm, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, took to Twitter again to defend himself, this time with a longer statement in which he admitted to “having mutual conversations with a minor which sometimes leaned too far in the direction of being inappropriate. (The tweet’s edit history shows that Beahm had edited the tweet after posting it to remove the word “minor”, replacing it with “individual”, although once readers noticed this change, the word “minor” reappeared.)

“Nothing illegal happened, no photos were shared, no crime was committed, I never even met the individual,” Beahm said. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with Twitch and that case was settled… But trust me when I say this… to all my haters who live and breathe (sic) social media with no real-life experience, I don’t give a shit about you. They want me gone… yeah, fuck it, that’s true.” (Beahm did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)

A former Twitch trust and safety employee, who worked for the platform at the time Beahm was banned and has direct knowledge of the matter, confirmed to rolling stone that Beahm continued to send sexually graphic messages to a minor he knew was underage. The former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his career, also said that crucial elements of Beahm’s latest defensive tweet were inaccurate.

“I remember that Dr. Disrespect was informed by the individual that they were minors during the conversation, after which he indicated that it was not a problem and continued,” says the former employee. “There was no confusion. The messages sent after this was acknowledged were no less explicit and sexually explicit in nature than before, and I think more than the categorization of “leaning too much in the direction of being inappropriate” might indicate that.

The former Twitch employee also provided Rolling stone A more detailed account of internal conversations on Twitch following the reporting of Beahm’s messages and his subsequent ban. They say details of the Beahm case are coming to light because of Conners’ explosive tweet last week. “Cody definitely made things happen. I and many of my former colleagues are only comfortable speaking now because of this. Our priority is always the safety of the (alleged) victim and keeping their identity secret,” they said.

As some of its streamers faced a flood of sexual misconduct allegations in June 2020, Twitch created an incident response team named “Gold Sparrow” to develop a process to investigate and take action on reports as a unit, the former employee said. “We wanted to be able to handle growing investigations faster and with more resources while providing as much support to victims as possible,” says the former employee. (Twitch did not provide comment at the time of publication.)

When the first report of Beahm’s alleged inappropriate messages emerged in 2020, an investigation began. “After viewing the content of the Whisper conversation, it quickly became clear that the conduct was serious and that Twitch needed to take action,” the former employee said. “The decision to permanently terminate Beahm was relatively quick, due to the seriousness of the behavior.”

Twitch cannot and will not make the alleged messages public, the former employee says, because doing so “not only endangers the victim and law enforcement investigations.”

In early 2021, Twitch’s Trust and Safety team created OSIT, an investigation team for reports of off-site misconduct by creators. At the time, the company described the initiative as a direct response to “allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced in the gaming industry over the summer.” In assessing those allegations, the company said it “realized that our current policy on off-site misconduct was not clear enough.” Among the alleged off-site behaviors it committed to investigating was child sexual exploitation, including child grooming.

Following Beahm’s ban from Twitch and time away from the spotlight, he announced a return to streaming on YouTube in August 2020. But while he was free to use both that platform and Facebook Gaming, neither offered him an exclusive partnership. Her lack of a streaming contract was notable for an industry celebrity at a time when other streamers like Valkyrae, Ludwig Ahgren, and TimTheTatman were signing multi-year, seven-figure deals.

Google’s former global head of YouTube gaming partnerships, Ryan Wyatt, confirmed rolling stone that Beahm was not offered a contract due to discussions about the circumstances of his Twitch ban. He claims that a Twitch employee and journalists investigating the incident told YouTube employees that the messages were inappropriate and were directed at a minor.

“The unfortunate part of this is that there were so many rumors circulating in the industry, including the rumor that a minor was involved,” he says. “But no one provided any first-hand evidence, and because of those rumors, there was no reason to consider reaching a settlement with[Beahm]and the lack of evidence means you can’t take action if there was a violation[of the terms of service]. It got even more confusing when Twitch reached a settlement and effectively said ‘no wrongdoing,’ which caused everyone in the industry to dismiss the rumors, but even so, there was never any reason to reach a settlement with him after that ban.”

Tendency

A spokesperson for CAA, Beahm’s talent agency since signing in 2019, told Rolling Stone that he is no longer a client and has not been for some time. Several high-profile streamers, including Kai Cenat, Codemiko, and Valkyrae, have condemned Beahm in recent days. The San Francisco 49ers, for whom he had sometimes played a promotional role, announced cutting ties with him, while the video game franchise NBA 2K said this would remove his character from the series.

“I’m still humbled by that experience,” says the former Twitch employee, who was at the company when it mobilized to address reports of misconduct by Beahm and others in the summer of 2020. “The courage of the victims who spoke out and the commitment of my colleagues to do what was necessary to help them. I hope we’re all on the right track now.”





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