Things may be about to get very messy for pickup artist and most-hated-man-in-the-world candidate Roosh Valizadeh.
S. Jane Gari, the author of Losing the Dollhouse, a memoir dealing with emotional abuse, writes in a recent blog post that an Icelandic woman has come to her to tell her story of being raped by Roosh.
Up until this point, as Gari notes, Roosh has responded to accusations that he is a rapist — a conclusion many have come to by simply reading his own deeply creepy and unsettling accounts of his past sexual exploits — by proudly declaring that not a single woman has come forward to accuse him of rape.
“You would think that one girl would have come forward by now and say, ‘Roosh did it. He raped me,'” Gari reports Roosh as saying during his bizarre recent press coference. “Not one has come forward. Not one.’”
“Now she has,” Gari declares.
One of Roosh’s victims read my blog back in November and reached out to me, asking for my help in exposing him. She finally agreed to be interviewed after seeing how he continues to spout his poisonous, misogynist rhetoric with sickening bravado. I hope her courage will inspire other possible Roosh victims to come forward as well.
Here’s the story of the woman Gari calls “Susan” to protect her anonymity. (You can find more details on her blog.)
When Susan left a nightclub with her friends, Roosh, approached her on the street and insisted on walking her home. She asked him to leave her alone. Later, when she became separated from her friends, she noticed he was following her.
“You have a beautiful but sad walk. I know a great place to have a drink. You can join me. It will be fun,” he said.
Susan, Gari writes, told him several more times she didn’t want his supposed help, but he continued following her anyway.
When they reached Susan’s house, Gari continues, Roosh
asked politely if he could just use the toilet. Sleepy and still drunk from her night out, she acquiesced and let him in to use the bathroom.
Up until this point, Susan’s story matches one of the stories in Roosh’s book Bang Iceland almost exactly. The disappearance of Susan’s friends, which Roosh saw as an incredible bit of luck for him; Roosh following her home despite her clear and repeated protests; his insistence on coming in to use the bathroom — all of this is in Roosh’s own account.
It’s at this point that Roosh’s and Susan’s stories diverge wildly.
In Roosh’s version of events, she thanks him for walking him home, and after heating up some soup on the stove, joins Roosh on the couch
putting her legs over mine. Her wet feet were tiny and I compared them to my hands, which were a few inches larger. I went into horny creep mode and started rubbing her legs while talking.
Yes, even in Roosh’s own account, he comes across as a creepy predator.
After a brief conversation, they start kissing; she gets up, pours herself a bowl of soup, then heads into her bedroom.
“I followed her,” Roosh writes.
It went so fast in her bedroom that even I felt weird. Clothes ripped off. “Do you have a condom?” Jam the dick inside. Barely any kissing. I was too drunk to feel anything and she was too drunk to produce much in the way of lubrication, so after five minutes we stopped having sex, if that’s what you want to call it, and lay on our backs. She fell asleep and started snoring.
The next morning, Roosh says, he got up and left while she lay there sleeping.
As Roosh tells the story, in other words, he had brief, bad sex with a woman who was so not into it she was bone dry, and so drunk she passed out shortly after he gave up. It’s not clear even from his own account whether she was lucid enough to give meaningful consent. (This, by the way, is NOT the Icelandic woman Roosh has said he had sex with even though “in America” she would have been considered too drunk to give consent; that story comes later in Roosh’s book.)
Susan’s account of what happened after Roosh emerged from her bathroom is even more troubling. As Gari tells the story, Roosh asked her if she was home alone. When she said yes,
he asked her to touch his penis. When she refused, Roosh grabbed her.
Susan started crying and said, “Why are you doing this? You’re crazy.”
He laughed and overpowered her with force, saying, “All girls like this. It’s every woman’s fantasy. You don’t even know what you’re saying. You’re drunk, but I like drunk girls.” And then, according to Susan, he raped her.
So which account is more plausible — Roosh’s story of drunken but consensual sex or Susan’s story of forcible rape? If the latter, is Roosh’s version of events a lie, or is it his attempt to convince not only his readers but himself that what happened was just bad sex, not rape?
It’s worth noting, as I did in a previous post, that Roosh has admitted elsewhere to using force to get his way during sex. In Bang Ukraine, for example, Roosh describes using “muscle” to hold a woman down after she told him she wanted to change positions when the two were having sex. “I refused and we argued,” he wrote.
She tried to squirm away while I was laying down my strokes so I had to use some muscle to prevent her from escaping. I was able to finish, but my orgasm was weak.
Afterwards I told her she was selfish and that she couldn’t call an audible so late in the game.
This, too, Roosh presents as perfectly consensual sex.
Even if Susan’s account of Roosh raping her is 100% true, it’s unlikely Roosh will ever be prosecuted for this alleged crime. “He’s an American and she lives in Iceland.,” Gari notes. “She feels she has no recourse.”
Gari ends her post by urging any woman who may have been victimized by Roosh to step forward as Susan has done.
As Gari is careful to point out, Susan’s allegations against Roosh “have not been brought formally, nor has he been found guilty of a crime in court.” And I should note as well that I have not spoken to Susan myself; I am simply relaying what Gari has written. You can draw your own conclusions from the story she tells. I know I have.
Or because they have empathy, some thing you never felt and never will you despicable out grown fecal bacteria.
When I was in Reykjavik last August, I saw an article in the Reykjavik Grapevine complaining about the bad behavior of some tourists, including men who ask for tips how to pick up Icelandic women, fetishize the local women and treat them without respect. Maybe Roosh V’s shitty book influenced some assholes out there. Which makes me sad because Iceland is a country that’s very dear to me.
I’m glad that some of Roosh’s misdeeds may come back to haunt him. I hope that woman is doing okay and that the MRAs never find her.
Jane Gari’s post has been making rounds in the manuresphere where its regulars declared “Susan’s” story a case of “false accusations” (because of course) and Roosh a victim (because of course).
Surprisingly, however, and entirely apart from Gari’s post, some white supremacists / Nazi wannabes are convinced that Roosh is indeed a rapist — and that yes, it is a bad thing; even though their main concern appears to be about the “oriental” looking man defiling white women:
http://www.donotlink.com/ia7q
It is disturbingly bizarre to find oneself agreeing with something neo-Nazis are saying.
By the way, the discussion under that post is notable for Matt Forney’s self-serving defense of Roosh. Matt, you see, identifies with the plight of the falsely accused, having experienced that fate himself — unfairly, unjustly, and with no merit whatsoever. The fact that he bragged about raping a woman on his blog should not be used against him and is no way a proof of any wrongdoing. If anything, he is the victim. As always.
I wondered if the news coverage would turn up a few stones, because his extensive travel seems pretty calculated in terms of obscuring his full identity and location, mobility and far-away-from-home similar to the excesses of sex tourism.
We may see more people come forward simply from being able to associate the name to his face.
Who knows how many of his “conquests” weren’t flat-out lies, but chances are he really did rape at least one women. It’s well-known in criminology that highly arrogant, violent people write about and virtually confess their crimes in a novel or short story, though they almost always try to pass it off as fiction. Many of those “stories” don’t get published, but there are quite a few that do.
I have to wonder, does Roosh in fact know anything about Russia and the countries close to it? I mean, if he’s claiming that he’s going to move to Russia, does he know what happens to people of noticeably Caucasian descent (that is, Armenian, Azeri, Georgian and even Persian descent) in Russia? You see, the war in Chechnya has caused quite a bit of racism against people from the Caucasus to rise up, even in the larger cities. So, if Roosh’s threat/promise to bugger off into Russia is true, it might not actually be as “fun” for him as he currently imagines.
On another note, I actually couldn’t read most of this post. I’m sorry, I’ll be in my angry dome for the foreseeable future.
@Epsilon
That’s fascinating. Do you know the authors and titles of any of these books or short stories?
@ kat
One of my clients was convicted because he couldn’t resist the urge to hide details of his crimes in his paintings.
Reading Susan’s account of what happened has left me feeling sick. It just reads so much more like the truth than anything Roosh has written. His writing always has clear embellishments to make himself sound more “alpha” to impress his fanboys.
In comparison, Susan’s words sound like what so many women have experienced, including myself and lots of my friends.
I seriously hope he’s scared right now. I also hope more women feel they are able to come forward and that his own books are used as evidence. I hope he’s stuck in a situation where he has to choose between saying his books are lies (and losing his fans) or saying they are true and going to prison. Fuck you, Roosh. You absolute scumbag.
@Kat:
I remember this case from the news:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/06/books.booksnews
There was also a dutch guy who murdered his wife and then wrote a book called “7 Ways to Murder Your Spouse” or something similar to that.
A couple of years ago I was followed home after a night out – he got on the bus, got off with me, walked down my street and then asked to use my bathroom. Please…go piss in a hedge, I ain’t lettin’ some random into my house.
But who knows, if I’d been drunker…
Maybe he came up with this ploy on his own, but maybe he picked it up out of some coercion manual like Roosh’s.
In ‘Susan’s’ case, I think it’s unlikely that anything will come of it legally. Would be nice if it did. In a way, his publication of his exploits (carefully written to be on the legal side…maybe) is his own defense. I can see him arguing that she simply read all the details from the book and he’d never seen her before in his life – that the book description was either a lie or a different woman. Yuck.
Oh, I just had my first Roosh rape fantasy. It goes like this: Roosh is extradited and convicted of rape in Iceland and serves time at Litla-Hraun, the country’s only high security facility.
I actually wish the media highlighted this ‘bathroom ruse’ stuff when discussing Roosh, not the ‘legalize rape’ thought experiments. It just goes back to the core PUA/Red Pill philosophy – women are things to be tricked and manipulated into sex. Yeah, ask to use the bathroom (because if they wouldn’t let a guy take a piss, they’re a bitch) then once you’re in the house – ooh, she let you in the house! She must be up for it, and even if she’s not, hey she let you in the house…!
Fucking creeps. Anyone who thinks this is okay has no right to expect decent treatment from anyone, period. In fact by your misuse of the ‘social contract’ you’ve put yourself outside it.
What Epsilon talks about kind of reminds me of a Reddit AMA from a few years ago, in which rapists openly discussed what they had done and why. It’s not the same thing as detailing one’s crimes via art, but it does relate to the impulse to share or confess for ego gratification. And to spin the narrative in such a way that puts themselves in a favorable light.
Just to be clear: the above link is to a Jezebel article about the thread and not the thread itself. But, fair warning, it does take quotes from the thread.
That same thread was also analyzed by the journal Psychology of Violence, which had interesting things to say about it. (Same warning as with the Jezebel article though.)
Those reddit articles bother me a lot. I just really hate how these guys act like it’s no big deal or like they weren’t in control, like it’s something that happened to them. I don’t know how to describe how it makes me feel.
So he found a girl he thought looked good, stalked her to her house when she told him to go away he ignored her, lied to gain entry, raped her and lied about it for a crappy book.
How does this person have any following at all?! I’m sorry I don’t even want to use his name. Like my bad uncle, this asshole is someone who doesn’t even deserve THAT respect. I hope they can prosecute him. He needs to be apart from people for OUR protection.
I think for legal reasons, people should be careful what they put here. Regardless of whether he is guilty of those specific things, what he has written is enough to prove him a loathsome individual, and people who take his advice are taking loathsome advice.
This man needs to be in jail and away from people. He is a dangerous sexual predator, and that can be deduced from his repulsive website or books alone. I have no doubt that this woman is one of many victims. It’s about time he got arrested.
In response to one specific point in this: to say she “was was so not into it she was bone dry” is irresponsible. I get what’s being said, but that’s the reverse of a false equivalency used by rapists. “Though in any other manner she was resisting or was unable to consent, her actually uncontrollable biological response was consent and meant she really did want it!” Or conversely that you gotta be “bone dry” to really mean no. Didn’t some reprehensible politician make that argument? Or am I just thinking of Todd Akin?
I’m amazed at how horrible his advice is. It really is just trying to find ways to force women into a situation where they can’t say no.
Just from a purely selfish level I really don’t see the appeal of that kind of sex. Don’t you want that other person to be enjoying it and into you? I don’t see the appeal of fucking someone who is just doing it out of fear.
I can’t even get it from an objectification angle, because even in that case I would still want to feel like I pleasured them. I’m straight, but I pretty much exclusively interact with men sexually (shocker). I treat my partners like walking life support systems for their dicks, but I still want to see them leave happy.
This is why he goes to other counties. Not because the women are ‘better than Americans’ (whatever that means) because he can take advantage, leave in the morning and is less likely to be found out cos the women don’t think they can do anything because he’s forigen and he’s gone.
I always read whtm at breakfast…I should really stop…-_-
Also the toilet thing is a big red flag. She was drunk so she probably missed and also very likely scared to say no. But I don’t know about other men but when I am drunk I find a place outside to pee. Not charming but I think it is more usual this way. it’s clearly just to get inside and is almost an admission that he had bad thoughts on his mind. Like a really bad version of ‘can I come in for coffee’. No normal man late at night drunk asks some random woman inside their house for the toilet. Mainly cos it s super creepy and will make her scared
I think I’ve mentioned before my mantra of “Don’t die of politeness”
Predatory men rely on the fact that most women are socially conditioned to not appear rude or impolite. It’s similar to the tactics sales people use, but with much riskier consequences.
Women will often comply with requests, such as using a lavatory, even if they feel very uncomfortable in doing so. Their intuition is reading the situation correctly but they still over ride that. Even if a woman expresses doubts then predators can move onto another tactic, ‘stereotyping’. (“Oh, didn’t realise you’re one of those ‘all men are rapists’ radical feminist types”). The woman will often then comply just to disprove the accusation.
For further details I’ll just do my usual plug for Gavin De Becker’s ‘Gift of Fear’
Crime is very low in Iceland so people probably don’t watch their backs as much as in other places, making it easier for Roosh types to manipulate their way into women’s homes.