Firstly, I would like to say thank you to all the people that have come forward about their experiences with abuse. It’s because of these incredible and strong-willed individuals that I have managed to build up the courage to speak about my own experiences. I have nothing but respect for these people, and I really hope that one day they can find the closure that they deserve.
I met Luke (Mr Bug) in 2017 on OSRS – at this time, I was 17. I joined his clan chat and discord, and quickly became involved in his community. Eventually he asked me to be one of his moderators for his CC and discord, which I obviously said yes to. I took the role pretty seriously because I saw Luke as a good friend, and I wanted the community to be an inviting place for everyone. We often chatted in group calls and I would say we were friends at that point. On December 26th, 2017, I was talking in one of these routine discord calls and Luke asked people what they received for Christmas. I had him on snapchat and I’m pretty sure we had a group chat on snapchat with a bunch of close friends. I sent him a picture of some fairy lights which I had gotten for Christmas. This is when Luke began to flirt with me on Snapchat. At first, I didn’t think he was being serious, and I didn’t even think it was him on his account. This is because at the time, Luke was in a relationship. I was also in a relationship with my now ex boyfriend, and Luke knew this. Over the next few days, Luke would beg me for nude pictures of myself. I pointed out to him several times that we were both in relationships. He said it was fine, he said his girlfriend knew and that it was basically the equivalent of me being a cam girl. I was 17. I do not have screenshots of our chats because all of these were on snapchat and snapchat will tell the other person that they have screenshotted, however I do have screenshots of discord conversations afterwards where I am discussing the situation with friends. I also have screenshots of Luke somewhat ‘apologising’ (though not really) for what he had done. I told his girlfriend what he had done, and in the background of the call we could hear him laughing.
For whatever reason, I decided to stay friends with him. Trust me, I regret it and I will always hate myself for staying friends with him, but I was in a bad place at the time. I’ve been dealing with pretty severe depression for a long time now, and only as of last April have I been prescribed medication for it, so the years I was friends with Luke were the worst years for me mentally.
Luke is a very manipulative person, and I’m sure that anyone who has been friends with him or has spoken to him will have noticed this trait. He knew how poor my mental health was and I feel as though he used this to his advantage, as he was very very good at making me feel as though I was the one to blame for everything that had happened. And I apologised for it. I apologised for what he had done to me, in person, face to face, at Runefest 2018.
After Runefest we stayed in contact, and I convinced myself that we could work on our friendship and become good friends again. After I had broken up with my ex, I was quite lonely and my mental health left me feeling very isolated. At this point I think I had fallen for Luke on a more emotional level because of how dependant I was, and how scared I was of being alone again. He took advantage of this. Not only was my depression at the time incredibly bad, but I was also dealing with physical problems. The first was a problem with my breast which shared symptoms of cancer (it ended up being completely fine). The next was a problem with my uterus which is something I have since had surgery on. With these two factors in mind, combined with my severe depression, you can probably imagine how bad of a place I was in at the time. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, so thinking I’m going to die whilst being severely depressed isn’t a good combo.
Luke and I met up some time late in November. I live in Southampton, so instead of him driving to me he wanted to meet me halfway. He told me repeatedly that he lived in Oxford but wanted to meet me in some place called Littlehampton. If you look on a map, that isn’t in between Soton and Oxford. This left me questioning where he actually lived because it certainly wasn’t Oxford, and I was confused as to why he would lie to me like that if he wanted to build our friendship again. During this day out, we sat in his car and I told Luke about everything regarding my mental health. I told him how terrible I was doing mentally, how terrified I was about all my constant hospital trips and how I was convinced I might have breast cancer and how I wouldn’t be able to have kids in the future because of the problem with my uterus. While he seemed to show empathy at the time, when I look back to that day I strongly believe that he was just being nice so that I would calm down. After I had finished crying, we engaged in sexual acts. Afterwards it was the nicest he had ever been to me, however as soon as I got home, he returned to being an asshole. At the time I don’t think I regretted it because I was so badly mentally ill that I was genuinely incapable of feeling any kind of love towards people, or myself. Looking back now I wish I had never met him in the first place.
We met a second time at the start of December. This time he came to Southampton. The only reason he came to visit was not because he wanted to see a friend, but was because me and another friend had put some money together to buy him a new part for his PC. The part got sent to my address so that he didn’t have to give his out, and he would collect it from my place. I had a chat with him about a week before on voice call and he had said how he never got stuff for Christmas so I went out of my way to put a little gift together for him. It wasn’t much, just chocolate and a cactus – the joke being that he was a prick. After he had collected his computer part, we engaged in sexual stuff again and he just went off. I don’t even think he was there for 2 hours. I don’t think I ever really enjoyed any of the sexual stuff that went on between us. I was still incredibly depressed at this point and convinced that I was just incapable of feeling anything at all.
The third and last time we met was on my 19th birthday – March 1st, 2019. I invited Luke to come over to mine to celebrate my birthday with friends. The plan was to go to Wetherspoons and just hang out with my friends. I’m not a party person, I much prefer just going out and getting drunk at spoons with mates. He would have to stay over at mine because he would have to drive there, and he can’t drink and drive obviously. He arrived pretty early that day and was a dickhead from the get-go. He was aware that I had feelings for him, so he would talk about all the girls he was chatting to on tinder. This was pretty much the only thing he talked about the entire time he was there. He even asked if he could go off and meet a girl he had just matched with on the app when he was in my flat. In the evening we went to Wetherspoons (a big pub chain here in the UK). We went with 3 of my flatmates at the time, one of the girls’ boyfriends, and 3 other friends who met us there. My friends all hated him. He was an asshole towards them, and he would not engage in conversation. My friends were aware about my feelings towards him and I had spoken about him before, so they were expecting some nice guy to show up. Instead, what they got was an antisocial dude who was on his phone the entire night. He drank maybe 1-2 pints the whole night – keep this in mind. Because it was my birthday, me and my friends wanted to celebrate and have a nice night, so most of us, including myself, were pretty drunk. There is a picture of me and Luke where Luke looks pretty miserable and clearly doesn’t want to be there, and there’s a mountain of shots in front of me. You can tell I was already pretty wasted in the picture, but I also drank that mountain of shots. I feel as though I was most likely drinking more than usual because of my depression at the time. It was nice to drink and forget about how awful my mental health was, even if it was temporary. At some point in the night, something was said (although I can’t remember exactly what) and I went to the bathroom and cried, followed by my friends who were very loving. It was at this point that they were all telling me how much of a dick they though Luke was. One of the girls even disliked him so much that she begged me to come sleep at her place, because she didn’t trust Luke. I really wish I had taken her up on her offer.
At around 11pm ish we all went home. Luke was still being a dick, and I was still very drunk. Luke at this point was sober, because he had only had his 1-2 pints in the 4 hours we were at Spoons. I don’t remember a lot of what happened when we got to my room, but I do remember sitting in the shower and crying my eyes out. I sat on my shower floor and cried for a very long time. I came out the shower, and Luke was sat on my bed and offered me a hug, which I accepted. This was the first time he had been somewhat nice to me throughout the whole visit. I don’t remember every event after this, but I do remember Luke holding my head down whilst I gave him oral sex. I was too drunk to remember half of that night, and I was too drunk to consent. After that, I think he just went to bed. I went to the bathroom not long after and vomited. I don’t even think he even bothered to ask if I was okay whilst I was throwing up. He tried making me sleep on the floor after that because he didn’t want to share a bed with me, but my drunk self felt awful and the last thing I wanted was to sleep on the floor without a blanket so I crawled in to my bed and we slept top and tail.
The next day I was very hung over and I felt like shit. For whatever reason, I told him I wanted to get lunch at my favourite restaurant before he left. As usual, he was a dick the entire time we were there. Very rude and didn’t care about my state at all. I paid for us, and we started walking to his car. The whole walk, he made me feel like I was to blame. He made me apologise for everything that happened, and I did. We got to his car, he went home, I went into my room and cried myself to sleep.
Luke didn’t contact me for a while after that. After everything that happened, I sort of broke down. I became extremely suicidal and wasn’t sure how to cope anymore. I started seeing a counsellor at my university which helped, and I started taking weekly singing lessons to help me take my mind off things. My counsellor basically begged me to go to the doctors to get anti-depressants which is what I did. I was prescribed Sertraline, and anyone who has taken this drug will know how hit and miss it can be. For some people it works wonders, for others like me, it can be life threatening. Three weeks later I sat in my room crying, preparing to take my own life. I planned to overdose because I had a lot of left over medication from previous prescriptions. At the same time I was talking to a friend, who supported me through it all and convinced me to call a suicide hotline. If it wasn’t for him I really don’t think I’d be here today. I won’t name him but if he’s reading then thank you for everything.
After this I changed my medication, and lift started to get better again. I met a new guy who is now my boyfriend and we have been happily together ever since. I made new friends, including all of the incredible people I met at Runefest 2019. I even started MiniScape in October of that year. I was getting better but I was still suffering from what happened to me. Luke convinced me he lived in Oxford, so any time I passed that station on my way to and from home, I would go into a state of shock and cry, thinking he’d get on the train or something. I was terrified of men who were tall or even remotely looked like him. I couldn’t even listen to some songs because they were songs that Luke had previously sent me and the songs scared me.
In December of 2019, Luke messaged me for the last time. He tried to message me asking me to be friends again, which is something he does with all the girls he knows. I told him no. He asked why. I told him how I felt about what he did. This is when he went on some crazy rant about how I was lying and how he was the victim. He acknowledged that I was drunk and that he was not, and that I was too drunk to consent to anything. I screenshotted everything and threatened to go to the police. His nasty ramblings stopped and turned into some long victim blaming apology. This was the last time he had messaged me.
I am very thankful that he has stopped messaging me, but that doesn’t stop the trauma that I have gone through. Every single day, I get flash backs to what happened. I don’t think I will ever be able to truly describe how badly this has all affected me, but it has definitely affected me emotionally and mentally. The worst part is, I know I wasn’t the first girl Luke took advantage of. I also know I was not the last girl Luke took advantage of.
Me threatening to go to the police was not an empty threat. I want to go to the police with the screenshots that I do have. I want to bring a form of justice and closure to me and all the girls he has taken advantage of.
During the 3 years I was in contact with him, I made a lot of amazing friends, and lost them all because I decided to stay friends with him. If those people are reading this then please know I am truly sorry and that you were right about him. I really wish I had listened to all the people that had warned me about him.
I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed out because there was a lot of it. If I wrote down every single thing he said and did, this post would turn into novel.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me. I understand I will probably get backlash from this, but people deserve to know the truth about the person they are calling their friend. I have listed an imgur album below with some of the screenshots, including the apology he sent to me. Not all the screenshots are there as there are a lot of them. At one point you can see that he clearly changes his tone and starts apologising – this is when he was threatened with police action. The screenshots are out of order, sorry about this. The ones with the white backgrounds are from when I spoke to him in December 2017. The OSRS chats are from 2018. The discord messages with the dark background are from December 2019.
Please note that he made an alt account on Discord to get in contact with me because I had decided to ban him from my sever.
https://imgur.com/a/iOwn5MX
