Seeing that comment, and coming back to the site after a few months reminded me that Jay posted a website with a public response to this site a couple years ago. He never commented here, it’s just another site in the google results on a search for his name that contains his public statement about all his tom foolery.
Since there is a new report of him lying to people to protect himself I figured this would be a good time to break down the lies / half truths in that website response of his. Not going to link to it for obvious reasons.
I’m posting the meat of the piece here in bold with a gray highlight and will add in my notes throughout in italics.
This public statement is my response to a relentless attack orchestrated by two former friends designed to permanently ruin my personal and professional lives.
So relentless. I sometimes write blog posts about what people tell me is happening. But I get it. It’s tough for me too. I don’t want to spend any time thinking about him any more than he wants me to. But he’s out in the world causing harm and a record aught to exist.
This attack has lasted eight years and features several false and defamatory allegations characterizing me as a “groomer” and abuser of women.
He does have a history of turning professional relationships into sexual ones where he is in a position of authority, then later using that access gained in the sexual relationship to influence them to keep secrets or make coerced statements. I don’t know what you’d call that, but I call it grooming and emotional abuse. It’s all very well documented. He can put things “in quotes” to make them feel silly, but words mean things.
The allegations also involve unfounded and untrue conspiracy theories about my separation from Duke University. I have remained publicly silent in an attempt to move on with my career and not breathe further life into these baseless accusations.
I also didn’t draft a response to this for a couple years so as not to breath life into it. So, I can relate. But I felt it would be useful to help others see through his lies in case their mental and emotional health depend on it.
Unfortunately, given the continued efforts by these few individuals, I am compelled to provide anyone interested with my side of the story. My hope is that, with this statement publicly available, anyone who comes across the allegations of these individuals in the future will also consider what I have to say before making judgments about who I am as a person. All I seek is to be able to move forward in my life and career without being unfairly demonized as someone I am not.
And all I want is for him not to be in a position of power with vulnerable people given his track record of poor professional boundaries, lying and manipulation for self preservation.There are tons of professions that don’t involve working closely with vulnerable populations.
While the vast majority of what is being said about me by these in this smear campaign is baseless, speculative, and false,
It’s all true and backed by documentation available on this site.
the truth is that in December of 2017, I had an affair with one of my former students.
It was not just her that was involved with Jay at the time. There were others as well. So categorizing it as “an affair” is misleading.
The relationship lasted a few months, she was 20 years old at the time, and we ended on good terms. While the relationship was completely consensual (as publicly stated by the woman involved), it was also completely inappropriate.
No one ever accused him of sexual assault to my knowledge. Just abuse of power, grooming and blackmail. He lied about the relationship consistently until he was forced to admit it. It did not end on good terms. It ended with her saying what he needed to hear to leave her alone. To him, that’s “good terms”. And while, he does admit that the relationship was inappropriate, he doesn’t explain why.
I have already taken responsibility for my role in the relationship and have addressed my deep regrets with both the woman involved and my former wife. I am sincerely regretful of my actions during my final semester as a professor.
He’s admitted to only for what he was forced to admit and acting like it’s some powerful conceit. As far as I know, he’s not taken responsibility for anything. He’s just run away and changed his name.
That said, contrary to the allegations, I have not engaged in inappropriate relationships with any other students. The claim that this inappropriate relationship was one amongst many such relationships is not true
I don’t have evidence that he was engaged in other relationships with Duke students. But I do know that he was engaged in sexual relationships with employees at Little Green Pig and students in the classes he taught in Durham. I was in these classes with these students. I also performed alongside these players in performances he casted. So, he is using very misleading language. His own wife at the time sent an email to LGP about the consensual relationships he was having with players and students at LGP as part of them opening their marriage. But maybe he doesn’t consider them “students” because many also worked for him in the company.
and engineered by two people have been stalking me for nearly a decade.
No one is stalking anyone. Sometimes people send me things. They are concerned by what they see and they let me know. The information never comes from the same source twice.
The claim that any relationship that I was involved in was the product of grooming or abuse is utrue.
He is clearly choosing a targeted definition of grooming, and if that’s not what was happening with the Duke student, what did he even admit to as being inappropriate earlier in his statement? The age gap? Infidelity? Group sex? I don’t kink shame here. Love is love for consenting adults in balanced power dynamics.
Contrary to the accusations, I have neither blackmailed any of my former romantic partners, nor pressured or coerced any person I ever worked with to engage in sexual acts or relationships with me.
By qualifying that he didn’t blackmail or coerce them… “to engage in sexual acts or relationships” allows him to still have blackmailed or coerce them for other reasons, like redacting public statements, or keeping secrets. He also kind of admits that he was engaging in sexual relationships with employees here. He’s just saying that he didn’t coerce them into these relationships with blackmail. To his credit, I’ve never accused him of doing the very specific thing he’s saying he didn’t do. So, we agree!
But blackmail was absolutely happening, the text threads of his blackmail to the Duke student when she initially spoke out to get her to redact her comments were published by Duke Chronicle. I have seen other instances of him blackmailing this same student that are not published. This was just the one she was willing to share publicly when she spoke with Nadia.
Interestingly, while the article is live on the website, it has been removed from the google index. As a past SEO consultant, I know this is something that can be done through the Google Search Console by the site owner. The rest of their articles are being indexed just fine. Super interesting ethical line Duke is walking there with unflattering journalistic content.
As for the conspiracy theories surrounding my departure from Duke, all I can permissibly say is that they are not true and that is objectively provable.
The, no longer indexed by Google, Duke Cronicle article casts a clear and apparent shadow over his departure. That said, I’m sure he has a letter, with a reason, that isn’t all of this to make his statements true, but he can’t share it with us. His admission of permissible speech means that his departure involves some sort of NDA and it would be highly irregular for someone to have to sign an NDA for voluntarily quitting a job or being let go for simply not having published enough. In my experience running businesses for 20 years, NDAs only really happen when IP is involved or when you are paying for silence. And I don’t think the Duke Theatre Dept is spending a lot of time at the USPTO.
This campaign to destroy my career and life began in 2017 by a former friend and collaborator named Monica Byrne. I remained silent on social media, advised to submit, ignore her lies, and recognize her First Amendment rights to criticize me. I waited for the shaming to abate until it escalated in 2019 when, joined by another former friend named Adam Schultz, the two began emailing the venues where my company was scheduled to perform, informing them that I was a dangerous sexual predator.
Yes, after the initial FB post came out, I did contact Monkey’s Uncle to make sure they saw the FB post and the comments. I did ask them to reconsider hosting the show in an effort to pressure him to resign from LGP. I told him I was doing this and I asked him to resign before taking this step.
If all it took to destroy his career was telling people what he was doing, it wasn’t us doing the destroying. Sharing what we know is all we have ever done. We never told anyone that he was a dangerous sexual predator, that is language designed to allow him to say he didn’t do things we never accused him of instead of taking accountability for what he actually did. We just said that he was abusing his power and taking advantage of vulnerable people with no remorse or responsibility. From the google review, it appears that may still be the case.
These individuals, without any authorization or justification, have publicly shared my hacked e-mails including private content.
He’s just lying and being dramatic here. He doesn’t own any of the content that’s been shared. All the information shared publicly by Monica, myself, Duke administrators or the Student has only ever been in emails or texts that were obtained legally and voluntarily sent to us with consent by the owner of the correspondence. In the one instance where he asked me to stop posting his emails to me, I stopped posting his words.
I do know about a time that someone did send damming material to a group chat from his phone while they were physically with him. That private content exists and I have seen it, but it has never been shared with the general public. When that happened, it’s possible there was more damning information that was disseminated beyond the group chat thats he might be actually speaking to, but I haven’t seen it and I know nothing of it.
Renewing their attacks in 2023,
We didn’t “renew our attacks”. We found out that he was training to be a therapist for very vulnerable populations and got worried. So I made sure that there was a searchable archive of this information and it wasn’t hidden in a FB post. I resolved to manage and update the archive as a public service on my own, and for myself.
these two individuals have continued to attempt to ruin my life and have mobilized others to do the same at their direction by contacting my employers and university with threats and slander.
I did notify his school and the office he was interning with to make sure they had seen this information and someone notified the NC Psychology Board. So, there were a couple of us taking actions to share information with power structures that we felt should be aware of this information as a service to the community and we did ask community members to share their concerns as well. When these people and power structures did nothing with the information that we could see, we did nothing further.
And none of this is slander. He threatened to sue us, but the truth is legal defense for slander, so he never proceeded with a case. We even asked his lawyer for a single instance of slander in any of our writing so that we could remove it, and none was ever delivered.
Clearly, their objective is to render me unemployable, not to protect innocent victims. There are none and no one is in any danger from me.
Our objective is 100% to protect people. Based on that google review, it seems like it might have done at least a little bit of good in helping people to know who they are dealing with.
In Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed the author quotes the punitive judge Ted Poe: “The justice system in the West has a lot of problems, but at least there are rules. You have basic rights as the accused. You have your day in court. You don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the Internet. And the consequences are worse. It’s worldwide forever.”
I asked him to resign from LGP, a theatre company we all loved, he didn’t. I asked him to admit to everything he had done, he wouldn’t. I asked him not to prey on vulnerable people, he got a job overseeing the most vulnerable people.
Again, If all it takes to ruin someone’s life is to write down what he is doing, than I’m not doing the ruining.
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