Clara Sorrenti, a trans Twitch streamer also known as Keffals, is planning to leave Canada due to escalating abuse.
On August 5, Sorrenti was swatted at her residence in London, Ontario, a practice that involves making a fake threat with the intention of sending law enforcement to someone’s home. Since she was released from custody unharmed, Sorrenti has experienced escalating harassment, according to CBC News. She believes that she has no other choice but to leave the country for her own safety.
“I get messages almost every day from trans people, especially young trans people, saying that I gave them courage, that they can be who they are,” she told the publication. “But people hate me and want to shut me up.”
Sorrenti said that she plans to spend a few months in Europe, but is not willing to release any further information regarding her future whereabouts in order to protect herself. She believes that her harassers are trying to put her on a no-fly list to prevent her from leaving Canada.
“People hate me and want to shut me up.”
According to Sorrenti, the bulk of the harassment she has experienced was organized through Kiwi Farms, an online forum that has a history of targeting trans creators. It grew from an amalgamation of various online groups that harassed trans gamer and artist Christine Weston Chandler as far back as 2007. Since then, they have targeted individuals they perceive to be “mentally ill,” including trans folks.
Some trans women have reportedly died from the consequences of online abuse they received from Kiwi Farms. In 2013, the forum doxxed trans indie game developer Chloe Segal—doxxing being revealing private information about someone publicly with the intent to harm them. According to Variety, Segal burned herself alive in a public park five years later. Her friends believe the relentless harassment from Kiwi Farms that she experienced contributed to Segal’s decision to end her own life.
Sorrenti said she had to leave the first hotel she stayed at following the raid to a second undisclosed location due to getting doxxed by Kiwi Farms.
“My Uber account got hacked, and they found out where I was staying through the Uber account,” she told CBC News, adding that hundreds of dollars worth of food she did not order showed up on her doorstep. “The information from my entire family got posted online. All of our email addresses, phone addresses, home addresses.”
The incident with Uber convinced Sorrenti of the necessity of leaving the country, as she told CBC News. It follows a previous incident in which she started getting pizza delivered to her place of hiding under her deadname, which she has not used in over a decade. On August 14, she claimed to have received a call from the London police’s Hate Crimes division after an employee at one of those pizza companies recognized her name and contacted law enforcement. She believes that London police are currently investigating this incident as criminal harassment.
Sorrenti is worried that London police do not have the resources to stop her harassers, who are based around the world. (London Police Service declined to comment, citing that it is still an open and active criminal investigation.)
Sorrenti claims these incidents this month follow ongoing abuse that has been happening for several months. “I’ve tried not talking about it, I’ve tried being quiet for months, and I suffer in silence,” she told CTV News. “I am never going to back down.” She is calling on her supporters to pressure Cloudflare, the company that supports Kiwi Farms, to drop the forum.
Despite the abuse, Sorrenti is not planning to give up the community she has built through streaming any time soon. “I’ve seen people come out to their families because of this community, I’ve seen people say this community is the only place they feel comfortable talking about being trans. This community has given them an outlet to be themselves,” she told CTV. “They want to push us back in the closet. They want to do everything they can to build a future where we don’t exist. I want there to be a point in the future where I don’t have to worry constantly about being harassed in this way.”
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