You know what happened
After the years of political and media attention around the Pākehā Party, and later after I publicly supported Donald Trump in 2016, my life became increasingly hostile and unstable. In my account, that period culminated in a terrifying incident at my home and business premises involving people I understood to have gang connections.
I say I was threatened at gunpoint and pressured over my company. I also witnessed the aftermath of violence against a young woman who was present around that period. I am not putting her identity or private history on this page. What I am putting on the record is that, in my experience, this was not some trivial dispute and it was not the story that was later repeated about me.
What came afterwards is one of the reasons this section exists.
At a Christmas Day gathering at my mother's house, my sister Denise stated in front of me and other people present that I had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint because I owed drug money.
I personally heard her say it.
I reject that explanation completely.
At the time, I was still making substantial income from hosting, SEO work and Google Ads management. Whatever else was happening in my life, I made a point of paying what I owed. I do not accept the story that the events at my home happened because I had some unpaid drug debt.
What hurt most was not simply that somebody had apparently supplied Denise with a damaging explanation. It was that she was willing to repeat it as though it settled the matter, instead of asking me what happened, challenging the story, or considering that the people around her might have been wrong.
That moment came to represent something much bigger for me. I felt abandoned by my family at the very time I most needed people willing to look past the headlines and ask what had actually happened. I also felt abandoned by the police and by institutions I had expected to help. From where I stood, I was left to deal with fear, reputational damage and other people's stories about me while the people closest to me accepted explanations that made everything easier to dismiss.
I am not going to pretend that every person around me acted with the same motive, or that I can prove every private conversation that took place. I can say what I experienced: I was already carrying the consequences of years of media hostility and political controversy, and when my life became dangerous, I felt that the people who should have asked questions instead accepted a version that put the blame back on me.
For years I kept quiet while other people interpreted my life for me. They spoke about me, around me and over me. Some refused to speak to me directly at all.
I am done with that arrangement.
This site exists because if other people are going to tell stories about my life, then my own account is going to sit beside theirs. I will distinguish what I know firsthand, what I was told, what I believe and what I can document. But I am no longer going to stay silent merely because the truth is uncomfortable for people who would rather never discuss it.
The people involved will know what I am referring to when they read this.
They know what was said. They know what they chose to believe. And they know why this story has never been properly confronted.
This is only the beginning.