I used to be the person who was optimistic despite any circumstance. I have experienced a fair amount of tragedy and setbacks in my life, but I did my best to never let any of that faze me. Even my brother’s tragic death in 2006 was fuel for me to take my life seriously and pursue my dreams in his memory. I knew in my gut that by working hard and being a good person, I would get where I wanted and needed to go in life. That’s before I met Lee Stobby, and with his sexual predation and cruelty, he turned me into one of the more jaded people that I know. While my “gut” used to mean that I had a great sense of intuition, now it feels like a pessimistic bleeding ulcer that always knows the darkest truth of a situation.
I met Lee Stobby in 2013. I did not recognize his callousness even though in retrospect he showed it to me.
I graduated at the top of my class with my B.F.A. and several Associates’ degrees and gathered other film skills with certificates in acting, and from the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting. I moved to Los Angeles in 2010, living there for seven years, eventually (with family help) purchasing my own condominium in West Hollywood. I was just an aspiring determined comedian and screenwriter trying to make it in LA. I trained for years honing my craft as an improviser studying at multiple notable theaters, performing, spending time on sets putting my film school education to use, and even interned twice for an “A” list director. I was also studying for the LSAT to cement my creatively fulfilling passions by combining them with an ambitious and practical career that would only accelerate my progress towards success in Los Angeles. During my time in Los Angeles even stalkers, pancreatitis, neck and other orthopedic injuries, a TBI, and a ceiling collapse didn’t stop me. Lee Stobby and his dangerous lies did.
After we had been out drinking together, on May 5th, 2017, my long time platonic (after meeting on Tinder and dating for about a week in 2013, with an ethically murky one night stand in 2014) “friend” Lee Stobby made a pass at me, declaring he had had strong feelings for me since we met. My life was irrevocably changed two days later, when it looked like we would be dating and started to hook up again, only for Lee to blurt out that he was “positive”. I had to take horrific medicine (PEP/PREP), which had made me quite ill in the past (hence the pancreatitis) and therefore I had no plans on taking it again. Lee is aware that these medications made me gravely ill. My mistake was that I did not want to harm Lee, but wanted to get him to feel comfortable disclosing to his sexual partners so that other people would not have to suffer the same consequences that I did. Initially, he gave me the impression his status was brand new to him and he simply didn’t know how to handle it. His story changed dramatically and I no longer hold that belief.
He tried to illicit my pity, telling me he was the victim of someone recently exposing him and avoiding the situation. I was empathetic and more worried about him than myself, though I knew I would have to take pills both Lee and I knew would make me sick, and I feared would make me miss the LSAT. They did. It turns out Lee had had this for years, and I realized that I was simply the next victim of a sexual predator. He was either too lazy or didn’t have enough respect for me (or both) to even keep his lies about his sex crimes against me straight.
Early on, I figured if it was a matter of public record then Lee would have to come to terms with his behavior, but no lawyer was interested as Lee was not rich enough. I didn’t want money, I just wanted him to go to therapy to learn how to disclose (which he refused; he even said “nothing I can do” and nearly hung up on my mother when she called to tell him how sick and distraught I was), and to stop advertising himself on sex apps as HIV negative.
As a last resort, I went to law enforcement and once they heard he was a manager in Hollywood they could not care less and were disinterested in even speaking to him, and actually actively sabotaged the investigation. When I found out Lee was quickly dating again, and still advertising as negative, I had to use a sex app to reach out to a notoriously predatory city councilman who had approached me in public telling me that he watched me at night on that app, just to get the police to make a singular phone call to Lee, months after I reported.
Around the beginning of the “Me Too” movement, I finally found a lawyer willing to take the case on contingency, Lee’s lawyer appeared to do an asset search on me as they threatened a countersuit for the cumulative balance of all of my bank accounts. The case was not the low hanging fruit that it had initially appeared to be, and the lawyer lost interest.
Shortly thereafter, also due to “Me Too”, a reporter was interested, but ultimately Lee was not famous, and no one wanted the liability of either speaking out against corrupt law enforcement or getting sued for outing Lee’s status.
As Lee had continued to advertise as “negative” on a sex app, I complained about the police’s lack of investigation and they became quite hostile towards me for that. I got seriously injured (hit by two cars in two weeks, both while legally crossing pedestrian crosswalks with a walk signal and witnesses; once law enforcement ran my license at both scenes and realized I was the guy who had called the Attorney General’s office, amongst other governing agencies who also didn’t care, on them, they sabotaged those investigations too, and even falsely accused me of crimes). With law enforcement menacing me, and their behavior towards me growing more dangerous the more I complained about them, I no longer felt safe to live in West Hollywood. If any of this sounds crazy, please google “WEHO pedestrian death rate” and “Ed Buck 3rd rent boy” and you will see just how corrupt the WEHO Sheriff’s office is and that I’m telling the truth. My mother refers to their treatment of me, and this whole situation, as “human carnage”.
Yet the cops had let Lee Stobby keep advertising himself as HIV negative unhindered. He did so for at least over a year after exposing me; I stopped paying attention to my own mental health.
Having moved, I couldn’t afford the cumulative burdens of intense sex assault therapy, physical therapy, chiropractic, rent in a new expensive city, and my mortgage. I could not have rented out my condo for the amount of my mortgage, so in short order, I had to give it up and with it any hope of homeownership again and any modicum of stability in my life. I have not had my own place to live in over two years. Transience is my life now.
I used to smile wherever I went and I used to be the nicest guy in any room. Now I do not make eye contact with strangers unless it is to glare at them until they leave me alone. I distance myself from long-term friends and simply feel fractured.
My health is still wrecked. Anxiety attacks are my new normal, and shitting my pants in public isn’t a shock anymore. My hand tremors don’t even register to me, yet I used to think they were the scariest thing.
I would say that my spirit is broken, but I would be fooling myself that I still had one. My self-esteem took a swan dive as everything I worked for was continually stripped from me, with elements of my life degraded lower than I ever thought possible. I recently had to withdraw from a TV writing class that I had jumped through hoops to get in and was really looking forward to before it even started, as I learned that the teacher’s manager is Lee’s best friend and I knew I would just be setting myself up for further failure and disappointment.
So, today I have no place to call home, I’m on a first name basis with dozens of hotel employees in various places, and can realistically not submit under my own name to the screenwriting contests as Lee is a prominent judge in most of them or they are run by his good friends. The last time I tried and spoke out that I didn’t want to be judged by Lee, several of Lee’s friends started following me on social media, and my email was mysteriously hacked.
Today I live transiently between hotels and my Mother’s home. I’ve spent the last few years since all of this looking for my place in the world only to realize I don’t have one anymore. It’s like I don’t exist. My life in LA seems like a far off illusion.
I continue to suffer from the physical fallout from the medications that I had to take due to Lee’s exposure. I have lost weight down to the bones (I’m now 100 pounds lighter than I was at my heaviest) and my anxiety is going through the roof. This is my life now. Even writing this is very difficult for me as sharing my life and baring my wounds to the public is not what I really wanted to do as I know the world is not always kind. Maybe though the next person who is exposed without their consent will stand up and scream and maybe he will be heard.
I have a non-verbal learning disability so my processing can be a tad slow, a fact I never thought much of but now hate about myself as if I had realized who Lee was and what he was in the process of doing to me I would have stood up and screamed much sooner. It seems that nowadays people think that HIV is a thing of the past. For some of us, the medicines needed to take as preventatives and abortatives are horrendous and wreck your body. Nearly every doctor I’ve met recently thought I had HIV based upon my symptoms and appearance. I only know for certain that I’ve been left with a ravaged immune system and crippling anxiety.
No matter how hard I work, I will never have my dreams that I struggled for, but at least by speaking out I can warn others about the sociopath who took them from me simply because he’s so fucking toxically cruel that he has to manipulate, ply people with alcohol, and even cover up exposing people to a deadly disease just so he can get off and not feel alone like the cancerous rat that he is. He even leveraged the anniversary of my brother’s rape and suicide, and my war hero Uncle’s recent death in a futile to attempt to manipulate my anxiety and grief into an NDA to cover up his sex crimes, as he continues to threaten to sue me for speaking out.
I’m still a nice guy. Now I’m just a ghost.
I used to be a happy, optimistic, hardworking guy, full of ambition, full of dreams, and full of hopes. Now I have tremors, shit myself in public, cry constantly (fun fact, I physically couldn’t cry for nearly a decade after my brother died, now it’s like I’m watching Steel Magnolias constantly…I’ve never even seen Steel Magnolias, but you get the point) and have no idea why I wake up every morning. I will never achieve the dreams that I had set out to. All I think to myself all day is what did I do to deserve this horrible life. What I did is I gave Lee Stobby a chance. I mistook a sexual predator for a human being.