>>5590896https://twitter.com/yozoramel/status/1261618870453846019Starting in October of last year, Mel became the victim of a serious harassment campaign through numerous throwaway accounts on Twitter and email. These messages contained malicious and sexual harassment directed specifically at her by name.
At first she figured that this sort of thing simply came with the territory of being a Vtuber. It's the internet after all, so she simply blocked and muted the Twitter accounts as they came up.
However the harassment did not stop, the accounts kept increasing in number to the point where she could no longer keep up with blocking them all. This was causing her a lot of stress.
Then came her planned 3D birthday stream on Oct 31. She got another piece of harassing email just prior to this, except this had one thing that set it apart and made everything scarier: this email contained the sender's name.
It was someone she knew, someone she'd interacted with numerous times before.
She immediately contacted the police and CEO Tanigou as well as other appropriate staff at Cover Corp.
At the time, it wasn't clear if the email had really been sent from the individual it was stated to be. But the sender evidently knew Mel's personal information, as well as her schedule.
In light of this, police advised her not to do the 3D stream, as this would have involved physically going to Hololive's studio. At the time of the 3D birthday stream, since the situation was still very uncertain, staff announced the reason it was canceled was Mel "feeling unwell".
Mel apologizes to all the fans who were looking forward to it. She says she was also looking forward to it and thanks everyone who celebrated for her on the 2D stream that took place instead.
Around the time this initially happened, police were unfortunately unable to take any action.
The people she hoped would support her in a time like this did not give her the support she needed. Despite knowing what was going on, their actions were insensitive which caused further stress and exhaustion for her.
Since she wasn't getting the support she needed, a friend reached out and helped put her in contact with a lawyer. With help from the lawyer, they got the person named in the email to admit to being the one sending the harassing emails and doing the Twitter harassment.
As a result of these events, Mel understandably took a break from her VTubing activities for a few months due to the stress and fear.
During her leave of absence, she found a lot of encouragement in reading supportive messages on Twitter, seeing fanart, and seeing people who had newly discovered her. She sincerely thanks those fans.
As of March 2020, the harassment from the individual has stopped and things are moving towards a resolution.
Mel deeply apologizes for her sudden disappearance and causing her fans to worry about where she has been. She wasn't sure if she should even speak up about what happened, but she doesn't want any other Hololive members to go through what she did.
She hopes that by speaking up she can help prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
She still loves all the Hololive members, all her viewers, and all her fans (the "Kapu-min"), and she hopes that, if possible, she can have fun streaming again.
