Editor's Note: This article contains graphic details of sexual assault allegations.
Sam Pepper is a 'YouTube star' with over 2 million subscribers who just love watching the former UK Big Brother contestant traipse around and bother people for his prank videos. But a recent video of him groping women inspired one woman, and then several more, to come forward with their stories of how Pepper allegedly raped or sexually assaulted them.
The stories and videos range from unsettling accounts of unwanted groping to absolutely horrifying, brutal accounts of rape.
In the first video, an anonymous 19-year-old woman talks about how she met Pepper in July while working at a restaurant in L.A., Gawker reports. She says that Pepper invited her over and once she got there, he anally raped her. A police report was filed after she went to the hospital for an exam, but Pepper was not arrested. At the end of the video, she says the reason she decided to come forward was because of a "social experiment" Pepper conducted about sexual abuse.
Warning: This video contains a very graphic account of rape.
In the Pepper 'prank' video that has since been removed from Pepper's channel (but not from the Internet) he wears a baggy sweatshirt and puts a fake hand in one of the pockets. He uses his hidden free hand to pinch women's butts as he asks them for directions to the Apple store.
The video was, unsurprisingly, met with backlash. Then, Pepper posted another since-deleted video of a woman doing the same thing to men. He said the women from the first video were in on the prank, and that the video was meant to bring awareness to "sexual abuse against men," the BBC reports, because when it was a man pinching women's butts, people got mad, but if it were a woman pinching a man's butt, it would be laughed off.
This infuriated the 19-year-old waitress who says Pepper assaulted her, so she made and released the harrowing video. Her admission inspired other women to do the same.
An 18-year-old woman reported to the LAPD that Pepper also sexually assaulted her in L.A. She too posted a video on YouTube recounting what happened. She said she met him at a party and then went to a coffeehouse with Pepper and his two friends. Pepper offered her a ride home, but dropped his two friends off first and then said he needed to go to his apartment first. Once there, he went into his bedroom. She waited for a moment, playing with Pepper's dog, before following him. He invited her to watch a YouTube prank video on his bed. Then, "all of a sudden he started putting his hands all over me," she says. She says that she repeatedly told him to stop and tried to get away from him, but he overpowered her and raped her. He later told her it was her resistance that made him "come twice as fast." She also says that Pepper threatened to sue her if she reported him.
She says he later tweeted about how a compromise is when neither party gets what they really want.
Another woman said that Pepper raped her in his hotel in Toronto in 2013, Buzzfeed reports. She said she struggled, but he pinned her down. At one point, she said she fell off the bed and he ejaculated in her hair, then told her that was karma for not wanting to have sex with him.
YouTube personality Dottie Martin posted a YouTube video claiming that Pepper groped her when she was 16 and he was 23.
Another woman tweeted screenshots of a Facebook conversation with whom she says is Pepper, asking her for pictures of her naked. But she was only 15 at the time while Pepper was 22, Buzzfeed reports. When she refused, she said that Pepper "turned rude" and then asked her to delete the conversation and blocked her on Facebook. A YouTuber named Neesey posted a video about inappropriate Skype messages he sent her when she was 15. A woman named Shirley talks about Pepper grabbing her breast when she was 15. A YouTuber named Annie posted this video about him taking his penis out and trying to rub it on her. She says she had to use force to get him off of her.
There's more, like another YouTuber who shared an exchange she had with him at age 16:
And more women from the community:
After Buzzfeed reached out to Pepper for comment, they say his social media accounts disappeared.
