Trans Twitch streamer forced to flee home after ‘doxxing’ lives in fear as trolls share her location
Clara Sorrenti says online trolls are sending her a “threat” by showing they know where she lives and are “willing to act” in real life. (YouTube/Keffals)
Trans Twitch streamer Keffals has been doxxed and sent threats weeks after she fled her home following a horrific ‘swatting’ attack by online trolls.
Keffals (Clara Sorrenti), said she was woken up by armed police officers at her door on 5 August after trolls ‘swatted’ her – a harassment technique where people deceive emergency services into sending police to another person’s address.
Keffals, who gained popularity on Twitch for her political commentary and advocacy for the trans community, moved out of her Canadian home and relocated to a hotel for safety reasons.
She told Global News that the first hotel she was “staying at got doxxed” so she had to move to another undisclosed location.
Keffals said she hasn’t been visited by armed police again but that trolls have been threatening her with the knowledge that they know where she lives by sending her pizzas.
“Five different pizza companies sent pizzas to my hotel room in my (birth) name,” Keffals said. “Obviously, the pizza itself isn’t the problem. It’s the threat they send by telling me they know where I live and are willing to act on it in the real world.”
Sorrenti wasn’t sure how trolls found her previous hotel, but she believed it may have stemmed from a picture she posted online of her “fiancee’s cat on [the] hotel bed”.
“The people who have been harassing me (must have) spent hours looking at the bedsheets, cross-referencing them with every hotel in my city until they found a match,” she said.
they crossreferenced the bedsheets in the picture of my cat with other local hotels until they found a match https://t.co/OMHwsn2Jxa pic.twitter.com/UmQDcaJjxA
— keffals (@keffals) August 18, 2022
London Police Service deputy police chief Trish McIntyre was “concerned” about the recent attempts to doxx Keffals again, given the previous hoax.
“It’s harassment. Is it police’s responsibility to investigate those occurrences? 100 per cent,” McIntyre said. “We’re aware of them, they’re under investigation.”
Keffals made international headlines after she described being “woken up” by London police services “pointing an assault rifle” in her face at her home. She was arrested after evil trolls impersonated her and sent death threats to London, Ontario city councillors.
The communications falsely claimed she had killed her mother and was going to kill cisgender or straight people.
She was held for several hours, and police seized her computers, phones and other electronic devices for several days before eventually clearing her of the charges.
Swatting has been deployed against number gamers, content creators, streamers and internet users for several years now.
It led to the death of 28-year-old Andrew Finch who was shot by police in 2017 as he opened the door of his home in Wichita, Kansas.
Several LGBTQ+ streamers have fallen victim to swatting, and attacks against the queer community on Twitch are sadly all too frequent.
Creators and viewers on Twitch participated in “A Day Off Twitch” in September 2021 to protest against the tidal wave of hate raids on the game streaming platform. The boycott followed a viral campaign known as “#TwitchDoBetter” that raised awareness and sought for a solution to the rise in racism, transphobia, homophobia and abuse on Twitch.
