Editor’s note: This article shares the lived experiences of survivors who chose to speak out publicly about alleged abuse. The SGN offered all those named the opportunity to comment, and sought to verify all available factual information, including court records, wherever possible.
Some details are presented as the interviewees’ accounts and could not be independently confirmed. We publish these stories to center survivor voices, examine patterns of harm, and encourage community awareness and support.
If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate-partner violence or abuse, confidential help is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or www.thehotline.org.
A culture of impunity is often how victims of abuse at the hands of male romantic partners describe their experiences. And in the last few years of the post-#MeToo era, there has arguably been a lot of leeway for men of status, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden to all the prominent men in between, who’ve continued to not face proper repercussions for their actions. It seems that in the US today, more than ever, society’s message toward men is: “You can get away with anything as long as you’re rich and powerful enough.” The social expectation is that victims of abuse and mistreatment should just endure it, or meet an incredibly difficult standard of proof in order to see some consequences and obtain justice.
This year, for the SGN’s Queer Love "Love on the Margins” issue, we are taking a look at two harrowing stories of Queer people who have endeavored to come out publicly with their truth.
Alexis Rose (she/they)
Alexis Rose (Instagram @travelingnursealex/TikTok @travelingnurse) is an online content creator and former ICU nurse turned activist, whose story of alleged abuse by her ex-boyfriend went viral in 2021 after it was shared online. Now out as Queer, she has since gone on to become a strong public advocate for both LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights.
In October 2025, Rose posted about her ex, warning others that he is now running a business in Snohomish, WA. In the post, she also mentioned several other alleged victims of his that have not since been served justice.
In an interview with the SGN, Rose told her story of how the two came to meet, their alleged abusive relationship, his behavior with other women (including her friend), his trial, going viral with her story, and the aftermath.
Rose explained that, when they met, she was splitting her time between her Colorado college town and her work at a ski resort up in Aspen, where he had also worked. “We were both from the …Seattle area. He’s from Bothell. I’m from Issaquah,” she said.
The relationship reportedly started with him pursuing her online. “It was like very heavily manipulative love bombing,” she recalled.
The relationship went on for about nine months, according to her, and in that time she remembered that “the frequency of the violence just kept increasing. And it would take very small things to set him off.”
Rose recounted several alleged instances of abuse and threats of violence during their relationship. On one road trip, “he would pull off the car on the side of the road in Idaho and be like, ‘You know if I left you out here, no one would ever fucking find you.’” At other times, she said, “he would make verbal threats of: ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’”
She also claimed she suffered physical abuse and rape at his hand as well.
When she was finally able to break things off, he moved on to dating her friend Adrianna, she said. She suspected that he’d done this in order to get revenge on her for leaving him. About a month later, she received a FaceTime request from her friend — whom he had put in the hospital.
The trial
At first, Rose reportedly thought the FaceTime call was just her ex trying to reach her through her friend’s phone. She told the SGN she denied the request and blocked the number immediately. But when the friend reached out via email and wrote “you need to see what he did to me,” she began to understand the situation.
As Adrianna’s court case against him was underway, Rose explained, the two worked together to build the legal case against him, and reached out to another ex-girlfriend, Kelsey. “The girl he dated before me is the one [with whom] he had deliberately crashed a car into a line of trees, with them both inside,” Rose pointed out. And from their three examples of abuse, they helped the DA demonstrate “a clear pattern of increasingly violent behavior.”
During the trial, he pleaded guilty to second-degree kidnapping and was sentenced to 90 days in prison. But Rose noted that he only ended up serving 30 days, for good behavior. When asked what she thought of this, she said, “Obviously he got the shortest possible sentencing because he’s a wealthy white man.”
Going viral
Although the conviction was in 2018, Rose reported being cautious for years about speaking out publicly against her ex, out of concern for her family’s safety in Washington. She stated that he had allegedly threatened to harm both her mother and grandmother if she ever said anything critical, claiming to know where they lived and worked. However, after her family moved out of state to Arizona in 2021 and she knew they’d be safe, “I went kind of scorched earth,” she said.
That came when she posted on Twitter the testimony she gave to the DA during the trial, alongside a photo of him, warning others to be cautious. She recalled the attention the post got at the time, and how quickly it spread all over the internet. As she remembered, “it went viral on, like, all these local Seattle pages.”
She explained how several people reached out to her during that time, claiming they may also have been victims of his. One was a Black woman who thought she might have been stalked by him, and that he might have also pretended to be a repair person to get into her apartment. Her description of the man and his silver truck closely matched Rose’s memory, as, according to her, his vehicle was a distinct make and model. (Rose said that the woman filed a report with the Seattle Police Department; however, the SGN was unable to find the alleged report.) Rose was able to share with the SGN screenshots of the conversation, but she reported having lost contact with the woman over the years.
Rose also claimed his old high school schoolmates had reached out during that time. They allegedly told her that he had gotten expelled from their private school for violent behavior (the SGN has requested his academic records from Lakeside Academy to verify the claim), and that they’d supposedly watched him assault his own mother in the school parking lot. “It’s just really sad, because his mom’s like an angel,” Rose said. “His mom was a very sweet woman. She’s an insurance broker. I’m sure that’s why he’s now in the insurance industry.”
Rose also said that after deleting her X.com account last year, her original 2021 post and the contacts she had made through it have since been lost.
Rose added that one of her main reasons for going so public was because of how concerningly narcissistic her ex’s behavior was. “I remember one time he brought up Chris Brown and was like, ‘See, no one would even believe you, and even if they did, my life is always going to be fine, because I’m a highly successful person.’”
She laughed at the memory, and said it felt ironic for him to say, since she claimed he was kicked out of Western Washington University for selling cocaine, as well as for abusing another ex-girlfriend, and that this was why he ended up moving to Aspen in the first place.
Although the SGN was able to confirm that he did attend the college during the time frame given, had a police record, and did not graduate, our investigation could not independently verify the claim.
Rose’s ex-boyfriend did not respond to the SGN’s request for comment.
The aftermath
Rose told the SGN that in the time since going viral, she has continuously felt an obligation to help keep other women safe. She expressed an overall pessimism with the criminal justice system’s ability to punish abusers but lauded the power of social media as a tool for women to warn and keep each other safe: “If the courts won’t do it, you can turn that motherfucker into a hashtag, because when women go to look him up — when he meets someone and they look him up on Instagram — they’ll see your story instead.”
She emphasized the societal danger of not holding alleged abusers like her ex accountable, saying, “The reality of the situation is that men like this have a behavioral pattern, and they don’t just wake up and kill someone one day. These are the types of men that we have to look out for, and by giving them sweetheart deals and minimal sentences, you just embolden them further... The justice system does not exist to keep women and children safe. It exists to uphold the white male patriarchy and ensure that men never actually face consequences.”
Asked why she thought other media outlets hadn’t taken up her story over the years, she responded, “Unfortunately in our society, no one wants to lift a finger to address men with behavioral patterns like this until a woman is dead, and then they’ll make documentaries, podcasts, and whatever about the case, romanticizing it.”
Rose did say she found solace in that her abuser would never be able to become an influencer like she had, adding that he had always wanted to be one: “It’s like the worst-case scenario for him: the girl you beat the fuck out of ended up with half a million followers on Instagram.”
Breezy (fae/faer)
In a TikTok video posted on January 10, a user by the name of Breezy (@b_donielle) warned others about experiences with an ex-boyfriend who is the founder and front man of a local alt-rock band. On camera, Breezy spoke about how discouraging it was to see him so highly platformed in the community, for example, as one of the speakers at the vigil for Renee Nicole Good at Pier 58 on January 8. “He’s a super manipulative, abusive human being,” Breezy claimed, lamenting how he had gotten away with hiding his “true” personality so far.
Breezy shared the story of how they met, their relationship, his family, and what he had done, saying that the ex “is a very scary human being” and that his family were powerful people with a lot of reach. His mother is an entertainment lawyer and former owner of a local record company, a fact that inhibited Breezy from going public with the story of their relationship in the two years since the breakup. But since recovering from the experience and going to therapy, Breezy said, it now felt wrong to indirectly protect someone “who’s abused so many people categorically.”
Breezy talked about being brought up in a military household having moved several times as a child before the family settled in Yelm, WA. They are currently estranged from each other, due to Breezy’s coming out as Nonbinary and working as an adult entertainer. Breezy explained where the idea to use fae/faer pronouns came from, having learned about the gender-nonconforming Radical Faeries group: “I first learned about Radical Faeries when learning about the Queer liberation movement. Specifically in, like, the ’60s and ’70s, there were people that were, like, ‘Man, fuck this heteronormativity.’ The baseline is not the binary.... It really is a spiritual way of radically accepting queerness and living queerness in our lives.”
Breezy explained that working as an erotic dancer at strip clubs around Seattle paid okay, but it was also soul crushing, adding that it would be nice to transition into working for more Queer erotic spaces, like go-go dancing, having danced at a few events like Babe Night, but that breaking in was difficult. As a Queer performer often dancing for a straight male clientele, Breezy described the experience of trying to appeal to the male gaze: “I definitely view it as a drag performance of being a cis woman whenever I’m there. I try to play the role, and sometimes don’t do it well. But you know sometimes, I get really lucky with other Queer customers and don’t have to.”
Summer concerts
Breezy recalled first meeting this ex-boyfriend after attending one of his concerts in Tacoma in the summer of 2022. Having come to see another artist, Breezy was planning to leave when he came up and asked faer to stay. At the time, Breezy explained, “We didn’t talk much the first time, but I kind of got really into [his band], and went back to another show later that summer.”
That is when the two reportedly started chatting and exchanged Instagram profiles, according to Breezy, and in the span of a few months, he began DMing and commenting on Breezy’s posts. Breezy said he seemed to be super charismatic and psyched about his band, but also a little different. He had also given Breezy a lot of compliments during their first interaction, and at the time Breezy interpreted it as him being forward and direct, thinking back then, “That’s cool. I kind of appreciate that in people.”
After grabbing tacos with friends near one of the band’s shows in Fremont, they began to go on dates. Breezy described one of those: “He seemed very intriguing. he just was, like, very overpowering,” adding that within the first two months, “I felt as though there was, like, an air of arrogance with just his entitlement to my space and time.”
Breezy recalled how aggressively forward he was when dating, despite attempts to set boundaries within the first month: “I had to let him know: if you come over, you’re not spending the night, like, don’t think that you’re just gonna spend the night.”
But in a conversation three months into dating about what kind of relationship they might want, he allegedly told Breezy that “he didn’t have capacity for relationships.”
“I was so confused why he would say so many things about, even that week, … wanting to be together,” Breezy said. Those mixed signals were also further complicated by the fact that he reportedly introduced Breezy to his mother early on in their dating, at one of his concerts.
He had also been very supportive of Breezy's gender identity from the first date onward: “[It] was definitely something that made me feel more seen than most people in my life, which I definitely didn’t want to give up,” Breezy said.
But Breezy also felt being led on romantically and thought, “Is he playing me?"
Nonexclusive to exclusive
Looking back on that moment now, Breezy said fae probably wouldn’t have continued engaging with him if it were today, but admitted to being “very bad at being assertive and standing on business back then.”
Breezy claimed they had tentatively agreed to keep the relationship between them “nonexclusive” up until October 2023, a form of “friends with benefits.” But the dynamic during that period still remained ambiguous, as Breezy pointed out how, when they were together, “the verbiage was that I was his whenever he was engaging with me.” But then on the other hand, “he knew also that I wasn’t actively seeking out other people to be with.”
The unbalanced dynamic and lack of clarity about his true feelings made Breezy feet like “it was a lot of mind games, I guess, with what he was telling me, what he actually meant, and what he didn’t.”
There were other red flags too that Breezy mentioned: “There were things, like, with the sex that, from the very first day, was aggressive and very just not okay.”
But despite holding these reservations, Breezy said the couple decided to try making things “exclusive” in October 2023. Pretty much immediately, things between them became toxic. During their period of nonexclusivity, Breezy noticed he had another person he was messaging and hooking up with. “He hung out with someone that he was, like, kind of in a friend-with-benefits situation earlier that summer. But he saw her when we were exclusive,” Breezy said, adding that “he didn’t really come forward with what they were doing and how they were hanging out.”
Breezy began work as a dancer at that time as well, which ended up being the final straw for the relationship. The ex-boyfriend reportedly did not like that. While working on a project in the studio that November with some “uncles,” he told Breezy that one of the older gentleman had supposedly found the club fae worked at, liked Breezy’s dancer profile, and talked about wanting to take the group to go watch Breezy perform, not knowing the two were dating.
He had seemed to Breezy very anxious about working with the men in the studio, and decided to hold off on addressing it until two months later, since they supposedly kept bringing it up in conversation. Breezy expressed doubt as to whether the story he told was true: “I don’t know what to believe from him anymore. I don’t even know if this story that he told me is real. I’m assuming it was, because of how big of a deal it was to him.”
Breezy said he eventually decided to tell the men they were dating, and that he claimed to have received harsh criticism from the group: “‘Why are you with a girl who’s for the streets? Like, we thought you were a real man — what are you doing with someone like that?’ He told me that he [physically] fought them.”
The questioning of his manhood by his elders is what Breezy thinks finally pushed him over the edge, and shortly afterward they broke up.
His mother also supposedly did not approve of Breezy's interest in dancing either. After reportedly picking Breezy up from work, she allegedly said, “Oh no, we have got to get you out of there.” The next day, he had a conversation about it with Breezy who was blunt with him, saying “I, like, from the jump have been wanting to get into the burlesque and go-go scene here in Seattle.“
According to Breezy , he responded in the same way: “We need to get you out.”
Recovery
In the end, Breezy knew things between them were through and that “because I was a dancer, ultimately, that’s why he said that he just couldn’t be with me.”
Fae noticed how his behavior negatively changed toward after Breezy got into dancing: “He would get violent toward me,” Breezy said, mentioning that “it kind of reveled a side of him that reminded me a lot of my abusive father.”
Breezy also explained the overall toxicity of the relationship: “I was scared. I didn’t know how to get away from him. Because, for a while, anytime I did try and be like, ‘I’m done — I don’t want to talk to you anymore,’ he’d, like, talk to me for hours on end, asking for forgiveness, asking me, you know, just, like, let him back into my life.”
Once he had finally decided to cut things off for good, that made it all the more devastating for Breezy . Another reason Breezy thinks he might have finally become motivated to end things was the friend with benefits he had on the side that he could move on with: “He had someone else to talk to at that point that he liked, so I definitely think it was easier for him to discard me.”
After going no-contact with him, he had left an apology letter at Breezy's door, but “in the letter, it was a lot of like deflection, but [with] him, like, I can’t even call it really an apology letter.”
In the two years since their break-up, Breezy has regularly gone to therapy, which has helped overcome the trauma of their relationship, and has also since taken up emulsion art as a form of healing and self-expression.
Breezy’s ex-boyfriend and his mother also did not respond to the SGN’s request for comment as of press time.
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