YouTuber Yung Filly has been seen in public for the first time since his arrest in Australia on several rape charges. The 29-year-old, whose real name is real name Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, was spotted arriving at Northbridge Police Station in Perth to check in with police, a condition of his bail conditions which will see him remain in Australia for two months until he receives a court date.
The internet personality is facing charges of four counts of sexual penetration without consent, three counts of assault and one counts of impeding a person’s breathing or circulation by applying pressure to their neck. He has not yet entered a plea or a made a public statement on the charges. Grazia has reached out to his representative for comment.
In the days following the news that Filly had been charged, social media was awash with haunting commentary. ‘Why is the girl in his hotel room? What does she think she’s going back to do, read a book?’ one influencer with 123,000 followers posted on X. ‘It doesn’t really make sense… I think Filly might’ve been on a mad one after his performance and just moved reckless in the bedroom and scared off that tart.’ The post has received more than 13,000 likes.
‘Who goes back to a room & then changes their mind,’ the influencer said in another tweet. ‘Have you ever? I definitely haven’t, it’s a low probability this happened in my opinion. Much higher probability the hoe wants a payday [and] some clout. We will see with the evidence though.’
His sentiment has been shared widely online, with countless others asking what the woman expected by going to a hotel. It’s a terrifyingly harmful response, perpetuating victim-blaming narratives that ultimately hurt all women. Because we can be sure of one thing, no one expects to enter a hotel room with someone and leave a victim of sexual abuse. We shouldn’t have to say it, but consent can be revoked at any time. You can walk into a hotel room with anyone, at any time, with any intention, and should you decide that actually, no, you don’t want to have sex, you have every right to walk away unscathed. In fact, you can be bang in the middle of sex, and if someone tries to do something you’re not comfortable with, or expresses interest in a fetish you don’t like, they should be listening to you, reading your body language, asking for consent outright.
Beyond the scarily ignorant consent conversations happening online, many others have also agreed with the influencers claim that the alleged victim wants money or fame. It’s another grossly misinformed judgement – this is a criminal case brought by The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in which the alleged victim has a legal right to anonymity under Australian law. That means that her name will at no point be made public unless she chooses to waive her right to anonymity and go public.
The confusion around whether or not the alleged victim would receive money in this process appears to be a conflation with civil lawsuits. Civil lawsuits are filed by private parties to resolve individual disputes and usually result in monetary damages or injunctions – it could be the case that, in lawsuits involving sexual abuse, the victim was unable to pursue a criminal case if the statute of limitations ran out, or prosecutors rejected the case. Criminal cases, on the other hand, are brought by the government and are punished through jail time or fines. While it is possible that in criminal cases sexual abuse victims can claim compensation, this is only in the case that you sustained an injury or face financial loss due to the crime.
It seems that with so many high profile civil cases involving celebrities in recent years, a lot of young people are confused about the actual legal recourse that happens in a sexual abuse case like this. But facts of the case aside, one has to ask – what kind of cruel, woefully ignorant and misogynistic society are we living in that the first response of so many men online was to use such degrading, victim-blaming language to describe this young woman and presume her to be lying for money or fame?
Toxic male influencers are infecting the minds of young people so as to see women purely as sexual conquests with no agency of their own.
There was a point in time, around the 2017 #MeToo Movement, where it felt like people were really listening when we spoke openly about consent – now, with toxic male influencers infecting the minds of young men so as to see women purely as sexual conquests with no agency of their own, we’re reverting back to a time when women are shamed and degraded for even anonymously reporting rape. Must we remind everyone that rape conviction rates are so low in the UK, less than 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction, that campaigners argue it’s essentially decriminalised? Australia’s rate of conviction is largely the same at 1.5%.
So, for this largely unreported crime to result in no conviction 99% of the time, for the few times that a case makes the news and causes public discourse, it would be helpful if men could refrain from causing further harm by perpetuating victim-blaming narratives that allow for rape to go unpunished.