Katerina's Story
I dated Kevin Olliff (AKA Kevin Johnson) from September 2011 until January 2013. Although I’ve privately disclosed the abusive nature of our relationship to many people over the years, I’ve refrained from publicly naming him as my abuser - due in part to the legal threats and intimidation I experienced during and after our relationship, but also because of my own reservations about “cancel culture.” I don’t believe that simply expelling someone from a movement or organization is enough to address their harmful behavior; inevitably, the problematic person just finds a new community to terrorize and the cycle continues. I hoped that Kevin would take a critical look at how he treats women and commit to working through those issues on his own.
However, it has recently come to my attention that Kevin continues to exhibit violent, predatory behavior without remorse or accountability. Until he takes meaningful steps to address this, I sincerely believe his current position in the movement constitutes a safety issue for the women around him. I’ve decided to share my experience so that the people in his life will be better equipped to identify patterns in his behavior and protect themselves and others before it’s too late.
Ours was a textbook example of an emotionally abusive relationship. Everything seemed perfect at first: I was newly vegan, eager to get involved in animal rights activism but unsure how; he was a former political prisoner who introduced me to local organizers and regaled me with stories from the movement’s glory days. After only a few months of dating we decided to leave LA to develop a national anti-fur campaign and connect with movement leaders around the country. We spent the next nine months on the road together in what became the most traumatizing experience of my life.
Things started to deteriorate as soon as we left LA, but red flags are nearly invisible when you’re looking through rose-colored glasses. Sure, Kevin was a mean drunk with a penchant for driving under the influence, but he didn’t drink very often (at first). And yes, he was virulently anti-feminist and spent countless hours complaining that intersectionality was harmful to the animal rights movement - I disagreed, but who could blame him? His crazy ex nearly ruined his life when she accused him of being abusive.
But it wasn’t long before minor disagreements began to escalate into terrifying conflicts at the drop of a hat. I often found myself begging for his forgiveness for arbitrary infractions like “letting” him sleep through his alarm. His random bursts of rage, emotional withholding, and gaslighting left me totally bewildered, but I did my best to put on a happy face for the sake of our campaign and my reputation as an organizer. Most of our trip was spent in cities I had never visited, staying with friends of his whom I’d never met. I didn’t want to be remembered as just another one of Kevin’s crazy ex-girlfriends.
Little by little, Kevin assumed complete control over our lives, including where we traveled, what projects we worked on, and how money was earned and spent. We had initially agreed to share our income - I was on food stamps, and he received federal benefits - but he retained sole access to the money that we supposedly shared. Gifts magically transformed into debts I was expected to repay. He complained that I didn’t contribute enough, but when I expressed interest in getting a job he became livid and accused me of betraying our campaign.
He called me fat, useless, inept. He insulted my intelligence and criticized my work as an organizer. I was constantly reminded that I was nothing without him, that I was lucky he put up with me. Everything was somehow my fault.
He imposed strict rules on who I was allowed to talk to and I became isolated from my friends and family. When he uncovered an email I’d sent to a close friend that hinted at relationship problems, he decided I wasn’t allowed to say his name to anyone - not even in a casual context, i.e. “Kevin is at the grocery store.” He began to monitor my emails and text messages to ensure I followed this rule.
He ignored my sexual boundaries, made degrading, fetishizing comments about my Japanese ancestry, and coerced me into things I wasn’t comfortable with. My emotional or physical comfort during sex was totally irrelevant to him. I vividly remember him storming off in a rage after I asked to stop a sexual encounter that left me bleeding and gasping with pain.
Over time, the stress of our relationship made it difficult for me to have sex with him. Instead of working to restore the intimacy and trust I needed with a partner, he established a quota: he was entitled to sex at least three times a week, he said, and if I didn’t provide it he’d find someone who would.
There were a number of times throughout our relationship in which Kevin became physically abusive, although I didn’t recognize it at the time. I had adopted Kevin’s extremely narrow definition of abuse that conveniently excluded any of his behavior. There was only one “real” kind of abuse (physical) and one manifestation of it (battered women). I didn’t know that physical abuse extended beyond punching and kicking: sometimes it looked like overpowering someone, pinning them down, restraining them, preventing them from leaving the room, driving recklessly, or breaking inanimate objects.
I’m sure some people will ask why I stayed with him if he was so horrible. The truth is, I TRIED to leave more times than I can count. Sometimes he would apologize and promise to change; other times, he would threaten to kill himself if I left. I knew things were bad but I felt like I had nowhere else to go. When someone you love spends months telling you how worthless, stupid, and unlovable you are, eventually you start to believe them.
This is only a brief overview of the abuse I suffered during our relationship. I could fill a book with the cruel things he said and did to me, but I’ll spare you - and myself - from that. There are two incidents that occurred toward the end of our relationship which I feel compelled to address in more detail, however:
August 2012
I don’t remember why we started arguing or how it escalated. I do remember laying curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor at my parents’ house, begging Kevin to stop screaming at me while I had a full-blown panic attack. I locked myself in my bedroom to escape, but he banged on the door until the wooden frame cracked and then attempted to climb in through an unlocked window. As I struggled to prevent him from entering my room, I slapped the window (open palm) in a panic. To my horror, the glass shattered and cut his forehead. I apologized immediately and asked him to come inside so I could clean his cuts, but he walked away without a word and didn’t return until that evening.
He told me later that he sent photos of his bloody forehead to a friend to document evidence of my “abuse” - an absurd accusation, meant only to shift blame and evade accountability. A relationship can’t be mutually abusive because abuse is only possible when one person maintains a disproportionate level of power and control over the other. I categorically reject the implication that I was somehow responsible for Kevin’s behavior, or that I deserved it.
The things I did in response to abuse could certainly be maladaptive (i.e. slapping a window), but it’s ridiculous and harmful to conflate these coping mechanisms with committing abuse. I acted out in order to regain my own sense of control. Kevin acted out in order to control me.
September 2012
We spent a weekend camping in Santa Barbara with some of his activist friends, including CAFT co-founder Tyler Lang. Kevin drank several bottles of wine as we sat around the campfire. He started to make rude comments about me in front of the group and falsely accused me of cheating on him with my friend “Cody” (name has been changed for privacy). After everyone went to bed, I tried to sleep in the car to get away from him but he spent 45 minutes banging on my car window, screaming at me for being a “slut” and making vulgar suggestions of things I should do to Cody.
Eventually he convinced me to unlock the car so he could get his belongings from the backseat - but as soon as the door was unlocked, he lunged toward me. After a brief struggle, he seized my phone and ran into the woods, leaving me with a bloody lip. Unbeknownst to me, he had memorized my passcode by watching me unlock my phone. He deleted the recordings of his verbal abuse, read my messages with Cody, and texted him “I miss seeing you” in an attempt to provoke flirtatious conversation.
Terrified and desperate, I woke up Tyler and asked him to come to my car so I could explain the situation without alerting the entire campsite. Kevin eventually returned and berated me for involving Tyler. He denied hurting me even though I was obviously bleeding (which Tyler confirmed). Tyler returned to bed shortly thereafter but I woke him up for a second time when Kevin drove off with my car, still intoxicated.
When he returned from his drunken joyride, I broke up with him on the spot - but he refused to get out of my car or relinquish my keys. It was pointless to continue arguing with him so I returned to the tent, tying the door closed with a pair of headphones I borrowed from my dad. Kevin threatened to cut the headphones with his folding knife, knowing that I was unemployed and couldn’t replace them if they were damaged, so I let him inside. He continued to harass me until he fell asleep, calling me names and ripping away my blanket so that I was exposed to cold air.
Kevin apologized the next morning and promised things would get better, just like he always did. And I forgave him, just like I always did. I put on a happy face. No one made any mention the previous night, including Tyler.
I never understood why Tyler ignored this incident. He was the only other person who saw me at my most vulnerable and terrified, but he just pretended like it never happened. He continues to defend Kevin and even perpetuates the misogynistic, ableist, and victim-blaming narrative that I was “crazy.” But after talking with other women in his life I now realize that Tyler has not only enabled Kevin’s worst behavior, he’s also participated in it himself.
It’s been eight years and I’m still coming to terms with the abuse I suffered. I’ve made a lot of progress with the support of my family and friends, but my trauma still rears its ugly head every now and then, especially in my romantic relationships. I fear the abuse has permanently changed me - made me smaller, more withdrawn, less able to give and receive love freely. I grieve the life I could’ve had and the person I could’ve been if I had never met Kevin.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about accountability for Kevin. What does accountability really look like? How can I hold someone accountable for breaking me down and destroying my sense of self, leaving me to pick up the pieces for the next decade? The truth is, there’s nothing that Kevin could do to make it up to me. He broke me and the trauma is mine to bear. It’s not fair, but life rarely is.
The only form of resolution I’ve ever wanted is for him to stop this pattern of abuse. For years, I tried to warn the people in my life. I privately filed reports with various animal rights organizations and movement leaders so they could protect the community. It wasn’t enough. He continues to leave a trail of traumatized women in his wake.
I don’t know if Kevin is willing or able to change, and to be honest, I don’t care. What I care about is making sure the women in his life have the support they need. If you know Kevin, please make a point to regularly check in on the women around him. Make sure they’re safe and that they know they aren’t alone. We can’t control his behavior, but we have a responsibility to the women in this community and survivors everywhere to ensure their safety.
