Michelle C's Story
This is my testimony of the ways in which I was abused by Tyler Lang, as well as my experiences with his best friend and known abuser, Kevin Olliff. Tyler and Kevin are the founders and organizers of the animal rights group, CAFT USA (Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade), which they launched together in November of 2020. Tyler is still very active within the animal rights community, and Kevin works alongside him behind the scenes, despite making a public post that he stepped down from CAFT.
I am making this statement because Tyler and Kevin are both serial abusers who continue to thrive within the animal rights community by using their positions within CAFT to seek women and any activists who they can prey
upon, manipulate, and use for personal gain.
Meeting Tyler and Kevin and Their Predatory Patterns:
It's important for me to start out the story of how I met Tyler and Kevin, because it outlines a pattern of behavior they use when preying on women within the animal rights movement. I am now the 5th woman adding a testimony to this website, and I believe there will be more to come if these two individuals are not stopped.
I met Tyler and Kevin while attending my first CAFT anti-fur protest in early January. When I arrived, they immediately started showing me a lot of attention. After the protest, Tyler and Kevin were both eager in their approach to get to know me. Tyler followed up with me after the protest to ask the question, “Do you drink?" I thought it was odd for an organizer to ask an activist he just met that question, but I told him, “Yes.” He then proceeded to want to get to know me, and told me more about himself.
Kevin was also quick to follow up with me and make conversation. He told me he wanted to hang out but had to leave to go on a trip with his “friend.” He said we would all hang out when he got back. Later, I found out he was actually on a trip with his girlfriend who he was in a committed relationship with.
I was excited to meet and get to know them because they seemed like nice guys who genuinely cared about other animals. They boasted about raiding a mink farm for which they were sent to prison after being caught. They were also the organizers of an animal rights organization, so I felt safe with them. I let my guard down. I didn't realize it at the time, but they had only been back in the animal rights scene for about two months after being released from prison years prior.
Over the next two weeks, I attended another CAFT protest where I saw Tyler, but I went directly home after the protest. Tyler tried to make plans with me a few times, but I wasn't able to go, so about a month later, out of curiosity to get to know him, I invited him over to eat vegan food and hang out.
When Tyler came over, he was happy to tell me stories about his activism, mountain biking and his recent breakup. I liked Tyler. He was very charismatic, entertaining, and very charming, so I was happy to hear about his experiences.
As the night went on, Tyler became more aggressive, encouraging me to drink heavily and he kissed me inappropriately. This upset me so I pushed him off but welcomed a kiss later as I became more intoxicated. I did feel a connection but I had no intention of sleeping with Tyler that night. I ended up feeling nauseous from the alcohol so I laid down in my bed. Tyler laid next to me and started groping me over my clothes. I didn't want this to happen but I was too sick to tell him to stop and I fell asleep without reciprocating any touching or cuddling back.
Even though Tyler was aggressive and touched me when I wasn’t able to consent, I overlooked it because we had great conversations and I genuinely liked Tyler. The fact that I felt a connection with him at all, and that he was an animal rights activist, overshadowed many of the red flags I saw early on.
Unknowingly, the following week, Tyler went up to San Francisco for a CAFT demo and slept with activist, Rachel Ziegler (another one of his victims), for the second time, after the “threesome” incident from her testimony. Tyler also texted with Rachel the following week, insinuating that he was planning on sleeping with her again in the future, though she had no interest in doing so and wasn’t happy about having slept with him again. These are the text messages that Tyler never exposed during his public retaliation against Rachel after she came forward.
When Tyler returned to LA, he immediately tried to sleep with me again. After learning that he had just slept with another activist, I was hurt and confronted him, but he said since we were not exclusive, he could sleep with whoever he wanted. However, he assured me that he would not have sexual relations with other activists while sleeping with me in the future so we started dating. Later, I found out that Tyler was bragging about sleeping with me and Rachel around the same time.
Threesome plot:
After Tyler and I had been dating for a few months, he revealed to me that when he and Kevin initially met me, their plan was to have a threesome with me. They wanted to charm women, get them drunk, and coerce them into threesomes with the two of them.
Now it made sense as to why they were so anxious to get to know me and one of Tyler's initial questions to me was, “Do you drink?” He explained how that was an important question he asks women he's interested in, because if the woman doesn't drink, then she's disregarded as a candidate for sex with him/them. They targeted me in January only one month after they had a “threesome” with Rachel. Tyler told me that after hanging out with me, he told Kevin, "[He was] going to keep this one for himself” and to keep me out of their threesome plans.
I never had any interest in a threesome, or in Kevin romantically, and I was appalled that those were their intentions for me and other women in the animal rights movement. Tyler immediately regretted telling me and made me promise not to tell Kevin's girlfriend who he was in a committed relationship with at the time when they preyed on me.
Tyler has done a great job of convincing many people that HE is the victim in Rachel's whole testimony. This is particularly the case with the “threesome” incident, but he also admitted to me that he cheated on his ex-girlfriend with Rachel that night partially because she didn't want to come out to the party with him, but also in an effort to get back at her for not supporting CAFT. The next day after cheating on her, he made Rachel promise not to tell her. He told me he invited his girlfriend to go to Fur-Free Friday with Rachel, Kevin but she declined again, which made him feel resentful towards her, even though he had just cheated on her the night before. Tyler is NOT the victim in any of the women's testimonies.
Revenge Plots/Violence:
After the initial four survivors came forward with their testimonies of abuse from Tyler and Kevin, CAFT lost a lot of support, and they both had to take a step back from the community. During this period of time, Tyler viewed a popular activist who protests fur as a “threat,” since he wasn't the one controlling their protests. He talked/fantasized about “curb stomping” this activist. He even talked of plans to vandalize public property by wheat pasting a smear campaign about this activist outside the 2021 Animal Liberation Conference (ALC) in an effort to hurt this activist who he viewed as a threat to CAFT. He talked about seeking revenge on many activists, some of which are teenagers, because they publicly supported the victims.
Both Tyler and Kevin had various revenge plots against the other women who have come forward. Kevin built a revenge website that to this day is ready to be launched. They joked that they were now running a campaign against Rachel instead of the fur trade. Tyler created a revenge document against Rachel, which he actively sends out to many people in our community in an effort to humiliate, discredit, and silence her. When Tyler was putting this document together, he would often say it made him look like, “the man." Tyler talked about showing up to Rachel’s preliminary court date (for the felonies she’s facing from doing activism) even after she told him to stay away from her. The revenge plots were relentless. I started to distance myself from hanging out with Tyler and Kevin together early in the relationship because they were so toxic.
Tyler constantly talked about using people and how he doesn't actually view anyone as a friend, but rather he values them based off of what they can do for him. He’s a terrible friend, even to Kevin, and even speaks poorly about the few people who still support him. He shifts the blame on Kevin for all of his mistakes but the truth is that they make most of their mistakes together. I realize now that Tyler was using me too. He bragged in front of me to people about how much money he was saving by dating me since I willingly paid for everything. One of the things Tyler said the most was that he does not like or care about animals, and he spoke condescendingly about any campaign or organization that wasn't CAFT.
Tyler would tell me that he only gave special treatment to certain activists who were helping him with CAFT, but that he actually hated them as people. He admitted to using Rachel due to her platform with DxE many times, and he felt no remorse over it. He claimed to be the victim when she stopped supporting him/CAFT.
Tyler often said that he wanted “every woman to want to fuck him, and every man to want to be him,” and this wasn’t a joke. It became clear to me that Tyler and Kevin did not re-emerge into the animal rights movement to save animals, their true objectives were to gain power and status. Our community gave them the opportunity to access vulnerable women and men to reach their goals.
Following the previous women’s testimonies, Tyler announced new female leadership to neutralize the organization, when in reality Tyler and Kevin never stopped leading CAFT. Tyler relentlessly called activists who no longer supported trying to flip them onto his side and took it as a victory when they did. He harasses the organizations that banned him, demanding a public apology while simultaneously begging them to let him attend their future events. He secretly recorded phone conversations he had with organizers in an effort to later smear them if they said something wrong or refused to help him.
He would regularly ask me and his female supporters to seek out people in the community who didn't support him, confront these people at protests in an effort to regain their support, and he would ask that we make public statements in support of him/CAFT. He wanted Sidney and I to attend the ALC conference (which he is banned from) in an effort to upset Rachel and flip DXE activists onto his side in which Sidney and I agreed to but I ended up breaking up with Tyler before the conference. We even spoke about this plan with Sidney in front of another San Diego activist at a restaurant while having dinner.
His few female supporters would rather lie for Tyler, and help him with damage control, rather than encourage Tyler and Kevin to seek professional help. I also bent over backwards to help Tyler do damage control after being called out and I deeply regret that as I hadn't known him for long enough to vouch for his character, and I was also under his control and being manipulated by him.
Physical Abuse:
During a sexual experience with Tyler, he started to slap me extremely hard across the face back and forth over 10 times. He was intoxicated after a night of drinking and told me to perform oral sex on him. Then he hit me again hard across the head a few times while calling me a whore. My cheeks were red and swollen and the next day the side of my head was sore. Although it was painful, I didn't tell him to stop because I was in a bit of shock, but mostly because I wanted to please him. I knew he derived pleasure from causing me pain because of some prior sexual experiences together where he violated my boundaries. After the physical abuse was over Tyler told me, “that was the happiest he's been in awhile.” The first time we slept together he choked me to the point where I wasn’t able to breathe, and felt like I could pass out. I told him I was not ok with that and his response was that he thought that was normal. After this happened, we never discussed that incident, but I was always fearful that he would become physically violent with me again.
Verbal Abuse & Manipulation:
The Tyler I met was not the Tyler I came to know. He went from fun and charming to extremely angry, manipulative and verbally abusive. He would call me names regularly and degrade me. If I didn't wear make-up, he would look at me then ask me if he was “dating a man," so I started to wear make-up more often. He would make comments that I didn't look cute enough for the CAFT protest, so I started dressing up. He often commented that I had a double chin and told me that I wasn't photogenic on many occasions. I’m 36, 3 ½ years older than Tyler, so he regularly criticized me regarding my age. He referred to me as an, “old bitch”, “boomer”, and he regularly told me that I looked old. He told me that the only reason he keeps me around was for “the sex.” If I got upset, he would say that he was teasing, then punish me for my reaction by giving me the silent treatment or insulting me again later. He constantly told me, “If you weren't such a cunt, then maybe our relationship would work out.” I have thick skin when it comes to criticism-jokes but these comments were not jokes and it took a toll on my mental health.
He criticized and convinced me that in all my years of activism, I hadn't actually done anything to save animals and I came to believe that, so I started focusing solely on helping him with CAFT to be “effective”. He was jealous of my friendships in the movement, my successful career, and was never happy for me in general. I had to pick and choose my battles with Tyler however the verbal abuse is something I often let slide, but I am still trying to recover from his degradation.
I won an all-expense paid company vacation for two to Mexico due to being a top sales performer at my job in which he promised that he would come with me, but he couldn't be bothered taking the time to request the days off work. After we broke up he wrote me an email telling me he didn't request the days off because he was, “waiting for me to leave him” which is not a justifiable excuse. Given the amount of effort, money and care I was putting into the relationship I found this email to be absurd, and a classic example of how Tyler always becomes the victim. Tyler was only interested in getting his own desires fulfilled, but when I expressed my needs, I was punished, labeled as a cunt, and then he made himself the victim.
I didn't deserve this treatment and all of those insults hurt me deeply. My friendships, performance at work, confidence, and overall well being started to decline. I felt sad, but I cared deeply for Tyler and wanted to make him happy thinking he would change. The more he mistreated me, the harder I tried to make the relationship work.
My breaking point and the night I broke up with Tyler. He yelled at me in front of a group of people and another activist, “GET IN THE CAR, WHORE!” Earlier in the night he told me I was an, “old bitch”. While sitting at the bar I overheard him bragging to the other activist that he had almost gotten me to sleep with him the first night we hung out, but I was too drunk. I'm a private person so I found this comment to be inappropriate and it was also a lie. I pretended like none of this bothered me, like I usually did, in an effort to keep the peace, but I considered his behavior towards me to be extremely disrespectful.
The reason I broke up with Tyler that night was when I started feeling unsafe at an after party because I was being harassed by a man and woman that I had just met that night and it was late, around 4 a.m. When I told Tyler that I needed to leave and wanted to tell him what happened, I had to beg him to walk outside with me. Tyler expressed to me that he was disappointed in my behavior in wanting to leave, he refused to even listen to my side and went back into the party to be with the people who harassed me and whom we had just met earlier that night. When Tyler came back to where I was waiting for him outside the party I broke up with him immediately.
Later, in an email Tyler disclosed that the reason he didn't want to leave the afterparty where I felt unsafe was because he was secretly upset with me after overhearing a comment I made about my ex boyfriend from college (who I dated 13 years ago) and it made him feel insecure.
Gaslighting and Manipulation:
Tyler was good at finding my weaknesses and exploiting them. He told me he wanted to sleep with other activists, would then ignore me and seek out that particular activist at a protest in an effort to upset me. He inappropriately touched, massaged, and cuddled with women and men in front of me. He slept in bed with other women while we were together. When I told him I wasn't comfortable with this behavior, he said that flirting and being inappropriate with people “was his nature.” He told me lies that certain women and his ex-girlfriend were reaching out to him, flirting or trying to get back together with him. He told me that he still wanted to sleep with his ex-girlfriend from high school to upset me.
The gaslighting worked and I eventually became extremely insecure. Tyler brought out the worst in me. He intentionally tried to pin me against other women in the movement who I respected. Many of those women who have now come forward saying TYLER is the one who was pursuing THEM and I have proof. He has made more than a handful of women who's testimonies are not on the website feel uncomfortable with his inappropriate behavior in the past to the point they will not attend an event/protest if they know he will be present.
Instead of talking through our problems, he would punish me for my reactions to his disrespectful behavior. I was constantly apologizing to Tyler over problems he initially created, but he rarely apologized or took responsibility for his actions. Tyler tells people that the only mistake he made with the other victims was believing that they were his friends, and that he could trust them to overlook his bad behavior.
Before a CAFT protest he would floor the accelerator in the car, almost hit another car, but then brake check at the last second to avoid a crash. He would do this out of anger and to rattle me before the protest. Afterwards, he would give me the silent treatment as I sat there crying and shaking. In hindsight I believe he did this to intimidate me and gain control over me through my fear. When we arrived at the protest I made sure to act like nothing was wrong because if I didn't, I would be further emotionally punished and manipulated.
He told me that I needed to get therapy and to get on medication, so I did, but he had no interest in doing therapy himself even though I offered to pay for his sessions. I'm thankful he made me go because my therapist is one of the people who helped me realize I was being abused and needed to exit the relationship.
Tyler enjoyed the attention he received while making me upset with other women. If he wasn't constantly getting attention he became resentful. In an email he wrote to me after I broke up with him, he wrote a novel painting himself as the victim throughout our whole relationship in an effort to get his own closure. I certainly hope this testimonial gives Tyler the closure he so desperately wants and needs.
Inappropriate Behavior at other Organization's Events:
The first animal rights event I ever invited Tyler and Kevin to was an event that I was helping organize outside of CAFT. They drove to the event and showed up drunk. Kevin was also under the influence of drugs. Tyler immediately started flirting and taking photos of a woman who he previously told me he was trying to sleep with and he believed initially wanted to sleep with him. When I became upset he told me that he had asked this particular woman in the past the question, “Do you drink?” and when she said “NO”, she was ruled out as a candidate for sex with him so I shouldn't be upset but I was.
Another organizer noticed their reckless behavior at the restaurant that many activists came to after the event. They brought it to my attention but I assured them that everything would be fine. Kevin's girlfriend was out of town at the time, so after the event was over, Tyler and Kevin (both in their 30’s) offered activists much younger than them drugs and invited people to go party at her house. When the other organizers and I realized what they were planning, I became extremely upset and embarrassed. I told them that this was unacceptable behavior at our events and thankfully the afterparty never happened. Later, Tyler told people the only reason I was upset at the restaurant was because I was jealous of the activist he was flirting with earlier which is a lie.
There were also reports by multiple activists who said they witnessed Tyler and Kevin aggressively kissing, massaging and being sexual towards each other in public while attending this specific event. I did witness them massaging and touching each other in a sexual manner which made me feel uneasy since Tyler and I were dating exclusively at the time, but I did not witness them kissing.
Months later, I brought Tyler to another event where he behaved recklessly by climbing onto the front of a slaughterhouse truck while it was moving. Other impressionable activists saw him doing this and followed his lead, which ended up putting their lives in danger and many attendees and organizers have PTSD from the events that occurred that night. This was the first event he attended in our community after the testimonies from the other women came out. He was removed and banned by both Animal Save Movement groups in Los Angeles. I never invited Tyler or Kevin to any animal rights-related events together again. Tyler is also banned from DxE, PETA and Animal Alliance Network events, but he has relentlessly begged these organizations to let him back into their communities without success.
Tyler has recently been attending many Los Angeles animal rights events, which he has not been banned yet, but these are some of the very organizations and specific activists he talked poorly about to me in the past. When CAFT lost most of their support following Tyler and Kevin's victims coming forward, Tyler complained that now he had to invite activists he doesn't like or value to his events, and go to theirs in order to gain any support at all. He also takes photos as a tactic to gain support by sending them to the organizers and to the women he preys on at animal rights events in an effort to gain their trust. I have already heard stories of him being inappropriate at some of these events towards women, which does not surprise me at all. Some of these activists and organizers have welcomed Tyler, recently been to CAFT events, and have shown public support despite the prior abuse allegations.
Harassment After the Breakup:
Since I broke up with Tyler about two months ago, he has relentlessly harassed me through various methods. He has tried to get in contact with me after I asked him multiple times to leave me alone and blocked him on my phone and social media. He's reached out to my close friends, and called activists via private numbers to trick them into answering. He's even contacted activists that live in different states or that I don't know very well, all in an effort to try to get information about me.
After blocking him, he sent me desperate emails, he made many fake Instagram accounts so he could send me voice notes and more written messages. He has had multiple people reach out to me on his behalf during my busy work day in an effort to stop me from adding my testimony to this website with the other women's testimonies against him. As I mentioned earlier, this relentlessness is what motivated me to come forward to try to warn others so what happened to me does not happen to them.
After I broke up with Tyler, I reached out to the victims to apologize for publicly speaking out against them in the past because I knew their stories were true after enduring similar treatment first-hand. They were extremely kind and forgave me immediately. Now, we are all friends on social media. Although Rachel and I both have Tyler blocked, he somehow figured out that Rachel and I had recently become friends then started to relentlessly create new methods in order to get in contact with me but he was unsuccessful.
Tyler had some of our mutual friends reach out to me and harass me over potentially adding a testimonial to this website. One of them started her message to me with, “Michelle with all due respect, please don't tell me you're about to join “Rachel’s cancel drama show”. She wrote to me that I was above Rachel's ‘toxic- ego- driven- man- hating- schemes” and then continued to attack me. She then got upset when I told her that her messaging on behalf of Tyler was inappropriate and told her not to contact me again. This person never bothered to ask how Tyler abused me even though I had informed her of the abuse when she previously reached out to me regarding our break up. I was really disappointed, but this particular incident of harassment is exactly what pushed me over the edge into write this statement and reveal the truth about Tyler.
On multiple occasions, I’ve been so overwhelmed by this harassment, I’ve had to come home from work. I have had trouble eating and sleeping from all the stress/anxiety he causing me. I have felt afraid for my safety, because I know what Tyler is capable of. I have seen first-hand how vengeful he becomes towards those who expose him for the person he truly is. I know that he will do whatever he can to try to paint himself as the victim, because that’s all part of his tactic that he uses to manipulate others into believing him.
Conclusion:
This has been the worst experience of my life. I never wanted to make this testimony. I never thought that I would. I used to be on the wrong side with these abusers, fiercely defending Tyler and calling these other women liars. I thought they were being dramatic. I thought they were only out to get revenge, until I experienced for myself what they saw, and understood why they came forward. I knew that the few people defending him were lying for him, and they have been for the last decade. I hope that their supporters will encourage these men to seek mental health help in the future instead of enabling them to continue victimizing others.
Not only do abusers manipulate and hurt their victims, they create a tornado of destruction around them by tearing apart friendships, gas-lighting activists against each other, creating hostility and resentment between organizations. This is about justice and safety. We cannot keep our communities safe while allowing serial abusers who refuse to take accountability to be in them. This is not about “cancel culture.” Calling it that only minimizes the damages that these men have caused, and it diverts the blame onto survivors who are left to deal with the consequences these men need to face for their own actions.
Tyler and Kevin are the only people to blame for their actions. They need to voluntarily take a step back, accept responsibility, and start working on bettering themselves. But until then, we cannot allow them to continue hurting more women by allowing them to remain in our movement. Neither of them have acknowledged or apologized for their behavior. Instead, they continue to blame the victims.