Michelle D's Story
In this testimony, I'm going public about my experiences of abuse with Kevin Olliff (Now Kevin Johnson). I want to clarify that I'm coming forward alongside Katerina and Rachel, because I see an urgency in protecting women inside and outside of this community. Each of us were severely manipulated, lied to and subjected to several types of physical violence. Kevin has been accumulating reports against him over the past decade, but the information has not been successfully accessible to us, neither was it for me, so I decided to make this information public to ensure women can be alerted and to prevent these abuses from happening again.
I'm totally aware of the challenges that this presents for me to come forward about my abuser, as I've seen how other women in the animal rights community have dealt with misogyny, victim blaming, backlashing and humiliation by other activists when they came forward. So my ask here isn't to believe me or not, or to grade this situation as “bad enough,” nor is it to justify Kevin's behavior because he is an activist or your friend. My ask here is to hold him accountable for the violence that he has been committing against me and many other women through the years. This must come to an end, and I will support whoever decides to come forward against Kevin (and Tyler Lang), as well as the ones who decide to not come public.
Lies, manipulation and violations of consent
Kevin and I met on social media. We texted several times throughout the year and we decided to meet in person in the Bay in December. After meeting in person, we dated for almost 2 months. Before I even met Kevin in person, he lied and manipulated me about his other relationships with past partners, including three women that came forward against him for several abuses in the past. The last person he dated before me was Rachel, and he always said that his relationship with her was only going out twice in the summer and that she became obsessed with him, was very jealous, and tried to control him about dating me or other women in the community. All of which was untrue.
From my experience, Kevin is really good at portraying himself as very honest and straightforward in order to erase reality and come across as convincing and sincere, so you do what he wants. Multiple times he tried to pin me against Rachel, push me into not talking to her, believing that she wanted to hurt me. Tyler also repeated the same lies about Rachel when I met him.
On our first date, he was acting weird, extremely euphoric. He repeatedly offered me alcohol. He tried to touch and kiss me several times. He was also being “playful” in a very aggressive weird way, and when I tried to walk away, he grabbed my hair very hard and tried to pull me towards him. He said sorry, but then he acted like nothing happened. After he drove me back home, he insisted on having sex, and even tried several times to undress me. I showed him that I was feeling pressured and uncomfortable but instead of stopping, he just made it seem like it was funny and playful.
Kevin multiple times put our lives in danger while driving
It was very difficult to tell if he was sober or not because he was very secretive; several times he went outside my house to drink alone and then lied about it when I asked him. Whenever I expressed that I felt in danger about his recklessness and drunk driving and offered to drive instead, he got super hostile and aggressive, slamming his hands on the steering wheel, compartment doors, and throwing stuff.
One day he was touching my leg and underwear very aggressively and shouting that he wanted to kiss and undress me. Then he crashed the left side of his car into the sidewalk. I freaked out but he acted very careless and remarked that I had to get used to it. After this, I helped him change his tire and managed to get back home.
We went through several scary situations like this, where after all, Kevin acted like nothing happened and tried to “fix” things, by being very super affectionate, demanding a lot of kissing, touching and having sex. This love bombing was a common strategy that Kevin used with me to erase his violent and unapologetic behavior, in order to be together. He also used his mental illness to justify his behavior and actions. Especially when things always escalated very quickly to end up being excessively bad, Kevin always tried to create such vulnerable positions where I needed to do whatever it took to make us get back home safe or to the whatever place we were going.
Physical aggressions
While having sex, his aggressiveness was very common. He left bruises on several parts of my body. And enjoyed choking me as I struggled to breathe. He constantly objectified me and took photos of me when I was naked in the bed. He once sent Tyler an intimate photo of both of us without asking me and then showed it to me after.
One of the worst experiences that I had was, when he invited me to go to his mom's house in LA. This was supposed to be a fun and cool experience to hang and meet each other more, but right when we arrived, he received a call concerning the reports that Rachel and Katerina filed against him. I asked him to share his version, and he said that he was just being a victim of Rachel's revenge intended to “ruin” his life and work. He denied all guilt and responsibility, even the physical aggression that he committed against Katerina.
He obsessively tried to convince me that Rachel hated me and that she was doing everything to keep us apart. He also assured that she was going to affect my work and opportunities as an organizer until Kevin and I stopped dating. This issue became a wrecking point and within minutes Kevin's behavior just kept getting drastically worse. He was drinking straight alcohol, shouting, coming in and out of the house, and making several phone calls on speakerphone with Tyler. Suddenly he also wanted to be very affectionate, to hug and kiss me and got very mad if I pulled myself away.
I was 6 hours away from my home and I didn't know exactly where I was. Kevin insisted on making me stay or driving drunk at midnight. This was way too risky and I didn't agree, so I ended up locking myself in a room until the next day. It took me several days to get back home, since Kevin kept trying to make me stay. In my first effort to make him drive me home, he got super mad and tried to run out of the car screaming and crying on the porch. In my second effort, he started to drive recklessly and dangerously and he almost crashed the car with the concrete bars on the freeway. He got me to the point of being so afraid that I had to convince him to pull the car over in a parking lot. Until the next day, I finally got back to my home. After this situation happened, he was very love bombing again, trying to be charming again.
My last encounter with Kevin. He asked me to go with him on a trip to Las Vegas, to attend a CAFT action that they organized as part of their campaign against “Alice and Olivia.” When we got to Las Vegas, Kevin and I were not really getting along anymore. I was feeling very exhausted and annoyed so I told him that I wanted to be alone and didn't want to hang out with him or his friend Tyler who was arriving later that night. Despite me being in the room alone, Tyler ended up coming towards me to get conversation out of me. He offered me alcohol multiple times and insisted that I should get out of bed to “have fun.” Eventually Tyler and Kevin decided to drink next to the bed I was laying on. I continued to show that I wasn't in the mood. In one of his attempts to be "charming", Tyler came next to me, asked me if I was naked and then ripped off the sheets away from me.
Kevin made several sexual comments about my body towards Tyler, and also tried to kiss me and throw me in the bed in front of Tyler, but I pushed him away and insisted in not wanting to be touched. So he got very mad after this and again, Kevin's behavior started to get worse and worse. He was running away from us, shouting, getting close to police patrols and then shouting that he was going to drive back to LA immediately. Tyler did nothing to stop this. He endorsed his behavior, and was acting very euphoric too. He was shouting, drinking while “drifting” the car and playing music super loud, even while I expressed to him that I was very concerned about that. Kevin ended up running away and Tyler went after him.
I was left alone in the car for a long time. After hours of not knowing what was going on, Tyler came back without Kevin and started crying. I didn't wanna be there and I was feeling like shit, so I asked Tyler to drive us back to the hotel. When we got there, Kevin was faking to be asleep in the bed. Literally like nothing happened. Next morning, I decided to not talk to Kevin or to ride with him anymore. I bought a bus ticket and Tyler agreed to drive me to the station later that day.
Tyler and I rode together to the protests, but since leaving the hotel he was super angry and kept complaining about Kevin. On our way to second location, Tyler wanted me to follow him around in circles, carrying several heavy signs for him. He was lost and having a lot of issues communicating with Kevin as with the rest of the activists. I tried multiple times to explain to him where we could walk and meet the activists instead of going around a parking lot, but he purposefully kept ignoring me. So I left him and I went to the car to wait until the protest finished.
Despite Tyler offering me multiple times to stay with him in LA and driving me to the Bay later that week, I kept showing him my urgency to get back to my home. Tyler said that we were getting there, after having lunch with Las Vegas activists. On our way to the restaurant, Kevin sent a message to Tyler stating that he wanted to “fuck an activist in the ass,” and asking for the message to be deleted. This message was in reference to an activist from Las Vegas that was present. I didn't say anything to Tyler about this and I know that neither of them know that I saw this message.
During the drive, Tyler confirmed to me that Kevin had been drinking hiding that whole day, and he pointed out other experiences of Kevin's abusive and reckless behavior, but he also brought a lot of victim blaming towards Rachel, Katerina and Kevin's other past partners who came forward or broke up with him.
This was the last time that I saw Kevin, as I decided to cut all communication with him. Kevin did not apologize for this, neither did Tyler.
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