Fake News is Fragile
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When Cal Coast News uses fake accounts to attack your family on reddit, you know you’re doing something right.
Last week, I penned a column about the website’s poor handling of a story involving over 40 women alleging two SLO County business owners of sexual assault. As a result, they retaliated against me in all sorts of petty ways — from using a fake account to regurgitate conspiracy theories they made about my family on their website to incessantly editing Wikipedia with misinformation to leaving fake reviews of my book to making comments to accusers about me that are patently untrue.
I used to be exhausted by it, but I’ve since downgraded their bullshit to “laughably sad” status. However, I am grateful to my readers for making me aware of their activity.
It’s laughably sad because I’ve merely held up a mirror to them. An opinion or two is always thrown in for good measure and that’s it. There is no need to embellish or distort. It’s all there with their ink on paper and the ink has long dried.
But Cal Coast News likes to play victim, even though they got a poor track record of doing that. Karen Velie has told at least two victims that I’ve “harassed” and her associates for a decade. Holding them accountable is not harassment, just like it’s not “harassment” of a popular business when accusers tell their stories and hold that business owner accountable. But please Karen, tell us more about how amazing the decor is inside Kin Coffee Bar.
Karen Velie’s mistreatment of young women and girls is nothing new. She’ll even target them after they’re gone — when they can no longer defend themselves.
Los Osos resident Nailani “Ni Ni” Ubay Buchholtz was only 13 when she chose to end her life. Velie alleged without evidence that Buchholtz committed suicide because of “years of torment” and bullying. Oddly enough, it was Velie who tormented her family after they disputed her sensationalized account. Velie did not change or update her story after an investigation by Nailani’s school district and the SLO County Sheriff’s Office concluded Nailani’s death was not the result of bullying. She didn’t update the story to reflect Nailani’s family pushing back on claims from “unnamed sources.”
And what did Velie do right after I wrote about her “reporting” on Nailani? She threatened me.
I’m used to her now, but her victims shouldn’t be. And people who are actual victims of harassment and assault shouldn’t buy into her narcissistic pity party. With everything she has done to people, Velie has no right to declare victimhood.
