CW: Sexual violence, abuse.
As we were helping edit, factcheck, and polish ex-Anarchist Federation member Soba’s statement about Soba’s time in the UK Anarchist Federation (AF), we started noticing connections between, and overlap of, many of the things Rev (the focus of these pieces), the AF, and others have said about the allegations and investigations involving him. This has given us a clearer picture of what Rev has actually been accused of and the ways his exculpatory stories have changed over time. In this piece we’ll be examining them.
We recommend you read Soba’s piece before this one because, amongst other things, it lays out how the various documents and screenshots came into Soba’s and then our possession, as well as featuring Soba’s own experience and analysis that we—for the most part—don’t repeat here. Soba’s experience of being intimidated, roadblocked, and then lied about by Rev is a crucial part of this.
However, we’ve tried to make this accessible to those who, for whatever reason, haven’t read Soba’s piece. We also have a separate article in the works on the rampant abuse apologism that permeates through the AF that shows it is not a safe place for victims, survivors, the gender oppressed, or anyone who might want to speak out against its boss, Rev. Though frankly, if this piece and Soba’s statement aren’t enough to convince you of the danger, then a third article probably won’t either.
Recap
To begin with, we’ll remind you of a few important things to know from Soba’s statement.
Rev uses a number of different aliases, and he claims that revealing and linking them is doxxing him. It isn’t, as none of them are his government name (which we have but aren’t revealing) and are all aliases he has used publicly at different times. Making it clear that these identities are the same person is not the same as doxxing, especially as this lack of clarity further enables his actions. We’ll be referring to him as ‘Rev’ throughout this piece, but his aliases appear in a number of the sources we use.
Elsewhere he is known as:
- Rhyddical
- Seditionist
- Peter Ó Máille
- R
- P
Rev is the boss of the UK Anarchist Federation and Seditionist Distro, and the editor of Organise! Magazine. He’s also on the organising committee for the biggest annual anarchist event in the UK, the London Anarchist Bookfair.
Soba was able to provide documentation showing that the IWW previously investigated Rev for historical racism and transphobia, and that the IWW investigation concluded there was ‘no case to answer’, something that means that the claimant has either withdrawn their complaint or stopped pursuing it for whatever reason (not that it didn’t happen).
This is very different to how Rev and the AF have portrayed this elsewhere, acting as if the IWW’s investigation cleared Rev of the allegations of abuse and sexual violence that continue to follow him. The IWW unquestionably did not clear him of these allegations. The AF’s own investigation was largely based on the IWW’s investigation and so returned a similar result. However, the AF managed to speak to someone who was in contact with the person who accused Rev of sexually assaulting them. They said they hated Rev and didn’t want to go through any kind of formal process with the AF (which makes sense, because they weren’t a member). This has led to the AF concluding that they don’t believe Rev is a rapist, along with enabling Rev to use these ‘no case to answer’ results as if they are proof that he is not an abuser or rapist.
Soba demonstrates how Rev attempted to intimidate Soba when Soba asked questions about the accusations against him and then lied about Soba and others who have repeated those accusations. So you must keep in mind throughout that Rev is at best a bully and a liar.
Rev constantly muddies the water around what people in the present are concerned about or believe [screenshot]—that he is a rapist—by saying every bad thing anyone says about him is part of a years long smear campaign targeting him. Rev likes to point out the absurdity of some of the apparent claims, such as him being a British National Party voter or working as a meat promoter. We don’t have evidence that these claims even exist, but they do seem ridiculous. What we do know though is that Rev is a liar and we only have his word that those claims exist. It’s well within the realms of possibility that he made them up in a clumsy attempt to make the rape accusation against him seem just as absurd.
Rev has used various methods to harass people who cut off contact with him after they learned of the allegations against him. He circumvented social media blocks, sent them things using the postal service, and even dispatched people to in-person events that he and the AF were specifically barred from to argue on his behalf. If you’re keeping score, that makes him at best a bully, a liar, and a harasser.
Soba’s piece also showed the rampant abuse apologia that Rev spouts, and runs through the AF at large. Rev also let Dave/Kuwasi/Mutt, someone he assuredly knows is a sexual predator, back into the AF’s Discord server, and continues to work with him via Seditionist Distro. Even making Dave a director of the company Rev owns.
Finally, one of the people Rev is apparently regularly accused of abusing says that he did not abuse them and that the constant repetition that Rev abused them is very distressing. The AF says they spoke to this person in 2018 and confirmed it. This piece is explicitly not about that person. However, Rev has regularly used this person’s dismissal of the allegations involving them to say that all abuse allegations against him are made up, conveniently failing to mention that at least one other person has accused him of sexual assault and abuse.
The Sources
There are four main sources we’ll be referring to in this analysis, all containing some overlapping details about the things Rev has been accused of. Importantly, each also contains details not mentioned in any of the other sources. This has allowed us to get a fuller picture of what Rev has actually been accused of and track how his version of events has changed over time.
The following quotes are taken from each source, and while the pseudonyms for involved people each source uses are different, they are all pretty obviously talking about the same events. As in Soba’s statement, we present the quotes as-is, typos and all.
From AF Notes Part 2: (believed to be from August 2022)
A rough document made up of some notes and comments taken during and after an AF meeting. The document notes that the contents were kept from the wider AF membership, however that could have changed since it was created.
This was raised in the meeting, but I have kept it in a separate document to the minutes as the minutes go up on the AF discord and I those present did not think that this is the kind of thing that should automatically be shared on the discord. [Redacted] passed on this message:
“…Sometime between 2015-2018, someone in South Wales Anarchists informed the group that Rev had sexually assaulted her. An accountability process took place, but Rev and his mates hijacked it and made it into a ‘Where’s-the-evidence’ ordeal. …”
We don’t know who ‘A’ is, but they passed on a message to someone in the AF that among other things, Rev sexually assaulted someone while he was a member of a different anarchist group—South Wales Anarchists—and Rev and his mates wrecked an accountability process with demands for “evidence”. This is a common tactic used by rapists and abusers that any anarcho-feminist or gender oppressed person with a few years of experience in the scene will have seen at least once. We will state for the record that someone saying they were sexually assaulted is evidence that it happened.
At the meeting I said I would check with others in the wider Fed what had happened with this, as I was aware of a process with Rev in the past, but not the details. I asked K from Bristol about it (I did not share the above message with them), and they gave me a fairly comprehensive answer:
“…The second [allegation] was an ex partner of Revs (person2). Rev says that he is a survivor of abuse of multiple types at the hands of person2, and regrets being quiet about that in the aftermath. Person2 said that they hated Rev but didn’t want any process or other formal consequences persued. …”
It is notable that Rev didn’t bring up that the person who accused him of sexual assault allegedly abused him only after information spread about him sexually assaulting them. Alleging that someone he abused was the actual abuser once that person starts talking about the abuse they’ve suffered is a textbook abuser move. It sounds a lot like DARVO, something Rev calls “…convenient terms you can use to ignore anything you want” in a statement of his we’ll be examining further on. It is our belief, based on experience, that Rev did this to seed doubt in an attempt to make the truth unknowable.
Seemingly the person in question still hates Rev, and that they want no formal process suggests they could be the person from the previous quote in South Wales Anarchists that had their accountability process hijacked. However, we don’t have enough information to make a confident probable assertion that this is or isn’t the same person. What we can infer from this is, however, that there is at least one person whom Rev has abused and/or assaulted and who cannot see the use for any ‘formal processes’ that they deem as being unhelpful.
…people who knew … person2, and had heard the rumours above, and decided that this meant Rev needed to be ostracised. I assume the majority (if not all of them) are acting in good faith, especially as person2 is certainly not at any pains to stamp out rumours. They were the group within IWW that raised the complaint, and have continued to tell people within South Wales that Rev must be excluded, and it appears ‘by force if necessary’.
If Rev did abuse and sexually assault ‘person2’, then why would they have any interest in “stamping out rumors”, especially in the area where they live? If it’s the truth and they want it known, why would they “stamp out rumors”? Survivors often want it known that a certain person is dangerous in the hope that someone else isn’t also abused by their abuser. If other people are aware that Rev abused and sexually assaulted ‘person2’, then it makes perfect sense why they’d want to keep him out of their spaces “by force if necessary.” No one should be obligated to share space with a rapist or abuser.
From Rev’s “nice and sweetness” Discord post (September 2022)
Someone told Rev that Soba had been asking questions about the allegations against him. Rev posted on the AF’s private Discord server in a transparent attempt to intimidate Soba into stopping. In the post he admitted to having done some bad stuff, but made it out to be no big deal.
The initial accusation themselves amount to…
…B: A accusation of domestic and sexual violence from C. Upon enquiry this was “said I’ll hit you” during a tickle fight and ‘Was overzealous about bum stuff” which was (cringe enough) my mid- twenties post break-up (with someone else) way of saying. “I am not feeling sexual and don’t want to sleep with you.” Tho there is in fairness more to this as this story was regurgitated by them for other ex’s, and in all honesty they may of felt these things were a threat and I feel appropriately bad about that. Tho early this year I was informed that they didn’t even know the accusations spread as they did and was delighted to know it caused me severe harm. So my empathy is minimal.
I have since been informed that AF have been told my friends of C that ‘C doesn’t care and doesn’t what anything to happen.”
We believe this refers to the same person from AF Notes Part 2; the main clue is that the AF were apparently told “C doesn’t care and doesn’t [want] anything to happen”. Except this is a slightly embellished version of what K from Bristol said the AF discovered in AF Notes Part 2. That person said they hated Rev and didn’t want any formal process, not that they didn’t care. As we examine more sources, you’ll see how we’ve linked them all together.
Crucially, we get direct confirmation from Rev that these allegations exist and now know for sure that there is definitely someone out there saying that Rev abused and sexually assaulted them. We also get some details about what Rev is alleged to have done. Though, of course, it’s via the liar Rev, so we shouldn’t take his word that this is the extent of it. Half-truths and minimisation are common tools of abusers. Still, neither thing he mentions makes him look good.
“Said I’ll hit you” during a tickle fight … and in all honesty they may of felt these things were a threat … So my empathy is minimal.
Here Rev claims that this was the extent of the claim of domestic violence levelled against him. Sure. What Rev wants us to believe is that what he’s accused of doing is a relatively minor, one-off incident. This seems like a blatant attempt to discredit the accusations as having nothing of real substance to them, as well as discrediting the survivor as over-sensitive or ‘hysterical’. He’s essentially saying “I don’t remember it happening, but if it did happen it wasn’t that bad and I apologised, but I’m not actually sorry, because it’s not worth apologising for“. This strategy is commonly employed by abusers. Of course, this alone is not a slam-dunk by any means, but combined with the rest of the evidence over the articles on this site, a pattern starts to emerge. And if it quacks like a duck…
Furthermore, it’s absolutely the case that lots of smaller incidents like the one described when viewed as a whole amount to domestic abuse. This is what makes gaslighting possible, casting doubt on every small act of abuse to convince the survivor that there isn’t any abuse taking place. It seems like that’s what Rev is doing here. Rev’s ‘explanation’ reads more like an obfuscation of reality.
…was overzealous about bum stuff’ which was (cringe enough) my mid-twenties post break-up (with someone else) way of saying, “l am not feeling sexual and don’t want to sleep with you.”
The implication here is that, instead of turning down sex with someone (something that is obviously fine to do), Rev went in the opposite direction and tried to pressure his partner into anal sex so they would no longer want to have other forms of sex.
Sorry, what?! This is incredibly hard to believe. In fact, we don’t believe it. It reeks of a post-hoc justification for—at best—being a piece of shit who tries to pressure someone into unwanted sex. If we apply the same lens as we did with the previous “tickle fight” statement, this becomes even more sinister. There’s every chance that Rev is minimizing what he did, because we know that that’s what abusers do, and we know he’s a liar. There is a real possibility it was an attempted or successful sexual assault or rape. “Overzealous about bum stuff” could be a whole spectrum of things. From pressuring a partner to try anal sex, to inserting something into their anus without consent. The context Rev provides that it was a way of turning down sex is irrelevant. Not only that, he’s using the immaturity defense for something he did in his mid-twenties! As if his actions were those of a child, not a grown-ass person.
Rev’s explanation is a vague non-confession, its awkward, personal nature meant to dissuade anyone from asking more questions. The fact that he’s willing to admit to this much leads us to having a lot of questions about his prior alleged behaviour. While we can’t make a definite accusation, it is clear that the allegations of sexual assault that have been brought against him have not been at all dealt with in any serious capacity and that no one has engaged the victim(s) on their terms.
Tho there is in fairness more to this as this story was regurgitated by them for other ex’s
Rev also indicates that this same person subsequently warned people he dated after them that he was a threat. There’s a clear disparaging tone from Rev here with his use of the word “regurgitated” which makes it read as if they were just spreading rumours or shit-talking. Survivors of abusers often attempt to warn potential future victims (i.e. new partners) that they may be in danger, or offer them support if abuse has already happened. This sounds a lot like that. This would also fit with ‘AF Notes Part 2’s’ claim that the person there is “…certainly not at any pains to stamp out rumours.” Taken together, it suggests that they want what Rev did to them widely known and wanted to find out if he’d done to others what he did to them.
Tho early this year I was informed that they didn’t even know the accusations spread as they did and was delighted to know it caused me severe harm. So my empathy is minimal.
It’s a common lie that survivors are vindictive and only interested in damaging an abuser’s reputation by revealing what he did to them. However, this is not mutually exclusive with us celebrating when we hear bad things have happened to those who have abused and attacked us, even more so when the cause of the abuser’s misfortune is their own actions (i.e., people learning that the abuser is an abuser). It’s completely understandable why someone who Rev abused would take delight in hearing that people still believe them and are still acting on what they tried to tell others.
Lastly, it is notable that, unlike in other sources, Rev doesn’t mention in his post that the person apparently abused him. Strange thing to leave out, huh? While we’re pretty certain that everything we bring up in this article relates to the same person, it is not outside the realms of possibility that the allegations we’re examining relate to different people. However, everything we have points to it being about one person. So why didn’t Rev mention that he is “actually the survivor of abuse” in this scenario when detailing the accusations against him to his fellow AF members? Theoretically it should be a significant detail. Most likely it’s because Rev can’t keep his story straight, throwing out any old garbage in a vain attempt to protect his reputation and power.
From Afed Statement on Rev (December 2023)
In October 2023, Trans Action Block (TAB) tweeted a thread [screenshot] about their anger and frustration at having to share space with Rev—someone they believe to be a rapist—at the largest annual anarchist event in the UK, the London Anarchist Bookfair. Two months later the AF quietly published a statement backdated to January 1st 2022 (presumably to keep it off the front page of their rarely updated website) about Rev and the allegations against him.
Accusation that Rev threatened, sexually assaulted, and took money from PersonD whilst in a relationship with them: we were unable to establish direct contact with PersonD. …
…Rev confirmed to us that he had been in a relationship with PersonD for two months a number of years prior. His version of events was that he had paid back the money claimed as taken, and then set up a standing order to do so a second time (after it was claimed it was never paid back initially). With regard to the more serious accusations, he gave more details on the circumstances of these events that we will not be sharing here. All we can say is that our facilitators were satisfied that what Rev told them fit, made sense, and crucially did not in any way contradict the information we were able to get from anyone else. We were given no first- or second-hand information that would suggest that Rev had committed sexual assault or abuse within his past relationship.
Reading this, it appears very clear from the allegations that PersonD is the same person as described in the previous sources we’ve looked at in this article. What’s new is that Rev took money from them. Seeing as it’s in a list of other allegations, presumably Rev took or kept this money without their permission. What’s less clear is why Rev would pay the money back twice. Did he lie about paying it back the first time?
More relevant to our purposes is that this means Rev admits that at least two of the allegations levied at him by this person were definitely true. He took money from them and threatened them—even if he disputes the severity. What’s less clear is why this person was able to accurately describe these two things and be believed by Rev—and by extension the AF—but was wrong about Rev having “sexually assaulted” them. Presumably the latter two allegations mentioned in the Afed Statement are the same events that Rev described in the section above. That he threatened to hit his partner during a tickle fight and was “overzealous about bum stuff.”
It’s unclear where the AF first learned of these specific allegations, but the only person they’ve accepted an explanation from is Rev, and he admits to the accuracy of two of them. Well, the accuracy of one of them and his own version of the other. So why do they accept that a sexual assault didn’t take place? Especially given Rev’s suspect description of what he claims happened in the Discord post above?
The AF are clear that they weren’t able to “establish direct contact with PersonD”, and elsewhere in the statement say: “PersonA … would only say they were in contact with PersonD and that PersonD did not want to speak or in any way communicate about Rev.” There’s little reflection from the AF about why PersonD might not want to have spoken to some strangers about past abuse or sexual assault they were subjected to. They simply say “[other people] will point out that PersonD does not have to make their testimony to us in order to be a survivor. We agree.”
Ultimately it still leads them to the conclusion that “we do not believe that our member Rev is a rapist, [or] that he is an abuser”. So the AF went ahead with one-sided information from the perpetrator of the accusations, allowing him to basically ‘run the show’ and for them to dismiss the allegations. From our perspective, it appears that there was little if any intent to question the things Rev told them.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that as Soba’s piece showed, Rev was in a group chat with the AF members who discussed writing this statement. It’s not clear whether they formed a separate group chat to write it, but from the beginning Rev was aware of it happening and based on the things it says, his fingerprints are all over it.
From The Suck (December 2023)
A couple of weeks before the AF released their statement, Rev put out his own titled ‘The Suck’. Since originally publishing it, he redacted some of it, and eventually deleted most of it, saying that he plans to revisit it in the future. Our analysis focuses on the original version (the link above leads to an archive of the original). It is filled with lies and water-muddying—Soba covered much of this. It is also completely bonkers. For a little taste, here’s how it starts:
So obviously that introduction is supposed to be Rev poking fun at the accusations leveled at him. But it’s nothing like as endearing as Rev seems to think it is. This is the kinda brain genius we’re dealing with. But onto the text.
The social media post that incited this whole thing (in which Person A gleefully describes attacking me), states that I had previously threatened to hit them. When asked about this, they say that I said “stop or I’ll slap you” or similar during a tickle fight. I have no idea if I said these things, regardless I apologised for them and entirely understand that my tone/manner may have came across as severe or intenting violence.
So now Rev is unsure if he threatened this person or not during the aforementioned “tickle fight”, and there’s a social media post where this person “gleefully describes attacking me.” Okay. Where is that post? Why were they attacking you, Rev? Was this during the same “tickle fight”? Was it even a “tickle fight”? Regardless, we still only have Rev’s word that this is what the person said Rev did and as we’ve comprehensively shown, Rev cannot be trusted. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s what’s coming next.
They willfully neglect to mention that Person A was, in fact, abusive to me, has a repeated pattern of false accusations with the same story beats and told an accountability process they don’t care about any of this and later, a party full of people that not only was it not true, but that it’s funny that it has caused me harm.
Firstly we see the same embellishment from earlier where Rev changes this person’s stance on an accountability process. The person said they hated Rev and didn’t want any formal process. Not that they didn’t care. And as you’ll soon see, details from other sections appear in ‘The Suck’, which allows us to confidently link all of the previously examined quotes showing they apply to the same allegations from the same person.
While AF Notes Part 2 mentions that Rev said his ex-partner was abusive to him, this is the first we’re told of them having “a repeated pattern of false accusations with the same story beats.” It is very notable that over the years our sources cover, this person has gone from “hating Rev” to “abused Rev” to no mention of them abusing Rev and “…they didn’t even know the accusations spread as they did and was delighted to know it caused me severe harm,” to someone who has repeatedly made up sexual assault allegations and tells groups of people they lied.
It is impossible to escape that this looks like Rev trying harder each time to make this person seem more and more unreliable. But their supposed unreliability is difficult to accept when elsewhere Rev admits to two of this person’s three accusations against him and had a very questionable explanation for why the third—the alleged sexual assault—wasn’t a sexual assault.
Why has no one else who went to the party spoken up in Rev’s defense? Presumably Rev wasn’t at this party. So someone must have told him that this happened, which begs the question why that person—or anyone else—wasn’t willing to confirm they’d lied about Rev.
Most importantly, and damningly of all, why has Rev’s previous explanation of being “overzealous about bum stuff” in his Discord post as a response to “an accusation of sexual violence from C”, entirely disappeared? Did that not actually happen? Because both of these explanations cannot coexist unless Rev is lying about something.
If the person who accused him of sexual violence made it all up as Rev now claims, then that means his explanation on Discord was also made up. As a reminder, it sounds very made up! Here it is again:
…Was overzealous about bum stuff” which was (cringe enough) my mid- twenties post break-up (with someone else) way of saying. “I am not feeling sexual and don’t want to sleep with you.
If Rev knew this person’s sexual assault allegation was made up when he gave that explanation back in 2022—and for his explanation of “[they told] a party full of people that not only was it not true”—he would have to have known that it was made up. Then why did he give a different explanation for it involving a gross way to turn someone down for sex?! It makes absolutely no sense to have used that as an explanation if the allegation was made up. Anyone else would just say “It’s a lie” or “It’s made up”, right? Right?
On the flipside, if his explanation about being “overzealous about bum stuff” is true. Then he is lying about that person telling a whole party of people they made everything up, because his previous explanation shows that they didn’t, even if he questions the severity of the allegation.
Rev is lying about something to do with this alleged sexual assault. There are no two ways about it. One of his explanations has to be a lie. And the more doubts, embellishments, and lies we find, the more it seems like Rev, for all his protestations, definitely did do something terrible.
Summing Up
That’s all the information we’ve been able to gather on the outstanding sexual assault allegations against Rev. We hope it’s clear that the things he’s said don’t add up. His evolving disparagements of the person who made the allegations against him are incredibly suspicious. He also admits to two of the three things they—according to him—allege he did to them.
Abusers and their defenders will tell you that the abductive reasoning we’ve used throughout this piece is bad, because it cannot lead to a definitive conclusion like deductive reasoning, as if the room for doubt means any conclusion reached by it is as good as hearsay. “What if it’s not a duck?!” they qua- sorry, cry.
There is unquestionably someone in South Wales telling people that Rev abused and sexually assaulted them. It seems that they tried to deal with it via an accountability process in the org they and Rev were both members of, but that process was wrecked by Rev and his friends. To be clear, we do not know who this person is, and we have not spoken to them. However, neither have the AF. Rev’s insistence this means the investigation the AF carried out have cleared him, is a lie.
Everything Rev says about this person being delighted about the circulation of the allegations, the regular reappearance of them from people who meet anarchists from South Wales, and Rev being threatened with violence if he shows up at certain anarchist spaces there, points to there being a survivor who wants other people to know these things about Rev. Therefore we believe when it comes to this person, we are acting in a survivor-focused, if not survivor-led way.
Combined, the above would be enough for any anarcho-feminist worth their salt to cut contact with someone. But on top of that, we can now say that without a doubt Rev has told at least one easily provable lie about whether the allegations relating to this person that follow him are true or not. Rev is lying, at least to some degree, about having sexually assaulted someone.
This is on top of the fact that he has intimidated people within the AF who asked questions about the allegations, told lies about them after they left, and has harassed people who cut contact with him in 2023 after TAB published their statement calling him a rapist.
Get rid.