Trans Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti has been left “traumatized” by a swatting incident in which trolls incited the police to raid her home and arrest her under completely false pretenses.
Sorrenti, a Canadian-based content creator and activist who streams under the alias Keffals, posted a video to YouTube on Tuesday, recounting the harrowing details of the incident.
“On August 5, I was woken up by London Police Services pointing an assault rifle in my face in my home,” Sorrenti said. “I was later told that at 6 a.m. that morning, an email impersonating me was sent to every city councillor in London, Ontario stating that I killed my mother, I have an illegal firearm, and I plan to go to city hall and shoot every cisgender person I see.”
Sorrenti said she was shown the email in question only after she had been taken into custody, during the interrogation process. She said that the email was “riddled with grammatical errors and read more like a troll than something I would sincerely say,” and that it had included her deadname, despite the fact that it has not been her legal name since 2012.
“It was an obvious attempt to make the police humiliate me,” Sorrenti said. “The police referred to me during the arrest by my deadname. I was booked in the station under my deadname.”
Sorrenti added that the police even referred to her as her mother’s “son” when performing a “wellness check.” Her mother, Catherine Sorrenti, told Vice that she was told that “[the police] came because they wanted to check on my welfare because they were … oh God, I can’t remember, something about ‘my son’ and I said, ‘my so— my nephew?’”
The police then clarified by referring to Sorrenti with her proper name, and informed her about the email. “I just kept telling them ‘no, no she didn’t do it,’” Catherine said.
While London Police Chief Steve Williams declined to elaborate on the details of the incident, he “acknowledge[d] the distress” that the misgendering and deadnaming had caused, and said the department would be “reviewing the occurrence to understand how that might have happened,” per a press statement released Wednesday.
The swatting attack notably follows a June Washington Post profile examining the younger Sorrenti’s work breaking down American anti-trans legislation on Twitch, a rarity on a platform known for gamer culture and its ensuing homophobia and transphobia.
