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David Dobrik is facing multiple allegations of misconduct in his Vlog Squad videos. One incident involves how a former member, Seth Francois, was a victim of a sexual assault in the videos. Another incident is when a woman is saying she was raped by Durte Dom (Dominykas Zeglaitis). He’s made a statement saying that “he’s sorry” and that he doesn’t “stand for misconduct”.
What are the allegations of misconduct for David Dobrik and his Vlog Squad?
In the Seth Francois incident, Francois claims he was a victim of sexual assault when he was pranked for one of the videos for Dobrik’s channel. He was blindfolded and was told that he would be kissing a female member of the squad, Corinna Kopf. But it turned out to be a male member, Jason Nash. That was not something Seth Francois was comfortable with and later realized that it was sexual assault. This led to very legitimate trauma for Seth Francois. Francois also claims that he experienced several incidents of racism and bullying by the group which affected his mental health.
And in more recent news, a woman claims that during filming for David’s videos, she was raped by a former vlog squad member Durte Dom. She said she was too intoxicated with alcohol (which was supplied by other adult vlog squad members) to be able to give her consent. The footage of her entering Dom’s bedroom was also put in the videos which portrayed that it was consensual. In actuality, it was not. And as per the woman’s request, the video was taken down before being viewed almost 5 million times.
Another ex-member of the group, BigNik (real name Nik Keswani), also shared his story of how he was often bullied by the whole squad at his height. These remarks and comments negatively affected him and led to him feeling “worthless” and low self-esteem. He remarked that the whole group acted like a ‘toxic cult’.
Dobrik makes a short video addressing the situation
In his podcast channels ‘Views’, David Dobrik posted a video titled ‘Let’s Talk’. He talked about consent in the video:
“I love being able to make people happy for a living. That’s all that I want to do. That being said, consent is something that’s super important to me. Whether I’m shooting with a friend or a stranger, I always make sure I have the approval from that person. There’ve been moments where I’ve looked back on videos and I’ve realized these don’t represent me anymore. They’re hurtful to other people.”
Dobrik further admitted that out of the hundreds of videos he has made, some have “missed the mark”. He also shared that he is not the same person he was years ago when he made those problematic videos:
“I’ve grown as a person and I don’t agree with some of the videos I’ve posted”.
He also directly addressed the Seth Francois incident, saying that he was “sorry to Seth”:
“With the Seth situation, I’m sorry to Seth. I’m really sorry, I truly, truly am.”
Further mentioning the Durte Dom rape incident, David Dobrik said that he doesn’t associate with Dom anymore:
“With people in my life that I don’t film with anymore, like Dom, I chose to distance myself. I don’t align with some of the actions, I don’t stand for any misconduct. I’ve been really disappointed by some of my friends. For that reason, I’ve separated from a lot of them.”
He again apologized to those he has wronged
“I’m sorry if I’ve let you down, things like that won’t happen again, I’ve learned from my mistakes and I also believe actions speak louder than words. I’ll prove to you that the mistakes I made before won’t be happening again.”
It must be noted that the comments were turned off for the video and people are responding with their opinions on social media.
