Damien McMullen:
an unexoneration

Damien is attempting an extraordinary revision of the last three months. His new narrative is one of studied innocence: he always accepted that Oli and I had been in a relationship; he never denied anything material; he knew nothing about Oli’s police account; he merely wished not to be dragged into an unpleasant dispute; and, if I will now show him what Oli said, he will of course correct anything untrue.¹

That is not a partial or tendentious version of what happened. It is almost the reverse of what happened.

I do not claim that the surviving material already proves the words of an express agreement between Damien and Oli, or that Damien drafted Oli’s statement. The deleted conversation is the missing evidence on those questions. What the record does prove is Damien’s knowledge before the deletion, his awareness of its significance afterwards, and a course of conduct which preserved the very account he was uniquely well placed to contradict.

I. What Damien knew

He understood that Oli and I had got that sorted out

Damien was not an uninformed bystander who first heard my account after the arrest. In March, when I asked whether Oli was all right, he replied that he was happy Oli and I had got that sorted out, adding: you’re both made for each other; it’s very sweet.² That is not how one ordinarily addresses a rejected pursuer in relation to somebody who has already described him to a household as a stalker. It is how Damien addressed two people whom he understood to have reconciled.

He witnessed the relationship continuing after the assault

After I struck Oli on 12 April—an act I have admitted from the beginning—Damien remained present in Facebook group chats in which Oli and I discussed our relationship explicitly. Oli said, among other things, I love you Sam, I love you so much and we’re boyfriends, aren’t we?.³ On 14 July, after initially speaking as if I were introducing him to the history, Damien conceded: I was in a group chat for sure, yeah, I saw it. He added that he had already got that impression from Chelsea Cloisters.⁴

This is the first decisive fact. Whatever label anyone now wishes to apply, Damien knew that 12 April was not followed by six days of silence and settled termination. He had witnessed the opposite.

He communicated a conditional withdrawal, not a final disappearance

On 9 May Damien acted as an intermediary. He said Oli and I clearly have a unique bond and that this was something we would be able to work through.⁵ He represented Oli’s grievance as the emails, the group chats and my speaking to other people. His language purported to convey Oli’s present state of mind: I’m just letting you know he’s pissed off about it; the messages and group chats were pushing him away.⁶

I’m not saying don’t talk about it, although I think if you give it a few days with no emails or group chats he’ll soon enough speak with you.

I didn’t say, he may leave you, nor do I think that’s the case.⁷

Whether each sentence was a verbatim instruction from Oli or Damien’s paraphrase, Damien was plainly functioning as a proxy and presenting himself as informed about Oli’s position. He described a temporary, conditional rupture: stop talking to other people; wait; Oli will return. I explained that exact significance to him on 14 July and read his own message aloud.⁸

This matters because Damien now tries to flatten the whole history into Oli said no contact; you went to the house. His own contemporaneous account was different. The offending conduct, as he described it, was substantially the breach of the compartment—the emails, the group chats, the communication with others—not the mere existence of contact between Oli and me.

II. The hinge: 27–28 May

Damien knew exactly why I intended to go

Before going to the house, I told Damien in writing that I believed Oli had maintained relationships with both Sam Cherny and me; that I intended to explain this to Cherny; and that I feared Oli might intercept or insulate him from the information. At 14:32 I asked Damien to pass a message or establish whether Cherny had seen what I had already sent his sister, so that he could think about this before I get there.⁹ Damien did not answer.

That does not make Damien legally responsible for my decision to visit. It does demolish any suggestion that he later had to guess its purpose. He knew, contemporaneously and in my own words, that I meant to disclose what I believed was a concealed parallel relationship to Sam Cherny. He was also the best-placed available intermediary to avoid a doorstep confrontation. He chose silence before the visit, just as he later chose silence about its context.

The deleted conversation

Following my arrest, Damien communicated with Oli. Damien’s surviving Instagram conversation begins at about 06:00 on 28 May. The preceding conversation—covering the arrest and falling within the interval between Oli’s first and further accounts—is missing. The exact formal times and mechanics of the two statements are not completely settled; the importance is the narrow coincidence between the deletion, the arrest and the development of the police account.¹⁰

On 26 June Damien’s account moved, within minutes, from Nothing at all, to Nothing special, to the recollection that it was negative.¹¹ When I explained the chronology, he said: Oh, so that’s why those messages are important, because they’re around that time.¹² He later called the situation very sus, promised I will try and find them, Sam, suggested that he would probably ask him, agreed not to delete anything further, and admitted: It does look very odd, yes.¹³

He did not retrieve them. On 17 August, when the question arose again, he said: I’m sure Oli still has the messages. I could quite easily find out if I wanted to.¹⁴ That sentence strips away the later pretence of helplessness. Recovery was not impossible. He did not want to do it.

Established Damien deleted a highly material conversation, knew why its timing mattered, described the deletion as suspicious, promised recovery and later admitted that Oli’s copy was probably obtainable.

Not yet established The precise contents of that conversation, whether Damien helped formulate the further statement, and whether their understanding was express or tacit.

III. The account Damien was asked to contradict

Precision matters here. Oli’s signed further MG11 does not itself contain the exact sentence our relationship ended on 12 April. It presents the subsequent communications as repeated and one-sided. The police MG5 summary goes further: WILSON confirmed that the relationship ended following this assault.¹⁵ Whether that proposition came from the VRI, some other conversation with Oli or the officer’s interpretation, it became one of the prosecution’s central factual premises: relationship over after the assault; continued emails; visits by an ex-partner.

On 14 July I read that official sentence to Damien verbatim.¹⁶ I then compared it with the April group chats and with his own 9 May messages. His response was not the simple confirmation which he now says was never a question. He said it was very difficult for me to confirm or deny and that there was a mixed vibe.¹⁷

This was not a request for Damien to determine whether the relationship was healthy, exclusive, legally cognisable or approved by everybody involved. It was a request to confirm events he had witnessed: reciprocal romantic discussions after 12 April; declarations of love and boyfriend status; and his own later representation that Oli would resume speaking if I stopped involving others. Mixed vibe was not uncertainty about those historical facts. It was refusal to let the facts do the work they plainly did.

IV. Damien was put on notice—repeatedly and in writing

The present what statement? routine is especially untenable because the issue was not left buried in several long telephone calls.

I emailed Damien asking whether he knew that Oli had said I fabricated evidence of our relationship, and asked him to establish whether Oli had said it and still maintained it. I expressly said I was seeking clarification before legal proceedings.¹⁸

Immediately after the call about the deletion, I emailed Damien and Steven Cherny describing the problem as temporally hyper-localised amnesia combined with deletion shortly before 06:00. The same day I sent my solicitor the full chronology, the May 9 messages, the screenshot, the recording and a request for urgent preservation. Mr Hussain replied that he would ask the officer to preserve the messages.¹⁹ Thus, within a month of the arrest and before much of the later hostility Damien now invokes, the allegation and the evidence problem had been stated formally and contemporaneously.

On 9 July, in an email copied to Damien and Sam Cherny, I put the historical questions with almost laborious precision: Will you confirm, gladly and without qualification, that Oli and I were in an active romantic relationship until at least 18 April?; what had Damien understood between 12 and 18 April; and would he give the same account to both of us in the same room at once?²⁰

Damien’s only email reply said that he had not read your emails in full, denied knowledge of an Oli–Cherny relationship, and demanded that I stop contacting people. It did not answer the question about the relationship he had witnessed between Oli and me.²¹ That selectivity is the point: he answered the proposition he could deny to both audiences and avoided the one which would expose the incompatible histories.

In the 14 July calls, Damien said candour placed him in a really awkward position because Oli is my friend as well, adding: I can’t tell you what he tells me. Almost immediately he referred to something Oli had supposedly done concerning the official account: he corrected [the] police report to say that he’s not his partner, and that’s good enough for me.²² That is difficult to reconcile with his current posture of knowing nothing whatever about the police material.

When I explained that the Chernys had apparently been led to fear a crazed stranger, rather than understand the recent reciprocal relationship and the reason for my visit, Damien asked what telling them would achieve and how it would help me. I answered that it would tell them the truth and might reassure them. He replied: I’ll look at the email and I’ll reply.²³

While we examined Heather’s statement, Damien speculated: Oli probably wrote that, you know. Asked whether Oli bore blame for Heather’s fear, he answered:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I do. I think he shouldn’t have told you lies. I think this has caused a lot of problems … you tell one lie to cover another lie up.²⁴

Finally, Damien promised: You write an email … and I’ll send it off. When I said I did not believe it would happen, he replied: I will do it. Categorically do it.²⁵ I wrote it. He did not send it. On 23 July I emailed him and the Chernys again, setting out the promises with timestamped recording links and telling him that he had traded on the moral credit of being going to correct the account without ever doing so.²⁶

This is why I didn’t want to be dragged into it is not an innocent explanation. Damien was already in it. He had mediated, communicated Oli’s position, spoken to Oli after the arrest, deleted the conversation, discussed the evidence, offered explanations, and promised correction. His later conduct was not mere non-participation. It was resistance to correcting a history he knew enough to contradict.

V. Promise became denial

Damien did not simply fail to send an email. He moved from private recognition to positive denial.

On 25 June he first said, If it will make you happy I’ll voluntarily be questioned; later that day he challenged me: You can try get me to court and we’ll see.²⁷ By 4 July, he was saying: Sam and Oli are not together; this is all in your head. On 23 July: Oliver is not in any relationship; he never has been. On 28 July: You speak of a relationship that doesn’t exist.²⁸

On 9 August he made the denial retrospective and pathological: I only thought I had been in a relationship because I was autistic as hell, and methed up; it had been a meth fueled fantasy and was all in your head. He hoped the court would send me down for a long time.²⁹

Those are not statements by somebody who always accepted the relationship and merely declined to arbitrate its label. They are unambiguous denials of the very history he had witnessed. His current assertion that it was never a question is not an interpretation. It is textually false.

His remarks also reveal that he understood what disclosure might do. On 25 July, while resisting the promised correction, he asked: What do you want, the family to chuck Oli out? and then: And then he’ll come back to you.³⁰ This does not prove that housing was the original subject of the deleted conversation. It does prove that Damien understood the practical purpose of keeping the histories separate: disclosure might endanger Oli’s position with the Chernys and collapse the compartment between the relationships.

VI. When denial failed, he used the prosecution as leverage

When I continued to press for the messages, testimony and correction, Damien repeatedly invoked the police and imprisonment. On 25 July he warned: if you contact any one else in those emails I will go to the police!³¹ On 20 August, in direct response to repeated questions about the deleted conversation and Oli’s copy, he said:

I’ll call the police and have you arrested today.

You’ll get a custodial sentence.

I’m the difference for you getting custodial sentence and being let out on bail.

An apology here vs 18 months.

Oliver wants you behind bars.³²

These remarks do not prove what the deleted messages contained. They do prove that Damien understood his evidential position, expressly described himself as capable of making the difference to my liberty, and attempted to make continued pressure personally dangerous to me. This was not neutral withdrawal from a quarrel. It was the use of the existing prosecution as leverage while the material I was asking for remained withheld.

His factual posture changed with the audience and the pressure. Late in the 14 July call he told me: I don’t think you should be punished for being very much in love. And I’m certainly not criticising you for it.³³ He later wished a long sentence upon me, then reverted to saying that he had always accepted something existed and had only ever tried to help. The point is not to diagnose which mood was sincere. It is that the historical propositions changed whenever a different proposition was immediately useful.

VII. The collapse—and the rewriting

On 17 August, in a group which included members of the Cherny family, Damien finally said: I think there was something going on, yes. The following day, challenged that he had cracked under pressure, he answered: I’ve always said it. You have recordings of such.³⁴ That is the essential manoeuvre: resist a proposition for months; concede it when the surviving record and audience make denial impossible; then recast the concession as one’s position all along.

Even his supposed willingness to attend court remained conditional and contemptuous. On 10 August he said, Maybe I’ll see you in court; I haven’t decided if I’ll be bothered to go. On 18 August: If it would make you happy, I’ll go to court, but it’s just circus.³⁵

On 27 August came the complete retrospective exoneration: I’ve never lied; I’ve just never wanted to be dragged into this; I haven’t betrayed you. When shown the April group chats, he said: No but that was never a question? and I don’t think this changes much. He then invoked my later insults as the reason he had not helped earlier—an explanation requiring later events to cause earlier conduct.³⁶

His final retreat was stranger still: I haven’t spoken to the police!; I don’t know what his statement is?; Have you seen his statement; I’ll correct it if needs be?³⁷

I had never principally accused Damien of giving a police statement. I accused him of agreeing, expressly or tacitly, that he would not contradict Oli’s account and then acting accordingly. The I haven’t spoken to the police answer is therefore a straw man. The rest is the newborn-baby version of Damien: what is a statement, who is Oli, what is July, and has anybody ever discussed any of this before?

The recordings and emails answer him. By 14 July I had read the official formulation aloud, compared it with the Facebook evidence, read his 9 May message, explained the significance for the prosecution and the Chernys, and obtained his categorical promise to send a correction. His present willingness is not his position all along. It is the position to which the surviving record has finally driven him.

VIII. Why the present excuses fail

• I never denied the relationship. He said it was all in your head, a meth fueled fantasy, and a relationship that doesn’t exist.
• I did not know what Oli’s statement said. He was taken through the official account on tape, referred himself to a purported correction of the police report, discussed the effect of Oli’s lies, and promised to correct the Chernys.
• I merely did not want to be dragged in. Before withdrawing, he had already mediated, communicated Oli’s position, spoken to Oli after the arrest, deleted their conversation and repeatedly undertaken to assist.
• Your later rudeness made me refuse. His silence, deletion, selective email and resistance pre-dated much of the abuse he now invokes. Time does not run backwards.
• The messages are private or irrecoverable. He said Oli probably retained them and that he could quite easily find out. Privacy may explain a refusal; it does not exonerate deletion followed by broken promises of recovery.
• I haven’t spoken to the police. That was never the principal allegation. The allegation is that Oli could give an account Damien knew how to contradict because Oli had reason to expect that Damien would not contradict it.
• What difference does it make? It makes the difference between a comprehensible confrontation within a recent reciprocal relationship and the prosecution’s simplified picture of an ex-partner pursuing somebody who had unequivocally terminated all contact.

IX. The case Damien must answer

The adverse inference does not arise from deletion alone. It arises because everything Damien did afterwards corresponds to the role Oli needed him to perform. Damien was among the very few people who could disprove the proposition that the relationship simply ended on 12 April and that all later contact was unilateral. He refused to do so, denied the contrary facts, withheld the recoverable evidence and attempted to deter further inquiry. Subsequent conduct cannot tell us the deleted words with certainty; it can make an innocent and wholly unconnected deletion much less credible.

That is the unexoneration. Damien is not accused merely of changing his terminology, losing patience or being an imperfect friend. He is accused of allowing a false or radically incomplete history to acquire legal force when he knew enough to correct it; promising to correct it; fighting correction; and now trying to erase the fight. I always said it is not absolution. It is the last and least plausible of the rewritings.