Thelife- Clara Sorrenti — also known as Keffals — said she has had to go into hiding as a harassment campaign against her escalated.
- She said doxxers tracked her location to a local hotel using photos of the bedding after impersonating her to police claiming she was going to kill everyone in City Hall.
Clara Sorrenti, a popular Twitch streamer known as Keffals on the platform, said in a YouTube video shared Thursday that she has had to go into hiding after a months-long doxxing campaign against her escalated.
In the video entitled "Things have escalated. Now i'm in hiding," Sorrenti recounted the morning of August 5, when she woke up to the London, Ontario, Police Service at her home, accusing her of sending emails to local politicians threatening violence.
Following the August 5 incident, Sorrenti, her fiancé, and their cat moved into a local hotel, which she said was quickly doxxed when Sorrenti posted a photo of the cat lying on the hotel bed to Discord.
Sorrenti said members of Kiwi Farms, an online forum, cross-referenced the hotel bedding in the photo with images from local hotels to figure out where she was staying so they could continue to harass her.
She also said that while staying there, she received five pizzas she did not order from five different pizza shops, which were all ordered using her dead name, referencing the name she was assigned at birth that she has since changed.
"Obviously it isn't the pizzas that are the problem. But it's the threat that they make — that they know where I live and are willing to act on it in the real world," Sorrenti said.
The case is now being investigated as criminal harassment, Sorrenti said.
Sorrenti is a transgender woman who has used Twitch to speak out against anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the United States while playing games in front of her audience of over 40,000 people. She said she believes doxxers were at least in part motivated by "hatred against transgender people."
Sorrenti and her fiancé have had to go into hiding
Sorrenti said she and her fiancé have since moved out of the hotel and are living in undisclosed Airbnbs that are being rented out by a third party to ensure their safety.
Sorrenti said she is using a VPN so no one can track her IP address and employing a green screen in all of her streams and videos so Kiwi Farms users can't cross-reference furniture in the homes with local listings.
"I have essentially had to go into hiding for my own safety," Sorrenti said.
Sorrenti said users of Kiwi Farms — described by Sorrenti as "an online community of stalkers that torment and harass their victims" — were able to obtain the addresses in a months-long doxxing campaign to get her address.
"I have been the target of an intense harassment campaign now for several months. I have had friends doxxed, I have had family doxxed, I have had people even loosely associated with me doxxed. But over the last month, things have been escalating," she said.
In an August 9 YouTube video, Sorrenti described being the victim of a "swatting" attempt on August 5. Swatting is a type of harassment in which someone calls law enforcement with false information saying there is a threat at a person's address so that armed police show up to their home.
Sorrenti said police arrested her and took her electronic devices after someone sent emails impersonating her to every city council member in London, saying she had an illegal firearm, had already killed her mother, and was planning on murdering every cisgender person at London, Ontario's, City Hall.
She accused the person who called in the swatting attempt of trying to "terrify me at best and kill me at worst."
Police are investigating Sorrenti's situation
In conjunction with the criminal harassment investigation, London Police Service, Toronto Police Service, and Durham Regional Police Service are all investigating the threats and are looking for the person who used Sorrenti's identity, Sorrenti said.
London Police Service said in a statement on August 11 that they no longer believed that the emails sent to the city council originated with Sorrenti and that they were part of a "deliberate attempt by a third party to place suspicion on Ms. Sorrenti in relation to what are now believed to be false threats to harm people at City Hall."
Sorrenti said she believes the authorities wouldn't have returned her electronics to her if it weren't for media attention on her story. Despite being unhappy with the London Police Service's conduct — specifically alleging they referred to her by her dead name and gender — she said she would be willing to work with them to catch the swatter.
The London Police Service did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Sorrenti said she has also hired a lawyer and plans on "seeking justice for myself."
"I never plan to back down," Sorrenti said. "I am never going to go away. I am going to continue fighting."