A former Twitch trust and safety employee, who worked for the platform at the time Beahm was banned and has direct knowledge of the matter, confirmed to Rolling Stone that Beahm continued to send sexually graphic messages to a minor he knew to be underage. This former employee, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their career, also said that crucial elements of Beahm’s latest defensive tweet are inaccurate.
“I recall that Dr Disrespect was made aware by the individual that they were underage during the conversation, after which he indicated that this was no problem and continued on,” the former employee says. “There was no confusion. Messages sent after this was acknowledged were no less graphic and in sexually explicit nature than before, and I think more than the categorization of ‘leaning too much in the direction of being inappropriate’ might indicate.”
The ex-Twitch employee has also provided Rolling Stone a more detailed account of internal conversations at Twitch following the report of Beahm’s messages and his subsequent ban. They say the details of Beahm’s case are coming out because of Conners’ explosive tweet last week. “Cody definitely got the ball rolling. Me and many of my former colleagues are only comfortable speaking up now because of it. Our priority is always to the safety of the [alleged] victim and to keep their identity secret,” they said.
As some of its streamers faced a flood of sexual misconduct allegations in June 2020, Twitch created an incident response team codenamed “Gold Sparrow” to develop a process to investigate and take action on the reports as one unit, the former employee says. “We wanted to be able to process mounting investigations quicker and with more resources while providing as much support for the victims as possible,” the former employee says. (Twitch did not provide comment by press time.)
When the initial report about Beahm’s alleged inappropriate messages came through in 2020, an investigation began. “After viewing the contents of the Whisper conversation, it quickly became clear the egregiousness of conduct and what actions Twitch must take,” the former employee says. “The decision to permanently terminate Beahm was relatively quick, due to the severity of the behavior.”