A baseball writer has been terminated from two websites after allegedly harassing women online under the identity of “Ryan Schultz,” Awful Announcing reports.
On Wednesday evening, a woman named Erin, using the Twitter handle @ebrownie, claimed Schultz was not a married man, writing for Baseball Prospectus and Beyond the Box Score as described, but a 21-year-old female, who allegedly emotionally abused Erin and her friends from an account that has since been deactivated.
“I’m sure by now if you followed and/interacted with Ryan Schultz (rschultzy20) you have noticed he deactivated his account. You may have also heard that multiple women had come forward telling stories of emotional abuse and harassment leading him to be fired from the publications he was writing for,” Erin wrote. “I am one of those women.”
Erin noticed “a lot of holes” in Schultz’s story, and the identity in turn had been developed by an aspiring baseball journalist.
“It didn’t take long for my friends and I to realize that so many of the stories we had been told (the wife, the kids, pharmacy school) was all made up,” she continued. “Unfortunately the only thing that was left that was real was the emotional manipulation and the harassment.”
Erin alleged to Awful Announcing that during the course of their relationship, Schultz became “emotionally dependent” on her, and couldn’t let go as Erin pulled away from the relationship. In addition, Erin said Schultz solicited nude photos from a friend of hers, in addition to subjecting her to repeated harassment. Erin discovered Schultz’s actual identity by tracing the phone number used to contact her and through social media.
A second woman came forward supporting Erin’s claims that Schultz used the online persona to get naked photographs of women.
Erin said the catfisher in question has promised her the falsehoods are over. Meanwhile, one of Schultz’s former colleagues posted a tweet Wednesday addressing the damning allegations.