Last weekend, gay porn star Tegan Zayne shared a lengthy and detailed story accusing fellow gay porn star and onetime co-star Topher DiMaggio of raping him the night before they filmed a scene together for CockyBoys. Today, nearly five days later, Topher DiMaggio has finally issued a response to Tegan Zayne’s allegation, and his denial is problematic, to say the least.
DiMaggio’s confusing and highly misleading response comes via a collage of text images he just posted on Twitter. It begins with an image of DiMaggio’s own text (“I vehemently deny all these allegations”), and it’s then followed by two screencaps of tweets from Tegan Zayne, which DiMaggio falsely presents as proof that Tegan Zayne says he “willingly” slept with DiMaggio:
While Topher DiMaggio has the right to defend himself against these accusations, his use of Tegan Zayne’s tweet (the one that says, “Because even though I was willing to sleep with him”) to prove his case is misleading at best, and maliciously deceitful at worst. Tegan Zayne’s tweet about being “willing to sleep” with someone was about someone else and another situation entirely, and was not in reference to DiMaggio at all. But, DiMaggio used the tweet anyway out of context in order to cast doubt on Tegan Zayne. Here are the threaded tweets from Tegan Zayne in full context, which show who he was actually talking about when he said he was “willing to sleep with him”:
Even if Topher DiMaggio took the tweet out of context on accident, his attempt to shift blame and question the motives of someone who claims to have been raped is awful, and it only makes thing worse. DiMaggio could’ve just denied the allegation without making implications about his accuser, not to mention presenting something that is completely false.