Help Zak fight back

[Painting by Zak Smith]

I've helped create this fundraising campaign in support of my friend/former roommate, the artist Zak Smith. Zak’s life has been destroyed due to recent online defamation of character being posted by his ex girlfriend Mandy and spread over the internet by people who have never even met the couple in person. I do know them, and I know what she’s saying isn’t true. The money we are raising is to help cover legal fees because of the devastating impact Mandy's lies have had on Zak. The judge in Ottawa presiding over Zak's defamation suit against Mandy stated:

"Given the impact of the facebook post on Smith, this lawsuit is not a disproportionate response. Since Nagy has not filed a criminal complaint against him and Smith has not been able to obtain a retraction, it is difficult to see how he would otherwise re-establish his personal and professional reputation."

Along with my own personal experience here is a message from the woman who knew them best--their girlfriend Michelle, who has been fighting to help prove Zak innocent for two years:

"This is still going on, and Zak needs our help. In early 2019, Zak’s ex, Amanda, took advantage of the me-too movement to publicly accuse Zak of rampant abuse during their relationship. This was shocking and sickening to hear, because she was lying. She told me herself that she was going to put this story out there in the hopes of ruining his career and livelihood. I lived with and worked with Zak and Amanda for many years; for 3 of those years we lived in one room together - no doors, no walls, sometimes even sharing the same bed. We were all intimately involved in each others’ lives and the abuse that Amanda has claimed never happened. She made it up, because she knew people would believe her by default. We are taught to ‘believe women,’ still, I, and several other women who have been supportive of Zak through this have been told to back off, shut up, and even been accused of not being real people by complete strangers, a handful of whom were at best casual acquaintances of the couple. I've written plenty of longer and more detailed statements on this, and they're all available online, as are other documents proving Zak innocent."

As for me, I first moved to Los Angeles and began renting a room from Zak and Mandy in February of 2013 after I moved out of my father's apartment in Tacoma Washington. I was a nineteen year old girl from Washington and had never lived with anyone other than one of my parents before and I wanted to get away from everything negative that was present in my life at that point in time, so I was excited to start over somewhere new. I began working primarily as my cousin's assistant helping run online porn profiles for her, Mandy, and two other women while also working as Zak's personal assistant with the occasional side job as a production assistant on porn sets—which I really enjoyed. The people I worked with—including Mandy—clearly enjoyed what they did and there wasn't this 'dark' energy about it like a lot of people would expect from the porn industry. The actresses had total control over what content they wanted to create and never had to do anything that they weren't comfortable with.

Despite the fact that I was working as Zak's assistant, most of my time on the clock was spent running errands for Mandy and taking care of whatever she wanted done for the day. A normal days work consisted of cleaning the apartment to keep Mandy's allergies under control, walking to the grocery store to get foods that were safe for her dietary needs/restrictions, washing her clothes for her at the laundromat, and occasionally getting art supplies for Zak or running to the post office.

At the time I was really struggling with clinical depression and trying to make new friends in a new city was almost impossible, but Zak and our other roommate Michelle were always very kind to me and did their best to help me overcome my different anxieties. More than once, when we hung out with other people in the neighborhood Zak tried his best to act as my social wingman because I was too awkward to talk to anybody, Mandy's attitude towards me however wasn't so supportive. She was always very polite yet indifferent to my existence unless it somehow benefited her or made her look good, but that's how she was with almost everyone.

As supportive as Zak was with me he was of course even more supportive and understanding with Mandy and her own struggles, that's why—having witnessed their interactions first hand—it disturbs me to hear what is being said online about their supposedly "abusive" relationship. She doesn’t claim Zak crossed boundaries on some specific occasion, but rather claims in her testimony that Zak was abusive all the time—but I lived with them and I know different. She’s claiming he would yell, throw things out of anger, and 'punish' her if she said no to/backed out of sex, but that's not consistent with what I or anyone who knew them saw every day. There was never any yelling, nothing broken or knocked off of shelves, or any yelling aside from when we would play Dungeons and Dragons sometimes on the weekends. From the moment I moved in I admired how many sacrifices Zak made in order to accommodate to Mandy's various medical issues, often putting his own wants and needs on the back burner.

The walls of our apartment were brutally thin- you could hear anything and everything going on not only from the room next door but also the apartment below you, which means yes, I could hear whenever anyone was having sex. Sex was not the only thing I could hear- There wasn't yelling, nothing was being broken or knocked off of shelves, or any acts of aggression towards me, Mandy, or any other woman that came over to the apartment.

Now because of Mandy's narcissism Zak's personal and professional reputation is being ruined by allegations of mental abuse and 'trauma' supposedly experienced in their relationship. It was obvious from the start that whatever Mandy wanted- she got- and Zak rarely objected. On the rare occasions when she didn't get what she wanted or it didn't seem like she was getting enough attention she would throw a childlike tantrum until she got what she wanted or the whole room was focused on her.

Mandy is now saying she was “brainwashed” before she got married—I can’t for a moment believe the picture Mandy paints of herself as someone who just goes along with what Zak wants to get along. She would never let anything she didn’t like happen without telling everyone. She was far too self-absorbed to just do what Zak or anyone else wanted. (She once said ”If I were the president of the united states I would make it illegal for ugly people to be citizens. And if people told me that wasn't 'fair' I'd tell them that the laws weren't fair to begin with”.) I can recall two separate occasions where they had an argument because Mandy didn't get her way and she didn't like it. Even then Zak remained level headed and did his best to defuse the situation without being hurtful (which is more than I can say I personally would have been able to do.) Zak's personality is hard to try and summarize, and he can be hard to read sometimes, but the one thing that was clear to me is that Zak really loved Mandy. I didn't feel like she understood or even cared about the fact that most people wouldn't be so willing to make their whole world revolve around the needs of their partner.

The fact of the matter is that Mandy only cares about herself and doesn’t see anything wrong with someone's life is being destroyed as long as she gets what she wants in the end. That’s why I’m asking you to please donate and help Zak.