Anyone Questioning Alleged Human Trafficking Survivor Eliza Bleu’s Story Is Getting Banned on Twitter

Eliza Bleu, Eliza Siep, Eliza Knows, Eliza Cuts – whatever name you know her by, Eliza Morthland has propositioned herself as a human trafficking survivor and advocate for the past several years.

Her op-ed in The Daily Wire in 2020 first propelled her into the right-wing media space. It wasn't long before she gained a large social media following and appeared on popular right-leaning YouTube channels like The Michael Malice show and TimCast IRL.

Recently, she's even demonstrated that she's been personally working with Elon Musk supposedly to remove inappropriate child exploitation from Twitter – something she says that the former Twitter leadership failed to do.

However, Bleu is now caught in a whirlwind of controversy after many public figures have had their Twitter account's suspended simply for sharing public photos and videos of her and sharing threads raising questions about the authenticity of her trafficking story. Strap in because it's a bumpy ride.

The Thread That Started It All

Manuel Defango, who claims to have hung out with Bleu in the early internet days of Myspace, along with Jeffree Star, took to Twitter to observe that Bleu had blocked him. His tweet read, “Oh finally got blocked by the lying grifter Eliza bleu. In honor of this we will fully debunk her lie of being a sex trafficking survivor with her own words”.

He provided a screenshot showing he was blocked, followed by tweets containing photo and ideo evidence contradicting her statements over the years. These ranged from her supposed real name, her age, the trafficking timeline, and her many attempts to get famous. Defango detailed the various personality changes he observed in Bleu over the years. The thread has been removed and got Defango suspended, but the thread has been archived.

First, she was a straight edge farm girl, a band groupie, then supposedly engaged to Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, and appeared on reality shows like Blind Date and American Idol, then a hip-hop music video girl, and most recently, a sex trafficking advocate.

Through this timeline, there are multiple issues. For one, Bleu seems to have a knack for resurging under different identities, hence the five different names she's gone by that we know of. However, in interviews and online, she's also publicly stated to be inconsistent ages.

If she claimed to be 21 years old when she appeared on Blind Date in 2006 and was hanging out with My Chemical Romance in 2007, then if she's claiming she was sex trafficked 15 years ago at 17 years old, this implies she was being sex trafficked during her Myspace fame days of hanging out with Jeffree Star and famous bands.

The only problem is, how could she be 17 in 2007 if she was 21 in 2006? Various examples were provided of several different conflicting age timelines. An article about her auditioning for American Idol in 2010 claimed she was 28, so none of these ages add up. He also alleged that she used to be a camgirl on a website called Chat Star. Old photos exist of her account.

Bleu struggles with having a consistent timeline. She vehemently denied being the daughter of Republican Representative Richard Morthland, despite her real name being Eliza Morthland and there being photos of the two together with other family members. The Daily Beast also reported that Bleu's cosmetology license lists Richard Morthland's farm as her address, and they are linked together in newspaper articles.

The “Non-consensual” Photo

Other public figures took notice of Defango's thread and began sharing it. Fellow content creator Brittany Venti had tweeted to Bleu, asking her to clarify some things in the thread “I'm hoping you could clarify this thread. There are claims & videos in this thread that conflict with the timelines you gave and could distract from your anti-trafficking messaging.”

Venti also tweeted, “I think it starts to blur the line about what is trafficking vs what was voluntary. I think it's fair to ask questions when things like this distract from the anti-trafficking messaging when it's not clarified.” Venti had provided a screenshot of Bleu appearing in a World Star Hip Hop music video as a video vixen (Bleu's own description). A video vixen is a female model that appears in hip-hop music videos dressed scantily clad and treated as eye candy, usually in the background.

This particular photo greatly upset Bleu, who quickly shut it down. Venti's tweet was promptly removed and her account was suspended. Bleu took to Twitter claiming the photo posted of her was non-consensual and has been removed. She continued, “the source of the photo has also been contacted and I'm preparing to escalate to the full extent of the law.”

In a follow-up tweet, Bleu said, “Twitter did an outstanding job, and they will be excluded from legal action. There won't be anyone else involved spared. I take things all the way and I have no chill. I'm a survivor advocate and that doesn't stop with advocating for myself as a survivor.” Content creators are now claiming that their YouTube channels are getting falsely flagged by Bleu, including The Quartering, Chrissie Mayr, Brittany Venti, and ThatStarWarsGirl.

Was The Photo Actually Non-consensual?

The controversy around the mass-censorship campaign against accounts that shared these photos of Bleu on Twitter or even just shared other people's tweets is that the photo in question is a public video by World Star Hip Hop's on YouTube, which has been up since 2016.

Regarding consent, World Star Hip Hop released a statement saying that Bleu had been paid for the video and that they own the rights to it. Further complicating her claims that the photos of the video were non-consensual are the damning videos of Bleu boasting about how she was able to get in the video by networking and pitching the idea herself.

The Quartering posted videos of Eliza Bleu after starring in the video, where she talks about how proud and blessed she was to “work with one of the dopest directors in the game.” “The idea of wanting to do something of that caliber was so… humbling,” Bleu said in a video.

Bleu describes how she orchestrated her place in the video by thinking to herself one night about what would take her to the “next level” that she wanted to reach, which brought her to World Star Hip Hop.

Perhaps suggesting that she wanted to achieve fame and notoriety, she added, “I'm never going to be on E Entertainment television, I'm never going to be on TMZ… unless I do something crazy or stupid.” Another video by Bleu in 2016 shows her saying, “I'm really happy that the World Star video got released” and that it was a “piece to the puzzle.”

If it was Bleu who went out of her way to get cast in this music video and she's demonstrated multiple times that she's proud of it and was “blessed” to star in it, that she got paid for her time, and that it wasn't under duress or coercion, then what are content creators Brittany Venti, The Quartering, and YellowFlashGuy violating by sharing this on Twitter?

As far as legality is concerned, it's uncertain what is illegal or non-consensual about these images or this music video, despite her repeated threats to take legal action. A community note was later added to her original tweet, providing context that the screenshot in question appears to have originated from a music video publicly available on YouTube for several years.

When you attempt to follow the link, it now takes you to a page that says warning: this link may be unsafe. Bleu hasn't been shy about her connections at Twitter. She has been open about being in close communication with Musk after criticizing former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for not doing enough to remove inappropriate content of children on the platform.

On a recent Twitter space, Musk told Bleu she “has a direct line to him on this issue.” Twitter seems to have doubled down in its support for Bleu. Ella Irwin, VP of Trust and Safety at Twitter, tweeted that their decision to suspend and restrict content from users over the past two weeks caused confusion for users but that they can't comment about specific details or answer questions about it.

Instead, she provided context that Twitter will suspend accounts for threats or incitement of violence, including declaring war on an individual. Irwin followed up, “Reports of non-consensual nudity, copyright violations, illegal content, etc. do not get processed by all platforms at exactly the same time; however, if properly filed, the content is normally removed from other platforms as well.

Has Her Story Been Verified?

Bleu has gained a notable amount of followers over the past two months thanks to her association with and promotion by Musk. However, not many people noticed the thread poking holes in her story until accounts started to get banned for sharing public photos or sharing the thread, asking her to clarify the confusion. In this sense, Bleu seems to have Streisand Effect-ed herself.

These are reasonable questions to ask a spokesperson for human trafficking survivors who has been incredibly vague about her own story. Back when she appeared on the Michael Malice show last year, Bleu was asked about her personal experience with human trafficking. As she shared her story, it became clear that what she was describing wasn't human trafficking in any sense of the term.

Rather, she described a situation where her images or public likeness were being used online to entice people to ‘do business,' and this would be digital identity theft. At no point does she discuss being personally human trafficked in real life. This doesn't mean that she was not a victim of human trafficking, of course, but it does warrant clarification – not censorship.

Bleu has not named her abusers, citing that she fears for her and her family's safety. However, when you dive a little deeper, things become a little murkier. In another clip posted to Twitter, Bleu has a conversation with another woman, where she seems to equivocate pimps and human traffickers.

When the woman she's speaking with says she at first referred to herself as an ex-prostitute with a pimp instead of a trafficking survivor, Bleu chimes in, “we didn't have a word to put to it.” It's unclear if Bleu is categorizing consenting sex workers and human trafficking victims as the same.

She also mentioned that she turned down a $150k “booking” for a man to have sex with her. What does she mean by booking, in this context – booking through a modeling agency, a camgirl site, or something else?

Bleu's Model Mayhem profile mentions for bookings and enquiries you can contact management at a a Helen Troy Bookings email. There is also a Helen Troy Modeling link which takes you to a sketchy looking website that looks like an escort or camgirl service.

Bleu has claimed that reputable people have vetted her survivor story. She claims that in 2013 she emailed Eves Angels, a Christian nonprofit that helps victims of trafficking. The details of how she came to get in contact with this group have changed.

Initially, she claimed she was being held hostage by her traffickers in an apartment and, in her desperation to escape, came across founder Anny Donewald on Youtube. However, in a Dec 11 tweet, she says she found their website on the back of a bible she got at a strip club.

Donewald came to Bleu's defense on Twitter, insisting that her story is real and that she came to Eves Angels for help. The only problem is, Donewald was sued by her own parents for falsely accusing them of sex trafficking children – a case that she lost.

She was ordered to pay $47,000, not including legal fees. Donewald's own daughter informed the plaintiffs that her mother had instructed her to confirm the accusations in an attempt to get a pay-off from the grandparents.

Bleu had also posted to Twitter many times about opening a safe house for trans victims of human trafficking and claimed to finish it in 2020, but no one has heard about or seen it since. Old videos of Bleu exist on YouTube under the name Eliza Siep, where she discusses being a video vixen for an old blog.

In one video, she calls her mom to ask her what she thinks about her being a video vixen in music videos and is surprised that her mom doesn't think she looks too sexy in them. There is an entire YouTube Playlist which appears to have been created by Bleu herself, listing the various hip-hop videos she has starred in.

The Daily Beast also reported that she advertised a now-defunct camgirl account, where men would pay money to talk to her. They also interviewed a former friend of Bleu's who claims that she has caught her in many lies over the years and has been exaggerating her experiences for attention.

This, coupled with newly resurfaced videos of her making bizarre comments like making a case for children being able to consent to sexual relationships with adults as long as they are mature enough.

Final Thoughts

Just because Bleu used to be a video vixen and potentially engaged in sex work in the past doesn't mean we can know for sure that she has never been a victim of human trafficking.

However, the holes in her story do raise suspicions and warrant clarity from Bleu herself, who has only shut down conversations and silenced well-meaning people who respectfully asked her to explain these inconsistencies.

It's unclear why so many people are getting suspended, and their tweets taken down over publicly available videos and photos that she clearly consented to but now may regret. Before propping up so-called advocates of causes, we should do our due diligence in making sure their claims are true.

This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.