Gus Johnson was condemned following an October 2021 video from ex-partner Abelina Sabrina claiming the YouTube star was abusive during their relationship, including through an ectopic pregnancy. Six months on, Johnson has said he has been “mischaracterized” throughout the drama, sharing his story.
Abelina Sabrina’s October 2021 video titled “My ectopic pregnancy” — while not mentioning Gus Johnson by name — claimed the YouTube star across their three-year relationship was unsupportive, abusive, and uncaring, including during her pregnancy scare.
Sabrina outlined situations where Johnson was dismissive of her issue, including ignoring her pain to create content instead and go out drinking.
Gus Johnson did issue his own apology in a five-minute reply in January, around three months after Sabrina’s allegations were made public. However, another three months on, Johnson has defended himself in a candid interview with Twitch star ‘Paymoneywubby’.
In it, the disgraced YouTube star stated Sabrina “mischaracterized” Johnson’s actions throughout the ordeal. He also explained while he doesn’t “want to negate or discredit some of the legitimate trauma she had to go through,” there were two sides to the story.
“It was real. It was painful. I was just absolutely so saddened that we had to go through this shit,” he opened with.
Johnson explained Sabrina and himself agreed that if she did get pregnant, they “would seek a termination” since they “didn’t have a lot of [their] personal life in order.”
However, after they got the news she was expecting, Sabrina “started to express a change of her mind in regards to what we’d do with the kid.
“She fully changed her mind on that, and I didn’t deal with that in a mature way. I was really fearful, and I told her that ‘I wasn’t ready for this,’” he admitted.
Once it was discovered Sabrina had an ectopic pregnancy — where it starts developing outside of the uterus — he tried to be supportive. While he didn’t go with her to hospital, instead honoring a podcast obligation, he soon joined her for surgery and then recovery.
“In the year that followed the surgery, she and I went to so many doctors appointments together, saw dozens of specialists. Our lives, day-to-day, were pretty heavily dictated by the situation,” he explained.
“It felt like nothing was being figured out, and nothing could be done this entire time [in recovery]. There was just times I just frustrated at the problem, at the situation not getting better, and I said some stupid things. I have since apologized for these things. It’s embarrassing.
“This was borne out of fear and exhaustion, but that does not make them okay.”
Things in Johnson and Sabrina’s relationship soured in the years following the ectopic pregnancy, culminating in their September 2021 break-up. However, after nearly a year of couple’s therapy and them then privately parting, Sabrina expressed an interest in getting back together.
“It was pretty shortly after we did privately break up that I was watching the dog one weekend to get some stuff from my house and get the dog. She surprised me because she had brought me some gifts and said she wanted to get back together with me. She was sorry it didn’t work out, and she didn’t want to give up.
“I just looked at all the effort we had put in the last year, and I thought we had as much of a try as we could have, but I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just not there right now.’ This was before I put out the public statement on Twitter, and I was texting her that morning saying ‘I want you to weigh in on what we’re saying.’
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“She screamed at me, saying, ‘put out whatever you want but don’t say it was mutual, that’s a lie.’ She slammed my door and left the house. Very shortly afterwards this video came out that talked about the worst time in both of our lives, and I just wasn’t expecting it.”
The fallout from that video, Johnson believes, deeply mischaracterized him. This included Sabrina sharing posts from random people on Twitter attacking him, as well as making memes about the situation.
Sabrina also reportedly approached close friends of Johnson, as well as business partners, pressuring them into distancing themselves from him. This includes Eddy Burback, who Gus did a podcast with up until October 2021.
“She took to a lot of my friends and people I do business with to get them to stop working with me. I know this because in the last half a year I’ve had a number of these people come to me personally and just say that she made them feel extraordinarily uncomfortable,” he stated.
Johnson did put out a sketch in December 2021 which received widespread criticism for being tone-deaf to Sabrina’s concerns — something he admitted was “never his intention” despite reaching out to others for advice.
He later put out an apology video in January 2022 to address the problems publicly head on. Sabrina discredited some of Gus’ claims, including one where they went to couple’s therapy. After sharing receipts and documentation on Twitter, her tone then changed in his eyes.
“There were a lot of digs at my character and my decisions,” he continued.
“She tweeted out trying to discredit the counselor, calling her a TikTok therapist, and then she tried to share intimate details — completely mischaracterized and taken out of context — about things we talked about in those sessions.
“She took that down immediately, and then an hour or so later, she tweeted out she was not going to continue talking about this. I think you could clearly see the contradiction in intention in those two things within the span of a few hours.”
https://twitter.com/Gusbuckets/status/1485735357945552898
As Johnson looks at rebuilding his platform on YouTube — he has posted about once a week since the apology went live — he is also working towards clearing his name with those important to him.
For the general public? He has “no interest in a public back-and-forth about this situation.”
“I’ve been living…really afraid of what to do and uncertain of where I stand with a lot of people. I want people to know that I’m not trying to discredit anymore or start any problems with people,” he concluded.
“In the last half a year, it’s been really difficult in a lot of areas and it’s eroded my mental health significantly. I’m finally getting to a place in my personal life where hopefully a lot of this has subsided, but it’s difficult as I continue to put myself on my own platforms.
“It’s hurtful, embarrassing, and difficult to see a good number of people with a fully misrepresentative idea of what happened.”