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| Is Rance a recidivist or a victim of widespread libel? Photo Credit: Florida Department of Law Enforcement - Sex Offender Database |
The Team Vision Dojo, you might wonder, is run by Chasyn Rance. If that name sounds familiar for dubious reasons, it's because he's the wrestler who bought drugs and alcohol and had sex with an underage girl. He was arrested and convicted for it. The one-year gap in matches on his Cagematch page seems to indicate a stint in jail. EDIT: He in fact did NOT go to jail and instead got probation. In most cases, haranguing someone who spent time in jail for the crimes they seemingly rehabilitated for is unjust and leads to preventable recidivism. Michael Vick, for example, is someone who paid his debt to society for the charges surrounding his dogfighting ring, and when he got out of jail, he became an upstanding citizen and advocate for dogs.
However, what if there was reasonable doubt that Rance ever rehabilitated? Rance was arrested this past Saturday for a DUI, but that's not indicative of possible recidivism for his prior, more heinous crimes. However, what if there were other signs that he was? The Facebook group post from Matthew Brown alleges that Rance runs a porn studio out of the Team Vision Dojo specializing in "unlicensed sadistic chloroform" videos that he sells to "overseas customers." The reason they'd be unlicensed is that sex offenders in Florida are not allowed to produce pornographic videos. Right away, with no other context, that alleged porno rig was verboten from the start. Add in the word "chloroform" and now it goes from "technical violation" to "uhh, yeah, maybe he should have gone the fuck to prison." The kicker is that Hart, who was arrested and tried for human trafficking and sexual assault in Canada, and who made rounds on the indie scene in America while he was out on bail and fled Canada, AND who only got off because the victims dropped charges, was allegedly a performer in those videos under the name "Teddy Trouble."
The fact that this bit of news was tacked onto the end of the plea to find the missing Fiddler makes it feel like Brown was trying to put two and two together here without outright accusing Hart, Rance, or anyone else named in that post (Alex Porteau, JD Amazing, Russell Payne, Indy Carlos, Deon James) of doing something nefarious with regards to Fiddler's disappearance. The truth is, without hard evidence, no one can make the connection. I'm not sure a Facebook post is actionable either, given how lawless things seem in Florida thanks to Republican lawmakers doing their best to hijack elections and make unjust laws that protect the wrong people.
The thing is that around the same time the Facebook post was made, people on Twitter started getting DMs from burner accounts detailing a lot of the same things and implicated more people, including accused domestic abuser Aaron Epic and "Night Chill" Ian Anselmo, who murdered his stepmother and spent a laughably short time in prison. It says that the only reason Rance is out of jail and in the wrestling industry is because of the money that illegal porn makes that may or may not be performed on consenting partners (I can't shake the word "chloroform" form my mind). Either someone wants the cover on all this blown off, or there's a massive libel campaign ongoing.
However, if a missing person is involved, it should be on the onus of local law enforcement to at least poke around, right? Aside from not trusting the police to protect victims of rape, the problem is procuring evidence enough to get a search warrant for the dojo. You'd need someone who bought the porn to surrender a copy, or at least for one of the participants to turn against Rance. All of that is easier said than done. The heart of it all is Fiddler's disappearance. Her kids deserve to know what happened to her, if she's okay against all odds or worse. For all anyone knows she could've flipped her car into a swamp and sank deep enough into it that no one could pull it or her out. I somehow doubt that happened. There are leads into treating the disappearance more seriously, but even small-time crooks have connections in local government, especially if they have dirty money to throw around. All the bluster from the Facebook post could be suspicion from someone who doesn't trust former convicts. You can't discount that possibility. But the converse is that if there's plausible enough evidence to go after an illegal porn ring with much more suspicion of awful shit behind it, shouldn't someone investigate it? You would think so.
