Petrelis Files

LezGetReal Owned by 'Bridgette LaVictoire',
Not Male Hoaxer 'Paula Brooks'

("Bridgette LaVictoire" in a courtesy photo.)

Let's recap the sordid tale that leads to the LezGetReal web site and the hoaxers behind it. More than a week ago, suspicions were raised about the existence of Amina Arraf and her blog A Gay Girl in Damascus, which we have learned was actually a fictional character and phony site created by a straight married Anglo-American male named Tom MacMaster.

Many of MacMaster's flawlessly written posts as Amina were heavily promoted at the LezGetReal site, until the Washington Post unmasked that site's alleged creator, top editor and controlling agent Paula Brooks as another married heterosexual male. Paula was really Bill Graber, a supposed ex-military vet and construction worker in Ohio.

Paula's closest LezGetReal associates were two dubious characters, Linda S. Carbonell, who claims to be a 60-plus straight woman, and Bridgette P. LaVictoire, who says she was born male and is in the process of transitioning to being a woman and identifies as a lesbian who's never had sex with another woman.

As the criticism and demands for transparency fell around them, Linda and Bridgette cast themselves as victims and dupes of Paula, and started telling tales about how Paula was always in charge of LezGetReal:

Bill Garber has turned over the site to Bridgette LaVictoire, with me as her assistant. We are still trying to sort out the mess in here, and that is being complicated by the fact that the site has received so much traffic in the past 36 hours that we are crashing every five minutes. We are trying to find a computer programmer we can afford.

More spinning here:

[T]hey have agreed to step in as the managers of Lez Get Real, all while trying to grapple with their own conceptions of what was and was not real.

And also here:

He was already in the process of turning over the site to others and withdrawing the Paula Brooks character from the internet. The exposure of Tom MacMasters cost us the opportunity to let “Paula” retire quietly.

Still more here:

The [Paula Brooks] persona is most famous for her work on Lez Get Real, which she founded in September 2008 with fellow writer and gay rights activist Julie Phineas. ... Yesterday, Graber ... also announced that he would step down from the website and allow two successors - Bridgette LaVictoire and Linda Carbonell - take the reins of Lez Get Real.

I believe all those claims about Paula being the big boss of the site are false, because a search of the internet records for the blog conducted last week at GoDaddy.com located this info, bolding mine:

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars.
 
Asking whois.godaddy.com

The data contained in GoDaddy.com, Inc.'s WhoIs database, while believed by the company to be reliable, is provided "as is" with no guarantee or warranties regarding its accuracy. This
information is provided for the sole purpose of assisting you in obtaining information about domain name registration records. ...

Registrant:
Bridgette LaVictoire
[Redacted] Street
Rutland, Vermont 05701
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: LEZGETREAL.COM
Created on: 29-Sep-08
Expires on: 29-Sep-11
Last Updated on: 15-Sep-10

Administrative Contact:
LaVictoire, Bridgette bridgettemacbride (at) gmail.com
[Redacted]  Street
Rutland, Vermont 05701
United States
+1.802 [Redacted] Fax --

Technical Contact:
LaVictoire, Bridgette bridgettemacbride (at) gmail.com
[Redacted] Street
Rutland, Vermont 05701
United States
+1.802 [Redacted] Fax --

Bridgette was sent the GoDaddy.com evidence three times, and I requested a comment from her about how the registrant data contradicted what she and her alleged mother have been saying in the past ten days. The normally long-winded Bridgette remained mum and didn't respond.

There is still many credibility matters about the LezGetReal mess, and the Bridgette and Linda personae, for me to grant them much credence about any damn thing they claim about their site, who started and managed it, and every bit of information they've offered about their lives.

Finally, the general contact info for the phony lesbian site is still listed as Paula@lezgetreal.com.The hoaxer behind LezGetReal have a lot more accountability to deliver.