David Dobrik posted a second apology video on YouTube on Monday, addressing the recent controversies surrounding his “Vlog Squad.” Dobrik has been accused of mocking and even abusing some of his collaborators over the years, and now one of the members of his crew has been accused of sexual assault as well. Dobrik talked about all of this in a 7-minute video titled simply “03/22/21.”
“I want to be able to do this — to shoot directly to the camera and just talk to you guys,” Dobrik began. “I have put myself in a lot of situations where I have needed to apologize for my past actions, and I have never done this correctly and never done this respectfully. My last video is a testament to that. I don’t want to defend that video, I don’t want to delete that video.”
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Dobrik was referring to his March 17 video titled “Let’s Talk,” where he first addressed the latest spate of controversies — particularly the rape allegations against his collaborator, “Duerte Dom,” whose real name is Dominykas Zeglaitis. In spite of Dobrik’s commentary, “Let’s Talk” has now been deleted. On Monday, he said: “I fully believe the woman who came out against Dom that she was sexually assaulted and raped by him.”
Dobrik apologized for putting women into an environment that he said he “enabled and that made them feel their safety and values were compromised.” He acknowledged that his work has created an “unfair power dynamic” with his collaborators. In the case of Zeglaitis, he said: “I didn’t know what was going on in that room, and I should have been. I should have been making sure everybody involved was taken care of and wasn’t uncomfortable.”
“I am sorry that I took Dom’s words for what happened,” he continued. “In those certain situations that I did not believe you — and not only did I not believe you, but I also made a joke about what type of person Dom was. I couldn’t wrap my head around a childhood friend of mine doing this to people and actually hurting people, and I am sorry for that.”
Zeglaitis is accused of sexually assaulting a woman who appeared in a now-deleted Vlog Squad video from 2018, which was a skit about group sex. She said that Zeglaitis engaged in sexual activity with her when she was too drunk to consent. This, on top of other recent allegations against Dobrik and his friends, has led several brands to sever their ties with the YouTuber. However, some fans consoled Dobrik over these losses in the comments on Monday.
