Kathryn on Sabrina: May 28th

 Sabrina Michelle Taylor was in Japan from May 17th to May 28th, 2018. On May 18th, $22,000 was withdrawn from Sabrina’s bank account in America. It would turn out to have been a legal removal of funds owed for an unpaid loan.

Kathryn: I’ve lived in Japan for almost 16 years now. I live slightly North East of Tokyo. I became friends with Ebony about a year or so ago when we met through Sabrina and the friendship has grown. What follows explains most of what else you need to know about me.

I stayed quiet on FB for much of this drama. My friends in America were going through horrors, so I was sleep deprived for two days before Sabrina’s account was drained. We here quickly realized that Sabrina was NOT ok. Sabrina sent me so many manipulative messages while she was in Japan and tried to MAKE me (and others) go play nice with her near pathological fixation on us all having a wonderful Tokyo Disney Day . So much so that I was preparing (with the support of all involved) to fake a mental breakdown so that a bunch of us could get space away from Sabrina if that’s what it came to. It wouldn’t have taken much acting.

This was originally written by Kathryn on a May 28th FB post shortly after Ebony posted hers. Additional screenshots have been added.

I am writing this because the people who were traveling with Sabrina Taylor are now safely on their planes back to America.

I know I will get blow back and people might not believe me.

I want to make sure that no one else invests in Sabrina M. Taylor emotionally or financially without information. Her lies and manipulations go deep. They have hurt my friends. They have hurt me. But more than that they have hurt and will hurt countless others we’ve never met. There is concern of people who have invested the largest amounts of money in Sabrina money becoming suicidal when they learn the whole truth.

Background: Sabrina first reached out to me in May 2016. We were both members of a small private FB makeup group. She friended me on the basis of my being in Japan. She said she’d be visiting friends and her family in Japan soon. I had friends in common with her so I said I’d be up for meeting her.

Soon after she contact me because her AirBNB in Tokyo fell through. She blamed it on AirBNB while brown, which is a legit and common issue so I didn’t hesitate to believe her. I offered to let her stay with me awhile. The dates of her stay changed a few times. There were requests for me to buy things for her in advance of her coming here and she’d pay me back but I declined making the purchases because there was no good way to facilitate money exchange.

Since then I’ve trusted her as a friend. She’s visited Japan often. (Sept 2016, Nov 2016, April 2017, July 2017-late Sept 2017, Dec 2017, May 2018) twice traveling with a new-to-me friend (who she complained about non-stop behind their backs) and whom she cut ties with when she got home. I always believed that to be her bad luck.

I’ve opened up my home to her often. I’ve spent a lot of time with her. The most time I spent with her was the summer in 2017 while she studied at small private language school in Tokyo, KPC, for a summer. I met some of her classmates. She never attended Waseda here.

I’ve been taken aback by the amount of money she spends but she had always assured me that it was due to the good money she makes as a research assistant and working in a lab. What do I know of science money, my BFA is fine arts. She claimed to be working in a lab while attending KPC.

I had seen large inconsistencies in what she has written online with the life she had here when living here. Sometimes I saw it when I was in the same room with her, but I wrote them off as being aspects of life a WOC might not want to discuss with her straight white friend.

All of the trust and love I had for her as a friend was shattered within the last week and a day.

Last Saturday, May 19th, while staying at my friend Ebony’s place Sabrina logged online to find that $22,000 had been removed from her account. That’s verifiable. She sent Ebony screen shots. She’d also left her phone and credit cards in a taxi (although she still had a Wifi egg and a tablet). I was updated of the situation by private group messages with Sabrina and the rest of us here in-between three classes I was teaching. I prepared to come lend support and money if needed as soon as lessons ended.

Screenshot of Wells Fargo email indicating the $22K removed from Sabrina's account. — This is the screen shot of what she sent Ebony. $22,000…not $26,000

This is the group text Sabrina started with us Saturday, May 19th. Note: NO RENT.

I traveled into Tokyo to Ebony’s place, with money. Ebony messaged me about the many ways Sabrina’s online public narrative was not matching behavior and actions she was showing right in front of Ebony. Sabrina was now stating that she’d lost 26,000. She alternately claimed she didn’t have money for next rent or that she had the next two months of rent taken care off. Her accounts of calling the bank were incorrect, as Ebony had called them for Sabrina and no shouting about lawsuits ever happened. Sabrina had not left Ebony’s home and was not on train platforms being suicidal.

I started privately messaging all those involved to get a clearer story, while also asking Sabrina to give me her medication information so I could keep her on track so that wouldn’t compound her physical and mental stress. I wanted this to be a stress induced loss of reality instead of something much worse. She did give me her information and I later double checked that the medications at Ebony’s matched with what she’d said. I offered to bring over food and sit down to plan out our next steps.

She was also in contact with another visiting friend, Randy, who kept trying to talk to her about setting up emergency money plans. She kept throwing up screens at his suggestions and asking for money instead.

Ebony met me at the train station and passed on concern that Lauren (a friend traveling with Sabrina who I know) was getting information from friends back in Seattle about how much money Sabrina owes people. I knew then I wouldn’t be lending her money because I cannot afford to lose what little I was prepared to lend.

When I saw Sabrina with my own eyes it was shocking. She seemed overjoyed to see me. she seemed hyper. She wanted to give me gifts. When I showed concern about if she’d eaten, how she was doing physically, she acted like I was being a mood killer.

When I stressed that she needed to re-think her whole time in Japan from this point on, no trips to Universal Studios Japan, no big trip to Disneyland, she kept telling me that it was ok because people were lending her money. She said that it made her feel bad to ask and bad to talk about what she was going through (I’ve never known her not to talk about what she goes through online. she’s great at it) but that it was ok. She could still do what she wanted to do. It was taken care of.

I watched her flip through very familiar narratives she’s told in the past to get me to sympathize with her, or to drop a subject. I saw it all happen in rapid succession. I felt deeply sick.

We took her to the police department to report her lost phone and credit cards.

I went home.

That same night, as I start saying NO Disney.

Now I’m not supposed to worry. She’s got more money than I have on most vacations ever and her rent is paid for two months now?

For days I saw her on-line narrative about how poorly we in Japan were behaving because we couldn’t deal with her mental issues. (Some of that happened in a private group I think she forgot she’d added me to) Lies. Huge lies and insults as each and every one of us is very aware of mental illnesses and suicidal thoughts. We’re all active in speaking out about our own. We were bending over backwards to try to help each aspect of her crisis. We all kept trying to connect Sabrina to mental health professionals in the area, including one that is helping Ebony ( Ebony is black. African-American Bi-racial and black) but were told (by Sabrina) that the people we offered wouldn’t be able to handle Sabrina’s WOC issues.

She wouldn’t even think about not going to theme parks she’s been to before. I know it’s weird to bring it up but for the next week EACH of us were told how much she didn’t want to go to Disneyland but that person X dearly wanted to go so we should. None of us wanted to go. (I was often blamed for ‘making her change her flights to go to Disney’….untrue..I suggested it after she told me the dates she’d be in Japan) None of us wanted her spending more money or exhausting herself.

The week since then has been a barrage of lies and emotional abuses. Those of us who know her here, or were still stuck traveling with her , or were just in the country at the same time, have endured long messages filled with disgusting lies about each other. Messages crafted to induce pity. Messaged crafted on the incorrect assumption that we do not trust each other and are not communicating with each other. She has blamed our mental illnesses and more. She had lied about what we’ve said to her. She’s lied about us demanding money from her. She’s shown me personally how quickly she will throw other WOC under the bus to try to curry favor with me.

We’ve all tried to keep a calm front and reduce our contact with her to reduce mental stress and conflict until she had left. Many of us have been in contact with people back home who are friends with her, or who I’d introduced to her on-line, to start warning then AND to ask for emotional support during this.

Since then the bottom has fallen out of our worlds as we’ve learned the following over a week.

(What followed was an abridgement of point from Ebony’s post from slightly earlier that day . If you haven’t read Ebony’s then click on this, it contains most of the visual proof and information we had at that point)

The damage she’s done emotionally to those of us here doesn’t even begin to encapsulate the whole of the damage. She often targets Butch Women/Genderqueer people. She has no qualms about trashing Black women when wanting to deflect from her own behavior. She has slut shamed, medical shamed, and torn down people if it bought her sympathy.

These are the messages she was bombarding me with Thursday the 24th before “Lauren dragged her” to Disneyland. I kept trying not to reply. I was busy, that day I had to teach all 6 periods of elementary school and THEN teach three dance classes ….which I’d explained to her more than once. It was everyone’s fault but hers and the amount was once more, $26K