Rowan E. Janiszewski is a predator who has repeatedly sought out mentally ill victims in order to sexually, physically, and emotionally abuse them via spiritual manipulation, claiming to share past lives with their victims and channeling their victims’ deceased loved ones. On at least one occasion, they have attempted to poison someone and have successfully poisoned another. They are a resident of Rochester, New York and occasionally make money with massage work. They have claimed to be the Unseelie Fae King and Narvi of the Norse ‘Narvi and Vali’ myth. Their current known associates are Vali R. Janiszewski, Sage Barber, and Alex Lovelle (Alexander Nightshade on Facebook), all of whom have been known to feed private information about their victims back to Rowan.

Magic and Past Lives Used as Manipulation:

Rowan has a long and repeated history of seeking out the mentally ill and telling them that their symptoms are actually past lives and alternate dimensions that they can corroborate, thus preventing their victims from seeking treatment. They’ll tell their victims that they have past lives in common to artificially strengthen the bond between that and the other person. They’ve also used ‘channeling’ to claim to deliver messages from not only past lives, but deceased loved ones and even the alters of other people.

Below is from the second former friend of Rowan’s who came forward to provide testimony.

As far as my own testimony…

One of the first times I’ve ever video chatted them, Rowan pretended to be possessed by or channeling my late girlfriend. They, in a British accent, said, “I remember you!” And then ‘fainted’, dramatically falling to the side. They then told me that this was the late girlfriend I’d lost to illness five years before.

Well, they’d recently read ‘Zeitstuck’, my premier novella that takes place in England, where my late girlfriend is immortalized as a character. My girlfriend was Canadian, only portrayed as British for the novel.

Rowan told me early on that I wasn’t human. I’d opened up about other worlds I thought I’d explored throughout the years, having written it off as mental illness and trying to keep it quiet from most. Rowan not only corroborated my experiences, but told me they had several past lives in common with me, and that we had been in love before.

Of course, I didn’t realise that I’d had DID. When Rowan began to claim that they’ve visited my inworld and could talk to my alters without needing to interact with our external self, it began to get Extremely dangerous. Aberle is an alter of mine that Rowan claimed to date outside of me.

Forging Fake Bonds:

Knowing that my particular situation left me isolated, Rowan would often claim to channel otherworldly beings in order to talk to me in order to forge more bonds with me. Arannan and Rebecca were two of those that ‘adopted me’ as their child. I’m not the only one they’ve done this to. One particularly heinous instance is when my mother, named Rebecca, had a falling out with me over my being trans. The ‘past life’ Rowan claimed to channel ‘adopted’ me just afterwards.

Neither of these ‘past lives’ ever deviated from Rowan’s thoughts or goals and could functionally not act apart from Rowan’s schemes.

And of course, Rowan’s manipulation can reach incredible lengths when their victim is has Dissociative Identity Disorder. I’m part of the Living Fiction System and we have an expansive ‘internal world’ (inworld.) Before I knew I had this disorder, I would confide in Rowan that I would go into ‘another world.’ Taking advantage of this, Rowan professed to going into the same world to meet and even date some of my alters, reinforcing the idea that this all existed outside of me.

Within the same pattern of forging as many relationships as possible with just one person, they even claimed to have been impregnated by my astral form and gave birth to my twins. Yes, really.

The Murder Attempts:

Rowan has also been known to physically harm and even endanger the lives of their partners and friends. They tried to kill themself and their ex-boyfriend by grabbing the wheel of the car while driving.

Rowan also attempted to poison a friend, who already had health issues, by steeping nightshade in rosemary tea. Rowan’s ex-boyfriend was witness to this.

It’s honestly a bit of a miracle that they haven’t managed to kill anyone, as of yet.

Sexual Misconduct:

In June of 2018, I had told Rowan specifically that I did not want to sleep with them when they visited me in Savannah. They told me that they understood. Then during a video call between myself and our shared boyfriend in which a knifeplay kink was obliquely referenced, they held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me in front of Arkady. As they seemed to act like it was only a kink scene that I didn’t get, I didn’t hold it against Rowan, but I admitted to not being certain if they would kill me. When they expressed hurt that I actually felt my life in danger, they pressured me into sleeping with them. When I reiterated again that I did not want them having sex with me, they convinced me that me having sex with them wouldn’t count.

In January of 2019, Rowan volunteered to be my caretaker after my double mastectomy. The day after my surgery, when I was still under the influence of pain killers, Rowan once again had sex with me.

Rowan had also been sexually inappropriate with my alters. Not only Sparrow, who endured their reenactments of our collective childhood trauma, but also Aberle, who they were dating at the time. They would commonly blame their ‘fae culture’ or ‘fae instincts’ for ignoring common rules of consent.

Unsettlingly, one of Rowan’s sources of income come from their massage work. They have, at least once, admitted to deriving sexual pleasure from a client who didn’t know or consent to this, as seen below.

Invasion of Privacy:

As previously stated, when I went to move in with Rowan, I did not know that I had Dissociative Identity Disorder. I thought that I was accessing some alternative world and Rowan encouraged that, reinforcing the idea that my internal world and my alters existed outside of me. When tensions within the house we shared began to rise, Rowan shared the fact of my alternate world to do their best to discredit me when I spoke of unbalanced group dynamics and manipulation, all while failing to mention they thought themself the ‘Unseelie Fae King.’

Systems commonly have internal worlds with fantasy aspects. Rowan has a history of treating it as though it’s real, special, and secret until it’s more convenient for their victims to be seen as delusional.

During the time I had lived with them, Rowan would routinely go through my private journals or have Vali do it for them. They would share my journal entries with the rest of the household to further humiliate and alienate me. They found an entry where I had self-harmed and smeared blood on the page and claimed I had done a ‘blood curse’ on their friend.

My journals were in my room, which was routinely broken into so my journals could be read and even photographed. References to my journals would be mocked and used against me or even to convince me that Rowan had mind-reading powers.

Rowan also commonly refused to knock when going into rooms they knew me to be sleeping in, perhaps hoping to catch me in a dissociated state. Their main excuse was that since they shared the room with our mutual partner, they could walk in as they pleased.

D.I.Denial:

After spending no less than two years of reinforcing my inworld’s and alters’ existence outside of me, Rowan soon found my mental illness inconvenient and attempted to tell me none of it was real. Including people that they had professed to sleeping with, and our alleged shared sons. This led me to discovering that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, which made me discover that Rowan had been taking advantage of my disorder. This led to Rowan ‘Fake-Claiming’, a harmful act in which people say that one is ‘faking’ D.I.D.

Rowan has done this to multiple people and they and Vali have continued to spread the rumour of me faking having the disorder, despite encouraging the dissociative symptoms.

Iron Poisoning:

Claiming that they are Fae, Rowan has also insisted that they were a sufferer of ‘Iron Sickness.’ They would explain that, despite us all agreeing on a downtown home when I moved to Rochester, the iron in the city was slowly killing them and that we needed to move to the country to save them. In truly cult fashion, they eventually asked me to put money down for their farmhouse.

In an astoundingly manipulative move, they also professed that their fae blood didn’t allow them to lie. If one were to accuse them of lying, they would say that it was impossible.

Rowan E. Janiszewski manipulated me, violated my consent, and psychologically tortured me and as many as five others. They continually stalk their old victims, filing false complaints in workplaces, calling their therapists, and using burner accounts to try to silence people. They prey on those with dissociative symptoms and encourage the unreality, claiming it’s spiritual. If Rowan is not revealed, they will continue to use mental illness and the guise of spirituality to manipulate and hurt the spiritual, queer, and mentally ill communities of Rochester, New York.