After Being Assaulted at TwitchCon, Popular Streamer Emiru Warns Other Creators to Avoid the Show

By Catherine Masters  |  October 21, 2025 | 2:01pm
Image: YouTube screencap
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After Being Assaulted at TwitchCon, Popular Streamer Emiru Warns Other Creators to Avoid the Show

TwitchCon happened this weekend in San Diego, California, marking 10 years since the inaugural convention. The event is a good way for fans and streamers to connect at panels and meet-and-greets, but that means the potential for parasocially-motivated harm for streamers is high. And this weekend the Amazon-owned event failed to protect one of its biggest stars.

Emily “Emiru” Schunk is a popular streamer who specialises in playing games and reacting to videos for her fans, often in some manner of cosplay. During a meet-and-greet on October 17, a man in a plaid shirt skipped the line, came up to Emiru just after she signed a fan’s lanyard and pulled her close to kiss her, according to her later statement. As she wrestled out of his grip, her manager escorted her backstage and her security forced her assailant out of the general area before returning to her side. After only a minute she came back out to continue her fan event, all recorded in an in-person stream by BaconCrumbz.

The following day, both Emiru and Twitch put out statements on social media regarding the sexual assault. Twitch asserted that their security team had “immediately blocked” the assailant from the event and banned him from Twitch online and in-person. Emiru refuted this as “a blatant lie,” alleging that there were at least three members of the security team in the area at the time who missed the assault and later joked about it, not even checking in on her after it happened. As can be seen in the footage, none of TwitchCon’s security stepped in, only her own security guard who quickly returned to the streamer’s side.

“I didn’t hear he was caught until hours after he attacked me,” she said in her statement, contrary to Twitch’s claims. “It felt like this only happened because of my manager pressing for it, not because Twitchcon staff present thought it was a big deal.”

In a stream in an empty conference room before what will be her final TwitchCon event (uploaded on YouTube), Emiru spoke at length about the incident and how it was managed. Two hours after the initial assault, her manager spoke with Amazon’s Head of Security and Twitch’s Head of Risk, who told her that the assailant would be banned for 30 days from Twitch in response to the sexual assault. She then pushed this to be indefinite and Emiru intends to press charges against him.

“I don’t think that Twitch would have put out an official statement if that clip wasn’t posted and going viral,” she said. “I really would discourage other creators from going back to TwitchCon.”

Twitch does not make it easy for streamers to protect themselves; at a previous TwitchCon, Emiru’s usual security guard was banned from the event after detaining a stalker and presenting him to the police.

In response to the incident, Twitch told Emiru that they sent in a senior member of their security team to rework the convention’s security going forward and removed the allowance for meet-and-greet attendees to bring a plus-one with them (who were unvetted). Speaking with Taylor Lorenz, CEO Dan Clancy said that there are challenges with security “when someone is putting themselves out there.”

This is not the first time that people have grossly overstepped boundaries with a streamer and almost definitely won’t be the last. If people as high profile and important to the platform as Emiru are not receiving meaningful support and protection from Twitch, then there is little chance of smaller streamers being protected by the company taking 50% of their revenue.

 
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