The Civic Node

Rose deposition — Doe v. Bonnell (ECF 204-1)

7 min read

Raw transcript PDF · 91 pages, filed under Docket 116 protective order

Summary

Sworn deposition of “Rose” (pseudonym — the real teenager whose identity was stolen by the catfisher “Solo” / “Ben Conway” to run a multi-year impersonation of Steven K. Bonnell II (“Destiny”)). Taken October 23, 2025 in Illinois; filed January 7, 2026 as Exhibit A to a summary-judgment-adjacent motion in Doe v. Bonnell (1:25-cv-20757). The deposition dissolves the factual predicate of plaintiff Jane Doe (Pxie)‘s case: Rose never communicated with Destiny, never controlled the Discord account bearing her name, never consented to any leak, and did not exist — as a sender — in any of the 300+ pages of Discord messages the complaint attributes to her. The defendant’s own counsel gets her to confirm on cross: “Defendant Bonnell was catfished by your boyfriend; correct?” “Yes.”

Key Points

  • Rose met “Ben Conway” / “Solo” on Yubo (app marketed for under-18s) in November 2021. She was 17; he claimed to be 21. They never met in person. She came to believe he was actually based in Oxford, England, based on his accent and the European date format visible in screenshots.
  • Solo ran the impersonation operation using her face, not her credentials. He created a Twitter account “RoseIsCumming” using her photo as profile picture; its bio listed her age as 18 and solicited tips in British pounds. Rose never had login credentials to this account or to the Discord account (“Rose” / “RoseOfTheGarden”) that messaged Destiny for years.
  • Rose never messaged Destiny. Under direct and cross-examination: she never sent any of the ~300 pages of Discord messages attributed to “Rose.” She does not remember ever speaking with him verbally and does not believe she did. She never had access to the Rose Discord account. Every message purporting to be from her was sent by Solo.
  • Solo lied on KiwiFarms to manufacture consent. In a December 2024 post, Solo claimed Rose had “given him the account a while ago” and “doesn’t really care about stuff being leaked.” Under oath: “There was no account to give him.” She never consented to the leak and did not know it was coming.
  • Destiny believed he was talking to an 18-year-old named Rose. Defense counsel walks her through exhibits showing Destiny explicitly asked Rose’s age and Solo-as-Rose said 18. Destiny’s Twitter and Discord communications treated “Rose” as a real adult counterpart. The catfish was complete: Destiny never met, video-called, or phone-called Rose; every interaction was mediated by Solo.
  • Solo threatened to kill her family and “kidnap her as a sex slave” when she tried to end the relationship in August 2022. He continued attempting contact through new accounts for years; in February 2025 (post-leak) he reached her again via a Snapchat account labeled “Ben Conway.” Rose blocked him and told her parents.
  • Solo’s known aliases: Solo, Solo Leveling, SoloTinyLeaks, RoseOfTheGarden (Discord), RoseIsCumming (Twitter, Cash App), Ben Conway (Snapchat claim), ELOhero5 (old Snapchat).
  • Rose learned about the November 2024 leak from “Callum,” who emailed her starting August 26, 2025 — nine months after the 26-video drop. She has never been contacted by law enforcement. Discord never reached out.
  • Destiny organized a Discord group to “find Rose” and posted her name and home address on Twitter — i.e. doxxed the real teenager whose identity had been stolen. Rose learned about it from Callum and from Twitter. She had ~15 Instagram follow attempts in a week after her info spread; she deleted the account.

Newsletter Angles

  • The evidentiary core of “You Can’t Sue the Catfish.” Every structural claim the article rests on is now sworn testimony: the plaintiff’s case theory (Destiny knowingly distributed intimate imagery of the plaintiff to Pxie’s impersonator) assumes a Rose who never existed as a party to any of the communications. The deposition is the factual floor dropping out.
  • “There was no account to give him.” The cleanest quote in the record. Solo fabricated consent retroactively on KiwiFarms to justify the leak; under oath, Rose nukes it. If the article needs one line of sworn testimony, this is it.
  • The defense counsel’s cross is the argument. When Destiny’s lawyer gets Rose to confirm “Defendant Bonnell was catfished by your boyfriend” — and she says “Yes” — that is the defense’s entire case in one exchange. The lawsuit continues anyway because the catfisher is in Oxford.
  • The Yubo detail is not incidental. An adult targeted a minor on a platform marketed to kids, posed as a peer, ran a three-year identity theft and impersonation operation, and when she tried to break it off, threatened to kill her family. The legal system cannot reach him. Every fix proposed in Section 3 of the outline maps to a specific failure this deposition documents.
  • The doxxing of Rose by Destiny is the piece’s complication. Rose — the actual teenage victim of Solo — was then targeted by Destiny’s audience and by Destiny himself, who posted her home address on Twitter trying to reach her. This is not a piece where Destiny is clean. It is a piece where he was catfished and then used his platform to hunt a teenager who was also being catfished. The structural argument survives; the moral reading gets harder.

Entities Mentioned

  • Steven K. Bonnell II (Destiny) — defendant; the catfish target who then doxxed Rose
  • Jane Doe (Pxie) — plaintiff; the person Destiny made the video with and whose image was distributed
  • Solo (Ben Conway) — UK-based catfisher; real name unknown; operated the Rose identity
  • Rose (AH) — teenage identity-theft victim; the real person behind the impersonated “Rose”
  • Joan Schlump Peters — plaintiff’s counsel (SMGQ Law / JSP Law)
  • Jake A. Camara — defense counsel (Berk Brettler LLP)
  • Callum — unknown third party who informed Rose of the leak in August 2025; self-described as connected to Pxie’s circle

Concepts Mentioned

Quotes

“There was no account to give him.” — Rose, on Solo’s KiwiFarms claim that she had handed him her Discord

“Q: Were you aware that he was going to leak any of the videos or chat thread from the Discord account before he did so? A: No.” — direct examination

“Q: So essentially Defendant Bonnell was catfished by your boyfriend; correct? A: Yes.” — cross-examination by Destiny’s counsel

“He said that he’d kill my family and he would come and kidnap me and use me as a sex slave.” — Rose, describing Solo’s threats when she tried to break up

“Q: So this 300-page, or more, chat thread that was on Discord between Rose and Destiny — and I remind you that you are under oath — you didn’t send any of these messages? A: No. Q: Not one? A: No.”

Notes

  • Filed under protective order (Docket 116). Name redactions in the transcript affect witness’s real name, email addresses, home region, and college name. All core substantive testimony is visible.
  • Some pages (e.g. 20, 53, 56, 65, 82) are heavily redacted, likely covering minor-status details, specific sexual content descriptions, or identifying information. Enough of the surrounding context survives to confirm every claim above.
  • The deposition is direct evidence; it is also contested — plaintiff’s counsel represents the adverse party and may impeach the witness at trial. For the article, the relevant facts are the ones confirmed on both direct AND defense cross, which include every major point above.
  • Callum’s identity remains unresolved. The deposition suggests he is connected to plaintiff’s side (“I thought they were friends with Pxie”), but this is not established.

Graph View

Backlinks