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Culture > News

The Ace Family’s Austin McBroom Faces Rape Allegations

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at FSU chapter.

The Ace Family is a young, attractive family that uploads weekly vlogs on YouTube that receive millions of views. Their family consists of the coupled former basketball star Austin McBroom, Instagram Influencer Catherine Paiz and their two daughters Elle (2 years) and Alaia (11 mo.). Since their debut on YouTube in 2016, the family has racked up a total of 17.7 million subscribers, with an audience consisting of young kids and adults.

Within the past year, the family has faced large amounts of criticism for child exploitation, not being relatable and filming videos with a fake plot. Recently, Austin McBroom has been accused of cheating and sexual assault by two women. This is not McBroom’s first run-in with a sexual assault allegation but this time around, we have the receipts. 

Courtesy: TubeFilter

This allegation began with makeup YouTuber Cole Carrigan. Carrigan tweeted on Oct. 11, “this whole situation is making me feel so uneasy. I hate inserting myself into sh*t but when it involves my friend it becomes my business and knowing the disgusting, CRIMINAL acts going on behind closed doors with this family makes me SICK.” Carrigan says after this tweet, Keemstar, also known as DramaAlert on YouTube, reached out to have a call with him about what has been going on and that he would include his statement in the video.

DramaAlert is a channel on YouTube that gives the intense details of drama surrounding YouTubers whenever it surfaces. Carrigan says that he and Keemstar talked about what happened and Keemstar asked for permission to reach out to his friend who was claiming sexual assault against McBroom. Permission was granted and Keemstar was set to publish a video the following day but Carrigan says that Keemstar sort of “went ghost” following this. Carrigan claims that he reached out to Keemstar the following day to see why the video had not been published and Keemstar responded by stating the Ace Family paid him $500,000 to keep quiet about the story. Keemstar, however, remembers this interaction happening differently.

Keemstar says in his video that the woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted was scheduled to do an interview but “disappeared.” He also says that his response that the Ace Family paid him $500,000 to keep quiet was sarcasm and that he later texted Carrigan saying that he was joking. Keemstar says that he received no response from Carrigan and that his next time hearing anything from him was when he published his YouTube exposing the Ace Family.

Carrigan took to his YouTube channel to discuss the backstory and allegation. Although he was not involved in the incident, Carrigan assures in his video that he knows that this has happened more than once and if no one comes forward, it will happen again.

Carrigan begins the backstory by telling his audience that his two female friends, along with McBroom, McBroom’s father, assistant, and many of his friends went on a trip to Miami. He says, prior to going on the trip, his friend and McBroom were texting back and forth about which girls she should bring for him. Carrigan provides screenshots of these messages that include pictures of several females that are sent for McBroom’s approval. McBroom’s trip to Miami was documented, as there are many paparazzi pictures of him in party settings on the days leading up to the incident. They spent the day on a yacht and consumed quite a bit of alcohol. Cole says that the sun was starting to set and everyone had gone back to their rooms to change. He says that his two friends were about to shower when they were walked in on by McBroom, McBroom’s father and his friend while they were unclothed. Carrigan then called one of the two friends who went on the trip to recap the story on camera.

The woman, now identified as Leslie Golden, states, after the group of men walked in, she recalled her friend frantically screaming and the men rushing out of the room. She says that they also found bloodstains on the bedsheets in their room. Carrigan provides a picture of the bloodstains in the video. Golden says that she and her friend refrained from leaving their rooms until the following day when they left on a plane.

Courtesy: Kon Karampelas

Following this, Golden took to Instagram to make a statement that has since been deleted. The post read, “to speak on this video that Cole Carrigan posted, some of you have already figured out that I am the other girl that they’re talking about in the video. I feel like this video was made for the wrong reasons, and this wasn’t Cole’s story to tell. Cole even texted me saying we could potentially get paid $100,000 from this, following the claim that DramaAlert was paid off…This isn’t what I wanted, there’s several sides to every story and this isn’t how I wanted to tell mine.”

Following this, McBroom took to Twitter to deny all allegations and let his fans know that he would be taking legal action against Carrigan for extortion, defamation and slander. Carrigan has since taken to Twitter to say “I didn’t sign an NDA come arrest me.” While the Ace Family’s YouTube channel has remained silent, Twitter buzzes with drama as we await a response from yet another YouTube scandal.

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Aiyanna is a current student at The Florida State University as a sophomore. She is currently studying Psychology with a minor of Communications. Her favorite food is french fries and her favorite drink is strawberry-lemonade. Her passions include working with and helping people. She hopes that this passion one day leads me to the field of public relations and media.
Her Campus at Florida State University.