James Charles is facing several repercussions following a new round of sexual misconduct allegations.
The 21-year-old beauty influencer, who has 25.5 million YouTube subscribers, has had his account demonetized following accusations of sexual misconduct by several underage fans, who allege that Charles sent them inappropriate messages.
“We can confirm that we have applied our creator responsibility policy and temporarily removed James Charles from the YouTube Partner Program,” a YouTube spokesperson confirmed.
YouTube’s creator responsibility policy states that creators “should remain responsible both on and off the platform” and that the platform will take action “if we see that a creator’s on and/or off-platform behavior harms our users, community, employees or ecosystem.”
Morphe, which has collaborated with Charles on several highly successful eye shadow palettes, has also cut ties with the influencer following the allegations.
“In light of the recent allegations against James Charles, Morphe and James have agreed to end our business relationship and wind down sales of the Morphe x James Charles product offering,” read a statement from Morphe posted on April 16. “It is and has always been Morphe’s goal to create a positive, safe and empowering space where all beauty lovers can freely share their artistry and passion for cosmetics, and Morphe is committed to furthering that goal.”
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Charles has been receiving backlash on the allegations since he posted a YouTube video on April 1, titled “holding myself accountable,” where he admitted to sending inappropriate messages to two 16-year-old boys, but stated he was told that they were both 18.
“These conversations should never have happened,” he said in the 14-minute video. “I take full responsibility for them. I trusted the information that was given to me, the information that I could have and should have gotten myself. In both of these situations, doing research into these people’s public social media profiles would have revealed their true ages and, therefore, these conversations would have never happened in the first place.”
According to Insider, more than 15 underage fans have since come out and accused Charles of sexual misconduct.
Charles has a long history of sexual misconduct allegations. The beauty influencer was embroiled in controversy in 2019 when fellow influencer, Tati Westbrook, started one of the biggest influencer feuds where she accused Charles of acting inappropriately toward minors. Charles initially lost hundreds of thousands of followers following Westbrook’s allegations, but shortly after regained his lost followers and returned to his regular content once the two influencers announced they were dealing with the fight privately.
Last June, Westbrook issued a public apology to Charles for starting the fight and stated she was manipulated by “the heinous lies that were fed to me by Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star.” She stated that Dawson and Star told her that Charles was a “monster with many victims” — including minors — and that these individuals would come forward if she started the fight. She said this ended up not being the case and she realized that she had been lied to in order to hurt Charles.
“James, I am so sorry for letting myself get poisoned and weaponized against you,” she said in her apology video. “I am sorry that I bought into any of their lies. Believing those lies and allowing myself to get gaslit and making that video is one of the biggest regrets of my life.”
Dawson and Star later denied Westbrook’s allegations.
Charles has not yet issued a response to YouTube demonetizing his account, but released a statement following Morphe ending their partnership.
“Accountability is something that I have spoken about a number of times in the past,” his statement reads. “In my most recent video, I spoke about and took accountability for my part in conversations I had with a few individuals who told me they were over the age of 18. As I said in my video, I can’t show change overnight, but will over time.”
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