On June 17, April's Chaewon made a very lengthy new post on the group's official fan cafe, revealing her side of the story in response to the ongoing "bullying" controversy surrounding former member Hyunjoo.
[Below is a shortened version of Chaewon's fan cafe post.]
"Hello, this is April's Chaewon. After a long debate, I decided to write this post in order to unveil with exact detail that the claims made by Hyunjoo's side are not true. It may be a long post, but please read until the end.
While preparing for our debut, Hyunjoo often said that she did not feel well or that her body hurt here and there, and refused to practice. Even when there were mandatory lessons, she made attempts not to attend, and our managers went to great lengths to care for Hyunjoo; however, she continued to skip practices.
Despite so, as the older member, I did my best to care for Hyunjoo, and I also relied on Hyunjoo even more than she may have relied on my care, so I thought that she was a very good friend of mine. But as soon as we debuted, events that we all worried would happen, happened.
Soon after our debut on August 25, 2015, we were headed for the hair and makeup shop before our scheduled 'Music Bank' performance when we learned that Hyunjoo had disappeared. We had no idea why Hyunjoo was nowhere to be found, and we were concerned that this would negatively affect us in some way on such an important schedule. We had to run through our dry rehearsal and camera rehearsal without Hyunjoo, and we anxiously waited for Hyunjoo to return. Right before the live stage, Hyunjoo entered our waiting room saying, 'I still need to go on stage~'. Because of this, we were instantly labeled as a mannerless girl group who skipped dry rehearsals not even one week into our debut. Hyunjoo's actions were very unexpected and selfish, and we were hurt by her actions which put herself before our team; however, I thought that if I went on caring for Hyunjoo with more attention, things would get better.
However, Hyunjoo continued to skip our practices. It's true that we were tired of Hyunjoo skipping practices as members who strongly felt that everyone needed to be there, putting in effort during practice in order to put on a good stage; however, we never excluded Hyunjoo in any way, as claimed.
None of the April members were allowed to have personal mobile phones until 2017. But Hyunjoo was the only exception, and she also had special permission to attend schedules while living at her family home. Many of you may say that these were the reasons why we 'bullied' Hyunjoo, but that is not true. I tried my best to care for Hyunjoo and to protect April. I always hung out with Hyunjoo, so any claims that Hyunjoo was excluded or bullied just do not make sense to me.
I did my very best to understand Hyunjoo and to match her personality, and she always told me that she felt thankful toward me. So now, I want to ask her why she suddenly turned me into someone who 'always egged her on' and 'gave her a hard time', and 'betrayed her'. I want to ask her why she went around telling people such unbelievable lies.
Because I felt so wrongly accused when this issue first came to light, I just kept thinking that I wanted to die.
But now, I would like to make things right again. I've endured as much as I could, and I just want her to know that the kind of attention and popularity that you earned from such an unjust method will never last you. The truth will be revealed.
After seeing the post made by Hyunjoo's side, I have gone through the few electronic devices that I had during my debut days, in order to recover records of my therapy sessions, the messages that I exchanged with my parents, and any other form of evidence I could gather. I plan to reveal each of these forms of evidence accordingly and explain clearly that the accusations raised against me are entirely false.
Because I want to prove that I am innocent, I will no longer remain silent. Up until now, I believed that if I waited, the truth would be revealed, but I cannot wait longer."
Meanwhile, back on June 8, it was reported that an acquaintance of Hyunjoo, 'A', was cleared of charges raised against them by DSP Media for slander. However, DSP Media claimed that the police cleared 'A's charges solely based on the fact that 'A' heard the information written in their post from Hyunjoo, and therefore the content cannot be proven as "false".
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