One of the contestants from season 12 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sherry Pie, has issued a public apology after five men accused him of catfishing them over the course of several years.

Sherry Pie, real name Joey Gugliemelli, is due to make their Drag Race debut tonight. Gugliemelli posed as a casting director and asked the five young men, all aspiring actors, to send on videos of themselves, pretending it was part of an audition process. The men told BuzzFeed they were tricked by Gugliemelli into sending on embarrassing and degrading recordings.

Gugliemelli pretended he was assisting a casting agent called Allison Mossie and passed on her email address to the men. There was no Alison Mossie, it was Gugliemelli himself who replied to the men. The men were then told they were in the running for a series of TV shows and plays where the characters had to wear revealing clothing and show off their bodies.

During some of the tapes, the men were urged to strip down to their underwear. One of the young men said he was groomed by Gugliemelli over the course of a few years and was convinced to masturbate on camera for a part in a HBO TV show.

Josh Lillyman explained, “I did everything he asked me to because at that point he had built up so much detail for the show that I was truly convinced it was real and associated with HBO. It took a lot for me to break that delusion. I was willingly doing all the things he was asking me to. He sort of groomed me, I would say.”

Another young man, Ben Shimkus, agreed to perform a “particularly sexual and awkward” act on camera thinking it was for a part in a major New York play about a man addicted to steroids. After been urged to send on revealing videos, ‘Mossie’ then stopped contacting Shimkus.

Shimkus shared on social media, “When I began telling my friends about what had happened to me, one of my best friends told me that a colleague who had worked at a theatre doing Hairspray with Sherry also had the same experience with Allison Mossie. Another friend said the same thing had happened to someone she knew. Her friend was also in close contact with Sherry.”

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When all of the stories came to light, Gugliemelli shared on social media, “This is Joey, I want to start by saying how sorry I am that I caused such trauma and pain and how horribly embarrassed and disgusted I am with myself. I know that the pain and hurt that I have caused will never go away and I know that what I did was wrong and truly cruel.

“Until being on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I never really understood how much my mental health and taking care of things meant. I learned on that show how important ‘loving yourself’ is and I don’t think I have ever loved myself. I have been seeking help and receiving treatment since coming back to NYC. I truly apologize to everyone I have hurt with my actions. I also want to say how sorry I am to my sisters of season 12 and honestly the whole network and production company. All I can do is change the behaviour and that starts with me and doing that work.”

Producers of the show have yet to release a statement about Gugliemelli’s actions.