Jesse Lacey Releases a Statement • Page 14

fuck this piece of shit.

 

I didn't want to bring it up initially because I didn't want to drag Emily into this if she didn't want to (somebody who I don't personally know other than a couple very brief exchanges on Myspace back in the day) but I remember seeing leaked screenshots of an online interaction they were having that seemed to show Jesse instructing her how he wanted her to pose for him. I remember when they were posted, it was almost entirely people shaming Emily and not Jesse and that stuck with me.

I don't know if it's alright to even post this, they were posted publicly years ago but I'm glad Emily is finally speaking on it

(Edit) and I’m bringing this up because I saw die hard Brand New fans refusing to believe the initial victim, I want them to know there is actually proof of this out there if you search. Also just believe victims

 

Holy fuck the brand new subreddit needs to be shut down. It's just victim shaming. Someone is posting screen shots of "people who knew the victim" and are slutshaming her and saying she was a drug addict and doing this for attention. That subreddit is disgusting.

 

I never expected to be getting into arguments with people who are trying to defend a 26 year old sexting with a 15 year old. Also, just want to say, calling abuse victims "groupies" is fucked up. I don't see this happening anywhere but r/brandnew.

 

I was 11 when I heard Brand New for the first time. I was freshly pubescent and having a rough time of my new womanhood due to boatloads of childhood trauma and some sexual abuse. I’d been bullied in school since kindergarten, and even at that very young age, suffered from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

I remember sitting in the backseat of my oldest sibling’s car while they played a mixtape. I was annoyed because I didn’t like music then, and I’d rather have silence. Then Seventy Times Seven came on and everything changed. It opened my eyes to what music could be, how it could make you feel.

Quickly music became my life and my only coping mechanism. YFW made me feel like it was okay to be angry, Deja made me feel like it was okay to be sad, and Devil and God made me feel like it was okay to be crazy. I was continually abused by my father for my entire adolescence; I would listen to Brand New while crying myself to sleep and all the times I ran away. I got “seventy times 7” inked on my wrist when I was 17, after the self-fulfilling prophecy of my obsession with that song concluded in an earth shattering friend break up. By then, Brand New was permanently sealed on my skin and in my heart as my comfort and strength and joy.

Also by that time, I had successfully repressed the memory of the much older man soliciting nudes from me when I was only 13. It only lasted a few weeks, in my case, and I got out before irreparable damage was done. He wasn’t famous, I didn’t worship him, and even the feeling of being wanted for the first time couldn’t stop the knowledge that it was wrong for a grown man to offer me $500 for my virginity.

I have not thought much about that man or what he did to me in the twelve intervening years. I was very successful repressing that memory.

So on Friday when I read the headline about Jesse Lacey doing the same and much worse to another woman, I wasn’t sure why I felt numb instead of shattered. I’m grateful that my brain is better at protecting me than I am; I was able to rationally process that my biggest idol in life was a piece of shit. Brand New was, at times, the only salvation in my shit storm of a life, the only safe harbour in my sea of self loathing and depression. I hope eventually I will forget all the lyrics I know like my own heartbeat, even if they have only provided me with comfort until this point.

Because eventually I remembered my own trauma, and had to process my experience while processing this news. Knowing that Jesse caused these same feelings and so much worse in so many other women — it makes me sick. I look at my tattoo and I feel sick. I think of the things I’ve said about this band and I feel sick. I feel sick knowing that a man I revered so highly did so much damage.

I’m sorry to all the woman Jesse has hurt, and if my fannish adoration hurt you too. I hope you can find strength and power and solace in your truth and in being finally believed. I hope the beautiful parts of this community that I’ve witnessed over the last four days can help you heal.

And to the beautiful parts of this community, thank you so much for letting me lurk and process with you, and giving my faith that this scene can be a positive thing and faith, really, in humanity as a whole. I could not have done it without you.

Ps, if your Science Fiction vinyl hasn’t shipped, you can still cancel the preorder by emailing pmt customer service.

 

Update: one of the more prominent bands in my local scene literally just now broke up because of this lol

Maybe things will finally change

 

Everyone should watch s02e07 of BoJack Horseman (Hank After Dark)

 

I’ll ask because I hadn’t seen much in the way of a resolution: what ever came of the allegations against the Neck Deep guys two years ago? I know Lloyd left the band, but Fil is still a member and was supposedly involved.

Same goes for the stuff against Steve Klein. Seems like that one just fell off the face of the Earth.

 

Awesome idea, if there is a demand for it at this time. Thanks for that, didnt even cross my mind

 

The bizarre thing about all these recent events is how important timing is. There are PLENTY of people who behaved as equals or worse to these recent revelations, and still have blossoming careers. We're not even bringing them up now, we've just kind of, given them a free pass?. It's good that the worlds eyes and ears are open now and demanding action but it brings up the sad fact that just a few years ago, the majority of people just didn't care (or maybe it's a media problem in that those prior stories weren't pushed?). I'm not sure but it's just weird that basically bad behavior coming out in the past few months = losing everything. Bad behavior that was discovered years ago = meh.

 

I was thinking about this, too. Those couple leaked pictures have a fundamentally different meaning in retrospect. Anyone who saw them was literally looking at a snapshot of this man's abuse of young women/girls without knowing it. So horrifying to think about, especially since this evidence of coercion was viewed at the time either as something funny or as something where Jesse was the victim. I forget what my response was, but I'm sure it was disgusting.

 

I mentioned selling all of my vinyl (including the limited SciFi one even though it hasn’t shipped yet) and tour posters as a lot on Twitter and people are already messaging me about prices and asking to buy it. A lot of people do not care about this at all, sadly.

 

to be fair, why offer to sell if you don't expect/want people to want to buy?

 

I do expect people to buy it because they don’t care about this, which I also think is sad. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive?

 

Donate the proceeds to charity in the buyers name if you want to feel better

 

I’m using the money to cover my tattoo and donating the rest. I was just responding to the part of the post I quoted about whether or not there was a demand for this stuff.

 

A lot of people are seemingly over their initial shock and are working hard to exonerate Jesse like finding pictures of this girl Nicole with other band members and trying to pinpoint her age when she would've met Jesse etc etc and it's grossing me out.

The underage account was the thing that blew this up and even if there was some legal/criminal reason to not address that specifically, why on earth would you not flat out deny the underage aspect if it wasn't true?

 

Bingo.

 

This is what's still killing me. People still defending him and glossing over the fact that he has no reason not to at least claim innocence in the most disgusting, illegal implication if he didn't do it. Even people who are guilty trip over themselves to claim innocence as soon as they can. There's no legal repercussion for doing so. These people can bend over backwards trying to find every which way to pass the blame and demand evidence but are blatantly and self servingly refusing to see that he didn't deny breaking the law because there could be evidence that he did. With more people coming forward it's even more clear now that his statement was nothing but a ploy for sympathy to get ahead of the inevitable release of even more details of what he's done.

 

Finally people are speaking up about this scumbag. Also did not know Stefanie Reines was hooking up with minors.

 

close friends of mine definitely met with him in the later years of drive-thru. the most i've ever heard was the "walking on the back" stories. is there anything more?

 

Though not sexual in itself, I would not doubt that Reines get's a fetishy sexual thrill from the act, whether through coercion or not.

 

The stories have always been that he would request band members to be in certain color socks when they did it and would ask about their weight ahead of them - definitely fetishized behavior.

If I recall, there’s a YMAEWK song that contains a message to Richard.

 

"This is a fuck you to Richard Reines, who told me I should lose some weight"

 

These things are so damn weird on their own, but it becomes much more real when you imagine this happening anywhere besides the music industry. Imagine if you applied for a job and then interviewer asked you to walk on his back while he looked at your resume? It would be weird as fuck, but then if tons of other people said the same thing happened to them...it would definitely feel like he just got a thrill of some sort out of it.