Mitski Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking Allegations

Overview

Mitski Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking Allegations refer to accusations made by Tumblr user amberdollars that popular indie rock musician Mitski sexually abused her as a child, and raped her at a concert on July 10th, 2015. The user also claimed that Mitski's father is a sexual abuser and was involved with a child sex trafficking ring, which facilitated the abuse. Her claims have been strongly denied by Mitski and judged false by music journalist Peyton Thomas. Others have questioned the accuser's credibility by pointing to a number of alleged inconsistencies in the story.

Background

On August 10th, 2018, Tumblr user amberdollars^[1] made a post saying indie rock singer Mitski is a pedophile and rapist, writing:

Mitski is a pedophile!!! Do not support her do not listen to her music do not go to her shows she is a CHILD PREDATOR
DM ME For more detail. I was sexually trafficked as a child and I was groomed and raped by her starting around age 11. Visited her (was trafficked to her) multiple times, at least 2 while she studied at Purchase Conservatory Of Music .Our last contact (including me being raped by Mitski) was in 2015 after a show with Elvis Depressedly in Memphis.

Developments

Over the following several days, more details about her allegations surfaced.^[2] On March 30th, 2019, the user posted that she attended the college SUNY Purchase with Mitski in the early 2010s. However, amberdollars is currently 18, which would have made her roughly 10 years old at the time Mitski attended college. Others doubted the story because her blog had several reblogs of Mitski-related content.^[8] Furthermore, the accuser has Dissociative Identity Disorder, which has led to people questioning the veracity of her claims. She later wrote:

“Not “went to” SUNY. All I know is I was AT SUNY. When I was 11 and later again around 12 or 13. And being drugged with benzos a LOT, including at home, on top of having clinically diagnosed DID, this was not easy to remember. She is my abuser and not yours. The face that I reblogged her music or shared posts about her music is actually irrelevant! Heard of a traumatic bond? . I saw her multiple times throughout her time in college. There was a gap between the time she graduated and until I saw her again and was revictimized. The last time I saw her was July of 2015. I had no contact with her in between. I was experiencing the same abuse at home and elsewhere complete with constant drugging from my family at 13 with strong opiates. Dissociative amnesia is common with my level of trauma and common among victims of child sexual trafficking. Fuck off.”

While amberdollars has stated she cannot remember exactly why she was at SUNY Purchase at the time, she has stated she was likely enrolled in a summer camp, providing screenshots of summer camps SUNY Purchase provides. The accuser also posted about the allegations on Reddit, where it was discovered she had talked openly about having paranoid delusions, including that she believed her father was in the CIA, from cough medicine and other hallucinogenics in the past.^[3] When another user pointed out that her admitting to previously having delusions would lead some to not believe her accusations, the accuser wrote that those posts describing her delusions were from an "Alter," or another personality.

During the controversy, an anonymous user in a thread on /mu/ posted screenshots which make the accuser appear to admit she's lying.^[7] These appear to have been doctored but it is unproven.

Amberdollars also alleged Mitski raped her at a show in Memphis on July 10th, 2015, writing:

I went backstage and we started talking and it all came back to me. She told me “ you remember me, right?” and I said “i don’t know” and she responded, faking sadness, with “how could you forget your first girlfriend?” we kept talking for a while and i told her i needed to escape my family and she convinced me we could run away together. i was taken to a hotel “for the night” she raped me in a similar but more violent fashion than before, I don’t wanna describe.

As the situation hit Twitter, guitarist Greg Rutkin^[4] tweeted that he was on tour with Mitski at that time and remembers the show very vividly, and that he could not recall anything amiss, and that Mitski was driven by her mom to Nashville.

On August 13th, 2019, freelance music journalist Peyton Thomas^[5] posted to his Tumblr that he had investigated the claims made by the accuser, spoken to her, and believed the allegations were false. Thomas wrote:

I am going to say this as clearly and unambiguously as I can. I have extensively fact-checked this person’s claims and I have spoken to Mitski’s manager about the claims. It is now very clear to me that this story is a fabrication.
…
1. The e-mail contained information that this person has not shared on their public blog, including information that is categorically false.
2. Though this person purports to have known Mitski for nearly a decade, their e-mail misstated a number of basic, public, and easily verifiable biographical facts about Mitski.
3. This person provided no documentation for any of their claims, nor any evidence that they had ever met Mitski, corresponded with her, or spent time with her.
4. This person has publicly claimed to have been raped by Mitski at a concert in Memphis, Tennessee on July 10, 2015. They claimed to have been fourteen years old at the time. They expanded upon this claim in their e-mail to me. However, Greg Rutkin, a musician who performed with Mitski at that concert, has debunked this claim. Furthermore, the concert in question was open only to people over the age of eighteen. Venues are generally strident about age restrictions, and it is highly unlikely that a fourteen-year-old could have attended this specific concert.
5. This person has publicly claimed to have been repeatedly raped by Mitski during Mitski’s time at Purchase College. They claimed to have been between nine and eleven years old at the time. When asked by another Tumblr user how this was possible – that is, how a nine-year-old could have attended college – they claimed that they did not attend Purchase College, but merely lived in the area. However, in their e-mail to me, they explicitly claimed to have been formally enrolled in classes at Purchase College at the age of ten or eleven. They provided no documentation for this claim. I mention this detail only because it directly contradicts their public statements on the matter.

Also on August 13th, Mitski^[6] denied the allegations on Twitter, saying she had never had contact with the accuser and that the claims were easily proven false. She added that she believed "we should continue the practice of believing in victims" and that she hopes "survivors are not discouraged to come forward with their own experiences because of this instance." Amberdollars has since deleted her Tumblr account.

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