"While none of the Growlers band members assaulted me directly, they hired someone else to for their enjoyment"
As the sexual-misconduct fallout surrounding Burger Records grows ever larger, the Growlers are now facing new accusations — this time by Starcrawler frontwoman Arrow de Wilde.
On Instagram, de Wilde shared a lengthy statement yesterday (July 30) outlining an incident that allegedly took place in January while Starcrawler were on an Australian tour with the Growlers. According to de Wilde, the Growlers had hired a male stripper, who de Wilde claimed assaulted her in a locked backstage room in Melbourne.
In her post, de Wilde claims she was locked in a room with the stripper as he aggressively attempted to perform a striptease and give her a lap dance, with members of the Growlers filming the incident and laughing at her as she repeatedly attempted to escape the increasingly aggressive situation.
"After reading a lot of other terrible experiences girls had with them years ago, I wanted to write this to let people know that this shit is still happening," de Wilde wrote. "While none of the Growlers band members assaulted me directly, they hired someone else to for their enjoyment."
According to de Wilde the incident was orchestrated by Growlers singer Brooks Nielsen, who paid out "a few hundred buck" for "a pretty expensive joke."
Neilsen has since issued an apology on Growlers' Instagram, stating "I apologize for my actions, and for any band members, that have hurt, offended, or damaged any person or made anyone feel less than 100% safe. I take full responsibility and accountability for the behavior of all Growlers' band members, past and present."
Specifically addressing the claims of de Wilde, Neilsen said he arranged "a male stripper as an end-of-tour prank to dance for the great Arrow de Wilde... This was a horrible idea that turned out even worse."
Below, you can find a section of de Wilde's account, followed by her full Instagram post.
During the last song of the set, my band continues to play as I exit off stage. I entered the dressing room and was immediately ushered onto a couch. I sat down, barely had a moment to catch my breath (drenched in sweat & fake blood), when all of a sudden a dude in a paramedic uniform bursts into the room. It's very common that this happens so I didnt think much of it (a lot of venues will think that they stage blood is real and send a medic to me backstage). Soon after he bursts into the room, he rips off his uniform and music starts playing. I realized then, it's a male stripper & begin to laugh as it honestly was pretty funny to me at first.
My bandmates tried to get backstage but the doors have now been locked (which I later found out). The stripper, giant muscles and all, grabbed me, put me in a chair, and started to give me a lapdance. The humor faded pretty fast when it just wouldn't end. I swear it went on for almost ten minutes. Every time I tried to get up he pushed me back down. It started to feel more and more degrading as each layer of clothing peeled off his body, the growlers just continued to laugh and film the whole thing. Soon he was down to a speedo and I knew where it was headed.
I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face as I felt his bare dick and balls rubbing and pressing against my chest and face as he continued to hold me down. I started to feel really panicked. My heart was beating so fast. I've never seen a striptease like this before. Everyone in the growlers were standing all around me, laughing and taking videos the whole time, no one ever stepped in. Once it was finally over, I ran to the bathroom to collect myself (aka cry) and wash the dick off my face. Everyone was still laughing and rewatching the videos to see my facial expression, talking about how "shocked" I was. I later found out that the whole thing was Brooks' idea & that it cost them a few hundred bucks, which to me is a pretty expensive joke.
A post shared by Arrow (@arrowdewilde) on Jul 30, 2020 at 12:52pm PDT
As previously reported, Neilsen previously denied the accusations against the Growlers — only for this apology to be quickly followed by a confession by band keyboardist Adam Wolcott Smith, who admitted to sexual assault and then announced he was leaving the group.
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