Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler denies sexual misconduct

completemusicupdate.com:

Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler has denied allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against him by four people. Three women say that he engaged in “inappropriate” relationships with them, while a fourth person, who is gender fluid, alleges that he sexually assaulted them twice.The accusations were made in a detailed report published by Pitchfork last week, with the three women – all of whom met Butler though being fans of Arcade Fire – saying that they had sexual interactions with him during various periods between 2016 and 2020, while they were aged between eighteen and 23 and he was in his late 30s.Subsequently, says Pitchfork, “they came to feel” that those interactions “were inappropriate given the gaps in age, power dynamics, and context in which they occurred”.The fourth person says that Butler assaulted them twice in 2015, once while travelling in a car and a second time at their home, when they were 21 and he was 34.Pitchfork says that it has viewed screenshots of text and Instagram messages confirming the relationships, and interviewed family members of the accusers who recalled being told about the incidents at the time they occurred.In a statement, issued through a crisis PR rep, Butler did not deny that any of the relationships had occurred, but said that all had been “consensual”, and that his wife and bandmate Régine Chassagne had been aware of them.

However, he added that, after spending “the last few years” in therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous, he had become “more aware now of how my public persona can distort relationships even if a situation feels friendly and positive to me”.“I love Régine with all of my heart”, he said. “We have been together for 20 years, she is my partner in music and in.