Tilian from DGD responds To Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct

TW: Accusations of Sexual assault/inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Tilian and the Dance Gavin Dance guys are in the middle of an album release cycle at the moment - and have recently suffered the passing of their bass player Tim Feerick. They are all obviously very raw and emotional about these things going on, but boy oh boy, that doesn't excuse poor behaviour. While we hope that these accusations are not true and Tilian is not guilty of these things, if the accustations are true, this really sucks - and we REALLY wish that these type of imbalance of power artist/celebrity to fan interactions could really just STOP, regardless of the gender of the perpetrators and victims.

His Statement (view it in full at Reddit) addressing one of the accustations reads:

“This morning I was made aware of allegations from someone regarding a brief relationship surrounding the weekend of Swanfest. Admittedly, this was a time when I was very vulnerable, but I can assure you that every sexual act was purely consensual. Since then, she has reached out to me multiple times wanting to see me again. We met again later in Cleveland on tour, and I decided to end things the following day. It was an amicable split, so this story coming out is extremely surprising.

I have text threads saved that paint a picture of the nature of our brief relationship, but I would prefer not to have to air that out.

It pains me a bit because I thought there was a general lightheartedness and sweetness that wasn’t mentioned in her version.

I take the subject of sexual assault seriously, and I want to firmly reiterate that there was no moment of anything happening that was not consensual. I understand that in a new sexual relationship, there is a period of figuring each other’s preferences out, but there is not a doubt our physical contact ever crossed boundaries into anything resembling assault.

My general state of mind surrounding the weekend was filled with grief, and I was leaning on alcohol as a crutch to get me through it. After Swanfest, I did the tour sober to properly grieve and got a lot of support from the band and friends.

Although her story saddens me to read, I won’t express any ill will toward her.

I hope this clears things up, and thank you for listening.

–Tilian“

And he finished that Reddit thread off with a link to a Dropbox folder of screenshots of their conversation.

Hours after that response to the first allegation, a second reddit thread was started by another user with similar accusations. He has not officially responded to this second set of accusations, so this story is still unfolding.

My Tilian Story (with pictures)
by u/spookypooky8 in dancegavindance