One all-female independent Ohio band was dropped from a New York music festival, along with those in other venues too.
Its drummer, Leslie Rasmussen, wrote a character letter that supported the Stanford University swimmer who has been convicted for assault of an unconscious woman.
The case has raised a storm, with a number of letters published online---the victim's, as well as his father's to the judge. Having been sentenced for only six months, Turner and even the judge have drawn a lot of criticism from all sides, so the support from his friend also did not go down well with the public.
Leslie Rasmussen explained in her letter that Brock Turner was "respectful and caring, talented, and smart enough to know better." Recalling that she had known him ever since she was in elementary school, she clarified that "he was not a monster."
"I don't think it's fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn't remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him," Rasmussen wrote. "I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn't right."
Her letter was published online by New York Magazine on Monday. But it raised such a fury that the entire band deleted its Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages. Rasmussen's punk-rock band had to pay the penalty, as it was dropped from Brooklyn's Northside Festival. Organizers announced "Due to recent information brought to our attention, Good English is no longer playing" at the event.
Good English was supposed to play on Saturday at Brooklyn's Industry City Distillery. Brooklyn's Bar Matchless too removed the band from its list.
"We did not want to be associated or even seen as passively approving the band or its viewpoints," Ronak Parikh, head of sales and operations at Industry City Distillery, said in an interview.
However, on Tuesday Rasmussen, 20, issued an apology on her Facebook page. She said that she understood why people would "misconstrue my ideas into a distortion that suggests I sympathize with sex offenses and those who commit them or that I blame the victim involved."
"Nothing could be farther from the truth, and I apologize for anything my statement has done to suggest that I don't feel enormous sympathy for the victim and her suffering," she said.
