SARGENT HOUSE founder CATHY PELLOW steps away from label amid allegations of misconduct

“First I might wish to thank the chums, former/present SH artists and employees, in addition to the followers who’ve reached out for help and shared their very own experiences. I might wish to be clear right here and acknowledge that Cathy has reached out to me despatched privately, expressing curiosity about my earlier video.

You will need to me that I perceive that this situation transcends any of my private experiences and that, even within the occasion that a number of the following could also be misplaced recollections of Cathy, there may be an plain tradition and sample of habits that’s ingrained within the foundations of Sargent Home to be handled. I wish to speak about two incidents that I personally skilled after which contact on the larger image.

In September 2015, after I was 19 and nonetheless residing in Sargent Home, I used to be assaulted by landlord and Sargent Home common Graeme Flegenheimer whereas attempting to kick him out of the home. I instructed Cathy about it, how he’d stayed after a celebration till everybody left and began asking me extraordinarily inappropriate questions, how he’d touched me and made passes at me after I refused to go to mattress with him, how he’d climbed the entrance wall of the home to get again in and he regarded for me after I locked him out, how he had then proceeded to ship me offensive and clear textual content messages all through that evening.

They did not take me critically, I used to be mainly met with a shrug and an ungainly snicker, and some nights later I arrived house to seek out him again as a dinner visitor. Their skilled and private relationship remained intact lengthy after I had instructed Cathy.

This was the impetus for me to resolve to go away Sargent Home, a transfer that might additionally take me away from my aspirations to have a life centered round music. I had heard Cathy strongly and publicly condemn the perpetrators and advocate for the victims utilizing the Sargent Home platform and the dearth of recognition or motion contributed fully to my repression and denial of what had occurred to me.

In October 2013, after I was simply 17 years previous, at a present in Chicago on my first North American tour, Cathy took me apart and instructed me with the utmost gravity to always remember that the one cause anybody would give consideration or would admire the music was due to her.

I actually by no means forgot that! Later that evening, he was strolling far and wide ruining my information and shirts with muddy sneakers and ultimately proceeded to name my mother a cunt in entrance of all the tour, my mother and father, and my caught up followers.

I’m embarrassed to speak about any of those occasions and they’re definitely not the extent of my experiences, however they’re value getting out of my head and they’re additionally essential to understanding the tradition surrounding Sargent Home.

I noticed excessive degradation and verbal abuse of employees and artists, deliberate belittling and manipulation that led to rivalries and insecurities throughout the artist base, blatant and even proudly misogynistic language surrounding the “acquisition” of emotionally weak feminine artists, deliberate withholding of economic info besides the cases of imprecise insinuations about how indebted artists have been to her, open disdain for bands’ followers, violent and purposeful violation of artists’ and employees’ private boundaries, and an inclusive means of “othering” that instilled a continuing feeling of paranoia.

I’ve no ambitions to “undo” Cathy, to shut Sargent Home, no emotions of vindictiveness. What I’m asking is for there to be an acknowledgment of previous behaviors to reassure artists, employees or followers that this sort of systematic therapy is now not tolerated and that those that have been harm may be held accountable with out the worry of getting to place themselves on the road legally or financially and with out having to revisit existentially embarrassing or painful moments of their lives.

Via the label’s structured exterior messaging and aesthetic, many individuals are drawn to affix Sargent Home both as artists, workers, or devoted followers, and I imagine that each one of those folks deserve an excellent religion impression after they think about venturing right into a model identify.

To these of you who might discuss to me right here, please accomplish that (supplied you’re at the moment legally in a position). Though I am unable to converse for you, I promise I bear in mind your struggles and your ache too, and I do know you carry your experiences the identical means I do.

I’ve nothing to advertise or acquire by this and I am not sad with my present life scenario, I am not a disgruntled ex-musician or an consideration seeker by my grief. I wish to give particular due to these few grownup musicians and employees who took the time to actually examine me out as an individual after I was nonetheless a teen. seeing previous cliques or careers within the business and simply recognizing a naive teen who most likely did not perceive what was happening.

On the time, I hated your efforts and understood that you just have been bitter ex-devotees who had merely did not dwell as much as Cathy’s steering and management genius.

Thanks all for taking the time to learn or take heed to this, I really feel ashamed, embarrassed and lonely as I end writing right here. It is no accident that I really feel these feelings now in the identical means that it is no accident that it is taken me practically a decade to speak about one thing that haunts me each day. It feels treacherous.

Kathy,

Your final message was despatched to me after I got here out publicly as queer. You mentioned, “Sending you like Henry. I am so glad you have been in a position to share your reality right this moment.”

I do not count on this to be a simple course of for you, I hope you will notice worth mirrored in my reality and that others will give their truths as effectively.

I feel Sargent Home actually deserves this, to not be torn down, however to be held to the requirements it’s speculated to be.

self-induction”