The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers is “relieved” an investigation into allegations of sexual assault against members of their road crew has found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The band’s lawyers launched an investigation into claims made by former sound engineer Chez Cherrie, who alleged she overheard crew members boast of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in a dressing room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2009.
The attorneys found “no corroboration” of the story – a finding that has been a huge relief to Flowers.
“I feel relieved that we were actually able to get to the bottom of it, actually find this woman and make sure that she was OK,” he told NME. “The most important thing is that there was no assault. That’s just nothing but relief. From what we see backstage, the people we hire and the people in the band, we’ve never witnessed anything like that happen. If something like that did happen, we would want to know.”
None of the band were implicated in the allegations, but Cherrie’s blog did claim there is a culture of misogyny in rock, prompting intense criticism of the band on social media – something which saddened the Human hitmaker.
“It sucks because as soon as you are brought into that conversation, some people are just going to believe that is you and paint you with that brush forever,” said Flowers. “If I could sit down with everybody or let them be a fly on the wall – let them see what your life is like and how you behave and show them that that’s not you… There’s not much we can do about that.”
Despite finding no wrongdoing, the group are bringing in new reporting procedures for future tours to ensure anyone placed in Cherrie’s position can quickly highlight any allegation so it can be looked into.
Calling on other groups to do the same, Flowers added: “That could be the more positive thing that’s come from it – to actually put our heads together and figure out something we can do so that if anyone ever does feel uncomfortable, female or male, there’s a number they can call so they don’t have to let it fester and carry it with them for so long like this woman on the crew did.”
