Win Butler, the leader of the Canadian rock band Arcade Fire, did he hide his game well? Arcade Fire, a veritable musical family comprising his wife, singer Régine Chassagne and, until recently, his own brother Will Butler, would not be the paragon of virtue he seemed to be. The singer, author, composer and musician is indeed implicated by four people, all fans of the group, in a survey published on the American site Pitchfork.
Journalist Mark Hogan notably collected the testimony of a non-binary person who claims that Win Butler sexually assaulted her twice in 2015, once in a car and another time at her home in Montreal when she had asked not to come and was in both cases not consenting. She was 21 and he was 34. Three other women accuse the artist of inappropriate sexual interactions, given the context and their age at the time of the events.
18-year-old Stella (a handle) was contacted by Win Butler in 2016 on Instagram after posting pictures taken of him at a charity event on the social network. He had given her his number and encouraged her to write to him, then sent her pictures of her genitals when she told him she hated sexting. According to a friend of Stella who says she saw the photos in question, the young woman was “devastated“. She now clearly refers to Win Butler as “sexual predator“.
Two other women, Sarah and Fiona (two pseudonyms), 20 and 23, also Arcade Fire fans but who did not know each other and displayed their love of the group on Instagram, accuse Win Butler of having asked them for character videos sex between 2017 and 2018. He asked them each similar things: “certain sex poses and acts, spoken words, outfits or sex toys he tricked them into buyingr.” Depressions followed. They also showed Pitchfork reporter Mark Hogan screenshots of him instructing them to keep these interactions a secret.
In the Pitchfork investigation, Win Butler does not deny any of the relationships but gives his version of the facts to the four people who accuse him. In a letter published at the end of the article, he assures us that these relations were all “mutual and consented”. He also points out that his wife Régine Chassagne, who is also the singer of Arcade Fire, was aware of these relations, the couple having “a less conventional marriage” that others. “I have never touched a woman against her will”, he wrote. But he wants to apologize if his behavior could hurt. He says he struggled with depression for a long time and “ghosts of childhood abuse“, particularly in his thirties when he started drinking.
For her part, Régine Chassagne, his wife since 2003, also published a short statement on the Pitchfork site in which she supports “my soul mate, my musical partner, my husband, and the father of my beautiful son” and said to himself “certain“that he would never touch a woman”without his consent“. “He lost his way and he found it“, according to her.