As Brand New are preparing to hit the road for a controversial reunion tour next month, new allegations of grooming and inappropriate behavior towards minors have surfaced against the band’s frontman, Jesse Lacey.
In a Medium post published on Friday, April 4th, a woman using the name Aiyana alleged that Lacey began grooming her in 2006, when she was 15 and he was in his late ‘20s — a story mirroring the disturbing allegations that emerged against the Brand New singer last decade, which initiated their years-long hiatus.
In her post, Aiyana explains how she met Lacey after a Brand New show, and soon began to communicate with him regularly. However, his alleged behavior quickly grew concerning, with inappropriate hugs, lewd comments, and a disturbing pattern of manipulation. He allegedly used “charm and calculated trust-building” to win-over Aiyana’s mother, and frequently made comments about Aiyana’s age, like “I wish you weren’t 15 years old” and “the truth is I’m in love with you, but you’re just not old enough for me to marry you yet,” she says.
Additionally, Lacey seemed to use his position of power and fame to manipulate the terms of his contact with Aiyana, who explains that after another fan hacked an account owned by her and sent Lacey screenshots of the two’s interactions, he began pressuring her and her mother to keep the relationship private, suggesting that if she weren’t discreet enough, she would lose access to him and the band.
“You’ve become a close friend, one of my best friends, actually,” Lacey allegedly told Aiyana at the time, “and although we understand our relationship, others might not without more context.”
Many other instances are described in the post, including inappropriate behavior from others in the Brand New camp — like a tour manager who messaged Aiyana and her friend to say “You two are so cute — Jesse and I were just talking about how we want to snuggle with you both on the tour bus.”
In 2017, Lacey acknowledged the earlier allegations against him, and indicated that they were true, vowing to work to “be better.” However, there hasn’t been much public indication that any “progress” has been made in regard to bringing justice to Lacey’s alleged victims, and now, the band is gearing up to return to the stage in full force.
Hence why Aiyana is now sharing her story. In her view, Lacey “should not be allowed” to tour with the group, writing, “To my knowledge, he has yet to name specific behaviors that were problematic — like the grooming, manipulation, and coercion — and he never reached out to the victims to attempt any form of restitution… Defending him by claiming he’s ‘done his time in therapy’ suggests that personal growth absolves public harm, which it does not.”
To that end, Aiyana’s new allegations certainly describe public harm. Though her experiences were evidently not as explicitly physical as the other public stories, the trauma allegedly inflicted by Lacey left an immense impact.
“Research shows that grooming at a young age increases vulnerability to future abuse, and that proved true in my case,” Aiyana writes. “The damage he caused would stay with me for years to come — leading to struggles with promiscuity, self-esteem issues, and the development of complex PTSD (something I am still in treatment for).”
Now, Aiyana’s story has amplified the public outcry against Brand New’s return, which is prominent enough that venues hosting the band had to disable social media comments.
