by Epitaph

Culture Abuse have announced that they will be disbanding. This comes after lead singer David Kelling released a statement on his personal Instagram page coming forward about his behaviour regarding sexual misconduct. His statement reads in part, “As these stories come up with how toxic the music scene has been, I have to recognize where I have been guilty of similar behaviors. 10 years ago I was 22 and slept with a 17-year-old. I led her on and pressured her and over time left the relationship without checking in on her feelings. Now come to find out it caused pain that she has had to deal with all the time. She did not deserve that in any way. We spoke on the phone today with both of our partners present and she said she accepted my apology, although she didn’t have to.” Click here to read it in full. The band have also released a statement on their social media accounts which reads in part,

“We have experienced David‘s erratic behavior before but we always took it as an immense passion for this band and David’s ultimate goals in music. Some people can say that this was our way of allowing David‘s behavior to continue but we looked at it as a support system to help a person change. However with the lack of honesty from David about his roles in abuse against women and its severity, we ultimately led David to not hold himself accountable and for that we are extremely sorry. Because we do believe people can change with a lot of hard work, without self accountability there can be no change. We will no longer open the associate with David because of his actions, however we feel it is important that David seeks therapy to unlearn his past behavior and attitude and ensure other victims and survivors receive the justice they deserve and to most importantly prevent further abuse. This is not just David’s issue it is our issue, it is a men's misconduct issue.”

The band have announced that they will be removing the word “abuse” from their name stating their social media “will no longer be used to promote what this band was, we will use this platform to educate and share information and important articles for abusers and victims." The band also shared a victim’s statement on their Instagram page with their permission. See all statements in full below.


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Here is the victim’s story.

A post shared by CULTURE ABUSE (@cultureabusefanzine) on Jul 23, 2020 at 1:25pm PDT