The week before my wedding last August, a couple my husband and I knew from seeing Dead and Company shows at the Sphere publicly accused me of groping the man and having a salacious conversation with him on the Sphere floor. I have remained silent until now for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that my husband, who is an attorney, felt the best response was no response. After a year of silence, I have decided that my voice matters as much as my accuser’s. Speaking has been difficult because I love the Grateful Dead community and understand that our friends, many of whom also know my accusers, don’t want any drama to interfere with their enjoyment of the music.
Attending Dead and Company shows for the past 10 years has brought me and my husband tremendous joy. The music, community, and the freedom to dance at shows have been the final pieces of my trauma-healing journey. Before the accusation, I had begun working on a non-fiction book about deadheads. The premise was based on my fascination with how followers first learned about the music and when they “got on the bus,” while exploring their emotions. I couldn’t imagine I was the only person whose life had been radically changed by the music and the community of people who follow it. By the time the accusations happened, I had already interviewed close to a hundred followers of the Grateful Dead and was receiving positive feedback on the book’s premise in the publishing industry.
This experience reminded me of my time at an all-girls boarding school, where during my junior year I was accused of stealing right before Thanksgiving break. While packing to leave, the house mother and the Dean searched my room without explanation, even digging through my dirty laundry. The Dean left empty-handed, told me to follow him to his office, then called my mother. I was terrified. As a scholarship student, I had to maintain good grades and follow rules; losing my scholarship would be devastating. My mother questioned the Dean about the stolen item, a pair of jeans, which seemed unlikely given my height and thinness. Twenty years later, a former classmate reached out to say she would be in LA for work and asked if we could meet for lunch. We hadn’t been close friends at school, so I thought it was odd that she was reaching out to connect, but I agreed to meet her. During lunch, she said she was working the twelve-step program and making amends. She was there to apologize for falsely accusing me of stealing her jeans and, with help from another classmate, had made the accusation more believable. I wanted to leave the lunch, shocked and saddened that my mother, who had passed away many years prior, would never know the truth. Instead, I consoled her and tried to make her feel more comfortable. Before she departed, I asked her why she did it, and she replied, “Because you thought you were so cool.”
I have decided not to name my accusers in this article because doing so would only stoop to their level. After posting several cryptic stories on Instagram, their final step in their calculated attack was taking a screenshot of my Instagram profile and plastering words across it stating that the floor isn’t safe with me around. When I saw it, I was in shock and completely traumatized. I am more than a Deadhead; I’m an author, have a successful career in finance, a mother, a friend, and a wife. To publicly doxx my profile without so much as a conversation with either my husband or me told me they wanted to inflict maximum damage.
My husband, Charlie, and I met the accusing couple at the second Dead and Company Sphere run. I don’t recall exactly which show, but it was around the time we stopped sitting in seats and bought GA floor tickets. Charlie is a passionate, longtime Deadhead who saw his first show in 1983, and I saw my first show in the late 70s with my brother at the Nassau Coliseum. I’m mentioning this because one of the things they said about us was that we were new on the scene, which in itself is sad because in this community, all are welcome. Between the two of us, Charlie is the friendlier, more social one. Through social media, he forged friendships in the Dead community, which led to meeting them in person at the Sphere shows. These friendships flourished during the Sphere runs because we saw people consistently on the floor and could talk with them during breaks and on Shakedown, where vendors sell their goods during show weekends.
I never felt much of a connection with the woman who accused me. Although we were friendly, I don’t recall ever having a meaningful conversation with her. We were also quite different in appearance because Charlie and I are what Deadheads call normies rather than looking like hippies. Charlie had some conversations with the husband and considered him more than an acquaintance but not a close friend. This couple often sat with our group of friends during show breaks and asked to use our wristbands to access the floor when they didn’t have a ticket. It was also clear the woman saw herself as the Sphere floor mom for all the young Deadheads who hung out on the left side with us. We also ran into this couple at several Dead events and concerts in Los Angeles, but we never made any plans with them. The week between the last two shows, Charlie and I stayed in Vegas to avoid driving back and forth to Los Angeles. That week, we had dinner with two friends who live in Vegas, then went to a Santana show with them. They picked us up at our hotel, but since they lived in the opposite direction, we told them not to drive us back and that we’d take an Uber. At the Santana concert, we ran into a few Deadheads, including the accusing couple, who offered to give us a ride back to our hotel with several other friends. We accepted.
A few months later, we ran into this couple at a Jay Blakesberg photo exhibit in Los Angeles, where they icily brushed us off when we said hello. I chalked it up to the woman either feeling threatened by me or disliking me. I did find it odd that they went from friendly to unfriendly so abruptly. Our last encounters with this couple were at GD60 in San Francisco. The first interaction was on the perimeter of the grounds, where Charlie asked the husband where everyone was standing, referring to the people we hung out with on the left side at the Sphere. The husband directed us straight to the soundboard, which wasn’t where anyone was. We wondered why he would do that and what his motivation was, but didn’t think much of it beyond laughing that it was so weird. Another odd part of that encounter was the way the husband looked at me. There was an expression on his face that seemed to say, “I’m sorry.” It was so odd that I told my friends about it after we walked away. The following day, we ran into them on Haight-Ashbury, where they were walking one way, and we were walking the other. When we passed them, you would have thought they saw a ghost. Charlie had one more encounter with the wife after the show, but I wasn’t there because I had gone to the restroom with two girlfriends. Charlie was quite rattled by his encounter with the woman, saying that it was so weird he almost couldn’t shake the way she looked at him and how cold she had acted.
Another important part of this story is that the accusers warned other Deadheads about our invitations to stay at our house and about our offer to buy their artwork. Charlie often invites our Deadhead friends to stay with us when they visit LA because we have extra bedrooms. As someone who grew up with a mother who believed in “elastic walls,” I enjoy and embrace having houseguests. We have supported the Dead artist community by purchasing clothes and artwork, including commissioning a custom-made robe for Charlie’s wedding gift, which my eldest son wore when he married us. Charlie and I hired a talented cinematographer we met through the Dead community to film our wedding. We flew her to Maine for the week and rented her a beach cottage so she could hang out with our family and spend time in a place where she used to live. The filmmaker was also friends with the accusers.
When Charlie and I arrived in Maine for our wedding, we went straight to his parents’ house to say hello. Charlie’s mother was excited to welcome me into their family and had a beautiful bracelet to give me. As I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist, my phone started blowing up with back-to-back message alerts, and then it rang. When I ignored the calls, it kept ringing. I glanced at the screen; it was a close deadhead friend, but I couldn’t answer because I was in the middle of a sweet moment with Charlie’s mother. I quickly scanned the barrage of texts and knew something horrible had happened.
This couple began their attack with cryptic messages posted on their stories for several days. My friends captured the images before they disappeared, mostly because they were so odd. Charlie and I had been unaware of their posts because they had already blocked us. They then took a screenshot of my Instagram profile and doxxed me as a sexual predator. They also claimed “there were others,” but, for the record, not one person has come forward to say I acted toward them in any inappropriate way, because I don’t do that. What I had done was share parts of my healing journey with my deadhead friends in a place where joy is spread, and hugs are commonplace. The accusations left me shaking, heartbroken, disgusted, traumatized, and completely shocked. It seemed unfathomable that they waited so long, many months, to make their accusations and then strategically launched their attack the week before our wedding. Was it an attempt to steal our joy? It all seemed so calculated and evil, the antithesis of what I believed the Dead community represented.
The couple accused me of grabbing the man’s butt on the Sphere floor and of slipping away from Charlie to have a salacious conversation with him. Neither incident happened. Many of my Deadhead friends asked whether I might have bumped into him by accident while dancing or whether someone else might have grabbed his butt while I was nearby. That scenario is highly unlikely and hard to imagine. I would like to believe that if a woman grabbed a man’s butt, he would either talk to the person, tell the person’s partner, or ask the person
to stop. But the truth is, it never happened, which is why they never talked to us about the imagined incidents and why they went to such extremes to stage the attack the week before our wedding and to block us on social media.Many of our deadhead friends reached out to the accusing couple for details. When did it happen? What exactly happened? After all, they had given us a ride in their van the week before the last show weekend, so it must have happened that weekend. My friends asked for details, but their questions went unanswered. We also heard from friends that, prior to the attack, this couple had many sidebar conversations about Charlie and me, trying to get them to dislike us. Many of our friends who supported us after the attack were also blocked by this couple on social media.
Our wedding filmmaker was about to spend a week with us in Maine, a couple she barely knew. I had just been accused of being a sexual predator by people she considered friends. She immediately asked them for details. The couple did not respond to her inquiries and blocked her on social media.
I have lost countless nights of sleep over this. I stopped working on my Dead book project because of it. My heart was ripped out and crushed. But I have a voice, and sharing this story is my choice. As a victim of sexual assault and childhood trauma, where victims are told to keep secrets, I felt this silence was like holding poison inside my body. I begged my husband to sue this couple for slander, but he said it wasn’t worth it and to just let it go. He is a peaceful man, and his silence and his request that I do the same ate away at me.
I have never grabbed anyone in that way in public, not even someone I was dating. I also never slipped away from Charlie to say something salacious to my accuser on the Sphere floor. I am very attached to Charlie and rarely leave his side. I have
aa relationship with him in which I would not hesitate to tell him if I thought someone was attractive, and if I did find someone intriguing, I certainly wouldn’t grab their ass. I also have significant social and crowd anxiety, and to ease my symptoms, I stay very close to Charlie and my inner circle friends at concerts.This couple used my childhood trauma against me, as if my traumatic experiences made me some kind of predator. All you need to do is read my books, check my social media, and see what I share to know I am a victim of sexual assault. For this couple to weaponize my trauma against me is the most deplorable thing I have seen in a long time. This couple also warned other Deadheads about our invitations to stay at our house and our interest in purchasing their art. Since when is kindness and generosity a predatory behavior?
I welcome the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with this couple, but if they had been interested in talking, they would have reached out to us before launching a public attack. If they wanted resolution, they would have answered the questions from our well-meaning friends. Since then, I have lived in an uncomfortable place, anxious about whether they will be at the next concert and wondering why they chose me. What I do know is that I am innocent, my voice matters, and so does yours. I hope that speaking out will ease the anxiety and pain this incident has caused me and help other victims to speak up as well. Please share any false accusations you have endured in the comments.