What was meant to be a night of sweet, sweet heavy metal turned into an upsetting night for one woman who claims to have been molested in the mosh pit.
Theresa Tang recounted the distressing experience she faced last night at *SCAPE’s The Ground Theatre, where thrash metal outfit Death Angel and Swedish death metal legends At The Gates had been playing.
According to Tang, it was in the chaotic mayhem during the latter half of the At The Gates set that she was sexually harassed — and even worse, she was unable to react due to her being pinned against the stage barricade.
This was what she encountered, in her own words:
“I was pinned against the barricade, unable to turn or move away, while this fucker continuously pressed against me, groped my ass almost all the time (except when he moved his hand up to grab my waist and finger my bra line), held the barricade with one hand while using his other hand to push my breasts against his arm, kept trying to wrap his arm around me and kept touching my arms and stroking my elbows despite my attempts to push and elbow him away.”
By the time she was able to turn around to confront her tormentor, he was nowhere to be found.
In response to a friend in the comments section, Tang mentioned that she did not make a police report, but spoke to the show’s organizer about the incident. She doesn’t want to make a huge fuss, she says, as she doesn’t want to give the “wrong impression of gig goers or metalheads”. Honestly though, sexual harassment really doesn’t have anything to do with one’s choice of music — gropey assholes exist across all genres.
Tang ends her post by advising fellow metalheads respect the unspoken rule in the moshpit: Don’t molest people. A rule that should apply to all areas of life, really.
Nonetheless, she did enjoy the rest of the concert with Death Angel, so that’s good to know.
