Two more men have come forward to accuse Christian rock superstar and Maga firebrand Michael Tait of drugging and sexually assaulting them – including Jason Jones, the founding manager of the American hard-rock band Evanescence.

Jones said he was fired from the band – which had ties to Tait – for speaking out about his alleged assault. Jones said the firing, which he claimed happened in 1999, cut him out of Evanescence’s massive success beginning in 2003.

“It destroyed me,” said Jones. “I was achieving my dreams at an early age, and Tait changed all that.”

Evanescence co-founder Ben Moody denied Jones was fired from the band for speaking out against Tait.

Moody said he does recall Jones telling him about a sexual encounter with Tait, but at the time Moody interpreted it as consensual.

“I was a kid, only 18, and clearly didn’t realize what he was going through,” Moody said. “I’m sure I missed a lot of things I’d recognize today. I didn’t realize he was traumatized.”

In all, eight alleged victims have now come forward publicly with sexual assault allegations against Tait. A previous investigation by the Guardian reported allegations of sexual assault by Tait against three young men while another from the Christian news outlet the Roys Report reported allegations by three other men.

Tait became famous as the frontman for DC Talk and Newsboys, two Christian mega-bands known for packaging conservative rhetoric about sexual abstinence, sobriety, Christian nationalism and the coming rapture in catchy rock songs. Tait has been a supporter of Donald Trump and served as a key bridge between Trump and evangelical voters.

Tait has not responded to questions from the Guardian about the allegations against him. But in an Instagram post in June, Tait confessed to a decades-long addiction to cocaine and alcohol and admitted that he had “at times, touched men in an unwanted, sensual way”.

In the post, Tait added that he had recently “spent six weeks at a treatment center in Utah”.

Jones was described by friends who knew him in the 1990s as a happy-go-lucky Christian teenager, bursting with ambition and creativity. Growing up in Arkansas, Jones remembers, one of his biggest dreams was “to meet DC Talk”.

Jones achieved that dream in 1994 after moving to Nashville to manage the band of his friend, Randall Crawford, who was also friends with Tait and introduced the two.

Jones recalled going to McDonalds with the DC Talk frontman and being mobbed by so many teenage fans they had to leave before getting their food. “That kind of thing happened a lot,” he said.

Jones was thrilled to be welcomed into Tait’s inner circle, yet he was taken aback by what he described as Tait’s proclivity for randomly grabbing other men’s genitals. He said he eventually learned that Tait was living a double-life as a closeted gay man, which was becoming a problem for a band mentored by Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell, who called Aids “God’s punishment for homosexuality”.

While surprised, Jones held no negative feelings toward Tait’s sexuality, even taking him to gay clubs in Little Rock (at Tait’s request) when DC Talk performed there.

Jones was regularly traveling back and forth from Nashville to Little Rock, and in 1995 he met aspiring musician Moody – the two of them hitting it off and collaborating on a project that would come to be named Evanescence.

After co-producing the first Evanescence demo, Jones returned to Nashville and began talking up the band to his friend, Tait.

Jones, as an evangelical, was sober and a virgin at the time. But he recalls getting caught up in a whirlwind of partying with Tait in 1995, chain-smoking cigarettes and marijuana and closing down bars, then returning to Tait’s house to continue drinking. Jones said he was uncomfortable with all of it, but was eager for Tait’s approval so he complied.

“I had this band that I was trying to take places,” Jones recalled. “And [Tait] had the power to open doors for us in the industry. So I went along with whatever, but didn’t know what it would cost me.”

Jones’ used his connection with Tait to help Evanescence get a foot in the door in Nashville, speaking with A&R people, record labels, venue owners, producers and musicians.

Sources that wish to remain anonymous alleged that Tait had a rotation of attractive young men at his Nashville home at this time, some of them underage, and that Tait had a “no clothes allowed” rule in his hot tub. “He would put his penis against one of the jets, and tell us to do the same, saying ‘see, it feels good!’” recalled a source who visited Tait regularly at this time, and wishes to remain anonymous.

“He was all about the shock factor,” recalled Crawford, who was close with Jones and Tait throughout the 90s. “He was always saying ‘let’s make out in front of these people!’ And I was like ‘no, you’re gonna destroy your career.’ But he felt untouchable. And in some ways, he was.”

Around this same time, Crawford recalls Tait driving him through the campus of Liberty University – Falwell’s Christian college where DC Talk formed – speeding at 60mph and getting pulled over by campus security, who turned from anger to laughter when seeing Tait behind the wheel, even asking for pictures and autographs.

“After they left, Michael turned to me, calm as ever, and said: ‘I can do anything and not get in trouble.’”

Jones recalls drinking at Tait’s house one night in late 1998, just after DC Talk finished rehearsals for their Supernatural album tour. Jones remembers feeling tired suddenly, and Tait recommended he go to sleep in his bedroom. “I felt honored that he felt that close to me, that he trusted me enough to let me sleep in his bed,” Jones said.

Some time later, Jones recalls waking up, his pants missing, and Tait was giving him oral sex. “I said no and pushed him off, but then, somehow, I passed out again. I woke back up and he was still doing it. I said no again, then nodded out. And then I woke up a third time, aggressively shouted ‘no!’ and pushed him harder. It was then that he left me alone.”

Looking back, Jones said, “I believe that Michael Tait drugged me.”

Two alleged victims from the Guardian’s previous report also say they believe they were drugged by Tait before their alleged assaults. In addition, a female accuser cited by the Roys Report said she believed that Tait supplied Rohypnol or some other sedative to a crew member on a Newsboys tour, who then drugged and raped her while Tait watched.

Distraught and in need of comfort, Jones flew home to Little Rock the day after he said he was assaulted. There he confided in a friend and mentor – who wishes to remain anonymous – that he had had “a bad experience with Tait,” but wouldn’t go into details. “He wasn’t the same after that,” Jones’s friend recalled.

Jones said that in early 1999 he had also confided in his friend and Evanescence co-founder, Ben Moody, about being sexually assaulted by Tait. “Ben was only 18 at the time, new to the music industry, and I wanted to warn him,” Jones recalled. “[Tait] was flying Ben out to Nashville to write songs together, to see if he fit in Tait’s inner-circle.”

Moody remembers things differently.

“He didn’t frame it as ‘sexual assault,’” Moody said. “He described it as like frat-boy joking around while they were drunk, with [Tait] saying ‘what’s the big deal? A dick’s just a muscle.’ And Jason said ‘the next thing I know he’s sucking my dick.’”

Jones said he remains confident that he told Moody the full details of the assault, including that he verbally and physically resisted Tait three times as his consciousness came and went.

Moody said he soon noticed a change in Jones’s demeanor. Jones, a passionate, fun-loving guy who was easy to get along with, began suffering manic swings from depression to rage to paranoia and then to dissociation. “After a late night studio he couldn’t get the car shifter into gear and he just started screaming, hurling his body around, jerking the shifter violently like he was going to break it off.”

Moody said he and the band began wondering if they should continue working with Jones. In retrospect, Moody said: “I didn’t know what he was going through. Looking back I would’ve been a bit more attentive, but I was the typical 18 year old who wanted to be a rockstar.”

Moody said that in a phone call with Tait, he mentioned that Jones had told him about a sexual encounter between them, which Tait then denied. “I wanted to get ahead of [Jason] talking shit about us and ruining the whole thing. Back then there were rumors Michael Tait [was gay] and at that point, right after [DC Talk’s Grammy-winning album] Jesus Freak, he was the biggest thing in Christian music history, and the scandal would’ve been a huge deal.”

Jones and Moody differ on whether he was fired or quit, but both recall the incident with Tait – however it was characterized – as the turning point of the relationship.

“I hid away after that,” Jones recalls. “I started snorting meth, then smoking it.”

His isolation and drug binge would continue for five years.

Moody said he regrets how things went down with Jones back then. “He was my best friend for so many years, and now I ask myself ‘how fucking blind could I have been?’”

Evanescence went on to be one of the biggest bands in the world, winning “Best New Artist” and “Best Hard Rock Performance” at the Grammys in 2003 and eventually selling tens of millions of albums.

The following year, Moody and Tait would go on to be roommates and musical collaborators, with Tait singing on Moody’s solo album, and Moody producing Tait’s solo album, Loveology. In 2003, Moody left Evanescence to pursue his solo career.

Evanescence co-founder Amy Lee and other representatives of the band could not be reached for comment.

Like Moody, Crawford remembers his friend Jones as a “a happy guy, a real sweetheart, but all that changed after 1998. I could tell something had happened. He didn’t tell me about it at the time, but he has since. And I believe him, because the same thing happened to me.”

Crawford first met DC Talk when the band was filming the music video for its first single, Heavenbound, in 1989. Crawford was working in a movie theater in the same Nashville mall the band was filming in. He loved their debut cassette and when they came by to catch a movie he introduced himself and gave them a discount.

Crawford remembers his friend Jason Jones getting squeezed out of the management position of Evanescence in early 1999, and that “it had something to do with Tait”, but was unaware of specifics at the time.

Back then, Crawford was an ambitious musician, and was being hired to write songs for solo projects for Tait and DC Talk’s Toby Mac (the band went on “hiatus” in 2000, and never officially reunited). Mac’s project was later nominated for a Grammy and Dove Award. Crawford had also just signed his own record deal for his band, Webster County.

Crawford recalls being distraught over a breakup one night in the fall 2000, and Tait inviting him over to hang out. “You’ll bounce back,” he recalls Tait saying, as he handed him a shot glass of Makers Mark whiskey.

“I told him ‘just one,’ and took the shot,” he recalled. “I had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol at the time, but I blacked out shortly after I took that one drink.”

Crawford said his memory picks up some time later, finding himself propped up on Tait’s kitchen counter, his pants around his ankles. “My legs were up in the air, and Tait was licking my anus,” he claimed. “I said ‘what are you doing, dude?’ and then he said the weirdest thing: ‘Hey man, did you catch the Colts game last week?’ Like we were just hanging out, chatting.”

Crawford said that he fled Tait’s house, but has no memory of driving home. He said he is convinced that Tait drugged him.

Two close friends of Crawford’s have corroborated his story. One of them confirmed that Crawford told him details of the alleged assault at the time, but only named the perpetrator two years ago. The other friend said he was told the whole story at the time.

“I was never the same after that,” Crawford said. “The joy and drive I had for music went away. Suddenly I had stage fright for the first time, brain-fog, anger issues, depression, and was even suicidal for a time. It ruined my career.”

Despite having finished recording the album for his band, Crawford felt unable to perform as a musician, and the record was never released.

Both Jones and Crawford recall thinking their assaults were isolated incidents and continued to have some involvement with Tait. Jones accepted a phone call from him when Tait’s father passed away and he was distraught, and Crawford says he was “love bombed” by Tait and succumbed to future advances.

After not speaking for years, Tait re-entered his life in 2020. Crawford’s wife was a musician herself, and Tait had offered to produce her album.

“I had buried the memory of that night for a long time,” Crawford said. After seeing Tait again, Crawford said, a lot of feelings came to the surface and he found himself weeping uncontrollably in the shower. After confessing to his wife what had happened, she encouraged him to enroll in EMDR trauma therapy, which he said had been helpful.

“Hearing Jason’s story recently broke my heart,” he said of reuniting with his friend, Jones, decades later. “I believe we’d both be in the music industry today if it weren’t for Michael Tait.”

Jones has been sober since 2008. After leaving the music industry he worked in banking and co-directed a sober living facility. Today he travels around the country sharing his story of abuse and addiction (not mentioning Tait’s name when recounting the experience).

Shortly after getting sober Jones contacted a law firm to ask about potential compensation he could be owed from Evanescence. According to his 2008 correspondence with the law firm that he shared with the Guardian, the firm told him that, because of the statute of limitations, his window for a suit against Evanescence had closed years earlier. Jones said the lawyers told him that, had he pursued the matter sooner, he could be entitled to up to tens of millions of dollars in compensation.

Moody disputed the notion that Jones has ever had the right to compensation for his management efforts in the early days of Evanescence.

Looking back 27 years later, Jones recalled the night he told Moody about what had happened to him. Warning him not only about Tait, but about the music industry in general, he recited a quote from the magazine journalist Hunter S Thompson, who said: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free.”

“And that’s true for the Christian music industry as well,” Jones said. “Even more so, in my case.”

The post ‘It destroyed me’: two more men accuse Christian rock star Michael Tait of sexual assault appeared first on Josiah Hesse.

The Christian music legend Michael Tait, whose hit song God’s Not Dead became an anthem for Donald Trump’s Maga movement, has been accused of sexually assaulting three men, two who believed they were drugged by the rock star in the early 2000s, according to a months-long Guardian investigation. Four other men have alleged that Tait, a founding member of DC Talk and later a frontman for Newsboys, engaged in inappropriate behavior such as unwanted touching and sexual advances.

The Guardian is publishing these allegations days after Tait posted an extraordinary confession on his Instagram account, admitting that for 20 years he had been “leading a double life”, abusing alcohol and cocaine, “and, at times, touched men in an unwanted sensual way”, according to his statement.

The statement appears to be a response to a separate report published earlier this month by the Christian media outlet the Roys Report, which also investigated Tait and revealed similar allegations of drug use and sexual assault against young, male musicians.

In the Instagram statement, Tait wrote: “I am ashamed of my life choices and actions and make no excuses for them. I will simply call it what God calls it – sin.” He added: “While I might dispute certain details in the accusations against me, I do not dispute the substance of them.

“Even before this recent news became public, I had started on a path to health, healing, and wholeness … I accept the consequences of my sin and am committed to continuing the hard work of repentance and healing – work [which] I will do quietly and privately, away from the stage and the spotlight.”

‘Biggest open secret in Christian music’

The allegations about Tait’s behavior revealed today starkly contrast with the public image that he cultivated for nearly four decades. The 59-year-old native of Washington DC has sold 18m albums, containing songs that often encouraged young Christians to stay sober, abstinent and straight. But sources who spoke to the Guardian claimed Tait’s alleged drug use and alleged abusive behavior were the “biggest open secret in Christian music”.

The Guardian has interviewed 25 people in the Christian music industry, most of whom say they had prior knowledge of allegations that Tait had engaged in abusive behavior. The men who have come forward and shared their alleged experiences – two agreeing to go on the record with their names, while the rest spoke on the condition of anonymity – were aged 13 to 29 at the time of their alleged experiences.

All grew up in evangelical churches where Tait’s music was the premier soundtrack of their youth groups, summer camps and mission trips. Having taken the message of Tait’s songs to heart, they were naive about sex and drugs throughout their youth. All were starstruck when meeting their childhood hero, but quickly saw their image of him as a role model of Christian piety dissolve as they were taken on a bumpy ride of rock’n’roll debauchery.

Shawn Davis, who was a lifelong fan and troubled youth who had immersed himself in Christian music, claims Tait pushed him to consume alcohol and cocaine on multiple occasions. He also says he believes Tait once secretly drugged him and then molested him in 2003, while he was still a minor.

“This man destroyed my life,” Davis now claims.

Gabriel (not his real name) also claims Tait pushed him to consume alcohol and cocaine before asking to join him in a hot tub in 2003, where he claims Tait repeatedly groped his penis while attempting to kiss him. “To this day I jump whenever someone touches me unexpectedly,” Gabriel says. “When something like that happens to you, you feel like the worst person, you feel dirty, worthless. It’s heartbreaking to think someone you look up to could do something like that.”

Adam (not his real name) claims he believes he was drugged by the singer while he was visiting Tait’s home in Nashville, and later woke up to find Tait allegedly molesting him. “This person has stolen a little piece of our souls,” he says.

Tait did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the allegations contained in this report.

God’s Not Dead

Over the last 38 years, Tait has emerged as one of the most iconic names in Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). The genre and industry often exists in its own commercial and cultural ecosystem – yet mimics popular trends of mainstream music – creating multi-platinum superstars who are marketed to teens (and their parents) as wholesome alternatives to the “sinful lifestyles” of mainstream rock stars.

Tait was one-third of the rap-rock group, DC Talk, which formed in 1987 while its members were attending the evangelical Liberty University, whose founder, Jerry Falwell, launched the Moral Majority, the political organization that first galvanized evangelical voters around the Republican party in 1980, forever changing the American political landscape. Falwell was a mentor to young Tait – whom he referred to as “my white daddy” – and helped boost DC Talk to stardom.

Blending MTV aesthetics with Christian right talking points, DC Talk instructed generations of teens to stand against the liberalism of the Clinton era, namely abortion rights and sex education. Songs such as I Don’t Want It (a rebuttal to George Michael’s I Want Your Sex), That Kind Of Girl and The Children Can Live shaped the moral landscape of a generation of young evangelicals, mandating sexual purity until marriage.

“They used the sounds often associated with teen sexuality – like hip-hop, rock and pop music – to combat teen sexuality and adolescent desire,” says Leah Payne, author of the book God Gave Rock and Roll to You, an academic critique of CCM history. “In 1994 the True Love Waits organization asked DC Talk to perform at their concert on the National Mall promoting virginity among young evangelicals, which resulted in the signing of 200,000 chastity pledges by the teenage fans.”

In 1995, their Nirvana-flavored smash hit, Jesus Freak, championed being a social outcast for the Lord’s sake; a book companion to the album celebrated the violent histories of Christian martyrs around the world, encouraging young people to follow in their footsteps.

The fight for Christian nationalism was also a premier theme of DC Talk’s music – as well as the book Under God, co-authored by Tait – claiming the US is suffering a collapse of moral values because of the secularization of government and public schools. This was underscored with frightening urgency by their songs warning of the coming rapture. As recently as 2021, Tait warned: “I believe we are living in the last days [before the rapture].”

The CCM industry has been primarily headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, where Tait and most of his colleagues work and live. While it is not affiliated with the country music scene of Nashville, it typically shares the same conservative politics. While DC Talk addressed racism in several songs – with Tait as the sole Black man performing with two white guys (one of whom rapped) – their narrative typically placed racism as an unfortunate touchstone of the past that the US must repent for, but never as a contemporary, systemic problem.

DC Talk went on a hiatus in 2000 and for nearly a decade Tait performed as a solo artist until he became the frontman of the legendary CCM supergroup Newsboys. In 2011, their rock song God’s Not Dead became a rallying cry for disaffected evangelicals in the Obama era. In 2014, Tait and Newsboys appeared in God’s Not Dead, a movie centered around the fictional story of an atheist college professor who threatens to fail his students if they refuse to sign a form declaring “God is dead”. Tait would make an appearance in four subsequent sequels, becoming a recognizable face in the fight against perceived anti-Christian discrimination, a central theme of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.

Tait endorsed Ted Cruz in 2016, but shifted his allegiance to Trump after the Florida pastor Paula White – chair of the evangelical advisory board for Trump’s 2016 campaign and leader of the White House faith office in 2024 – invited him to pray over Trump before a Florida campaign stop. Tait soon became a key bridge between the candidate and white evangelical voters. Newsboys performed for Trump at the White House in 2019, and the following year Tait sang at evangelical “Let Us Worship” events, which were centered around the false claim that President Joe Biden was using Covid lockdowns to repress church attendance in the US.

“I love you, I support you, and I’m one of the growing number of African Americans who love you,” Tait said in a 2019 video praising Trump’s efforts at prison reform, before adding: “I’m looking forward to hanging out, and eating some Big Macs!”

On 5 January 2021, Newsboys’ God’s Not Dead was sung in unison during the “Jericho March” at the US Capitol, the event that preceded the violent insurrection at the US Capitol the following day.

‘He betrayed that trust’

The Guardian’s investigation has revealed an alleged pattern of manipulative behavior by Tait. Most of the alleged incidents described in this article are alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2009.

Young and sometimes naive male musicians say they believe they were targeted by the star, with Tait allegedly dangling the possibility of career or artistic opportunities before them and then cutting off all contact once it became clear that sex was off the table. According to four people who were interviewed, some of them on the condition of anonymity, Tait would allegedly invite them to parties at his house in Nashville, encouraging them to drink alcohol and use drugs before making sexual advances.

Two of the men who spoke to the Guardian claim they believe they were secretly drugged, which left them floating in and out of consciousness, unable to consent to sexual acts. They claim Tait assaulted them by touching them sexually without their permission. Three others claim they awkwardly rebuffed his advances and left.

“I wore out my Jesus Freak CD as a kid, and so when I met him I was starstruck,” recalls Gabriel, who was 19 when he was introduced to 38-year-old Tait in 2004. “And then he started calling me to hang out, it was just crazy.”

Gabriel was ambitious to become a CCM musician, and now his childhood hero was inviting him out to bars, buying him drinks even though he was underage and taking him to parties at his home in Nashville. Tait often mentioned the possibility of them jamming together, but that never materialized.

Gabriel felt a little uncomfortable at first when Tait would rub a hand on his shoulder and constantly hug him, but attributed the feeling to the fact that he had been abused a few years earlier by a serial child molester. In fact, Gabriel was testifying in a court case about that incident during this same time, an emotionally taxing experience that he confided in Tait about.

“He was very sympathetic,” Gabriel says, “and then he betrayed that trust.”

Tait started inviting Gabriel over alone, when the house was empty. When Tait introduced him to cocaine, “it was a huge shock”, Gabriel says, partially because he had no experience with drugs, and because it was being served by the man whose music informed his moral universe. “But I was too excited to be there, and didn’t want to screw up this opportunity.”

The two used cocaine together a number of times over the next few weeks. One night, while they both were high on the drug, along with a couple of vodka and Red Bulls, Tait proposed they jump in the hot tub.

It was there that Tait unexpectedly “grabbed my crotch and tried to kiss me at the same time”, Gabriel claims. “It wasn’t subtle, and it was out of nowhere. I asked him, ‘What the hell is going on?’ He said he was just joking, but then he did it again. I jumped out of the pool and drove home, which I shouldn’t have done because I was more intoxicated than I’ve ever been, but that’s how scared I was.”

Gabriel didn’t tell anyone for 15 years, when he confided about it to the same friend who had introduced him to Tait, Shawn Davis.

Shocked, Davis told him he had his own bad experience.

Davis says he was 16 when he met 37-year-old Tait in 2003 at a Nashville party that was loaded with mainstream celebrities. But Davis’s attention remained only on his childhood idol, Michael Tait. A mutual friend introduced them, and Tait took down his number, calling Davis to hang out a few days later.

“DC Talk were my heroes in a lot of ways,” Davis recalls. “They were Christians, but they rocked out, and I thought that was so cool.”

Looking back, both Davis and Gabriel realized that while they spent time together with Tait at bars and parties, at some point they were only invited to his house separately and alone, which began when he allegedly introduced them to cocaine.

According to Davis’s claims, months passed with Davis and Tait hitting the Nashville bars (Tait was able to get Davis, a teenager, drinks), before going back to Tait’s house to smoke weed and cigarettes, and snort coke along with the opioid Lortab, which Tait would crush into a powder.

Like Gabriel, Davis confided to Tait that he had been molested when he was eight years old. “Tait made me feel like, and seem like, he was my only friend,” he says.

Davis says that Tait always mixed their drinks, and claims he often felt pressured to drink heavily. One night he recalls the drink tasting strange, and Tait insisting he finish it. “Suddenly, I felt super sick, dizzy, nauseous, going in and out of consciousness,” he says. “I woke up in the closet, and he had my pants down, and was giving me a blowjob. I pushed him off as best as I was able in that state, but he pushed me down, and then I punched him twice and left.”

Davis says he believed he was drugged by Tait. He was 17 at the time.

In the months that followed, Davis claims, Tait aggressively pursued a reconciliation. “He was relentlessly love-bombing me, trying to talk his way back in the door,” alleges Davis. “He apologized to me for what happened, but never got into specifics, it was more of a broad statement.”

Davis was attempting to get a CCM label off the ground, and forgave Tait’s behavior with the hope that he would help him get a foothold in the industry. He claims that “Tait had convinced me that what happened that night was my fault, he was very manipulative. And I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

All of this came to a head one night in 2012, when Davis was in Tait’s kitchen, and Tait texted him from his bedroom, sending him a picture of what Tait described as $5,000 in cash. “He said something to the effect of ‘this could be yours if you let me suck you off and cum in your ass’,” Davis claims.

After that, Davis called his mother and asked her to quickly come pick him up; Davis snuck out quietly without alerting Tait. On the drive home, Davis says he told her everything he had allegedly experienced with Tait. He and Tait never spoke again.

Davis’s mother, and a friend he had confided in at the time, confirmed the details reported in this story. Davis has had one run-in with the law. When he was a teenager he stole his mother’s debit card to rent a limo for prom. He got probation but was then found guilty of violating his probation in connection to drug use, which occurred at a time when he was friends with Tait. He served about five months in prison. He is now married, has a 12-year-old son and owns his own construction company in Nashville.

Both Davis and Gabriel express regret today for not speaking up sooner, believing they could have prevented other people from suffering the same experience. At the time, they each thought their experiences were isolated incidents.

Another young man who got to know Tait, Abraham (not his real name), claims Tait rubbed his thigh and caressed his ear minutes after meeting for lunch in 2006. Abraham was a 22-year-old musician in an up-and-coming band. “He said, ‘At Liberty University, we weren’t allowed to let our hair touch our ears,’ and then he brushed my hair back with his hand, which was weird,” Abraham recalls.

Zach (not his real name) was a 29-year-old aspiring DJ with little experience when, he claims, Tait invited him to his house after they met in a Nashville dance club in the summer of 2008. “He was doing a solo tour and said: ‘What we need is a DJ who can come on the road with us,’” Zach alleges. “And I asked: ‘That would be so cool! What would I need to do?’ And he said: ‘You need to hang out, come around [my house] a lot.’”

But when Zach arrived at his house, and was brought to Tait’s studio, he noticed the only furniture in the room was a bed, and Tait kept encouraging Zach to sit close to him.

“I was a virgin until I was 37,” Zach recalls. “And I’d always thought to myself: ‘Michael Tait’s been single his whole life, and if he can hold out so can I.’”

Feeling uncomfortable, Zach made up an excuse to leave early. Afterward, he sent Tait several messages to follow up on the DJ opportunity, but Tait never replied.

Adam (not his real name) was another young and ambitious musician in a Christian rock band that was slowly gaining steam in 2004 when he met Tait in Nashville. The 22-year-old was ecstatic when Tait texted him a few days later, inviting him out for some bar-hopping. “Tait was like the Christian Elvis, the GOAT,” Adam recalls.

Adam was dropped off at the bar to meet Tait by some friends, one of whom said “don’t get molested!” as he was exiting the car, a comment he found strange but dismissed.

A wild night out concluded at Tait’s home, where Adam was awed by “his trophy room, where he keeps all his Dove awards, Grammys and other accolades”. At one point they needed to buy more booze, and Tait showed him his collection of cars in the garage, telling him to “pick one”. Adam selected a white MG convertible.

It was nearly dawn when they got back to Tait’s house, which was empty but for the two of them. They drank more, and Adam recalls suddenly feeling profoundly sleepy. That’s when, Adam says, Tait told him, “‘It’s OK, just go to sleep,’ and then he laid my head on his lap.”

Adam’s next memory of that night is “waking up in his bed, my pants unzipped, and [Tait] was jerking me off. I passed out again, then woke up, wondering: ‘What the fuck is happening?’ I went to the bathroom and had a panic attack, asking myself, ‘Am I supposed to go there and beat him up? Or am I supposed to play it cool?’”

Like Davis and Gabriel, Adam had been abused as a child. “It made me a lot more insecure, wondering, ‘Why me? Am I weak? Too innocent? Was this my fault?’ I didn’t ask for this, I was just hanging out with a superstar.”

Adam says he believes Tait drugged him that night. He shared the story with his girlfriend at the time, and a couple of fellow musicians who were close with Tait, and recalls that “some of them stopped hanging out with me after that, which hurt, and made me afraid”.

A close friend of Adam’s at the time confirmed to the Guardian that Adam told him about what he says happened.

Many sources we spoke with also feared reprisal, and would only speak on the condition of anonymity. Several people who were interviewed said they recall Tait stripping down to his underwear or naked at parties and backstage at a concert, often exposing himself to young musicians touring as his opening act.

Jacob (not his real name) was a 21-year-old musician when he met 40-year-old Tait in the winter of 2004. The two were both performing at a church concert, and Tait invited Jacob to fly out to Nashville and stay a few nights at the home of his childhood hero. Once there, Jacob was surprised at the amount of cigarettes and alcohol Tait and his friends consumed, as he had never had a drink in his life. One night, the two of them alone in Tait’s kitchen, Jacob claims, “Tait somehow brought up that he had a huge urethra. And then he just whipped it out and showed it to me.”

Jacob had been sleeping on the floor of Tait’s house, as he didn’t have a spare bed, and when Tait offered to share his king-sized bed with him, Jacob didn’t think anything of it, as this wasn’t uncommon among touring musicians. He wasn’t sure what to think of the massages Tait kept giving him in the hot tub earlier that night, and then in his bed. When Tait’s hands “moved lower and lower and lower, until he was massaging my butt-cheeks, I didn’t know what to do, because I looked up to him, and didn’t want to make him mad”.

Jacob tried his best to delicately rebuff Tait’s advances, saying, “‘Hey man, I’m not into that.’ Tait said OK and went to sleep.” (Jacob’s girlfriend at the time, who is now his wife, corroborated the details of his story, which he shared with her at the time.)

Israel Anthem was only 13 when Tait allegedly exposed his penis to him in 2001. Anthem descended from the Rambo family, who were legends in the field of gospel music. His grandmother Dottie Rambo (whose songs had been recorded by Elvis, Johnny Cash and many other musicians) was being honored with a lifetime achievement award, and the members of DC Talk were in attendance. Anthem and his family took pictures with the band, and a few weeks later they were eating in a Nashville restaurant when “Michael walked in, and came by our table to say hi”.

Anthem was “a huge, lifelong DC Talk fan”, he recalls. “Some kids sleep with teddy bears, I slept with DC Talk cassettes.” He says he was stoked when the two happened to be in the restaurant bathroom at the same time later that night, sharing side-by-side urinals.

“He was still at the urinal when I was washing my hands, and as we were talking [about a CD that had just come out] I noticed his penis was out, and he was facing me, turned away from the urinal. I thought he was putting his penis away, but then he was rubbing his penis, and making eye contact, while I was talking.”

Anthem recalls this lasting anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds, with Tait “visibly aroused” and “fondling himself”. Back at the table, a family member recalls, Anthem looked “white as a ghost, absolutely terrified”. Anthem later described the alleged bathroom incident to that family member, who corroborated his story to the Guardian.

‘I felt he was fair game’

Tait’s career was on a stable trajectory until January of this year.

Last Christmas he made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, and the previous Christmas he played Carnegie Hall with Amy Grant and others. That all came to a halt on 15 January, when the host of the Yass, Jesus podcast, Azariah Southworth, claimed Tait was gay in a viral TikTok video that received more than 250,000 views before it was removed for violation of TikTok guidelines.

“I felt he was fair game,” Southworth says. “Some people disagreed with the ethics of [outing someone against their will], but this deserved to be said out loud. Keeping quiet would allow a false narrative to continue, fueling a movement that is hurting myself, as a gay man, and my trans brothers and sisters.”

Southworth – who grew up in a strict evangelical household, and was traumatized by five years of “conversion therapy” – was the host of a Christian reality TV show in 2004-05 that featured Tait. During that time, he claims to have seen Tait gambling, smoking and cursing, behavior that would’ve scandalized Christian audiences.

Within days of Southworth publishing his video, Tait announced in a social media post that “it is time [I] step down from Newsboys”, offering fans little explanation as to why.

The remaining members of the Newsboys released a statement after the Roys Report was published addressing the allegations, insisting that it was only last January when “Michael confessed to us and our management that he ‘had been living a double life’”, the band wrote, adding: “But we never imagined that it could be this bad … Our hearts are with the victims who have bravely shared their stories.”

In the closing of Tait’s “confession” on Tuesday, he offers understanding to those who lost “respect, faith and trust in me”, later citing the story of King David’s prayer for forgiveness after he had committed adultery and murder. Though he is quick to add that “it crushes me to think that someone would lose or choose not to pursue faith because I have been such a horrible representative of him”.

This was Gabriel’s experience, saying he had “blamed God” for the trauma he allegedly endured that night. “Tait was presented as the pinnacle of godliness,” he says, trembling with tears in his eyes. “I get that all people sin, but to use the facade of his righteousness to commit sin, that made me walk away from my faith for a while. He took something from me I’ll never get back. In time, though, I found my own way back to God.”

The post ‘He stole a piece of our souls’: Christian music star Michael Tait accused of sexual assault by three men appeared first on Josiah Hesse.

Ten years ago voters in Colorado approved a ballot measure called Amendment 64 that legalized cannabis for adult, recreational use. This not only created a booming avenue of tourism for Denver – which became the Las Vegas of legal weed – but sparked a domino effect of similar reforms across the US, eventually leading 19 states (and DC) to legalize recreational marijuana, and increase the number of medically legal states to 37.

Since then, Colorado has racked up $13.2bn in cannabis sales, which has gleaned $2.2bn in taxes and fees for the state.

Recently Joe Biden announced he would be pardoning all federal marijuana offenses, encouraged governors to do the same, and asked for a review of its schedule 1 status, where it is placed alongside heroin and LSD as having “no medicinal value”.

It has been a decade of remarkable change. Instead of birthing a huge new American industry, back in 2012, many conservative pundits and politicians predicted legal weed would plunge Denver into a post-apocalyptic chaos.

Former Colorado governor and current US senator John Hickenlooper – who, like nearly every other Colorado politician, strongly opposed legalization – confessed that time had proved his anxieties to be unfounded.

“Today, I go into the US Senate on a regular basis and say that we can prove that since we legalized marijuana there has been no increase in teenage experimentation, no increase in driving while high,” Hickenlooper said at a recent event marking the anniversary and citing a state health survey of 40,000 participants. “Just to be clear, I smoked pot when I was 16 … and I feel pretty darn sure now that [legalization] is a much better societal decision than what I grew up in.”

As Denver mayor in the 2000s, Hickenlooper aggressively opposed civic marijuana reforms and was labeled a hypocrite for making his fortune as a brewpub owner. His replacement in 2011, Mayor Michael Hancock, was arguably even more anti-cannabis, labeling it a “gateway drug”, and predicted: “We will lose our attractiveness to companies, employers who want to come to our state.”

However, he began his opening remarks at last Tuesday’s celebration with the joke “it’s great to be here at the losers rally for Amendment 64.”

After explaining his opposition to the measure at the time – citing addiction issues in his own family – he said “I was wrong 10 years ago. I’m a convert today. This can be done right and responsibly.”

Hancock also boasted that “today I am the chair of a national mayors committee for sensible cannabis policy. I have testified in Congress that it’s time to legalize marijuana.”

Similarly Hickenlooper called for federal marijuana reforms, and announced the creation of a marijuana taskforce in the Senate to mirror the one created in Colorado with Amendment 64, in preparation for federal legalization.

“We knew it was a matter of when, not if,” the current Colorado governor, Jared Polis, said. “It’s always exciting as an elected official to be riding the wave of history.”

Polis was a congressman at the time of Amendment 64, and a strong advocate for legalization, known for once flying a hemp flag on the US Capitol dome. Polis is currently campaigning not only for re-election as governor, but for the federal passage of a banking bill that would allow cannabis businesses access to loans, bank accounts, tax deductions (currently they have none) and interstate commerce, something advocates have tried, and failed, to pass for nearly a decade.

“When I was a member of Congress we started a cannabis caucus and only had a few members, and the safe banking bill only had a few sponsors,” Polis told the Guardian. “Now it’s passed the house with a strong bipartisan majority and it likely has 60 votes in the Senate.”

Before Amendment 64, even progressive Democrats like Barack Obama were mocking the idea of legalization with jokes and eyerolls. Fast forward a decade and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, stands in a field of hemp in a campaign ad, boasting that hemp could replace tobacco as a Kentucky cash crop.

When Gallup first began polling on this issue in 1969, only 12% of Americans supported legalization of marijuana. At the time of Amendment 64’s passage in 2012, about half the country was in favor of the change. As of 2021, that number climbed to 68%. Another Gallup poll shows 16% of Americans regularly consume the plant, nearly double from 2013.

But not everyone is happy.

Kevin Sabet, former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy adviser and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said that people like Hickenlooper and Hancock who have flip-flopped on this issue “are playing politics”.

“The legalization of marijuana has harmed public health and public safety, a point few supporters of legalization are willing to acknowledge,” Sabet said in an email to the Guardian. “Legalization has also allowed another addiction-for-profit industry to take root in America.”

Sabet blames marijuana legalization for other drug law reforms, such as the decriminalization of psilocybin in Denver, personal use of a variety of drugs in Oregon, and of opioids in Canada, saying “those who initially supported the legalization of marijuana in Colorado likely didn’t expect to be voting on the legalization of psychedelics 10 years later.”

Decriminalization is different from legalization: it only removes penalties for possession of drugs, unlike legalization, which establishes a commercial framework for production, transportation, sale and taxation of substances.

While full federal legalization often appears inevitable to advocates, legal marijuana is still a bogeyman in conservative politics.

Dr Mehmet Oz recently attacked his opponent for Senate in Pennsylvania in a campaign video, picturing Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman with a bong coming out of his head, following his support for legalization and his pardoning those with low-level marijuana convictions. And if you watch Fox News long enough you’re sure to see stories about marijuana psychosis, marijuana being more addictive than alcohol, or, Tucker Carlson’s favorite, blaming mass shootings on legal weed.

It’s true that in the early days of legalization in Colorado, edible products had inconsistent dosages and were far more potent than most cannabis newbies could reasonably handle, leading to Maureen Dowd freaking out in a Denver hotel room and emergency rooms filled with panicked tourists every night.

Fearing a surge in underage use, Governor Hickenlooper launched his “Don’t Be a Lab Rat” PSA in 2014, installing large metal cages with a hamster water-bottle inside near schools, intending to illustrate the lack of science around THCs impact on developing brains.

Edibles have since been regulated for consistency in Colorado, and are now capped at 10mg of THC a dose. And while underage use remains higher in legalized states than prohibition states, it never increased following legalization.

However, concerns around high THC products, regulation of consumption lounges and equity in the industry for women, people of color and low-income entrepreneurs, remain for those on both sides of this issue.

When asked whether the wave of legalization will continue, even Sabet said: “Given the industry’s financial incentives to commercialize marijuana nationwide, I expect them to continue pressuring lawmakers to liberalize our federal marijuana laws.”

But he added: “I imagine at some point we will look back and say ‘what were we thinking?’ and begin to reverse our loose regulations on marijuana like we have for tobacco. No one would’ve imagined 40 years ago we would have banned smoking from restaurants and airplanes – yet here we are. American attitudes can change quickly.”

The post ‘This can be done right’: how Colorado sparked a decade of marijuana reform appeared first on Josiah Hesse.

In the hours following the shooting that killed three people and injured nine at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs on Friday, many politicians and commentators were criticized for supposedly politicizing the tragedy. Some fell into the trap. Others jumped in head-first.

On Friday afternoon, shortly after news of the shooting broke, Vicki Cowart, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, sent out a statement that referred to “domestic terrorism”. The statement was subsequently revised, to refer to “acts of violence”.

“Words matter,” Cowart told the Guardian on Saturday. “And what is the definition of domestic terrorism?”

The FBI says it is “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law”, as well as any acts of violence with a distinct ideological message or purpose.

Nonetheless, in Colorado Springs, that question was debated in a highly charged atmosphere.

Critics said such labels should be avoided until a clear motive was established. By Saturday night, though police had not said what motivated the gunman, the mayor of Colorado Springs had said a motive could be “inferred” by the location of the shooting: a clinic run by a body which provides abortions.

On Saturday morning, however, with now characteristic anger, Barack Obama entered the debate. From the White House, the president issued a statement that connected the incident to the lack of gun control in the US.

“I actually don’t begrudge Obama his politicization of this event,” said Daniel Cole, executive president of the Republican party of El Paso county, in which lies Colorado Springs.

“Political problems demand political solutions, and clearly he thinks this is a political problem. But when victims have not even been buried yet, to suggest that ‘If everyone had simply followed my advice yesterday, none of these bad things would have occurred,’ that sounds a little silly.

“He is making the statement before all the facts come out, and the facts might not support his position. We don’t know if [the shooter] was carrying a gun that he obtained legally or illegally, and we don’t know if he had any type of mental illness.

“So it’s very unclear exactly what strictures Obama would like to create in order to prevent this type of thing from happening. Unless he just wants to take guns from everybody and get it over with.”

At an emotional vigil at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist church in Colorado Springs on Saturday, the Rev Nori Rost was not so inclined. In her opening remarks, she referred to the gunman as a “domestic terrorist”.

“It doesn’t matter what the cause was, whether it was against Planned Parenthood or not,” Rost said after the vigil. “A man with an assault rifle fired on and killed people. He was using a weapon of war.”

Cowart was the featured speaker. She stressed the necessity of access to female reproductive care, the far-reaching services that Planned Parenthood provides across the nation and the courage of her organization’s employees.

“We don’t yet know why this happened,” Cowart told a crowd of 150 to 200 people, crammed into the small church. “But we do know why people come to our health centers every day.

“They come because something has happened in their body and they don’t understand it and they’re afraid, or they’re young and exploring their bodies, and they need someone they can come to.”

Most speakers touched on gun control and reproductive rights. Following Cowart’s speech, a tearful woman stood and shattered the reverence of the moment.

“I support Planned Parenthood 100%,” she said. “But I came here today because I feel lucky that my entire family is alive, and I thought that we would grieve for the people who died, and not make political statements. So, have a nice day.”

To a smattering of applause, the woman walked out of the church.

Asked if the event had strayed too far into politics, Rost said “the announcement for the vigil said it was to come together to grieve our losses and to stand with Planned Parenthood.

“This was a devastating loss for them, and we wanted to show our support. The announcement was very clear.”

Nationally, on social media, the hashtag #IStandWithPlannedParenthood was used by Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all 14 Republican candidates stayed silent. On Saturday evening Senator Ted Cruz eventually broke the silence, calling the shooting “unacceptable, horrific and wrong”.

He was joined by Ohio governor John Kasich, who tweeted that he was praying for the victims’ families.

After the release by an anti-abortion group of videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of fetal tissue – a charge the federal body has denied – the GOP debates have been loaded with anti-Planned Parenthood invective. Republicans in Congress have pushed to defund the organization.

Cowart stopped short of laying responsibility for the shooting at the feet of such Republicans. But she said their campaigning created “an environment where it makes it feel OK to take it one step further in bashing Planned Parenthood”.

“Actions are linked to words,” she said, “and the speeches we hear set up an environment where unstable people are pushed into inappropriate behavior.”

On Saturday night, it was reported that in statements given to law enforcement officials – who spoke off the record – the suspected gunman at one point said “no more baby parts”.

State representative Gordon Klingenschmitt, a Colorado Springs resident, took exception at any association between anti-Planned Parenthood activists and the gunman who struck on Friday.

“The pro-life community, especially in Colorado Springs, is horrified that this is happening, and we universally condemn the shooter and his violent act,” the Republican said. “Colorado Springs is a kind of evangelical mecca, but this shooter is from North Carolina.”

Police said Robert Dear, the 57-year-old suspect now in custody, was listed as residing in Hartsel, Colorado, though he did have links to the southern state.

Klingenschmitt continued: “Nobody that I have talked to in the pro-life community – and I know just about everybody in the Colorado Springs pro-life community – nobody has ever met this guy. Nobody knows who he is.

“You cannot call him a pro-life activist, or a Colorado Springs conservative, because he is not one of us. That is not how we act.”

Asked about the notion of “domestic terrorism” as opposed to foreign, and if there was any analogy between conservative Christians not wanting to be associated with violent extremists who shared their views and moderate Muslims who abhor all acts of terror, Klingenschmitt said the question was “not entirely fair”.

“We as Christians are almost universally willing to renounce violence,” he said.

As he spoke, the faith (or lack thereof) of the Planned Parenthood suspect was not known. But whether or not religion played a part, the Colorado Springs shooting had undoubtedly forced Americans to consider a new meaning for the word “terrorist”.

At the church vigil, Cowart said she was looking forward to continuing her work in the service of women’s needs.

“We don’t think healthcare should be political,” she said. “We advocate to make sure people continue to receive it, and some folks take it politically.”

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In the summer of 2019, 23-year-old Elijah McClain was stopped by the Aurora, Colorado, police while walking home, after someone called 911 saying he looked suspicious.

The incident quickly turned violent, with three police officers piling on the 140lbMcClain, twice putting him in a chokehold that has since been banned. After vomiting, coming in and out of consciousness and pleading for breath, paramedics arrived and injected McClain with an excessive dose of ketamine, a powerful sedative.

He immediately went limp and went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, dying a few days later.

The three police officers and two paramedics have since been charged with criminally negligent homicide, and the family of McClain – who was Black – was recently awarded $15m in a civil lawsuit against the city of Aurora, the second largest of its kind, just behind the one awarded to George Floyd’s family.

McClain’s death magnified the American reckoning with racism and police brutality but it has also sparked a national debate about the use of ketamine – a medical anesthetic, popular club drug, and psychotherapy tool – in law enforcement situations, leading to its ban in the state of Colorado, and possibly across the nation.

“What we’re talking about is the weaponization of medicine,” says Mari Newman, the lawyer representing McClain’s family. “It might as well be a taser or a gun.”

Newman says that McClain was exhibiting none of the signs of “excited delirium syndrome” – a controversial diagnosis that legally warrants a ketamine injection – and that police officers erroneously employed “code words like ‘he had superhuman strength’” that she says were an attempt to influence paramedics to give the injection (and justify their own use of excessive force).

Police are not legally allowed to administer ketamine. Paramedics can, but only if a patient is exhibiting symptoms of “excited delirium”. The controversy surrounding this diagnosis – characterized by aggressive behavior, superhuman strength and hyperthermia – comes in part from its emergence during the war on drugs in the 1980s, and is applied disproportionately in the post-mortem of Black men killed by police. The condition is not recognized by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, or the American Medical Association.

A report by public radio station KUNC revealed that in the past 2.5 years, Colorado medics injected 902 people for excited delirium, leading to serious complications in 17% of cases. The American Society of Anesthesiologists recently stated it “firmly opposes the use of ketamine or any other sedative/hypnotic agent to chemically incapacitate someone for a law enforcement purpose and not for a legitimate medical reason”.

A Minnesota medic filed a whistleblower lawsuit last year claiming police had pressured him to inject someone with ketamine during an arrest, adding that such acts are not uncommon (in Minneapolis, ketamine use grew from an average of four law enforcement incidents a year, to 62, from 2015 to 2017).

After the death of McClain – and a similar incident involving Aurora police – the state of Colorado passed legislation last June banning the use of ketamine for excited delirium, and clarifying that police should never influence medics to use it. “EMS is responsible for patient care, not law enforcement,” Governor Jared Polis said in a signing statement. “Ketamine should not be used for law enforcement purposes.”

A similar federal bill was introduced shortly after, and is being considered by Congress.

Emergency Medical Services Association of Colorado president, Scott Sholes, says that, when used according to protocol, ketamine is the safest alternative to violence or other sedatives available to paramedics, and removing it from their toolbox puts them at a serious loss.

“I can tell you horror stories about physically restraining people for hours, back in the day,” says Sholes. “For the first ten years of my career it was strapping people to back-boards, sometimes flipping the board over and sitting on it in order to control people, and eventually we got some medications we could use.”

Starting in the early 1990s, Shole says, medics could use antipsychotics like Haldol, and later benzodiazepines like Valium or opioids like fentanyl, to subdue those who pose a threat to themselves or others. But these drugs could often take 30 minutes to take effect, and sometimes delivered the opposite effect intended.

“In comparison, ketamine takes three to four minutes, is easy to dose, has the safest profile, and has remarkable success with sedation,” Sholes says. “With everything we’ve seen in the media on ketamine, no one is looking at the data.”

Sholes points to a study released last summer revealing that, of the 11,291 instances of patients being injected with ketamine by paramedics, “patient mortality was rare. Ketamine could not be ruled out as a contributing factor in 8 deaths, representing 0.07% of those who received ketamine.”

Sholes stresses a kind of church-and-state separation between medics and law enforcement, and that paramedics should never be collaborating with police in the execution of their duties. However, he admits, there have been instances where this line has been blurred, violating EMS protocol.

And in the case of Elijah McClain, he says that Aurora paramedics failed to follow basic practices in the administration of ketamine.

“I’ve been a paramedic for 40 years, and that video [of McClain’s death], if you think it’s bad from a layman perspective, it’s astonishing to me,” says Sholes. “That’s not how ketamine is commonly used … In that video, I see paramedics who did not assess the patient. By the time they injected him, he wasn’t moving, certainly wasn’t fighting. He was given way more [ketamine] than protocol called for. ”

First approved by the FDA for use as an anesthetic in 1970, ketamine has been a popular medical tool for pain relief and sedation in humans and animals for decades.

In the 80s and 90s, illicit use of ketamine (or “special K”) was popularized by the rave scene of New York City’s club kids, who took it for its euphoric, hallucinogenic properties. In recent years, it has shown remarkably promising results in the treatment of mental health disorders, spawning an industry of “ketamine clinics” around the US.

“Ketamine’s effects operate on a spectrum,” says Desmond Wallington, a psychologist and Colorado mental health director for Klarisana, a ketamine clinic. “On the low-dose end it’s a psycholitic; so time, space and reality briefly dissolve around you. And then there’s a psychedelic experience, where those effects will last for an hour or so, and on the far end there’s an anesthetic [unconscious] experience. We operate in the first two realms.”

Wallington says he “cringes” at the idea of ketamine being used in a law enforcement context, particularly because of its growing association with police brutality against young Black men.

“You don’t want to give ketamine to someone with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder – you could send them into a delusional headspace and leave them worse than you found them,” he says. “If they’re already on a stimulant, you’re putting them at risk for a stroke.”

McClain’s family attorney, Mari Newman, says that she believes ketamine injections are being used by law enforcement simply to silence an unruly suspect.

“If someone’s disagreeing with an officer, what better way to shut them up than to knock them right out?” she says.

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Following the shooting in a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store on Monday, leaving 10 dead including a police officer, the community of this liberal mountain town are in a state of shock and disbelief, experiencing the all-too-common identity crisis experienced by so many American cities in the wake of a mass shooting.

“I’ve called this community home for most of my life, and I’ve shopped at that King Soopers many times,” Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, said on Tuesday morning during a press conference.

“Boulder is a small community, and we’re all looking at the list wondering if we know people. These were folks who started their day with a morning paper, cup of coffee, perhaps getting their kids ready, maybe making last-minute spring break plans, none of them expected that this would be their last day here, on the planet. A simple run for milk and eggs led to a complete tragedy.”

Both nationally and in Colorado, Boulder has a reputation for being a progressive utopia, characterized by hippie communes of the 1970s and 80s, the Allen Ginsberg-founded Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and ground zero for the ultramarathon running world. Those who live there often speak of the “Boulder bubble”, as though it’s a world free of the social ailments that plague the rest of the nation.

“Many of the shootings across the country have been in places people would like to think are safe, but when these tragedies hit close to home it threatens your feeling of safety,” said Jamie Beachy, directory of the Center for Contemplative Chaplaincy at Naropa University, in Boulder. “For some people, this will be very destabilizing for some time to come. We don’t live in a safe world when it comes to gun violence, and Boulder is not set apart from that.”

Beachy’s younger sister is a survivor of the Columbine school shootings in 1999, which took the life of 12 students and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado, only 37 miles from Boulder. Also a short distance away was the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, taking 12 lives and injuring 70. Following that, a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs was the victim of a rightwing militant who killed two employees and a police officer in 2015.

A 2019 analysis by the Denver Post found that, per capita, Colorado has more mass shootings than all but four states. But despite a recent anti-mask riot by college students, Boulder was considered by many as a safe oasis for middle- and upper-class liberals.

But Boulder resident Sammie Leon Lawrence IV, who was inside the King Soopers during when the shooting began, said that there was a sinister underbelly of Boulder that often isn’t spoken of.

“I’ve been called a [N-word] here,” Lawrence, who is Black, Native American and Caucasian, recalled. “I’ve seen protests where people were carrying AR-15s, and if I acted in the same way I would’ve been shot. Before this I’d been trying to convince myself that Boulder is a safe place for me, but now I teeter-totter back and forth on that.”

Lawrence had just returned home to Boulder after a visit to Sacramento, when he decided to pop into King Soopers for a quick lunch to take to work. Everything changed when “I heard a sound like someone was banging something. I didn’t understand it was gunshots until I saw people running.”

Lawrence helped an elderly man in a walker, along with several other older people, escape to the loading dock of the store, where they hid behind some trailer trucks as the gunshots continued. Lawrence chokes up when remembering the call he made to his mother in that moment.

“I feel like I understand what people at Columbine and Aurora went through – but I wish I didn’t,” he said. “It changes people. It makes you agitated, anxious, loud noises affect you. Hearing the names [of the dead] announced today, I remember hearing other people shout those names when they were killed.”

Maris Herold, Boulder’s police chief, was also personally shaken by the killings, saying in the Tuesday morning press conference that “I live three blocks up the street from that store. It’s heartbreaking.

“Officer Eric Talley had seven children, ages five to 18,” she continued, speaking of the police officer who was the first to run into the King Soopers and was subsequently killed. “His family is heartbroken. I just had that officer’s whole family in my office two weeks ago to present an award to his son. Eric Talley taught CPR, and when one of his son’s swallowed a quarter, his other son was able to save his life by performing CPR. He was a very kind man. He was willing to die to protect others.”

Lawrence said that this tragedy – along with the scores of other mass shootings in the US lately – should be a wake-up call about the “new normal” he said we are all living in.

“In Boulder we keep everything looking pretty, we avoid dealing with the dirty shit that gets swept under the rug. Once you crack the Boulder open, you see that it’s not a geode inside. It’s just dust.”

The post ‘We don’t live in a safe world’: Boulder in shock and disbelief over shooting appeared first on Josiah Hesse.

Located in this once-abandoned mountain town, the Black Monarch hotel offers an over-the-top immersive art experience for those who fetishize nightmares and is the latest addition to a thriving haunted hotel industry that has become big business in Colorado.

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In each case, the film alleges, Jackson sought out children who mythologized him, slowly seducing their parents with vacations, houses, and money, while psychologically manipulating the boys into thinking they were liable accomplices in his sex crimes. The boys’ stage performances and sycophancy toward Jackson are endearing (what 80s child wouldn’t fall to pieces when gifted a “Thriller” jacket or “Smooth Criminal” hat?) which makes the graphic and detailed account of their sexual allegations against Jackson all the more horrifying to endure.

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But his enduring status as an outsider icon tends to overlook the fact that Manson was a virulent racist—and the murders he orchestrated were fueled by the delusion that African Americans were plotting race war in hopes of enslaving all white people. That delusion is not completely absent from politics today. Manson’s insistence that social unrest in the black community was a threat to his followers’ safety has echoes in contemporary American life, where race-baiting can help get you elected president and the White House openly stokes white nationalism.

“If Charles Manson were alive and literate, he would be writing for Breitbart,” said Jeff Guinn, author of one of the more definitive biographies of the killer, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson. “Like all good demagogues, he knew how to prey on fear, to take something that’s a genuine concern and exaggerate the threat to create a panic.”

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