Garrett Clark Borns, the Michigan-born pop singer-songwriter who performs as BØRNS, has published a statement denying several accusations of sexual assault that have been made against him online in the last week. “I am both hurt and angered over the disturbing and false allegations that have been spread over the past few days on social media,” he wrote on Instagram. “All of the relationships I have had were legal and consensual. They ended abruptly and that obviously caused hurt feelings, but for anyone to suggest anything beyond that is irresponsible.”
On Thursday, a Twitter user with the handle @alyssaadaniele posted an account of meeting BØRNS at a concert when she was 16 years old. According to @alyssaadaniele, she began chatting with him on social media, and he invited her to his hotel room, where “he began to touch my leg…going further up my leg and started skimming me in other places.” “He also was aware of how old I was, 16,” she added. @alyssaadaniele alleges that her correspondence with BØRNS continued after that incident, and that at age 17, “He would ask me to send specific pictures and videos of myself, and I did.”
At age 18, @alyssaadaniele wrote, they “were intimate.” “He had groomed me from age 16 for this…The things he did were things I did not want, and it hurt,” she added. “He was aggressive and controlling and I was so fucking scared of him.” However, she added, “I just wanted to clarify that I did not accuse him of r*pe, the sex was consensual, and happened when I was of age.”
Another Twitter user, with the handle @kaliforxnia, previously wrote that she met BØRNS at a concert at age 20. She also says she began chatting with him regularly after that. He eventually invited her to “his place” in Los Angeles, where she “became drunk and was completely taken advantage of,” she wrote. “Once everything happened I went to the bathroom and started bleeding,” she wrote. “I blamed myself for that night because I didn’t say no even though I was intoxicated,” she added.
Spin has reached out to BØRNS’s representatives for comment and will update this post if we hear back. See his Instagram post below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoKHvUJFRAH/
