Well Groomed

This blog is about my experience with a producer. He indecently assaulted me in his Perth studio. Yes I’ve reported him to the police but he said it was consensual. I wrote a song about what happened as a warning to other Perth singers and musicians. It’s called Well Groomed and is on Spotify, iTunes and there’s a music video on YouTube as well. I saw a psychologist after I got out of the situation and spent thousands on therapy. This was definitely the worst experience of my adult life. I wish someone had warned me about this guy. Like the song, this blog post is a warning that I wish I had received, and is my way of treating others as you would like to be treated. A bit of a backstory about me, I got married at 18 to the love of my love and my husband and I have now been married for 16 years and we have four children. It’s one of those till death arrangements, we both want to be married to each other forever. He’s a personal trainer, the only man I’ve ever been with and honestly the thought of being with someone else is gross. If you’ve only slept with one person your whole life and have a good thing going, why would you want to risk having a bad root with someone else only to be left disappointed? When I was 24 I started recording my music with a Christian guy who was a friend of a friend, a totally lovely person, and he helped me record my music for free because I wanted to raise money for charities with the sales. I made a CD and sold it and within four months $10,000 was raised for a charity that rescued women from trafficking. After that, people thought I was a legit musician and wanted to book me for weddings and events. I went on to record some more over the years and have raised $50,000 for charities through my music, thanks to a bunch of wonderful people supporting me. I’ve never publicly had a bad thing to say about someone I’ve known or worked with like in this post. Yes I’ve encountered what I would call minor dickhead behaviour, but this was next level. Knowing what I know, I feel it is my duty to warn others about this, and not doing so would be irresponsible. So for the sake of my conscience I must write this.

He sent me a message saying he was a producer who had worked for Sony and other labels overseas with a publishing deal, and we had mutual contacts and he thought my voice would be perfect for a single track idea he had in mind. We met in a café and he seemed normal enough. He was very charismatic and funny. He fast tracked my trust by telling me he worked for a community organisation that I had been involved with. He said he was fairly new to Australia, and had only been here for a few years. He said although he was big in his country of origin, no one knew who he was here so he was networking and would like to collaborate with me. He said he had moved here to be with his adult sons. He thought my voice would be perfect for his track idea. His studio was at his home across the road so we went to his house to see it. His adult son was there watching TV and we went upstairs and he showed me his studio. He said it was only one song and what did I have to lose. He had all this gear and experience. He told me of another female singer he was working with and how they talked constantly every day. He told me he had a partner and she was at work. It all seemed normal enough, so I committed to the track. I went back to his house the next week and brought my guitar. I had been at an event with a confetti canon and a piece of silver confetti fell out of my case. He showed it to me months later saying he kept it because he always wanted a piece of me in his studio. Anyway, I was nervous because I had never co-written a song with anyone, and he said just don’t think, no thinking, just write the first thing that comes to your head. He was making the track on the spot. I wrote lyrics inspired by a friend who at the time believed she had met her soulmate by chance at a gathering, but they lived in different countries and couldn’t be together. They were just fantasy made up lyrics.

There was story after story about how these ‘bitches and whores’ had left him and run off with other producers after he had poured his heart and soul in to these tracks. He showed me their Instagram accounts and pictures of them, there was one in particular who was the biggest bitch of all and he zoomed right in on her eyes to show me how evil she was. She apparently wrote bad songs about him and how bad he was. He mentioned how his mother had given him up for adoption and these girls reminded him of his mum leaving him and how insecure he was. I felt sorry for him and promised on the spot I would never do that and leave halfway through the project. I was meant to come back the next week but I caught the man flu. I messaged him saying I couldn’t make it because I was sick. He replied and kept saying please don’t cancel, please don’t run away. I thought it was weird but remembered all the other singers who had left projects and made him feel insecure and felt bad. I said I was honestly sick and would definitely come back. He used this time I was sick to message me constantly about business ideas and song ideas and logo ideas. In hindsight he was just getting me used to receiving many messages from him and normalise it. At the time I was sick and in bed and it was nice having something to look forward to and someone to talk to and something to occupy my mind. I’ve been in other relationships including business ones where you need to be in touch all the time, but this was next level. I went back to record the song properly, I wasn’t 100% well but he kept messaging me every day asking if and when I was coming back. I felt bad making him wait. In hindsight there was a formula. He was so charismatic and hilarious and would make me feel at ease and then there would be another sob story to make me feel sorry for him. Then dangle a carrot with the promise of making my dreams come true. He told me his song was played on a major radio station. He told me his songs were doing amazing around the world in different countries and that would be our music soon. As an optimist I half believed it. Anyway the song sounded epic! I genuinely loved it and was so happy with it and felt honoured to be working with someone who was so musically talented. I listened to it on repeat. I went to his house to debrief and he had the song playing and was raving about it. He said we must keep working together and keep recording because we made great music together. I was flattered and excited. He said he was working on several projects but this is the one he was most excited about and obsessing over and I was his favourite singer that he was working with. He asked if we could make an EP, which is five songs, and after hearing how great the song sounded, I agreed. The theme of the EP was in line with the first song, two souls who wanted to be together but never would be in this lifetime, like a fantasy Hollywood movie. He told me his biggest dream was to have a school where he taught beat making to kids and I told him my biggest dream was to raise a million dollars for charity through my music. At the time I had raised $45,000. He said he could make that happen for me with this studio and to give back to the world. I honestly thought he was sent from the heavens to help make this dream come true to raise this money for charity. When he said he would make this dream come true, a huge part of me committed to him and our music together. I mentioned I’d never had any luck with publishing. He told me he could be my mentor and teach me how to make music money from publishing our music. He said it would feel good to give back and he had all this knowledge to share. There were things like this I desired in my career and at the mention of them he was like a genie who would make it all happen for me.

I told him my child was interested in beat making and we started going to his beat making classes on the weekend, and I would go to his house once or twice during the week to co-write and record songs. When I bought my child the MacBook they needed and the required recording software, he said I was such an amazing mum and he wished he could have had a mum like me when he was growing up, instead of one that gave him away. He made my child feel special in front of the class, as my child had perfect pitch and he gave them special attention. This meant a lot to me because like many children, this child didn’t always easily fit in everywhere and now they had this musical role model who believed in them. He also let me be part of the class, but none of the other mums were invited, he said it was because I was a musician and we were in a band together so it was different. He also didn’t charge me even though I insisted, because we were ‘like family now’ and it would be like charging family. Soon he started saying he loved my child, and was that ok to love my child. He said my child reminded him of his own son. He told me we had chemistry and a special connection that didn’t grow on trees. He said it wasn’t anything physical and never would be, it was better than the physical things of this world. It was a special connection that would make magic music. I remember he was eating a bowl of dinner in the kitchen as he was casually telling me this like it was completely normal, and I said I wasn’t really sure about it. I remember he always had incense burning in the kitchen. He said that it was an industry insider secret, and that Pink had this special connection with her producer, and Alanis Morrisette had it with her producer. I remember saying ‘but what if it manifested in to real life’, and he insisted it never would. It was like acting, it wasn’t real. And you’d just use the connection to make music. He said he had worked for big labels and that’s how he knew all of this stuff. He said we couldn’t tell anyone about it because they wouldn’t get it and that would be the end. At this point I had already started the EP and had five songs down and I was obsessed with the music and didn’t want to lose it. He said we needed to make it an album of 10 songs now. None of the other songs were ever finished. He even went to the lengths of getting me to watch a Joni Mitchell documentary to prove this point, of needing a connection and a muse as a recipe for making amazing music.

Anyway, producer sent me a text saying, ‘tell me something you shouldn’t’. I replied that I just wanted to keep things professional and I just wanted to be friends. He instantly backpedalled at 1,000,000 km per hour. The next time I saw him he was creating a track and I was ‘not thinking’ and just writing and I wrote ‘I wish I could be your genie’ and he turned around and said ‘this song sounds like a genie.’ I was a little creeped out at the mind reading that was going on and he then showed me a Dracula trailer about how Dracula knew this woman from a past life or something. I said I didn’t believe in past lives. He then started insisting we were together in a past life. I wrote songs about all these things. The genie, the past lives, everything we talked about in 1,000,000 messages a day with our ‘secret connection.’ He would reply to all my Instagram stories. I have to admit I was writing really well, every morning I would wake up with new, interesting lyrics and ideas and I was very inspired. In fact I’d never written so much or so well in my life. He kept saying we weren’t doing anything wrong and it was really working and we were making good songs. I thought maybe he was right about the connection for writing. I believed there was no harm. He kept insisting it would never be physical when I doubted things. He carried on about this special connection thing as time went on, and said it would never go away, I would never shake it or escape it, and I would be in his life forever. In time I started to believe it. He even said if I left the project he would die. I started to believe everything he said and he knew it.

Then the messages started to intensify. Then one day I went to his house as usual and he had been drinking and his partner wasn’t home. All of a sudden he started stroking my arms and legs and I just froze. I remember saying this part in my police report and the policewoman said that freezing in this situation is a very common response. I remember my psych telling me this was a stress response. There is flight, flight and freeze. Unfortunately I discovered that I freeze. He was offering me wine and I declined because I didn’t drink at all, and he kept coming close to my face asking if he could kiss me, like 1cm or less away from my lips and I kept saying no when he asked. If he asked me if he could stroke my body that day I would have said no. But he didn’t ask and I was frozen and it felt like a dream. So then he told me to record the song which is what I came there to do and again kept coming really close to my face and asking if he could kiss me and I kept saying no. So I recorded the song and then I said I felt bad and wanted to go home. He said I hadn’t done anything wrong, we didn’t have sex, we hadn’t done anything wrong. I scrubbed myself like heck in the shower that night and was very confused. By this time I had stopped talking to my family and friends. I gave up other projects I was part of including writing regularly for a newspaper, blogging for my website, any regular usual activity was given up at this time. He even said I want to be what your husband is to you. That was pretty much the only spot he hadn’t filled in me, and I said I was happy with my husband and that wasn’t ever going to happen. He said I was lucky, he wished he had what my husband and I had, he wished it had worked out with his first wife and that he had the family life that I currently had. He started to constantly complain about his partner, and talk about how unhappy he was with her. Apparently I was making him happy, our project was the only thing making him happy. If I left he would die.

I went on holiday with my family and while I was away, he would write a song and send it to me and say I couldn’t show anyone and they were secret for now but would be radio hits. He sent me a message saying his housemate woke him up with a hand and he was half asleep and he just thought of me the whole time. He then started asking me all the time if I thought about him when I slept with my husband. I said no. He kept asking me this constantly. With all the groundwork he had done, making this thing a secret I had no one to talk to tell me it was nonsense and to get out of it. So I started to think of him.

I started to express my concern that things can manifest once they’re in your mind. He assured me like crazy that it would never be a physical thing. Then I came back from holidays and we had to finish our album of 10 songs that we had. He then started to normalise kissing in his studio. I remember he kissed me on the lips and said he kissed his family on the lips and we were like family and there was nothing wrong with it and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I remember another time I walked in to his studio and he puckered his lips at me and I sat down and he acted insulted and I remember saying, ‘Sorry was I being rude just then?’ He said ‘yes’ so I went over and pecked him on the lips and apologised for being so rude. Then of course would tell me a sob story, dangle a carrot saying ‘my song has moved up the charts in whatever country’ and end saying I hadn’t done anything wrong. Once he had made things physical and normalised these kisses, he must have thought he had me hooked and started to play more mind games with me, saying he wasn’t sure when I could come back because he was busy. I actually did start to feel crazy, as he had filled all these emotional needs in me for months, and didn’t know what I was going to do without my source filling these needs, and without our music. I couldn’t even remember what I used to think about or what I used to do before he entered my life.

So I started to get back to recording my own music on an individual project I started just before I met him, before I put my life on hold. This honestly saved my soul. It was the only thing that got be back in the world talking to other people again. I hadn’t spoken to my friends or family properly for over three months at this point. I remember after I started recording with others, he said, ‘I feel like I’m losing you.’ I took a photo with another producer I was working with and uploaded it to Instagram and he said, ‘Who is that guy? Have you found another producer to run off with? I don’t like seeing photos of you with other men!’ I remember thinking I needed to get out of this situation and I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it. Then my friend separated from her partner, and he unfortunately killed himself. I was naturally devastated. I went to the funeral and saw how sad they all were. It was a real tragedy. I remember being so upset and crying saying ‘I don’t want to risk ruining my relationship and have my husband kill himself, I don’t want to go down this path anymore in case something bad happens.’ I remember him saying to me, ‘But I just want to make love to you.’ And I was like ‘WTF are you listening to me I’m saying no to all of that stuff I just want to get on with finishing this project.’ And he backpedalled and said ‘Okay, okay it will just be the music only I swear.’

Then he casually planted a seed about my husband, saying my husband had the kind of level headed personality that I should look out for. He said he knew a guy like my husband with the same personality and one day he just killed himself. He said, ‘you can’t ever tell your husband about our special connection because it would break him.’ He was trying to make me believe that if I said anything my husband would kill himself. I wanted to get out of it but I honestly couldn’t see a way out. I thought my husband would ask why I left the project, my son would ask why he couldn’t go to beat making lessons, and then I would say why and my husband would kill himself. I remember my wedding anniversary was around this time and I said I didn’t want to see him that week and I told him I didn’t want him messaging me at all anymore from now on. That morning on my anniversary he sent me a message saying ‘Happy anniversary, it’s so magic to have a love like you two have.’ As if he meant that, he was trying to make me think of him on my anniversary. He just would ask straight out when I would get to his house ‘Do you want to make love?’ I would always say no and let’s get on with the finishing the music. He would try to talk me in to it and try to convince me to have sex with him. He even said, ‘You’ve done it in your mind and the Bible says if you’ve done it in your mind it’s the same as doing it in real life. And it would be so good.’ I always said ‘NO!’ He then started saying that we could be together and get married and he could change things around in his life to fit me and my kids in it to make things work. I remember him even saying ‘Wow your husband is smart giving you a lot of sex so you don’t need it from anyone else.’ He was obsessed with asking me questions about ‘how I liked it and how long it took.’

Apart from the first song we did, nothing was getting finished. I was starting to get frustrated and started wearing only pants to his house because I was sick of him always trying to lift up my dress if I was wearing one and asking me to sleep with him. Also his housemate walked in to his studio after he had asked me as usual to have sex with him, and she started raving about their upcoming wedding later that year. I was surprised as he had told me all this BS about how unhappy he was with her and they never slept together blah, blah, blah. When she left the room I said, ‘I really want to get out of this it feels very wrong and now you guys are talking about getting married.’ His tune changed from her being his housemate and all of a sudden it was, ‘So what if we get married? It doesn’t change anything between us.’ He always had an answer for everything. So he changed tactic and said we were starting a new project and it was an electronic project, a different genre. Of the ten songs we had created, only the first initial one was ever finished. And in this new project he and I were together. Instead of the theme of two people who weren’t able to be together but wished they could be, I was to write lyrics as if we were together this time, no thinking. Just feel and write. He actually did finish this song surprisingly. So this song ended up online temporarily before he took it down. ‘Imagine you and I are together now.’

He would always make out like everything was my fault. You put the call out. You must have asked the universe for this because it’s what you wanted. I can’t help being the way I am around you it’s your voice. You’re a siren. You’re a seductress. I was bewildered and worried. I was definitely keen to get out but I didn’t know how. Then one day toward the end he turned me around in his studio and said, ‘I just want to feel my skin on your skin.’ He pulled my pants down and my top up and of course I froze, and he rested his penis on my back for a while. I literally did nothing. In case you’re like me and unaware, this is indecent assault and illegal without consent. He did not ask if he could put his dick on me and if he did I would have said, ‘NO!’ I’m not sure why he did that. Anyway, after a while I finally said, ‘I want to go home now.’ I left and I was freaked out and confused. The usual ‘you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t done anything wrong.’

The next time I went there he was getting real desperate. I remember saying, ‘this has to end and I’m going to miss this.’ I remember him mocking me and laughing at me when I said that. I mean this project meant so much to me. It was my world for six months and I knew I had to end it because of his behaviour getting more physical. Another time I was leaving his studio and he had me pinned up against the door asking where he could come over and over again. And I said ‘I want to go home now.’ The last day I was in his studio, he said, ’What if I forced you? No one could blame you because I would have made you do it, and it wouldn’t be your fault. And it would be so good!’ FINALLY THE LONG AWAITED ALARM BELLS WENT OFF! This was after about six months of knowing him.

I sent him a message saying I wouldn’t be coming back anymore. But of course he had my son in love with him and was still going to his music production lessons. My son would talk nonstop about these classes. They were the highlight of his life. I remember I had been saying to my husband I didn’t feel like we had been connected lately, he didn’t know what I meant. My husband had no idea what was going on, I was trying so hard to protect him because I was worried he would kill himself. My husband had been making a massive effort to connect with me, bless his heart and super-hot body ;)

So I took my son to what would be the last music production lessons we would ever go to. I remember saying to this guy that my husband and I had started to really connect lately and I was happy about it. I remember him stroking my face gently and saying he would be waiting for me when we got divorced. I said ‘I don’t want to get divorced I’m happy with my husband.’ So I stopped going there and finally told my husband what happened, not really everything because I didn’t want to freak him out. He was hell freaked out and said, ‘I think this guy has assaulted you.’ I kept it very minimal I didn’t mention too much of the physical stuff at all. So with me saying it was my fault, my husband thought I had cheated on him and had an affair, which wasn’t the case, and was understandably upset and angry. The term affair implies a consensual, mutually desired thing, and I know I didn’t want this thing and was desperate to get out of it and said no to everything I was asked permission for. I never wanted any of that stuff. I thought I was going to record one song and it turned out so far from what I thought it was going to be. I messaged the producer guy saying, ‘I’m so sorry I’ve betrayed you because I told my husband about the secret connection. I’ve hurt you and let you down. I’m so sorry I’ve ruined everything.’

I messaged him saying my husband is really upset and I don’t know what to do. I phoned him and he seemed different. This was the real him. He was cold, uncaring, mean. I was crying and confused about everything, and he said, ‘don’t be upset, don’t cry’ like I was irritating him. I was sad about our music I didn’t know what was going to happen to the other 10 songs. I remember saying, ‘it sounds like you don’t care about the songs or anything.’ He said, ‘I wish I had met you before I met all the other girls, and I’ll never forget you.’ One night soon after I couldn’t sleep, we were all pretty traumatised and confused by everything, and I said to my husband in the middle of the night, ‘babe I didn’t tell you this but he put his dick on my back.’ My husband was FURIOUS! He messaged the guy in the middle of the night and asked, ‘Did you put your dick on my wife’s back?’ And it must have startled him in the middle of the night because he admitted it! They texted each other until the morning and this is how amazing my husband is... he fiercely put his guy in his place and yet recommended a rehab centre at the end of the conversation where this guy could get his life back on track, which he of course declined.

So the last this thing is the aftermath. PTSD. This changed me as a person. But I didn’t realise it at the time. It took 18 months for my brain to turn back to normal after I told my husband what was happening. I remember my psych saying to me, that PTSD is like a sound desk in your brain. You have different knobs for the volumes on the sound desk, and it’s like that with your brain. Everything is perfectly set and then all of a sudden it goes out of whack and the knobs all end up everywhere out of order. One of the knobs is for the perpetrator channel for example. This can make you more likely to be a victim of perpetrators, or can make you become a perpetrator. My psych was explaining that PTSD made people do things they wouldn’t normally do. I said to her that I recently performed naked at a nudist colony and drank a whole bottle of wine and ended up in the pool naked and stayed the night. She was shocked and said that yes that is what she meant. I explained that I don’t normally drink and I’d never been to a nudist colony before. So yeah I was completely different. I was drinking all the time. Even at weddings I bought a flask of gin and tonic and always had a bottle of spirits in my gig bag. That’s fine if that’s normal for you, but it was out of character for me. I also lost feelings for my husband. It was almost like amnesia. I couldn’t remember how I felt about him before. I knew I was happy with him before and said I wanted to be with him forever before, but I honestly couldn’t remember. My poor husband ended up with depression from his wife not remembering him and acting like a totally different person. This impacted our kids.

I couldn’t even remember what I used to think about. I remember saying to people, it’s like all the blocks in my head were set in concrete and now they’re all up in the air jumbling around my brain and they’re not landing. I don’t know who I am or what I want. I can’t remember who I used to be or what I used to do. I felt strange but I knew I just needed to stick it out. I just had to keep going to therapy and I had EMDR which helped me to process everything. I just needed to have faith that I would get better, that things would get better, and I just needed time. I just needed to stay with my husband and hope things would get better.

After 18 months I finally started to feel normal. What I mean by this, is I started to remember how much I loved my husband before. I started to remember who I was before all of this. I stopped drinking excessively. I have a drink every now and then at my gigs but I don’t carry spirits in my bag everywhere I go. I remember I had an audition previously and was drinking gin at 7am HA! I’m happiest when I’m home with my family and I feel like ME. The old, real ME. I can’t tell you how good it feels. The blocks in my head aren’t floating and feel like they’ve settled in place. Everything has been processed. Also I had a lot of nightmares and I actually still do every now and then. So did my husband. I want to spare you and your family the heartache and the thousands of dollars in therapy you will have to pay if this or another trained douchebag with nothing better to do, targets you or your child, or someone you know. So that’s it. I am better now and healed, but holy shit why didn’t someone warn me? So here it is, the warning I wish I had received.

My homemade CD Stop Traffik raised over $10,000 for charities!

My second recording Little Sister that I sold to raise money for charity

Knocking on the Shore raised $20K for World Vision Child Rescue in Cambodia

My album #BFFme.. after this album my fundraising came to $50,000 for charity!

Photo by Partografia who made the music video for Well Groomed