Over the weekend, two women accused Justin Bieber of sexual assault. They posted their accounts to Twitter, one to an anonymous account and one on an accuser’s own page, where the stories were widely circulated. On Sunday (June 21), Bieber responded on his own page in a series of 15 tweets denying the first allegation and providing screenshots of emails and hotel receipts that aimed to disprove the accuser’s story.
“I don’t normally address things as I have dealt with random accusations my entire career but after talking with my wife and team I have decided to speak up on an issue tonight,” he tweeted. “Rumors are rumors but sexual abuse is something I don’t take lightly. I wanted to speak out right away but out of respect to so many victims who deal with these issues daily I wanted to make sure I gathered the facts before I made any statement.”
One of the women, Danielle, said her assault happened in Austin, Texas on March 9, 2014, after Bieber and another man invited her and two friends to the Four Seasons hotel once he’d finished performing at a local bar and restaurant. “He then asked me to join him in bed,” her account reads, as captured by PopCrave. (The original account has been since deactivated.) She gives specifics about their encounter, including her reservations, given his then-current relationship with Selena Gomez. “I kept asking myself, ‘What about Selena?’, ‘Did I consent to this?’, ‘How will she react if she finds out?’, ‘Where are my friends?’, ‘How is this normal and okay?.'” She also explained, “My body felt unconscious. I don’t want to go into detail about what happened next.”
“Although this was 6 years ago, although I was one year older than him (he was 20, I was 21), I was still sexually assaulted without consent,” she wrote, adding that she’s since sought therapy to recover from the events. “What happened to me was not okay. It took me YEARS to finally speak up about it, but it is never too late to do so.”
Bieber denied the details of Danielle’s account. “There is no truth to this story,” he tweeted. “In fact as I will soon show I was never present at that location.” Bieber explained that he did not stay at the Four Seasons in Austin that night, nor the following night, as another user’s tweet from 2014 seemed to suggest.
He also said he and Gomez stayed at an Airbnb on March 9 and provided screenshots of emails and hotel receipts that appear to back up his claim that he also didn’t stay at the Four Seasons on March 10. “We have also confirmed with the Four Seasons regional manager that I was never on property on the 9th of March 2014 and never a guest on the 9th or the 10th and I welcome all press to inquire with them if needed or wanted,” he tweeted.
A second woman, Kadi, came forward after Danielle’s story to share her own experience, which she said took place on May 4, 2015. She said she visited Bieber’s hotel room at the invitation of his bodyguard, where she claimed Bieber sexually assaulted her both in the bathroom and the bedroom. “I asked him to stop and continued to say that I cannot have sex with anyone prior to marriage (traditional and cultural thing),” she wrote, adding that in the five years since, she’s sought out treatment for the event’s negative toll on her mental health. She also said Disney star Kyle Massey was also in the room.
Kadi also posted screenshots to interactions apparently with Bieber’s bodyguard as well as with friends after the encounter. She also posted photos of her with Bieber that date to before their alleged encounter. Fans have highlighted, however, several of Kadi’s tweets that would seem to contradict her story, including two from June 2015 where she says she’s never met him.
“Most of my mutuals are jb stans and it would’ve been weird if I randomly unstanned him without giving a reason,” she tweeted on Sunday night. “Because they all know I’ve been a belieber since 2010. But they don’t know what happened on May 5th 2015. So I just continued to stan.”
Just as Kadi shared her story in light of Danielle sharing hers, Danielle wrote that “hearing Gabby’s story with Ansel, it gave me the courage to share mine.” Over the weekend, Ansel Elgort was accused of previously sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl while in his twenties, allegations which he denied in an Instagram note. Cole Sprouse and other Riverdale actors also faced allegations of sexual assault and misconduct over the weekend, claims Sprouse denied on Twitter. “False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Furthermore, I would never seek to silence anybody,” he tweeted, in a message Bieber retweeted to his own timeline. “I encourage that people look into the accusations themselves, as the events detailed were factually untrue.”
Bieber has not responded publicly to Kadi’s claims, though he concluded his tweeted statements by saying he is currently looking into taking “legal action.” “Every claim of sexual abuse should be taken very seriously and this is why my response was needed. However this story is factually impossible and that is why I will be working with twitter and authorities to take legal action.”
