Black Veil Brides have issued an official statement after a former member of the band, ex-bassist Ashley Purdy, was accused of both sexual and psychological abuse by multiple women on social media.
The allegations emerged late last week on Twitter, with Purdy’s accusers using the hashtag #AshleyPurdy to elicit others’ stories about the onetime Black Veil Brides member. Within days, the band — which parted ways with Purdy in November 2019 — spoke up about the claims.
“We have been informed of the allegations against a former member of our band and we want to make it clear that we do not condone the type of abhorrent behavior that’s been described,” the band wrote on Tuesday (June 23). “We are committed to creating a safe community for our fans and advancing a culture in which abuse of any kind is not tolerated.”
The claims against Purdy came to light June 20 when a Twitter user named Pearl Carolina (@Pearl_Carolina_) first publicly aired her story online. She has given Loudwire permission to share her tweets describing an alleged pattern of abuse carried out by Purdy, one echoed by subsequent accusers.
Carolina’s account portrays a verbally abusive musician who constantly criticized her before ultimately having “unprotected sex” with her while she was “extremely intoxicated.” She says the fallout from the encounter included warnings from other women regarding Purdy’s behavior. See her tweets below.
“If i can save even just ONE girl from having to experience the emotional and mental trauma all of us girls and women went through because of him,” Carolina says at the end of her multi-tweet allegation against the former Black Veil Brides bassist, “i will be satisfied. Time for the truth.”
Another woman who came forward, going by the Twitter handle @throwupbarbie, has also given Loudwire permission to share her tweets. In the message thread that starts directly below, she outlines her account of predatory behavior allegedly perpetrated by Purdy when she was underage.
@throwupbarbie charges that, soon after they met, the musician would communicate to her in a sexually suggestive manner online when she was 17 years old. She alleges that this verbal abuse soon turned to sexual grooming when Purdy purportedly sent her photos of women he wanted her to emulate.
This accuser also describes a physical encounter with the bassist that she says took place after a Black Veil Brides concert. During this meeting with Purdy, @throwupbarbie claims she felt pressured to consume alcohol before engaging in a sex act with the musician on the band’s tour bus.
@throwupbarbie’s retelling on Twitter includes multiple screenshots of her apparent correspondence with Purdy.
Another exposer fortifies those accounts. On Instagram, a woman who identifies herself as a former associate of the band, Aleena Averly, says she witnessed the bassist engage in disreputable ways with underage fans. This week, she spoke to the matter at length on her Instagram Story. See some of it below.
Writes Averly, “The last time I was around him, [he] got an underaged girl drunk on the bus that he had [to] meet around back of the venue because security wouldn’t let her through because she was under age.”
Each allegation regarding Purdy seems to follow a similar thread — that the musician was verbally abusive to a young female fan and that the introduction of alcohol led to a possibly coerced sexual encounter.
Recently, Purdy had responded to Carolina’s accusations against him in a pair of video messages. But the bassist has since made his Twitter profile private, and those replies are seemingly inaccessible to those not already following him on the site. However, a fan account has preserved the clips online.
In one of the videos, Purdy produces a man he calls a roommate to vouch for his version of events. In the other clip, the ex-Black Veil Brides bassist shows another of his associates refuting the accuser’s story.
Purdy joined Black Veil Brides in 2009 and played on all of their studio albums through 2018’s Vale. Last year, BVB said the band and Purdy had “mutually agreed to part ways. We have enjoyed a wonderful run together and both parties wish one another continued success moving forward.”
A month after the split, the bassist reemerged with a song called “Nowhere.” Earlier this year, Purdy indicated Black Veil Brides wanted him to quit. But he insisted he still had some amount of legal ownership in the group.
