Justin Sane, the previous lead singer of defunct political punk band Anti-Flag, has been ordered to pay $1.9 million to a lady he’s accused of raping in 2010.
A Tuesday (July 22) federal court docket order holds Sane (born Justin Geever) liable by default as a result of he’s failed to answer the assault and sexual battery lawsuit introduced in 2023 by a lady named Kristina Sarhadi.
Sarhadi alleges Sane strangled and raped her at a motel in 2010, after they met at an Anti-Flag present at The Bell Home in Brooklyn. She was the primary of a dozen ladies to return ahead with sexual misconduct claims in opposition to Sarhadi in July 2023, inflicting the avowedly “straight-edge,” pro-feminism band Anti-Flag to separate up after 35 years.
Sane denied Sarhadi’s claims as “categorically false” again in 2023, however he by no means took any motion within the lawsuit. Decide Brenda Ok. Sannes has due to this fact entered default judgment in opposition to Sane, a authorized final result the place defendants are discovered to have successfully admitted to the claims in opposition to them by failing to reply regardless of repeated warnings.
The Tuesday order requires Sane to pay Sarhadi $1.9 million in damages, together with $750,000 for ache and struggling and $420,800 for the prices of remedy to handle post-traumatic stress dysfunction, melancholy and anxiousness stemming from the 2010 rape.
“It’s well-documented by way of the supporting affidavits that plaintiff has suffered excessive emotional misery and an entire upending of her life, as evidenced by her signs which have endured fifteen years because the date of the assault,” writes Decide Sannes.
The damages determine additionally consists of $750,000 in punitive damages, which a choose can institute to punish or deter a defendant for conduct that’s past the pale.
“The sexual violence dedicated by the defendant undeniably constitutes morally reprehensible or completely reckless conduct making a punitive injury award correct,” writes the choose. “Defendant sexually assaulted plaintiff and shattered her emotional well-being, inflicting life-long ramifications years after the assault.”
“Defendant’s conduct is much more morally reprehensible as a result of he used his fame and standing to lure a a lot youthful fan into his resort room beneath false pretenses,” provides Decide Sannes.
Sane couldn’t be reached for touch upon Friday (July 25). Sarhadi’s legal professional didn’t return a request for touch upon the judgment.
Sarhadi’s lawsuit initially alleged that the opposite former members of Anti-Flag — Chris Head, Chris Barker and Pat Thetic — ought to have identified about Sane’s repeated sexual misconduct however did not put a cease to it. However Decide Sannes dismissed Sarhadi’s claims in opposition to Anti-Flag’s company entity, Hardwork Distribution Inc., this previous December after discovering that she had not adequately pled negligence on the band’s half.
Stuart Slotnick, a lawyer representing Head, Barker and Thetic, instructed Billboard on Friday that his purchasers “have had no contact with Geever in any respect (nor do they want to)” because the sexual assault allegations got here to gentle.
“They have been shocked to listen to the complaints,” Slotnick says. “We have been very completely happy that the choose acknowledged that the three former members of the band had nothing to do with Geever or his misdeeds.”
