Alice Glass accuses former Crystal Castles bandmate of rape

Ethan Kath denies the allegations and says he is considering his legal options

Alice Glass has accused her former bandmate Ethan Kath of a decade of abusive behaviour (Getty)

Former Crystal Castles singer Alice Glass has accused her former bandmate of rape and cited it as the reason behind her decision to quit the band.

Glass released a statement that alleged, with graphic detail, that Kath (real name Claudio Palmieri) had raped her and physically and mentally abused her since she was 15-years-old.

“He was manipulative towards me,” the statement read. “He figured out my insecurities and exploited them: he used the things he learned about me against me. Over a period of many months, he gave me drugs and alcohol and had sex with me in an abandoned room at an apartment he managed. It wasn't always consensual and he remained sober whenever we were together.”

Ethan Kath, left, and Alice Glass perform as Crystal Castles in 2013 (Getty)

Glass claims that Kath began to “abusively and systematically targeting my insecurities and controlling my behaviour: my eating habits, who I could talk to, where I could go, what I could say in public, what I was allowed to wear.

"He kept me from doing interviews or photoshoots unless he was in control of the situation... he became physically abusive. He held me over a staircase and threatened to throw me down it. He picked me up over his shoulders and threw me onto concrete.”

She also claimed that Kath told her that her feminism made her “a target for rapists and only he could protect me. He forced me to have sex with him, or, he said, I wouldn't be allowed in the band anymore”.

After a decade of alleged abuse, Glass said leaving the band was “one of the best decisions I've ever made. It has taken me years to recover from.. abuse, manipulation and psychological control. I am still recovering.”

In a statement to Pitchfork via his lawyer, Kath denied all of Glass's allegations.

“I am outraged and hurt by the recent statements made by Alice about me and our prior relationship,” a statement read. “Her story is pure fiction and I am consulting my lawyers as to my legal options. Fortunately, there are many witnesses who can and will confirm that I was never abusive to Alice.”

Stereogum reports that Crystal Castles have cancelled their existing tour dates following the accusations.

When she left the band in 2014, Glass wrote: “For a multitude of reasons both professional and personal I no longer feel that this is possible within CC.”

In April 2015 Kath released a new song and said he thought it could be “empowering for her [Glass] to be in charge of her own project. It should be rewarding for her considering she didn’t appear on Crystal Castles’ best known songs”.

Glass responded: “For the record, I wrote almost all of the lyrics in my former band and the vast majority of the vocal melodies,” adding: “I was a founding member of Crystal Castles and shaped the sound and aesthetic from the very beginning… manipulative statements about my contributions to the band only reinforce the decision I made to move on to other things."