Dozens Of Women Come Forward Alleging Serious Sexual Misconduct Against Disc Jam Music Festival Promoter Tony Scavone

 

This blog contains allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault which were posted publicly on Facebook by the alleged victims on a viral Facebook post that hundreds of thousands of people have seen. The women making the allegations used their real names, but we will be redacting their names in this story. It is implied when you post on Facebook that you are giving up certain amounts of privacy, however, due to the sensitive nature of these particular crimes we are hiding the identities of those who made the claims until they give us permission to show them.

The person they are alleging has victimized them has not been charged with any crimes, but they all publicly used his name and alleged serious misconduct on his part. I believe that criminals have a right to face their accusers, and people who publicly make allegations that can send a man to prison should have to put their name on it.

We are not redacting the names of people alleging non-sexual allegations, or those people who witnessed or were aware of misconduct and posted about it. I, along with Bristol and SSTG have been working on this blog cooperatively in order to put it together. As a man, the lens in which I view sexual assault is naturally different from how a woman might view it, and a story without input from women wouldn’t be a complete story.

Tony Scavone is a Worcester resident, and well known in the community as a music promoter at the Palladium and other venues. He is the owner of A Scavone Production, LLC.

He runs the Disc Jam Musical Festival, which combines music and disc golf since 2011, and has well known bands and vendors there every year. He’s well respected in the Worcester community, and last year was featured on a show with radio hosts Hank Stolz, Michael Bennidetti, and Brendan Melican to talk about Disc Jam, and ways in which people like Scavone are helping to rebuild Worcester as part of its “renaissance.”

It should be noted that Hank Stolz has refused to ever have any representatives of Turtleboy on his show because we are too controversial. Remember that when you read the allegations against Tony Scavone.

Pulse Magazine, owned by political operative and Mayor Joe Petty’s campaign manager Paul Giorgio, heaped praise on him for his role in helping to give the Palladium a “facelift.” It should be noted that Giorgio himself was accused of statutory rape against a young boy, and settled it by paying off the alleged victim. He was also convicted of voter fraud in 2007 and was sentenced to probation. These are the people spearheading the Worcester “renaissance.”

Disc Jam is a 4 night festival of music, camping, and disk golf that costs around $200 to attend. It’s held in Stephentown, NY, right over the border from Hancock, MA, ever June. Adam Straughn from the Huffington Post wrote this column glorifying the event and Scavone.

“Behind the success of Disc Jam is Tony Scavone, a native of Worcester, MA who started event promotion around 2002, and has always been a well-known face in the New England music scene. After he started booking events for his friends at venues like Tammany Hall in Worcester, Tony quickly started taking on more and more events, eventually starting his own festival that recently moved to its new location in Stephentown, NY. Aside from holding a few Disc Jam affiliated events each year, Tony now books events at Electric Haze, also in the Worcester area.”

https://twitter.com/kaleinyasoftly/status/1138295501420486656

@indubitably420 and I took our child to see detox unit at disc jam :::) pic.twitter.com/h0UEioOhSU

— Smokestax/ Rsrch Chmcls (@smokestaxmusic) June 13, 2019

One of the best weekends in a looooooong time. Thank U disc jam ❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z5hRYbwmUz

— coco (@sugareebabie) June 10, 2019

Disc Jam Music Festival featured @Dopapod as the Friday night headliner this past weekend, making their return to the festival after a year off…Check out photos from their set. #discjamfam https://t.co/BFzQdJztJu pic.twitter.com/iUcZ6uUboY

— 215Music (@215musicNet) June 10, 2019

Another epic @DiscJamFestival in the books! Til next time! 😎#discjam #discgolf #innovadiscs pic.twitter.com/BxrqPrr68y

— Innova Discs (@InnovaDiscs) June 11, 2019

Recap: Disc Jam Music Festival 2019 https://t.co/twPFv2gToI pic.twitter.com/cqeCmKgjRJ

— Mirth Films (@mirth_films) June 11, 2019

Other publications have praised Scavone for putting on such a good event, and have described it as family friendly.

“It was a great time thanks to owner/founder Tony Scavone who always seems to know exactly how to appeal to a crowd, no matter how diverse its tastes are.”

“And why should cool parents and their kids never be able to attend the same festival? Not so at Disc Jam ~ once again, there will be a ton of kids’ activities ~ including free face painting, a stilt walker, a children’s art center.”

At this year’s Disc Jam 68 people were arrested, and many attendees blamed Scavone for taking their money, and then setting them up to be arrested, since it’s not exactly a secret that people do drugs at music festivals.

Quite the scene, State Police say, at the Disc Jam Music Festival in Rensselaer County in recent days.

"State Police seized quantities of cocaine, doses of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, ketamine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, MDMA, and concentrated cannabis.”

68 people arrested. pic.twitter.com/9zL4L0I9RV

— Joseph Spector (@JoeSpectorNY) June 12, 2019

This is the equivalent of the police doing a DUI checkpoint outside of a bar on New Years Eve. Some of the people were arrested for pot, even though just two miles to the east marijuana is completely legalized, and many concert goers were from Massachusetts.

However, behind the scenes for years many have had negative experiences with Scavone, and they began coming forward with serious, credible allegations of misconduct after a New Jersey man named Christian Stack posted this on Facebook.

Stack made this post on June 7, and since his page is public it’s gained a lot of traction as more and more people, primarily women, came forward with their stories about Scavone. It should be pointed out that Scavone has not been charged with a crime, and these are merely allegations. We have reached out to some of the people making these allegations on Facebook, but have only spoken with half a dozen of them. We welcome anyone else who would like to speak on or off the record, anonymously or using their real name, if they’d like to speak more. Additionally, Tony Scavone and anyone supporting him who would like to share their side of the story is more than welcome to do so. Email [email protected].

Some of the allegations are more shocking than others. We’ll start with the less egregious, and gradually get to the more serious allegations of sexual misconduct as we continue.

• Bad business practices.

 

• Threatening critics.

 

 

• Retaliatory behavior against people who ask for water at the festival.

 

• Telling photographers to take pictures of girls butts, making female bartenders uncomfortable.

 

• Hitting on women he had professional business with repeatedly when it was clearly not welcomed.

 

 

• Hitting on much younger girls primarily, many of who had boyfriends.

 

• Creepy text messages from him to women, some of which were not returned, but yet he continued to text anyway.

 

• An ex-girlfriend alleged that he preyed on her because she had just gotten out of an abusive relationship. She also claimed that she found out that he had been been trying to recruit his neighbor into having a threesome without her knowledge, and that he “compulsively” watched porn on his computer with his son close by. Most disturbingly she said that he stalked her after she ended the relationship, broke into her house because she was ignoring his phone calls, and she woke up with him standing over her.

 

• Several women and men allege that he has retaliated against women who chose not to sleep with him, and told them that having sex with him would help advance their careers.

 

• Some women allege that they were put in a position where they felt like they had to put up with sexual harassment in order to get gigs because he’s a powerful person in the industry.

 

• More than one alleged unsolicited “dick pics.”

I’m not going to post the pictures here, because then it would be x-rated. However, the images are out there, and if you’re going to send unsolicited pictures like that you should probably make sure it’s something worth showing off.

 

• One woman alleged that he preyed on her because of her issues with addiction.

Defense attorneys in rape cases know that women with substance abuse issues make unconvincing witnesses at trial.

 

• One woman alleged that she denied more of his sexual advances after he choked her while they began to be intimate, and as a result she was not given promised stage access. She said that others in the industry covered up for him when she told her story because “Tony is creepy but you just kind of tolerate him.”

 

• Another ex-girlfriend told a chilling story about how he was driving back to the hotel with her, saw two inebriated girls walking on the road, attempted to use his ex in order to solicit the two other girls to have sex with them, and then left his girlfriend on the side of the road when she told him that the girls were too drunk to consent. She alleges that he then came back to pick her up and told her that if she did not have sex with him that she would have to find her own way home (he brought her there). Feeling like she had no choice she submitted to him as “tears poured down my face,” and he choked, spit on, and degraded her during sex. This same woman alleges that he does this frequently with young, drunk girls, and that one time he broke into her house while she was sleeping, and when she woke up he was already inside of her. She claims that when she forced him off of her he told her, “That’s what you get for being bad.”  She also claimed that he repeatedly told her to perform oral sex on him or she wouldn’t be given a ride home. The final straw for her was when he sliced open her mattress and convertible top after an argument.

 

• Many women have come forward with allegations that he penetrated them while they were sleeping. One story is from April 25, 2003, and contains many details indicating that this is an emotional scar she will never get over.
   

  

  

 

• A common them from these women is that they were urged by others in the music festival scene industry not to report Scavone, but now feel vindicated since so many women have come forward.

 

• People in the industry said that they knew he had a reputation for being scummy with vendors, but that the Worcester community as a whole had no idea that he was an alleged sexual predator.

 

• Since these allegations have been levied many bands and venues have disassociated themselves with Scavone.

Our statement on Disc Jam: Tony Scavone is a fucking asshole scumbag.

— The Phunion (@thephunion) June 17, 2019

 

• Scavone made a brief appearance on the post in a vain attempt to defend himself, but ended up taking down both his personal Facebook page and the Disc Jam Facebook page shortly after the accusations started rolling in.

We will keep you updated with this story if any more information comes out.

 

 

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