Justin Sane, the previous lead singer of defunct political punk band Anti-Flag, has been ordered to pay $1.9 million to a girl 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 reply to the assault and sexual battery lawsuit introduced in 2023 by a girl 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 girls to return ahead with sexual misconduct claims towards Sarhadi in July 2023, inflicting the avowedly “straight-edge,” pro-feminism band Anti-Flag to break up 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. Choose Brenda Ok. Sannes has due to this fact entered default judgment towards Sane, a authorized final result the place defendants are discovered to have successfully admitted to the claims towards 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 deal with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, melancholy and nervousness stemming from the 2010 rape.
“It’s well-documented via the supporting affidavits that plaintiff has suffered excessive emotional misery and a whole upending of her life, as evidenced by her signs which have continued fifteen years because the date of the assault,” writes Choose Sannes.
The damages determine additionally consists of $750,000 in punitive damages, which a decide 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 decide. “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 underneath false pretenses,” provides Choose Sannes.
Sane couldn’t be reached for touch upon Friday (July 25). Sarhadi’s lawyer 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 Choose Sannes dismissed Sarhadi’s claims towards 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 had been shocked to listen to the complaints,” Slotnick says. “We had been very pleased that the decide acknowledged that the three former members of the band had nothing to do with Geever or his misdeeds.”
