“When I was 16 or 17 he gave me a CD of songs and asked me to write and sing over them. I took the songs home and wrote lyrics and melodies and we recorded the tracks I liked. But even with music, he created a toxic environment that I often felt I had to go along with. While recording our first EP, the recording engineer sexually harassed me while we were in the studio. Claudio laughed at me and pressured me to go along with it. He called our first single “Alice Practice” and said my vocals were a mic test. He concocted that story and told press it was an “accidental” recording, intentionally diminishing my role in its creation. It was another way of putting me down and preying on my insecurities.
“Soon after, we were invited to tour the UK. I was overwhelmed by how quickly things were happening for us, and Claudio convinced me to drop out of high school only 2 credits away from graduation. As we started to gain attention, he began abusively and systematically targeting my insecurities and controlling my behavior: 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. Our fame grew in Crystal Castles but he didn’t feel he was getting the recognition he thought he deserved.
“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. He took pictures of my bruises and posted them online. I tried to leave, and he swore that it would never happen again, that he would never physically abuse me again. More severe psychological and emotional abuse took its place.
“He controlled everything I did. I wasn’t allowed to have my own phone or my own credit card, he decided who my friends were, read through my private emails, restricted my access to social media, regulated everything I ate. He berated me and yelled at me, telling me that I was a joke, that all the people that came to our shows were only interested in his instrumentals and that I was ruining the band. He broke glass shower doors to frighten me, he locked me into rooms. He told me that my feminism made me 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 to be in the band anymore.
“I was miserable and my lyrics indirectly spoke to the pain and oppression that I was enduring. But as is sometimes the case in abusive relationships, his cruelty was often followed by kindness. He was very good at keeping his terrible treatment of me private. He was charming sometimes, he was hyper protective and most of all I loved the band we had together. But he often told me how replaceable I was. He’d even tell me that he was actively looking for someone to replace me. He kept me insecure and on edge, and then would tell me that he was the only one it the world that believed in me. He told me it was us against everyone, because everyone else thought I was a loser, a joke, a talentless dancing clown. I believed him. I was suicidal for years.
“Leaving Crystal Castles was the single most difficult decision I’ve ever made—that band was everything to me. My music, my performances and my fans were all I had in the world. I gave that up and started over not because I wanted to but because I had to. As difficult as it was, I knew that leaving was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It has taken me years to recover from enduring almost a decade of abuse, manipulation and psychological control. I am still recovering.”
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