#Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek Accused of Sexual Misconduct by Seven More Women

In the seven months since Pitchfork published an article detailing claims of sexual misconduct against Mark Kozelek, seven more women have come forward with similar allegations about the Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters singer-songwriter. These new allegations include nonconsensual nudity and masturbation, unwanted touching, and one claim of nonconsensual intercourse. They span two decades, from Kozelek’s beginnings as a professional musician in the early 1990s with Red House Painters to the peak of Sun Kil Moon’s popularity in the 2010s.

Patterns of behavior emerge across the accusations from both articles. Several women allege that Kozelek brought them to hotel rooms with assurances that he wouldn’t try anything sexual, then suddenly removed his clothes and made advances. Many of the women were Sun Kil Moon or Red House Painters fans who first met Kozelek while attending one of his shows.

When possible, Pitchfork also interviewed friends and family members in whom the women confided about the alleged incidents, and reviewed copies of texts and emails between Kozelek and the accusers.

Kozelek denied the allegations in a statement issued to Pitchfork through his attorney. “Apparently an effort is being made by those with an agenda to renew and recirculate the same kinds of false allegations and innuendo that were the subject of my prior statement in August 2020,” it reads, referring to Kozelek’s earlier denial of the claims in Pitchfork’s initial reporting. “I continue to categorically deny that I engaged in the inappropriate incidents falsely depicted in the media. I intend to vigorously defend myself against these untruthful allegations and to pursue and protect my rights in the event that false and defamatory statements are disseminated or published.”

Ella

Ella first met Kozelek when she attended a Sun Kil Moon concert at the Sinclair nightclub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 7, 2017. She was a 20-year-old college student; Kozelek was 50 at the time. Standing in the front row, she passed him a letter about how much his music meant to her, and he asked her to come up and hold a sheet of lyrics for him while he sang, she says. (She requested to use a pseudonym for this article.)

According to Ella, Kozelek invited her to dinner the following night, and from there to his hotel room. Throughout their conversations, she was dizzied by her sudden closeness to this artist she admired. She says that he stressed repeatedly that he saw her as a potential friend and nothing more, seeming eager to dispel any ideas she might have about his sexual interest in her.

Ella, an aspiring visual artist, showed Kozelek some of her work while at his hotel, and he responded with enthusiasm, she says. Soon after, she claims, he suddenly began undressing, and then got in the shower. “He came out in a towel and he asked me if I would have sex with him,” Ella says. “And he made it sound theoretical, but it wasn’t.”

She told him no, she says, but he wouldn’t drop the issue, complaining that women her age didn’t find men his age attractive. She said she was ready to call a cab home, and he pleaded with her to stay the night, expressing concern about the danger of traveling home alone at that hour. She reluctantly stayed, she says, and they watched a movie together. After the movie, Ella took her pants off and got into bed, attempting to sleep. “I was scared,” she says. “I felt trapped.”

Kozelek began touching her sexually, she says, and she told him no multiple times. “Because I knew he was going to do it anyway, I finally said, ‘Can you at least use a condom?’ I wasn’t on birth control. He called room service and they brought him a condom. I think he put it on. And then he raped me. I said, ‘please don’t.’ And he did.” She says Kozelek made a chilling remark after it was over: “That was great. I loved when you were pushing me away.”

Pitchfork reviewed a photo of Ella onstage with Kozelek, as well as phone records of their subsequent calls and texts. Ella’s boyfriend at the time of the incident confirmed to Pitchfork that Ella had told him about her plans to hand Kozelek a letter at the concert, and updated him the next day as she met the singer-songwriter for dinner and went to his hotel. A few months later, he says, Ella told him that Kozelek had forced nonconsensual intercourse that night. Ella’s sister also recalled to Pitchfork a conversation months after the alleged incident, in which Ella shared details about the sexual encounter and described it as “nonconsensual.”

Laura

Like Ella’s, Laura’s first encounter with Kozelek began with an invitation to join him onstage. (She also requested to use a pseudonym in this article.) A singer-songwriter herself, she met Kozelek at a show in Australia in 2017, when she was 37 and he was 50. He brought her up from the crowd to sing his song “I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love” with him—audience duets on the song were a somewhat regular occurrence in his show at the time—and she accompanied him on four more songs after that. (Pitchfork reviewed video of Laura onstage singing with Kozelek.) According to Laura, he asked her to have a drink after the show, and said he’d prefer his hotel over the local pub she suggested. She figured she’d be socializing in a group with his bandmates at the lobby bar, she says, but when they arrived, Kozelek brought her to his room alone.

Less than 10 minutes after they arrived at his room, he went to the bathroom with the door open, and emerged in only a T-shirt and underwear, Laura says. Soon after that, she says, he got fully undressed, without any prompting from her. She says she expressed her discomfort and got up to leave, but he pleaded with her to stay the night, and she reluctantly agreed. He asked her if he could masturbate in front of her, and if she would have sex with him, she says. She told him no, she says, but he continued asking, seeming to feel entitled because she’d previously told him she admired his acting performance in the 2005 film Shopgirl. “But why? Is it because I’m old? Am I not attractive to you? You have to tell me why you won’t fuck me. You’ve seen my movies,” she says she remembers him saying.

“As a way of appeasing him in the moment,” Laura says, she allowed him to spoon her. He made a few more sexual comments, she says, and after she made it clear she wasn’t interested, he eventually fell asleep. In the morning, Laura drove to her sister’s house and told her what had happened, her sister confirmed to Pitchfork.

Anjuli

Anjuli, who requested that her last name be withheld from this article, had dinner with Kozelek after introducing herself to him at a Sun Kil Moon show in San Francisco in 2014. (Pitchfork reviewed screenshots of texts about the dinner between her and Kozelek.) He offered to walk her back to her apartment, then asked to use her bathroom when she told him she was going inside, she says. When he emerged, she says, his pants were at his ankles. He began grabbing at her, she claims, attempting to pull her toward him and place her hands on his body, continuing even as she protested multiple times that she was uncomfortable with the situation and wanted him to stop. When she told him she was calling him a cab, he asked her if he could masturbate on her bed, and she said no, but he got into her bed anyway, she claims. Eventually, the cab arrived, and Anjuli had to “basically push him out the door,” she says.

“It was the most excruciating period of time between when I called the cab and when the cab finally arrived, because it was like, nonstop him trying to force me to touch him,” she says. Like Laura, she says Kozelek seemed to feel entitled to a sexual encounter because of her fandom: “Like, he bought me dinner, and he’s doing me a favor because I’m this big fan.” A friend of Anjuli’s confirmed to Pitchfork that she told him about the encounter a few weeks after it allegedly occurred.

Anjuli had been a devoted Sun Kil Moon fan, but can no longer tolerate his music after meeting him. “I have a visceral reaction if I hear him,” she says. “I had to get rid of everything—I had his book of lyrics and all of his CDs and posters. And I just threw it all away.”

Rasa

Rasa, who requested to use only her first name in this article, claims that Kozelek nonconsensually masturbated in front of her in a hotel room in the European city where she lived. The alleged incident took place in 2017, when she was 24 and Kozelek was 50. She first made contact with Kozelek at a concert the previous year, where she handed him a comic that one of his songs had inspired her to draw, with her email address attached. He thanked her via email and invited her to contact him if she ever wanted to attend a show in the future. When she saw a scheduled performance in her city—she requested that the location be obscured in this article—she took him up on the offer.

They had lunch together on the day of the concert, and returned to his hotel room afterward. Kozelek had kissed her before the performance, and repeatedly asked her to spend the night at his hotel, but assured her that he would not make sexual advances, she says. She was aware that he was interested in her, she says, and open to some sort of relationship herself. Still, she alleges, he was sexually aggressive in ways that violated her consent.

In the hotel room after the show, Kozelek stripped naked and “pounced on me,” Rasa says. She went along with his kisses at first, she says, but repeatedly pushed back and said no when he attempted to escalate the encounter beyond that point. He then began masturbating.

The following morning, Kozelek asked Rasa to travel with him and the band to their next show, repeating an invitation he’d made the previous day. After first expressing her reservations, she agreed that morning, a decision she now ascribes to feeling starstruck, short on sleep, and pressured by his insistence on her company. “He mentioned me going with him even before we went to the show,” she says. “And when I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s too much,’ Mark insisted, ‘Why not? You’re young, live a little.’”

Rasa says she recalls feeling uneasy after traveling with the band. “I felt this pressure to be happy, even though I wasn’t. Like, to be pleasant,” she says. “And I did feel slavish to him, because at that moment, I didn’t really have money to go back on my own.” That night in Kozelek’s hotel room, Rasa says, they had a consensual sexual interaction. At one point he asked her to have unprotected penetrative sex, she says, but was not coercive when she refused to have intercourse. When she awoke and departed for her plane home, she says, they each told one another “I love you.” In the following weeks, Rasa and Kozelek exchanged a few affectionate emails. By the time she had processed the experience, she says, his responses had tapered off.

Several months later, in February 2018, Rasa detailed her discomfort with the experience in an email to Kozelek, which Pitchfork reviewed. “Masturbating next to someone who didn’t consent is not right even if that person is in bed with you. Touching someone who says no is not okay,” she wrote. “I believed you. I thought we were literally just going to sleep next to each other. I didn’t feel assaulted back then, because I was taken by surprise. I guess I freaked out, but the fact that I liked you made me stay. After all, I was staying with Mark Kozelek. You used your position. You used your authority to try to get something that you wanted from me.”

Kozelek responded with an email that cited her continued travel with the band after the incident, according to a copy of the message that Rasa provided to Pitchfork. “I don’t recall anything non consensual…i recall things differently. a different tone, than what you are describing. i recall laughter, playfulness, flirtation,” the message reads in part. “If the situation was as bad as what you described, you would not have opted to make the trip to [the next stop on the European tour] with me, the next day. 5 people saw you come along, and we shared dinner with others.”

“For me, the worst fact was not him masturbating next to me or trying to touch me; it was much more how eloquently he groomed me, and how confused I was after all of that. He made me feel so special,” Rasa says. “I was honestly convinced he loved me, and I was in love with him. It took me so long to actually realize what he did was wrong.”

Connie C.

Connie C., a locally celebrated singer and cabaret performer in San Francisco, had asked Red House Painters to open for her while the band was finding its feet in the early ’90s, and dated Kozelek briefly in the summer of 1992. In April of the following year, she says, Kozelek invited her to sing with him in a series of radio performances on a publicity tour of Europe. Their romantic relationship had ended, and Connie was engaged to another man, but she and Kozelek remained friendly. He presented the invitation as a gesture of thanks for the support she’d offered early in his career, she says, and promised her she’d have her own hotel room in each city they visited.

When they arrived in London, the first stop of the tour, Connie learned that she did not have her own room, and would be bunking with Kozelek, she says. She requested a cot from the front desk, and she says Kozelek seemed angered by her unwillingness to share a bed with him. The same situation arose repeatedly as the tour commenced, she says, and in several cities she heard what she believes was the sound of Kozelek masturbating in bed while she attempted to sleep in her cot. “I could hear it every night. I’d have to put the pillow over my head,” she says. “He did it several times: He did it in Paris; he did it in Hamburg. The more this happened, the grosser I felt. And I wanted to go home, but I didn’t have enough money to get home.”

According to Connie, Kozelek eventually told her he would be giving the radio performances without her accompaniment. “As it became apparent that I wasn’t going to sleep in the same bed with him, then those opportunities began to dwindle,” she says. “He assured me I would get my own room, and that he respected that I was getting married. In the back of my head, I was thinking, this is a bad idea. But it’s hard when somebody says, ‘I’m going to take you to Europe for free, and I’m going to introduce you to all these people and help you out.’”

Upon returning to the United States, Connie had a conversation with Kozelek about his alleged behavior, she says. He offered to refer her to a therapist, she says. She also confided to a close friend about Kozelek’s behavior shortly after they returned from the trip, the friend confirmed to Pitchfork. “I remember her just being really miserable, and feeling really broken in a way that I had never seen her before,” the friend says.

Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald

Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald and Kozelek had maintained a platonic friendship for years after first meeting at a Red House Painters show in San Francisco in 1995. In 2008, the two spent a day together in Melbourne, where he was performing that night. At one point, she says, he asked her if she’d ever been attracted to or romantically interested in him, and she told him firmly that she hadn’t.

According to Lewis-Fitzgerald, despite this signal from her, Kozelek asked her later that day if he could masturbate in front of her, while the two were in his hotel room for what he assured her would be a brief stop before parting ways. Lewis-Fitzgerald shared this story to a friend two weeks later, the friend confirmed to Pitchfork.

Lewis-Fitzgerald was shocked and distressed by Kozelek’s request, she says. She says she asked him, “Who says yes to that?” and that he said many women had said yes in the past. Years later, reading news articles about men who were accused of nonconsensual masturbation, including Pitchfork’s earlier reporting about Kozelek, led her to consider that exchange in a new light. “At the time I was like, well, maybe they’re into that,” she says. “But now, after having read that article, I wonder how many of those were entirely consensual.”

Claire

Claire, who requested to use a pseudonym in this article, met Kozelek at the 2014 Newport Folk Festival. He was performing, and she was attending in a professional capacity with access to the backstage area. One night after the festival, they made plans to hang out at the hotel where they were both staying, and she says she suggested that they meet by the pool, hoping that the public place would convey her disinterest in a sexual encounter. He asked her to come with him to drop something off in his room, she says, and assured her, “I’m too old to try to fuck you.”

Once inside, she says, Kozelek announced that he was going to take a bath, and did so with the bathroom door open. He returned to the room in only his underwear, and began repeatedly asking her to “fool around” and touching her butt and back, she says. “Have you been raped? Is that why you’re like this?” she says she remembers him asking after she rebuffed these advances. She left and returned to her room, she says, where she called her then-boyfriend and told him about the alleged incident. He recalls Claire telling him about Kozelek taking a bath while she was in the hotel room, and saying that she “didn’t know how to leave at that point.”

In spring 2019, a 25-year-old Sun Kil Moon fan reached out to Kozelek by email to thank him for his music. The woman, who requested to remain anonymous in this article, told Pitchfork that Kozelek replied to her fan letter via text about a week later. They exchanged texts sporadically for months, and at one point spoke on the phone for multiple hours, she says. In October 2019, they made plans to meet up for lunch in San Francisco.

The woman’s boyfriend, uneasy about the meeting, posted about it on Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole” board, a forum where users seek feedback on whether they are behaving inappropriately in a particular situation. He explained that his girlfriend had been in communication with “her favorite musician” and intended to meet up with him in person. Though he didn’t name the musician in the post, he soon received a series of private messages from someone who correctly guessed it was Kozelek. “I know who it is, you don’t even have to tell me,” the sender wrote. “I know because I met with him two years ago and it was a huge mistake. He is a bad dude. I would advise her not to get alone with him at any point.”

After the Reddit message, the woman told Kozelek that her boyfriend would be dropping her off at their planned lunch. Kozelek wasn’t comfortable with that arrangement, she says, and they called the meeting off. The message to her boyfriend was “a huge factor” in her decision not to go through with it, she tells Pitchfork. “When I saw that message, I just felt this sinking pit in my stomach.”

The sender was Ella, the woman who alleges Kozelek assaulted her in Massachusetts in 2017. She regularly searched for stories about him online after her own encounter, looking for other women like her. She says she contacted the boyfriend about his Reddit post because she “didn’t want anyone to go through what I went through.”

After Pitchfork’s first story about sexual misconduct allegations against Kozelek was published in August 2020, the woman who was the subject of the Reddit post understood more clearly what Ella meant in her message to her boyfriend, and contacted her directly to thank her. Ella, who was unaware of whether the meeting ever transpired, says she was “incredibly relieved” to receive the message.

“All that time, I had no idea,” she says. “I thought about her all the time.”

If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, we encourage you to reach out for support:

RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline
http://www.rainn.org
1 800 656 HOPE (4673)

Crisis Text Line
http://www.facebook.com/crisistextline (chat support)
SMS: Text “HERE” to 741-741