Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Former Real Estate Guitarist Matt Mondanile Detailed

Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP

Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Former Real Estate Guitarist Matt Mondanile Detailed

Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP

Among last week’s many troubling accounts of entertainment-adjacent sexual misconduct was the news that guitarist Matt Mondanile was dismissed from Real Estate last year due to “unacceptable treatment of women” and not merely so he could focus on his solo project, Ducktails. Today SPIN has published a lengthier report detailing multiple specific allegations. In summary:

These on-the-record accounts, from seven women in total, largely involve allegations of Mondanile touching, kissing, and groping them without their consent. Two women alleged that Mondanile groped them while they were sleeping, and a third said that he did so while she was trying to sleep.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the seven accounts:

According to Mary, after about 10 minutes of conversation, Mondanile asked her to show him to the bathroom of the venue. She explained to him how to find it, and he told her she’d misunderstood him: he wanted her to show him where the bathroom was, not tell him. She says that she agreed, somewhat uneasily, and led him down the hall. When they passed the door to a broom closet, she said, Mondanile opened it, physically forced her inside, and began aggressively kissing her.

SPIN also spoke to a woman named Elizabeth, Mondanile’s former bandmate from more than a decade ago at Hampshire College, who reported a long pattern of harassment: “He would say, ‘I just took a Viagra, I can’t help myself,’” she said. “He basically molested me in my sleep. My way of eventually dealing with that was to lock my door.”

The story details several other similar incidents from an 11-year period ranging from 2005 to 2016. Although Mondanile asked SPIN on Friday to delay publishing their report until he could comment, he has not responded to their request for comment on any of these incidents. In a private message to one of his alleged victims obtained by SPIN, he wrote, “I’ve learned from my mistakes and been very good for a long time.”

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