...
Dark Mode Light Mode

Jingle Punks Founder Jared Gutstadt Sued For Sexual Assault

Jingle Punks Founder Jared Gutstadt Sued For Sexual Assault Jingle Punks Founder Jared Gutstadt Sued For Sexual Assault

[ad_1]

Jingle Punks and Audio Up Media founder Jared Gutstadt has been accused of sexual assault in a model new lawsuit filed by singer-songwriter and actor Mary Koons (recognized professionally as Scarlett Burke), who alleges that the influential authorities “trapped” her “in a cycle of manipulation, abuse and exploitation” for years.

Filed in Los Angeles Superior Courtroom on Tuesday (Dec. 31), the grievance alleges that Gutstadt “manipulated” Koons “proper right into a sexual relationship beneath the guise of advancing her career”; repeatedly sexually and bodily assaulted her; “isolated” her from expert options “till she complied collectively along with his sexual and logistical requires”; and “engaged in stalking, harassment, intimidation and retaliation” when she tried to flee his administration — throughout the course of “inflicting her vital and irreparable financial {{and professional}} damage.”

Audio Up and Anthem Leisure — the earlier mom or father agency of creative music firm Jingle Punks, which Gutstadt primarily based in 2008 — are moreover named as defendants throughout the lawsuit for allegedly facilitating Guststadt’s grip over Koons “by exerting substantial financial administration and decision-making power over [her] expert options and dealing conditions, notably by the use of her employment and contractual relationships with Jingle Punks.”

The allegations had been first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Gutstadt is best recognized for founding Jingle Punks and Audio Up, a podcast neighborhood he launched in 2020. Anthem (then commonly known as ole Music Publishing) acquired Jingle Punks in 2015, lastly leading to Gutstadt’s exit 4 years later. In July, Anthem and Gutstadt struck a 3 approach partnership enabling Audio As a lot as develop scripted podcasts from among the many publishing and psychological property belongings he created at Jingle Punks. In October, Jingle Punks was acquired by music licensing agency Slipstream along with Anthem’s completely different manufacturing music corporations. (Slipstream won’t be named as a defendant throughout the lawsuit.)

In response to the grievance — filed by L.A.-based lawyer Samuel Brown at Hennig Kramer along with Parisis Filippatos, Tanvir Rahman and Gabrielle Rosen Harvey at New York company Filippatos — Koons met Gutstadt in 2017, when she was 27 and he was 39. Over the next a variety of years, she alleges she endured “psychological manipulation, bodily violence and sexual abuse, leading to excessive emotional and psychological trauma,” primarily based on the grievance. “The relentless pattern of abuse culminated in an environment the place Ms. Koons felt she had no different nevertheless to regulate to Mr. Gutstadt’s sexual requires, to avoid the horrifying penalties of refusing him.”

Inside the lawsuit, Koons claims she met Gutstadt in Would possibly 2017 on the Peppermint Membership in West Hollywood, the place Gustadt’s band, The Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra, had a residency. That evening time, she says, Gutstadt “fixated” on her immediately and later had his assistant contact Koons’ then-manager to rearrange a gathering. Over the next a variety of weeks, Koons claims Gutstadt “launched a calculated advertising and marketing marketing campaign to groom” her, “bombarding her with messages about prestigious career options designed to captivate and overwhelm her,” inviting her to dinners with high-profile music and TV executives, and bringing her alongside on journeys to Nashville and Lake Tahoe “beneath the guise of collaborating on music duties” for Jingle Punks’ then-parent agency ole Music (later Anthem).

Koons says that inside per week of meeting Gutstadt, he requested that she doc “Let the Dice Roll,” a tune he was planning to pitch as a result of the theme for the Netflix sequence Girls Incarcerated. “This marked the start of her employment with Jingle Punks and her entrapment in his manipulative administration,” primarily based on the go nicely with. After Netflix acquired the tune, Koons claims Gutstadt paid her solely $500 (“a apparent underpayment that disregarded the price of her work and contribution”) and saved the rights to the tune for himself.

In response to the lawsuit, the first flash of Koons’ alleged abuse occurred “in or spherical” June 2017 after Gutstadt invited Koons to a dinner that had “a variety of distinguished music executives” in attendance. After driving her once more to her Studio Metropolis home, Koons says Gustadt “began incessantly pressuring” her to kiss him, and, when she obliged by agreeing to kiss him on the cheek, he “turned his head on the ultimate second, tricking her into kissing him on the lips.”

The subsequent month, Koons talked about that Gutstadt invited her to hitch him in Nashville for per week of writing intervals with him and his group, all through which she says she was put up in a seedy “motel alongside the interstate,” half an hour’s drive from the Thompson Resort the place Gutstadt was staying. Claiming she felt unsafe, she says she requested Gutstadt to maneuver her to a particular lodge and that, in its place of providing her alongside along with her private room, he manipulated her into staying in his. Koons claims the first sexual assault occurred that evening time, when she alleges Gutstadt “forcibly grabbed her hand and put it on his penis” and “ignored her pleas for him to stop.”

Over the next a variety of months, Koons says Gustadt “overwhelmed” her with “lavish presents and gestures,” along with freelance work options, and “deliberately isolated” her from supportive people in her life, collectively along with her supervisor, “who, like many others, acknowledged that one factor was fallacious and tried to separate” her from Gutstadt.

In a pattern of alleged abusive conduct that Koons says occurred over the next seven and a half years, she says Gutstadt’s “manipulative methods paved the way in which during which for his coercive sexual relationship” alongside along with her. “In or spherical” August 2017, she says Koons invited her to a Jingle Punks agency retreat in Lake Tahoe, solely to as soon as extra deceive her into sharing a lodge room with him and failing to include her in any of the “group developing actions.” It was spherical this time that Koons says she grew to turn out to be aware of a “misogynistic” custom at Jingle Punks and Anthem, along with an alleged incident on the Tahoe retreat by which a male Jingle Punks music supervisor tried to assault a female Jingle Punks composer in her lodge room. Koons claims that whatever the company being aware of the alleged incident, “no movement was taken” to deal with it.

Koons says she was subsequently “lured into an intermittent extramarital affair” with Gutstadt, who she says “would moreover at all times resort to coercion and manipulation to influence Ms. Koons she needed to stick to him in order to advance her career” — all whereas being denied the possibility to “reap some great benefits of her work” as a songwriter for the company and being cut back off from outside work options. In a single account, she says that when the Deutsch selling firm reached out to her with a proposal of labor, Gutstadt “grew to turn out to be enraged” and verbally abused her sooner than compelling her to tell the Deutsch authorities that any future supplies wished to be run by the use of Gutstadt and Jingle Punks.

In response to the lawsuit, Koons says that Gutstadt, in a bid at “entrenching his dominance over her,” in the end left her absolutely financially relying on him, after which she says “the abuse escalated significantly.” Each time she says she tried to launch his grip on her, he would allegedly lure her once more with worthwhile work options on high-profile duties, along with paid writing intervals for the movie Trolls and a chance to write down down for nation star Chris Stapleton.

Inside the fall of 2018, Koons says that after taking her to an Emmy Awards celebration, Gutstadt efficiently compelled her to have intercourse with him at his office after making her “actually really feel indebted to him” for the invite. “This was not consensual intercourse,” the lawsuit reads. That exact same October, she says Gutstadt manipulated her into signing a non-disclosure settlement (NDA) “not tied to any explicit mission” with Gutstadt or his agency. After signing it, she says Gustadt “warned her that if she ever spoke out, no person would think about her, and that breaching the NDA would not solely destroy her career nevertheless allow him to wreck her solely.” She claims that as a celebration to the NDA, ole Music (now Anthem) “exerted additional administration over Ms. Koons by proscribing her functionality to speak out” about Gutstadt’s alleged abuse.

Koons claims the abuse extra escalated after she signed the NDA and that she was compelled to take jobs with Gustadt, Jingle Punks, ole Music and Audio Up, along with by the use of signing a variety of agreements with the companies that served “to strip her of her creative possession” and deny her adequate financial compensation. In response to the lawsuit, one amongst these alleged agreements — a progress deal with Jingle Punks and ole Music for Make It Up As We Go, a podcast sequence based spherical Koons’ distinctive music — observed Koons efficiently “signing away her creative rights” to the mission and being paid merely $10,000, described as “a paltry and insulting amount that grossly undervalued her contributions and highlighted the settlement’s exploitative nature.”

The lawsuit comprises a variety of allegations of bodily abuse. In a single April 2019 incident described throughout the grievance, Koons claims that after allegedly protesting when Gutstadt “took most of the money” she earned from collaborating in a two-day Deutsch songwriting session, he “grew to turn out to be violent” and commenced hitting every her and her canine. In a single different alleged incident in October 2019, Koons claims that Gustadt “violently tackled her to the underside” after she tried to be taught textual content material messages between him and his partner.

In a single different account of alleged abuse, Koons claims that whereas recording two songs with him and one different songwriter at Audio Up’s Audio Chateau in L.A. in January 2022, she awoke in the middle of the evening time to go looking out Gutstadt “raping her in her sleep.” She claims Gutstadt raped her as soon as extra in September 2023 — whereas they’d been staying on the Langham Resort in Pasadena, Calif., all through an Audio Up writing retreat — after Gutstadt grew to turn out to be enraged when Koons “refused his sexual advances.”

All by way of Koons’ alleged relationship with Gutstadt, she says Anthem/ole Music “enabled” a convention of “harassment and coercion,” thereby “solidifying its complicity throughout the ongoing mistreatment” of Koons along with a variety of completely different female employees by Jingle Punks staffers.

“Mr. Gutstadt’s deliberate and vindictive conduct has marginalized Ms. Koons, stunting her expert progress and obstructing her visibility contained in the commerce,” the grievance reads, together with that she “has suffered and continues to bear from profound emotional distress,” along with post-traumatic stress dysfunction.

Koons is in search of compensatory damages, misplaced wages and earnings, a money judgment for “psychological ache and anguish and excessive emotional distress,” and punitive and exemplary damages, amongst completely different assist.

Representatives for Gutstadt, Anthem and Audio Up had not responded to Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.

[ad_2]

Add a comment Add a comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Submit Comment

Previous Post
2025 Golden Globes Awards Winners Predictions in Every Class

2025 Golden Globes Awards Winners Predictions in Every Class

Next Post
The place did this come from? Zack Baun’s Eagles breakout has the NFL on the lookout for the subsequent him

The place did this come from? Zack Baun's Eagles breakout has the NFL on the lookout for the subsequent him

Cookie Consent Banner by Real Cookie Banner