The members of All Time Low filed a libel lawsuit Thursday in California against three unidentified women who accused them of sexual misconduct.
When the allegations surfaced last October on social media, All Time Low slammed them as “absolutely and unequivocally false” in a statement and said the band was “seeking legal recourse.”
A woman on TikTok claimed a “famous pop-punk band” had her on their tour bus when she was only 13 years old, offered her beer and “tried to take my bra for their nasty collection.”
In its statement at the time, All Time Low said the TikTok video contains “glaring inconsistencies in the story” and is “an outright lie.”
Another woman set up a Twitter account to accuse lead guitarist Jack Barakat of repeated sexual assaults over six years starting when she was 15. “It became nearly a nightly occurrence for him and I to get drunk, do hard drugs and for him to touch me,” she alleged in a series of posts on Oct. 24.
Barakat tweeted at the time that the claim is “100% false.”
Another Twitter user then claimed there were 97 allegations against the All Time Low.
This week’s lawsuit aims to “identify the culprits, prove that the defamatory statements are false, and seek justice.” The band said it wants to “establish the unambiguous truth and quash these malicious lies so that they won’t be repeated in the future.”
All Time Low – Barakat, Alex Gaskarth, Zack Merrick and Rian Dawson – promised to donate proceeds from the lawsuit to charities that support sexual assault victims.
The lawsuit claims the accusations have “harmed the band, its members and their families, and the business of All Time Low."
In 2020, Justin Bieber filed a similar defamation lawsuit over social media posts that alleged sexual assaults in 2014 and 2015. The singer described them as “outrageous, fabricated lies.”