A judge in Los Angeles ruled last week that Twitter has 10 days to hand over “identifying information” about the person behind an account that accused All Time Low guitarist Jack Barakat of sexual assault last year.
The band’s members filed a defamation lawsuit in February against three unidentified women who used social media in October 2021 to accuse them of sexual misconduct.
At the time, the musicians called the allegations “absolutely and unequivocally false.”
One anonymous woman set up the account @ATLstatement to accuse 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.
Barakat tweeted at the time that the claim is “100% false.”
Last week, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel S. Murphy ruled that All Time Low’s lawsuit cannot proceed without identifying the accuser. He said freedom of speech does not extend to defamation.
Twitter said it would only identify the person behind the account, which was deactivated, if ordered by a court.
The band’s lawsuit seeks to “identify the culprits, prove that the defamatory statements are false, and seek justice.”
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.
