dahviereceipts

[dahviereceipts]

“Garrett Ecstàsy” (Garrett Marshall McLaughlin) / Torres’ second arrest

(NOTE: The subject of “Garrett Ecstàsy” and Jesus David Torres’ second arrest have been merged into one post, as the incident is directly related to Garrett’s first-hand experience.)

Former “Blood on the Dance Floor” singer, the predecessor of Jayy Von Monroe, was recruited by Jesus David Torres / “Dahvie Vanity” through Myspace in 2008 (aged 18) for uncredited backing vocals (the “screamer”) on the album ‘It’s Hard to Be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World’, and was later incorporated as the band’s second lead vocalist with Torres, releasing 3 extended plays and one single over the summer of 2009.

Torres Arrested - 09/13/2009 in Denver, CO

On the night of September 12 2009, Torres raped a 15 year old girl on the band’s tour bus before their 6pm “all ages” show at ‘The LifeSpot’ venue in Denver, Colorado. The police were called shortly after and Torres was taken into custody, booked on September 13th.

(BOTDF Myspace 09/12/2009 via WebArchive)

(Garrett’s personal Twitter, during or shortly after Torres’ arrest)

Garrett McLaughlin later described the incident in detail to the Huffington Post in late 2018, extrapolating on the events leading up to Torres’ arrest:

Torres was arrested in 2009, apparently after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her at one of his shows. In a video on BOTDF’s YouTube channel, he later claimed the woman “seemed to have underlying mental issues.” Police took him into custody, then released him.

Witnesses who were present on the night of the alleged incident tell a different story. It was Sept. 12, 2009, and BOTDF was performing in Denver, according to McLaughlin, who was still singing alongside Torres at the time, and a woman named Elyse who did not want to use her full name, who was selling BOTDF merchandise at the show. That night, they said, is what led McLaughlin to quit the band and accuse Torres of pedophilia.

After setting up at the venue, McLaughlin said, he and a friend walked out to the parking lot to hang out in BOTDF’s tour van until the show started. To their surprise, the van had been moved to a location “where it was dark and no one was around.” They opened the door and found Torres inside with two girls who appeared to be “really young” teenagers, he said.

Torres “chased us away. He didn’t want us near the van,” said McLaughlin, who said he then went back inside the venue. Time passed, and it was getting close to show time, but according to McLaughlin, Torres was nowhere to be found, and the tour van was gone. McLaughlin said he was starting to worry that something was wrong, but Torres showed up just in time and the group went onstage.

“We play probably two songs and then the lights come on in the building. The sound gets cut off. We’re done. They won’t let us play. There’s somebody up at the sound stage motioning for us to get off the stage,” said McLaughlin. “In my head I’m just wondering, ‘What did Dahvie do?’”

The band stormed through the crowd to figure out what was going on. Police cars had surrounded the building, and an officer asked Torres for his name, then handcuffed him against a wall, according to McLaughlin and Elyse. Once outside, McLaughlin said, he noticed that one of the girls he’d seen in the van was sitting on the ground, speaking to a police officer and pointing at Torres. She sobbed and said Torres had forced her to perform oral sex, McLaughlin said. 

In its story, MetalSucks published an unverified copy of what appears to be an arrest record from a Colorado police department documenting a sexual assault committed by Torres. It’s dated Sept. 13, 2009, the day after BOTDF performed in Denver. HuffPost was unable to verify the document’s legitimacy or confirm if a charge was ever filed. A representative at the Colorado Bureau of Investigations would not say if any arrest records existed in Torres’ name, and noted that sealed court records are not accessible to journalists or the public.

(via Huffington Post)

This is the aforementioned arrest record in question procured by BVTV (”ak99superstar” on Youtube), a local band-news YouTube channel that covered the initial incident and reactions from the fellow bands on the tour following Torres’ arrest.

(Original Youtube Video 11/26/2009 via WebArchive)

The videos about Torres were removed after an agreement was made to do an interview with him. It is unknown if or when this interview actually took place, or if copies of the original videos still exist.

Torres released from police custody - 09/20/2009

After approximately 6 days in police custody, the victim refused to press charges against Torres and he was released to the public.

The refusal for the 15 year old victim to pursue the case against him, including taking a rape kit, is Torres’ primary defense that the allegation against him was illegitimate. As of 04/10/2020 the victim in this case has yet to come forward. However, it is important to keep in mind that there are substantial barriers for pursuing rape charges, especially for young teenagers: the cost of legal defense, the cost of a rape kit and related medical bills (even with insurance), and the prospect of revisiting the assault multiple times in court are common reasons for victims to drop their cases.

On September 21, 2009 he made a blog post to his Myspace talking about the situation.

(Myspace post via WebArchive)

Upon his release, Torres was banned from performing the remaining dates on the ‘OMFG Tour’. Garrett and the other bands on the tour, including ‘Electric Valentine’ and ‘Weston Buck’, concluded the tour without him in lieu of cancelling. (Videos: Garrett performs shows without Torres [1] [2] [3] [4]) 

Torres was released from police custody on September 20th, immediately taking to Myspace to denounce Garrett.

Torres Slanders Garrett 

Immediately following his release from police custody, Torres posted a blog entry to the band’s Myspace account proclaiming that Garrett had been “kicked out” of Blood on the Dance Floor for various offenses. 

He alleges that Garrett was a frequent user of unspecified drugs, “stole” the band’s tour van, “stole” Blood on the Dance Floor from him by performing the remaining shows without him, deleted unreleased recordings, “wrecked” the tour van, and “stole” money from him and the band.

(Original Myspace via WebArchive) 

Due to Myspace’s degradation over the years, and the lack of a WebArchive entry, the link to Garrett’s original testimonial/response to this post on Myspace no longer is accessible. However, the text was mirrored on an unrelated party’s blogspot (now defunct):

There are still surviving tweets online from Garrett regarding the post on his now-abandoned Twitter account:

Electric Valentine reached out to this archive on Twitter with screenshots of Torres threatening them over text messages after being kicked off the tour.

References to the case in Torres’ videos

Torres has made multiple “response” videos in the past that attempt to address this particular arrest. Due to the lack of accessible information, he claims that this is the one and only case ever brought against him, and further relies on the common misinformation that the victim in this case was either Damien Leonhardt (“Jessi Slaughters”), a “17 year old” with “mental issues” - alleging that the victim was within age-of-consent laws due to perceived inaccessibility of the information about the case, and that the refusal for the victim to pursue further charges is automatically an admission of the allegation being “false”.