Music producer Bassnectar has failed to win dismissal of a lawsuit claiming he groomed, trafficked, and sexually abused underage girls. In a lengthy ruling issued Thursday, a federal judge said the case could proceed toward a trial set for February.
The electronic music DJ, whose legal name is Lorin Ashton, claimed in his dismissal motion that the three women suing him had lied about their ages to “deceive” him into believing they were at least 18 years old. He further claimed he never “enticed” the plaintiffs into underage sex and never paid them for sexual contact. In her 54-page ruling, the judge said those questions were best decided by a jury.
Ashton was first sued by plaintiffs Rachel Ramsbottom and Alexis Bowling in April 2021. A third plaintiff, Jenna Houston, joined the lawsuit in May 2021.
Ramsbottom alleges she began corresponding with Ashton online in 2012, when she was 17 and he was 34. She says she initially told him she was 18 but later “confessed” she was only 17. She claims he invited her to a Memphis hotel, had sex with her there, and then pulled a “wad of money” out of his backpack and handed it to her.
“The court finds that whether this money constituted payment or remuneration for sex constitutes a jury question,” U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger wrote in her ruling.
Bowling says she met Ashton online when she was 17 and initially claimed she was a year older. She says he clearly understood her real age when she was turned away from a show because she was under 18. “Alexis reached out to Bassnectar to see if there was anything he could do, but he could not help her. Instead, Bassnectar directed her and arranged for her to meet him near his hotel,” the lawsuit states. Bowling claims she subsequently had sex with Ashton at a Kentucky hotel when she was still a minor and that he gave her an envelope containing $1,600.
Houston alleges she started communicating with Ashton online when she was 16 years old. She says he invited her to a Ritz Carlton hotel in Philadelphia and initiated sex with her as soon as she walked in his room. She claims he later booked her flights to have sex with him all over the country.
The judge said in her ruling that while Houston allegedly “misled” Ashton about her age, the question remained whether he “deliberately ignored” what he saw with his own eyes. “The court finds that a jury must resolve the question of whether Ashton deliberately disregarded obvious facts from which he should have known that Houston was still a minor when they met,” the judge wrote. She said that based on photos of Houston from around the time she first met Ashton, it was possible that “no reasonable person would have believed she was eighteen or older.” The judge even cited deposition testimony from Ashton in which he allegedly agreed she “does not look like she’s 19 years old” in a photograph she allegedly emailed him.
Judge Trauger did reject some allegations. For instance, she ruled that Ramsbottom failed to show that she received any payments after she turned 18, so she could not accuse Ashton of sex trafficking after she became an adult. The judge also rejected claims Ashton used “force, fraud or coercion” on any of the women or that he benefitted “from participation in a venture” that he knew or should have known engaged in sex trafficking.
“Our clients are very happy that the court agreed with us that this case must be heard by a jury. Rachel, Alexis, and Jenna all look forward to their day in court, yet another step on their journey to justice in this case,” the plaintiffs’ attorney M. Stewart Ryan tells Rolling Stone.
In a statement, Ashton’s lawyers Mitch Schuster and Kimberly S. Hodde tell Rolling Stone, “We welcome yesterday’s ruling.” The attorneys add, “The judge’s decision to dismiss multiple causes of action is very significant and, as the ruling indicated repeatedly, while the law dictates that other claims are allowed to proceed to trial, the evidence supporting them is extremely thin. This is an important step forward and we look forward to completing Lorin Ashton’s exoneration at trial.”
Ashton has vehemently denied the accusations since they surfaced. He referred to them as “fictitious claims” in a letter sent to Rolling Stone in 2023. A former staffer for Bassnectar described the artist as a “narcissistic tyrant” in a Rolling Stone interview. “It was a dictatorship,” they said. “In which he’d say what he wanted to happen and you would need to do it or face a berating phone call that would gaslight you…. We were mice in a maze of pain: You’d just go the way you had to go, [because] everything else is gonna be a world of suffering.”