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Oct 16, 2017 By Christopher Roberts Ducktails

In May 2016 Real Estate announced that Matt Mondanile had left the band to focus on his Ducktails project. Real Estate went on to release a new album without Mondanile, In Mind, in March of this year via Domino. Meanwhile this month Mondanile self-released a new Ducktails album, Jersey Devil, on his own New Images label (he was previously also on Domino). Last week both Pitchfork and SPIN reported that Real Estate had issued a statement that Mondanile was actually fired from the band “in February 2016 when allegations of unacceptable treatment of women were brought to our attention.” Now SPIN has posted a lengthier article that details specific allegations from seven different women who allege that Mondanile sexually assaulted them in some manner.

The SPIN article states: “These on-the-record accounts, from seven women in total, largely involve allegations of Mondanile touching, kissing, and groping them without their consent. Two women alleged that Mondanile groped them while they were sleeping, and a third said that he did so while she was trying to sleep.”

Some women opted to not give their real name. One woman, who SPIN called Mary, was 19 when the incident happened (Mondanile was 28 at the time). She met Mondanile at a Real Estate show at the Brooklyn rock club Baby’s All Right in December 2013 and she was a fan of the band. After asking Mary to show him where the bathroom was, Mary says Mondanile pushed her into a broom closet and aggressively began kissing her. “He shoved me in there, shoved his tongue down my throat, then closed the door and left, and left me in there,” Mary told SPIN. “I was so shocked and distraught, because nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Afterward, I was crying and my friends were consoling me.”

Mary’s story doesn’t end there. Mondanile tracked her down to her college dorm in the West Village. She hoped he was there to apologize and she agreed to get in his car to go back to his apartment in Brooklyn to talk it through. Instead, Mary says he drove her to his family’s home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and refused to take her back to the city until the morning. As Mary tells SPIN: “I was afraid, and the entire night I was trying to stay awake…. It was five in the morning, and he kept trying to move closer to me, and I was moving away…. The best way I could describe it was that he was like a dog, dry-humping me.” The next morning, instead of taking Mary back to New York, he drove her to the train station. When Mary pointed out that she didn’t have her wallet, he threw a 20-dollar bill at her. “I was hysterically crying the entire train ride, because I knew it was wrong,” said Mary to SPIN. “I never wanted any of that. What seemed like a harmless interaction turned into a spiraling chain of events.”

Read the entire SPIN article for accounts from the other six women.

Real Estate have issued a new statement, explaining why they didn’t make the real reason behind Mondanile’s dismissal public when he was fired from the band: “At the time of Matt’s dismissal from the band, the women concerned requested privacy and we honored their wishes. We remain in complete support of the affected women, and will continue to stand by any decisions they make regarding the further pursuit of this matter.”

SPIN have tried to reach Mondanile for comment for several days, but he hasn’t responded.

Pitchfork says they spoke to Mondanile last week, before Real Estate’s initial statement, and he denied any wrongdoing, saying: “There’s nothing I can tell you other than that I’ve done nothing wrong at all. There’s nothing to find out about me at all.”

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