Following the announcement of an artist booking for Infest 2026 a number of people have made comments online and sent anonymous emails suggesting that Infest is creating an unsafe, hostile and triggering environment for some attendees due to the presence of a “dangerous predator” and “domestic abuser”.
Infest works very hard to create a safe environment for everyone attending the event and given the serious nature of these concerns we have been looking into this issue as a matter of urgency. We absolutely have a duty of care to our attendees, however we also have to protect ourselves legally and pulling an act without an investigation could open us up to accusations of a breach of contract.
We have reached out to both parties, other mentioned parties, domestic abuse organisations and the police. Obviously, as a small volunteer organisation we have limited resources and are bound by GDPR regulations on how much information we can request and what we can be supplied with.
Using the information provided to us by both parties involved, we made enquiries as to whether we could apply for information on behalf of attendees at our event using the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (Claire’s Law). Unfortunately this scheme can only be used by concerned partners and ex partners to release information about a persons previous history of violence or abuse. We informed those concerned that they had the right to request this information but we as an organisation do not have that right.
Both parties made Subject Action Requests (SAR) to the relevant police authorities.
One SAR showed that one individual made a report about the other but there appears to be no record of any follow up in terms of further investigations, cautions, charges, convictions or any other reports.
The other SAR shared with us by the individual accused has no mention of any police interactions related to the other individual. There is no record of any other investigations, cautions, charges or convictions related to this other individual.
We appreciate that the fact that no further action being taken does not mean that nothing happened,
We also appreciate that making a report does not mean something did happen.
Of course the criminal justice system is far from perfect and sometimes the Police get things wrong, however we have not been able to find any corroborating evidence related to these accusations. If anyone has further information or evidence related to this particular case we would encourage them to report this to the Police.
We take our duty of care to our attendees very seriously and in light of what we have been able to ascertain we have found no evidence to suggest that the individual performing will be a danger to any attendee of the 2026 event. As an organisation we will of course reassess this particular case based on any new information that comes to light.
Finally we would like to reassure everyone who attends the event that your safety is important to us and if there are any issues or concerns at the event, report them to the Infest team or the venues security staff.