Wizard rock allegations
Having been preoccupied with Marauder Junior, I only now just found out that a number of sexual abuse/sexual coercion allegations were made against some people in the wizard rock community a couple of months ago. Although Mr. Marauder and I had a wrock band called The First Task Is Dragons and I wrote for Wizrocklopedia for a while, I was never "in the wrock community" outside of online activities and therefore I don't personally know anyone involved. The band consisted of Mr. Marauder and me recording random stuff in my old apartment during law school, before we got married, and what I did for Wizrocklopedia was mostly round up new bands to add to the master list, along with doing a few update posts about new songs or albums. Because I don't know anyone involved, I don't feel qualified to comment on the allegations, but there is one thing I want to say.
In reading reports of people claiming they were sexually abused or exploited by wizard rockers - there are a lot of links here and here, with more on the topic here and here - there seems to be a prevailing theme. People didn't want to come forward with what had happened to them because their allegations involved popular wrockers. I quit wizard rock partly because I'm not very good at it (which I always knew) and partly because life took over, but the other part was because, for a community that was supposed to be so big on love and friendship and acceptance, wizard rock always felt really cliquish to me. It seemed like a lot of the fandom was centered around telling the BNFs how great and talented they were, and around in-jokes between bands and band members. It was to a level that I've never personally seen in other parts of Harry Potter fandom, and after a while it was like hanging around a group of people, all close friends with each other, who weren't particularly interested in hanging around you. Therefore, it doesn't surprise me at all that people didn't want to come forward. In other subsets of HP fandom - this is a generalization based on my personal experience - the subset, whether it's the ship, the character, or whatever, is what the fans are there for. In wizard rock, it seemed like the BNFs were a lot of what the fans were there for, as opposed to the music or the community at large. In retrospect, it almost seems like wizard rock was a perfect breeding ground for this kind of behavior - several male BNFs in their twenties or older, female fans who could be as young as high schoolers, and an attitude that "we're all one big happy family here and we don't criticize each other." These allegations are not nearly as much of a shock to me as they could have been.
In reading reports of people claiming they were sexually abused or exploited by wizard rockers - there are a lot of links here and here, with more on the topic here and here - there seems to be a prevailing theme. People didn't want to come forward with what had happened to them because their allegations involved popular wrockers. I quit wizard rock partly because I'm not very good at it (which I always knew) and partly because life took over, but the other part was because, for a community that was supposed to be so big on love and friendship and acceptance, wizard rock always felt really cliquish to me. It seemed like a lot of the fandom was centered around telling the BNFs how great and talented they were, and around in-jokes between bands and band members. It was to a level that I've never personally seen in other parts of Harry Potter fandom, and after a while it was like hanging around a group of people, all close friends with each other, who weren't particularly interested in hanging around you. Therefore, it doesn't surprise me at all that people didn't want to come forward. In other subsets of HP fandom - this is a generalization based on my personal experience - the subset, whether it's the ship, the character, or whatever, is what the fans are there for. In wizard rock, it seemed like the BNFs were a lot of what the fans were there for, as opposed to the music or the community at large. In retrospect, it almost seems like wizard rock was a perfect breeding ground for this kind of behavior - several male BNFs in their twenties or older, female fans who could be as young as high schoolers, and an attitude that "we're all one big happy family here and we don't criticize each other." These allegations are not nearly as much of a shock to me as they could have been.