Vocalist of Pop Punk Act Night Skies and Visions Speaks About Sexual Harassment

Malaysian pop punk act Night Skies and Visions have been embroiled in sexual harassment allegations against their own band member. The band made the following statement announcing they will be taking a break to reel from all of this:

“Yesterday, an allegation surfaced regarding our band member, Megat Salleh. We came to a collective decision to officially announce that Megat Salleh is no longer a part of Night Skies & Visions.

The band had absolutely no idea that this has been happening and we are extremely disappointed and appalled at his actions.

We want to emphasize that we DO NOT condone any sexual harassment behaviors and offer our most sincere apologies to those affected by this situation.

Please note that Adam, Celyn & Dini had no knowledge of this matter until recently and did not partake in any of his actions.

We support and have endless amount of respect for those who came forward to shed light on this matter.

If you have experienced or been a victim of sexual harassment, please SPEAK UP as this has been going on for too long and is UNACCEPTABLE.

It affects not only OUR MUSIC SCENE, but our COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY as well.

For now, we will be on a hiatus to recover from this matter and will not be proceeding with any of our scheduled shows.

Again, we apologize to those affected and ask for your understanding to respect our right to privacy regarding this situation.

Adam, Celyn & Dini
Night Skies & Visions”

Then later their own band member, vocalist Celyn, recounted through a series of tweets her own experience with this piece of fucking shit, we mean, person. She kindly allowed us to piece all her tweets together in full post below as a way to continue to empower other victims anywhere on this planet to always come forward.

“At 5pm just now, my band Night Skies and Visions has officially announced that we are no longer affiliated with our former guitarist, Megat Salleh. This is a thread of my side of the story with Megat. Please understand that I am not writing this to add more personal damage upon him.

This thread solely serves as a reminder for me, you, and everyone else who is affected by sexual harassment one way or another, that not everyone deserves a second chance.

Please note that in this thread I am not speaking for the band, this is me speaking up as a victim, as a lady striving in a male-dominated music scene, as a person watching from the sideline knowing that I could have done something to prevent what has happened.

Megat, I have known him for 9 years now, ever since secondary school up until now, we were never close friends for the most part. But ever since he approached me to join the band, both of us along with my two other band mates became as close as a family can ever be.

As a band leader, he’s good at negotiating, always finding ways to push the band to be better. As a friend, he is nice but he can cross the line sometimes and make things uncomfortable. I always thought maybe that’s just how he is, I’m fine as long as he doesn’t cross my line.

Then, something happened. Ever since last December, whenever the band goes for jamming at our usual studio, and I wanted to go to the toilet, he will ALWAYS either says, “Eh Celyn, can I go first? Please x10”, or he would race to the toilet before I can enter.

The first time, I thought he had a stomachache. Though I know I was just gonna take a piss which won’t take longer than 1 minute, I didn’t bother so I just let him go first. But he went out of the toilet within half a minute. I was a lil thrown off. Wth was he doing in there?

Then he started to pull this shit on me every time we jam at that particular studio for 3 months continuously without fail. Of course I got weirded out after his 3rd attempt. To me this is not a joke anymore. So I started to be cautious.

One night, same thing happened. This time I found his phone sitting on top of the shelf in the toilet with his iPhone camera conveniently sticking out, putting an air freshener on top of it to hide it. I took this video to see what the camera would have captured.

When I saw his phone there, I panicked. I kind of suspected it, but still knowing that your close friend will ever think of doing that to you really fucks you up. My hands were shaking, lips were trembling. I didn’t pee of course, I flushed anyway to make it sound like I did.

I calmed myself down and told myself to act normal, as though nothing has happened. I went out and saw him standing right outside of the toilet door as if he was waiting for me to be done. I forced a smile at him, and walked away.

The worst part came after, when I looked over my shoulder, I saw him going back into the toilet to grab his phone.

Call me delusional, but you didn’t see how bad he was trying to make me use the toilet after him although I refused to, how suspicious he was when I asked him what was his phone doing in there and he told me to just leave it there, saying he’ll only retrieve it when I’m done.

I couldn’t get any evidence, maybe I didn’t try hard enough, maybe a part of me just refused to believe, maybe a part of me didn’t have the balls to face this. Then one day during March, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and confronted him on WhatsApp personally.

He was calm, he told me he didn’t know that I was uncomfortable with the toilet joke that he’s been pulling on me (he never made it look like a joke, he looked like his intestines were about to fall out every time he does it). He said he didn’t know I would take it the wrong way.

But I know what I saw, I didn’t buy his defense of course. So I approached my two other band mates about this problem, and they were completely thrown off, just like how I was. Their first reactions were, “I refuse to believe he is this kind of person.”

We then tried to investigate, we couldn’t find anything. To be fair, he had a window of time to get rid of all the shit he had on me after the night I confronted him.

When we met up and interrogated him he was calm, as though he has rehearsed the whole thing. While I was at the other end, screaming at him and crying because of the anger in me knowing that he might be able to just get away with it while I’m here losing sleep at night.

I knew I wasn’t going to get anything out of him, he was persistent. In the end we all came to a conclusion that we will not take any actions if there’s no proof. It wouldn’t be fair if I really was accusing him. Only Megat knows the truth. Nobody will know if he’s lying either.

So we talked it out and decided to leave this in the past and that it was just a misunderstanding.

The only reason I didn’t expose him at that point was because I have no proof. If you ask me, I can’t be 100% sure and tell it to everybody’s face that I was right and he was wrong.

The only thing that I could do was to give him a second chance, to hope that he learns from his mistakes, to hope that nobody will go through what I’ve been through, to hope that he tasted at least a little bit of the fear being as close as to getting caught red-handed.

You must be wondering, how can I still be in the same band as him after this incident. For the past three months I have never forgive nor forget about what he did to me. But my love for the band and the fact that he really did stop crossing my line made me try to look past it.

But yesterday, when I received the news, I wasn’t surprised honestly, I was sad, angry, disgusted not only at him, but at myself too. Especially when the other victim came forth to me and told me Megat has actually also tried the same thing on her.

If I could turn back time, I would have called him out publicly like what @zespoooky has done. You guys can go on with the bullshit replies about how I could’ve used my time to file a police charge against him instead of bashing him on social media.

Look, how much can you do when you have no evidence, no witnesses, no one to believe you. What’s left is only your gut feeling, the fear you felt, the sleep you have lost over this matter, while he is out there acting as though nothing’s wrong, searching for his next victim.

The only resort I have now is to use this platform to let you learn something from my mistake and know that sexual harassment is not a joke. I could be wrong, he could be wrong.

But at least now I can sleep at night, knowing I have done my part to let you guys know who to be careful of and to never trust a person completely even when he/she is your closest friend.”

As a website that supports our punk rock, hardcore, metal, indie community worldwide, there HAS to be part of our psyche an understanding of a line that should not be crossed. Fucking ever. Once we are NO longer creating a safe place for all the members of our community, we have FAILED.

Please listen to our peers – listen to what they have to say about what’s going on – if they say something about a friend of yours, be the bigger person and confront that person in whatever manner you feel will be appropriate to get an honest answer of that person.

More power to all the victims in the world – especially the ones who are remaining silent for fear of repercussions or fear of no one believing their story.

 

UniteAsia.org is an underground Asian music news website created for the sole purpose of supporting our own world. We support all bands and genres HOWEVER we do not support nor have any sympathy for homophobic, racist, sexist rhetoric in lyrical content or band material. UNITE ASIA!