Music

Mumford & Sons boycott Swedish festival after 17 sexual assaults reported

by Richard Howard

Mumford and Sons have vowed not to return to a Swedish music festival until changes are made in the wake of a spate of sexual assaults which occurred at the event last weekend. A shocking 17 assaults including five rapes were reported during Bravalla, the country’s largest music festival.

Bravalla is touted as Sweden’s “most upscale and eclectic” festival, a claim mirrored in ticket prices. In 2015, it was the sixth highest-grossing music festival in the world, pulling in US $9.65 million despite having just 46,500 attendees (by comparison, seventh place Osheaga had 135,000). However, protection for female festival goers appears to be severely lacking – a situation Mumford and Sons made clear in a Facebook post they would not turn a blind eye to.

That very same weekend, the smaller Putte i Parken festival registered 32 assaults largely described as ‘groping attacks,’ pointing to a disturbing trend for Sweden. And there was another dark side to the appalling incidents. The regional police released a statement attributing the Putte i Parken assualts to “foreign young men,” adding, “There is no doubt about who takes these liberties.”

The statement turned out not only to be incredibly unprofessional but largely untrue, as a later retraction admitted only two of the seven individuals arrested were from residential homes mostly populated by orphaned refugees. However, with many media outlets running with the story, the misinformation had already been accepted as fact by many and extended to the Bravalla incidents as well. Hopefully, more large acts will take action similar to Mumford and Sons, forcing all festivals to take real steps to combat the pervasive problem.