exclusive
Shelby Lynn started the Me-Too scandal surrounding the band Rammstein. In conversation with NDR and SZ she describes the encounter with frontman Lindemann – and how the public reacted to her statements.
Shelby Lynn sits on her mother’s sofa in a terraced house in a small town in Northern Ireland. She holds on to her e-cigarette as she tells how she first heard the Rammstein song “Pussy” at the age of 15 and became a fan.
Lynn is now 24 years old and works as a civil servant. She describes how she bought a ticket for the concert in Vilnius on May 22nd. And how she found out on the Internet that there should be parties around the concerts. All she had to do was contact a woman from the band’s environment.
“I thought it was just going to be an after party with Rammstein fans. Good music afterwards, everyone chatting, having a drink. And maybe a band member would show up, maybe not.”
Lynn reports that she was then invited to a so-called pre-party before the concert began. There she was offered alcohol.
“Oh no, that’s wrong”
During a concert break, she was then led under the stage. When she entered the tiny, completely black room, she was clear: “Oh no, that’s wrong, that’s bad, that’s definitely a sex thing!”
Till (band frontman Till Lindemann) comes in. And I immediately say to him, ‘Till, if you’re here for sex, that’s your business. I do not want to do that. Sex is very special to me.’ And he gets very angry and he yells at me and storms through the curtain to leave. I waited a minute for him to go away, opened the curtain and he’s still there. And yells at me: ‘No, you wait! You wait in there!
“How foggy”
Lynn herself reports that the encounter is one of the few scenes that she can still remember clearly. Because everything after the pre-party is “like a fog”. She can only remember fragments of most of it. In the evening in her hotel she discovered large bruises on her body.
“I’m almost 100 percent sure I was drugged. Because I’ve never felt like this in my entire life. It was a feeling like nothing else!”
Shared on social networks
She decides to share her experiences on social networks. The response is huge: many young women contact her. “I’ve never felt such exhaustion in my entire life: just on the phone all the time, sharing the girls’ stories, gathering information and so on. I couldn’t let that happen again! It wasn’t about me anymore .”
Gradually, more and more young women publicly raise accusations against the band. Lynn experiences solidarity – but also death threats. The band denies the allegations on social media, but later also explains there: “Do not engage in public prejudice of any kind against those who have made allegations. They have a right to their point of view.”
And the band also has a right not to be prejudiced, the statement continues.
The tone becomes more aggressive
The tone is now much more aggressive. Lindemann hired a new lawyer. Regarding the allegations that Lindemann may have drugged women with knock-out drops or alcohol in order to be able to perform sexual acts on them, a written press release said: “These allegations are untrue without exception take steps against individuals.”
In response to a recent request from NDR the band didn’t answer. According to Lynn, she received a cease and desist letter prior to the press release. But Lynn doesn’t care.
“Break me. I don’t care. Take me to court. I’m not afraid. You have a lot to lose and a lot to hide. I have nothing to hide.”
She will continue to fight to ensure that there are no pre-parties or after-show parties at Rammstein concerts in the future.
You can see the interview in the first under the title Theses Temperamente on Sunday from 11.05 p.m. and from 8 p.m. in the media library