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Modest Mouse dropped guitarist Simon O’Connor from upcoming tour dates amid accusations that the musician sent inappropriate messages to a minor.
The band announced O’Connor – who joined the band in 2021 – was no longer part of the tour in a post shared on social media last week.
“Simon O’Connor will not be joining us on the upcoming tour,” the band wrote. “The good news is that Seth Jabour of Les Savy Fav will be jumping in to play guitar.”
They added, “We look forward to being out there with you all.”
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Modest Mouse representatives did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
In a post shared on Reddit last month, a 16-year-old female fan uploaded screenshots and claimed O’Connor sent her an “erotic image,” followed by a slew of direct messages after she liked some of the musician’s Instagram stories.
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The accuser allegedly indicated her age on her handle at the time, and commented on the thread, “For context the story I had that he viewed was my 17th birthday countdown and it said that very clearly.”
She claimed that O’Connor quickly deleted the message, and proceeded to engage in a thread where he admitted his phone wasn’t “hacked” and that he “just had a party night and looking at everything with one eye ya know.”
The accuser wrote, “oh boy get a good night of sleep,” before O’Connor appeared to respond back, “But you did blindside me with a gaggle of likes and then very little intro besides bikini pics so we are both to blame.”
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A following screenshot appeared to show the message deleted, with O’Connor writing, “I did it again.”
O’Connor addressed the incident the following day, and stated: “I unequivocally oppose any sexual behavior towards minors, as a human and a parent it disgusts me.”
“Throughout my adult life, there has been a person who has popped up from time to time with the intention of, for lack of a better term, messing with me,” he wrote. “This person creates multiple social media accounts and deletes them… but always posts similar photos that I often recognize from previous accounts.
“After a long night, I picked my phone up to discover that a similar profile had been interacting (‘likes’ to be specific) with some of my instagram posts and stories.”
O’Connor “assumed” he was dealing with the same person as before, and “with poor judgement, I decided to reach out with a tasteless meme, a sticker that read ‘Simon calls your bluff,’ and an attempt to indicate that I recognized the ‘barrage of likes’ and similar photo content from the previous profiles…. Almost a ‘gotcha.'”
“After a few minutes, I realized that I had made a mistake and this was not the person who I had dealt with before. I unsent the messages and immediately ceased communication,” he wrote.
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“I’m genuinely sorry to the person who received those messages. They didn’t deserve to be put in that position, and I’m sorry for the stress and attention this has brought them.”
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He added, “I know some people will choose not to believe me, and I understand that. I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is tell the truth, take responsibility for my mistake, and apologize.”
O’Connor previously toured with MGMT, and appears on Modest Mouse’s latest album, “An Eraser and a Maze.”
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