Artist News Legal

Kasabian’s Tom Meighan pleads guilty to assaulting ex-fiancée

By | Published on Wednesday 8 July 2020

Kasabian

Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan has been sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to a “sustained attack” on his former fiancée Vikki Ager. He was told by the judge that he had narrowly avoided a prison sentence.

The court was shown footage of the attack, which took place on 9 Apr and was captured on CCTV at the couple’s home. The court was also told that the alarm was raised by a child who witnessed the incident and called 999. When police arrived at the address, said prosecutor Naeem Valli, according to the Guardian, Meighan “smelt heavily of intoxicants” and was “uncooperative and aggressive” towards officers.

Meighan initially denied assault, but then admitted his guilt after being shown the CCTV footage of the incident, asking police to turn it off because it was “horrible”. In court, when the footage was played again, he is reported to have cried and held his head in his hands.

Judge Nick Watson told the musician “I could have sent you to prison for this”, before adding that the “sustained attack” was a “violation of the trust and security that should exist between partners”.

While Ager had not given a statement to the police and “does not appear to support this prosecution”, Watson said that the wider damage done needed to be considered, explaining: “I need to take account of the fact that not only did you hurt Ms Ager, you also let down many people – band members and those who love your music. They will be shocked about what you did that night. I have been told that you have recognised that you have a problem with alcohol”.

On Monday, prior to Meighan’s court appearance, Kasabian announced that they had parted ways with their frontman “by mutual consent”, although gave no reason for his departure beyond “personal issues”. But in a new statement yesterday, they said: “Now that the legal proceedings have been concluded, we can comment on the departure of Tom Meighan from Kasabian”.

“No one in the band wanted this to happen”, they went on. “We have all worked so hard for the past 23 years and had big plans for our future together. We’re completely heartbroken. But we were left with no choice but to ask Tom to leave the band. There is absolutely no way we can condone his assault conviction. Domestic violence and abuse of any kind is totally unacceptable.”

“As soon as we found out about the charges made against Tom, we as a band made the decision that we could no longer work with him”, they added. “Unfortunately, we had to hold back this information until he was found guilty in court”.

However, they said that they had expected Meighan himself to give more details about the charges against him in his follow-up to their original statement on Monday. Instead, he simply told fans that he was “doing well” and “in a really good place”.

“We were led to believe that Tom would hold his hands up and in his statement tell everyone what he’d done, but he chose not to, misleading a lot of fans”, the band said. “Ultimately, as much as Tom has hurt us all, we’re not the victim in all of this. Domestic violence is something that can never be excused”.



READ MORE ABOUT: |