Police Reportedly Let Dahvie Vanity Off With a Warning After a Teenager Accused Him of Sexual Assault

In June 2007, a 14-year-old girl told Pinellas County, Florida police that Jesus David Torres, known as Dahvie Vanity in the scene band Blood on the Dance Floor, had forced her to perform oral sex. Police let the then-22-year-old Torres off with a warning. In the years since, dozens more women have come forward with allegations of sexual abuse.

According to HuffPost, Dianna Farrell was a shy kid who had trouble making friends when Torres allegedly began messaging her on Myspace. Torres hadn’t formed his band yet but was a popular hairdresser with a fairly large following on the platform. He drove across the state to do Farrell’s hair, and afterwards, she says he forced her to perform oral sex. Unable to process the assault, Farrell later called in to a Christian talk radio show where teens discussed their problems. The show’s host alerted police, and from there, Florida police did nothing:

“After speaking to Farrell and her mother, Captain Kurt Romanosky, a detective from the Crimes Against Children squad of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, called 22-year-old Jesus David Torres, the man known on Myspace as “Dahvie the Elite Hair God.” Romanosky informed Torres that he was aware of the sexual contact with Farrell, and that her mother would not ask cops to arrest Torres if he cut off contact with her daughter. Torres claimed he didn’t know how young Farrell was, said he was sorry and promised not to talk to her again.”

Farrell told officers that the act was consensual, and the police report reads, “Victim Refuses Cooperation with Prosecution.”

In December 2018, HuffPost reported that a dozen women and underage girls have reported similar assaults. Since then, nearly a dozen more have shared similar stories. Many say that their first sexual experiences were forced by Torres. Others claim the assaults were so brutal they were left with bleeding mouths:

“Kristin Gonzalez said Torres forced her to perform oral sex after styling her hair at his Orlando apartment in 2006, when she was 15. A Canadian woman named Justine said Torres groped her breasts at a show in Vancouver in 2010, just after her 16th birthday. Sam, a young woman from St. Louis, said she had an asthma attack when the singer forced her to perform oral sex in the back of his tour bus in 2012, and as the 18-year-old wheezed on the floor, he joked that his penis could have choked her to death. One of Torres’ former girlfriends, who goes by the name Madalyn, said he solicited nude photos from her when she was underage, and was physically, sexually and emotionally abusive to her when they were together from 2014 to 2016.”

Torres is now 34 years old and still has yet to face any legal ramifications for the allegations, though he’s also been arrested in Colorado under similar circumstances and released without charge.

Online, Torres’s mostly teenaged fanbase rabidly defends him, and after the December HuffPost article was published, Torres deleted angry comments posted to his Instagram and responded “Haters gonna hate lol.”

Meanwhile, Farrell wasn’t aware there were other victims until the December article and the statute of limitations has now run out in her case. And while Pinellas County police still insist that they couldn’t move forward with the investigation when the child victim insisted the act was consensual, perhaps much of this could have been avoided if authorities had acknowledged the fact that minors can never give consent to an adult in a sexual situation.