One day after the New York Times published a bombshell exposé of Ryan Adams alleging he had exchanged explicit messages with a minor, the FBI has opened an inquiry into the singer-songwriter’s communications with the younger fan, The New York Times reported Thursday.
FBI agents from the Crime Against Children Squad in the bureau’s New York office began the steps of opening a criminal investigation on Thursday, the Times reported. Those steps include interviewing the woman that the Times reported on, who is no longer a minor, and gathering evidence of the correspondence. If corroborating evidence is found to substantiate the Times‘ original account, the agents could take further steps to gather evidence, including subpoenaing phone records.
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Adams has not been contacted by any member of a law enforcement agency, including the FBI, Adams’ lawyer, Andrew Brettler, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The Times story reported that Adams had struck up a Twitter conversation with a 14-year-old bassist in 2013 that started as a conversation about the girl’s music career and became a sexually explicit exchange. The girl, identified only by her middle name, Ava, because she was a minor at the time of the relationship, eventually became aware of a power imbalance between the two, she told the Times. “It was just sexual power,” she said. Ava has turned off to pursuing music as a career after the realization, she added.
Adams, via a lawyer, denied ever discussing anything other than music with fans and engaging in an explicit correspondence with a minor.
A request to FBI for additional information was not answered.
The Times story on Wednesday contained the testimony of five women, two off the record, that Adams had initially offered the accusers professional help but ended up pursuing them sexually. Seven women, including the original five as well as Adams’ ex-wife Mandy Moore and ex-fiancee Megan Butterworth, alleged that Adams had been emotionally and verbally abusive to them when he was romantically rejected or spurned.
Ryan Parker also contributed to this report.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.