LA Goth nightclub known for rituals and secrecy has closed amid sexual misconduct claims
LOS ANGELES — Hannah Harding parted a thick wooden gate and walked into the barely lit labyrinth of the Hollywood club Cloak & Dagger on Oct. 22, 2019.
An evening at the Goth club, where a cast of experimental artists performed eerie, sexually charged ceremonies each week in the back rooms of the Pig 'N Whistle bar, was a coveted invitation: an uninhibited, LGBTQ-friendly, members-only club where underground DJs, actors, rockers and adventurous partygoers could revel in safety and secrecy.
The scene felt a little spooky, but that was part of the appeal for the then-21-year-old.
As the party ramped up in the main "black room," actor Thomas Middleditch, best known for his role as Richard Hendricks on the HBO series "Silicon Valley," approached Harding on the dance floor, she said. He'd met Harding at the club before. Staff had brought concerns about his behavior to co-founders Adam Bravin and Michael Patterson.
Harding said Middleditch made lewd sexual overtures toward her and her girlfriend. She turned him down, but he kept pursuing her, groping her in front of her friends and several employees, including the club's operations manager, Kate Morgan.
Morgan said she asked her bosses to kick Middleditch out and ban him, but they didn't seem to take it seriously.
"I felt like they dismissed it," she said. "I told Adam that he needed to listen, that this was not OK."
Harding has Instagram direct messages from Middleditch, seen by the LA Times, saying, "Hannah I had no idea my actions were that weird for you ... I know you probably want to just put me on blast as a monster ... I don't expect you to want to be my friend or anything ... I am so ashamed I made you uncomfortable."
A representative for Middleditch declined a request for comment.
Ten women, including four former employees, told The Times that Bravin and Patterson — prominent artists in LA's rock and electronic music scenes — ignored sexual misconduct among members at Cloak and at its festivals. They allege that the owners took cover under the club's secrecy and boundary-pushing aesthetic, until a Zoom call in June, when members unloaded on Bravin and Patterson about how they'd been treated.
Some staff and regulars said Cloak used its Goth allure as a front.
"Michael said he wanted to have a 'real cult,'" Morgan, 37, said of her three years working at the club. "We all felt complicit but realized we'd been duped as well."
In an email, Patterson wrote that he did not recall saying that.
"My goal for Cloak & Dagger was to create an atmosphere that would inspire people to be their best and most creative self," he wrote.
"Our goal from day one was to create the safest space possible," Bravin said by email, adding that the founders relied on trusted volunteers and members to "keep an eye out over their community and be a conduit to management or security."
Harding said that after she complained, she saw Middleditch grope another woman in the club. She said Bravin did reach out a week later, only to tell her she must have been mistaken about the incident.
"Adam called me 'to make sure and get a second opinion on him' because they didn't trust my story in the first place. They cared more about famous people at their club than women's safety," Harding said.
When Cloak opened in 2015, Bravin and Patterson tried to re-create the mystique of LA's Goth scene of the 1980s, when bands like Christian Death and 45 Grave forged a darkness-amid-the-sunshine aesthetic, fetishizing decayed Old Hollywood glamour.
Bravin, of the electro-rock duo She Wants Revenge, and Patterson, a Grammy-nominated producer, were veterans of LA's music scene. She Wants Revenge played Coachella, and Patterson worked on the Oscar-winning score for "The Social Network."
LA's contemporary Goth scene is diffuse, spans generations and stays largely underground. Fifty-year-old industrial-music producers mingle with early-20s OnlyFans fetish models at warehouse techno parties and private clubs for bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, or BDSM, across downtown and Hollywood. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, Cloak was thriving: Diplo often stopped by to DJ, and the club expanded to hold events in Chicago and Mexico City and a large music festival in downtown LA.
Libertinism was an accepted part of the culture, though the scene has begun reckoning with sexual abuse accusations against Goth's most famous figure, Marilyn Manson.
Lines between denizens' work, social scenes and personal lives were often hazy.
"When I started at Cloak, I was living with an abusive boyfriend," recounted one female staffer, who guided guests through the club's staged rituals. (She asked for anonymity, fearing attacks in her professional life.) "I was vulnerable. [Bravin] and I slept together a few times, and he offered to hook me up with movie roles or to jam with She Wants Revenge."
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