Since this post will likely be shared a million times and go viral like everything else on the internet, I am going to start out by introducing myself. My name is Mike Ziemer and I started putting on concerts in 2004. I have been putting on concerts and music festivals for over 10 years now. Not once during those 10 years of running a business have I allowed anyone within my company to have questionable character, in my eyes. I pride myself on professionalism and working with good people. Anyone that actually knows me will back this up. I have worked very hard to get where I am at and I have always treated everyone Ive come in contact with fairly. To get to the point... One of my employees, Dan DeFonce invited a girl by the name of Hanna Claxton down to Texas to see him. The two had known eachother for years and as far as we had all heard, and witnessed in person, the trip to Texas was for romantic reasons, they liked eachother. The first day she was here, I met her. When I met her she had a developing black eye from being hit by a dog toy at the dog park, this is something that she had posted and admitted was the case. After we said our hellos she cuddled up with Dan on the couch, they watched some TV or something, and they proceeded to hangout for the rest of that week, or couple days, whatever it was. Following a trip to Austin with Dan, she posted an image of that black eye and a statement about an event that she claims happened in Austin. As everyone knows, there are 3 sides to every story, his side, her side, and the truth. Since none of us besides the two of them know the actual truth, there has been a he said / she said internet war going on with too much hate for me to handle, from people on both sides. While her story seems to be very misleading, have many holes and contradictions in it, and I personally 100% believe Dans side of the story, others may not. About 30 minutes ago, two bands The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die and The Hotelier that I personally love musically, took it upon themselves to make a very bold statement about the situation. In doing so they involved my company and made us look, for lack of a better term, shitty. I believe that they have only reached out to one side of the story and made up their minds about the situation, which they are free to do. And while I respect their decision and understand their views, I think it was handled in an improper manner without personally reaching out to Dan or myself. At this point, its too late for that. My company Third String Productions has now been made out to be a villain in a situation that I am not even involved in. This is the unfortunate truth about our day and age, we live in a society where people are automatically guilty until proven innocent, instead of the other way around. We live in a world that loves to conduct modern day witch hunts and burn peoples reputations at the stake without any thought or concern for the actual truth. There is no judge, no jury, no police reports, no witnesses, no fair trial. There is the internet. Myself and my company take domestic abuse, and any kind of abuse for that matter, extremely serious. There is nothing okay with anyone assaulting anyone whether it is a man hitting a women, a women hitting a man, two people in a fight at a concert, etc. we do not condone this. There are millions of victims of domestic abuse and physical violence all over the world, most too scared to make a statement about it. What it comes down to for me is a very tough situation of defending one of my good friends and his reputation while also allowing him to step down from working with our company to keep myself and our name from any further association with this event. This is not our company throwing Dan under the bus and saying he is guilty, this is us allowing him to move forward with seeking justice for what he believes to be a case of defamation of character. As of today, Dan Defonce is no longer a member of the Third String Productions team and I hope for the sake of a man I believe to be a good and innocent person, he wins his case and is able to repair the damage that these accusations have done to his reputation. If anyone has any further questions, they can contact me. Please do not post anything hateful on this thread towards either person. We are all human, lets prove it.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 01:33:55 +0000