As men started to leave, Phillip says he found himself alone in the hot tub with Tait. That is when Phillip alleges Tait began “giving me a back rub.”
“[This was] obviously a little strange that you’re not wearing any clothes and you’re in a hot tub,” Phillip told TRR. “It was essentially fine. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I also wasn’t in that mindset of like, ‘Oh, he’s hitting on me.’ I was just like, ‘Some guys are more touchy-feely than others,’ so that was that.’”
According to Phillip, they both then got out of the hot tub, put their clothes back on, and began listening to music when Tait decided to show Phillip his genitals. “I don’t even know how this comes up, but [Tait] was basically saying, ‘My urethra is way bigger than normal size. Mine’s like two or three times what it should be,’ and he just, whips it out and shows me.”
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When it was time for them to go to bed, Phillip says he had to stay in Tait’s room. Phillip claims that Tait gave him two options: He could sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag or he could sleep with Tait in his king-size bed.
After starting out on the floor, Phillip decided to move to the bed in order to be more comfortable. Phillip says he recalled thinking nothing of moving to Tait’s bed due to his life on the road with bandmates and often having to sleep in tight quarters.
Phillip claims that after some brief conversation, Tait began to massage his back again, something Phillip said he didn’t consent to.
“[Tait] starts giving me a back rub again, and at that point I started getting nervous. He’s giving me a back rub for three or four minutes, and it’s just slowly getting lower,” Phillip alleged. “In the hot tub he had stopped at my lower back, but he just kept going lower until he was, like, actually massaging my butt cheeks. And I’m [laying] there, like, kind of frozen. It’s a new friend, and you look up to him. [I] don’t want to blow up a friendship.”
Phillip says he quickly spoke up after claiming Tait put his fingers in Phillip’s anal region. “I was just like, ‘Hey, man, I’m not into that. That’s not cool with me,’” Phillip told TRR.
Tait then stopped, apologized, and turned over, Phillip said. The next morning, Tait had left the house before Phillip had woken up. Phillip claims that after the incident took place, he reached out to Tait via text multiple times but never heard back from him.
Phillip says he shared with his girlfriend, who is now his wife, what took place in Tait’s bed and chalked it up to “a weird, failed romantic effort that (he) didn’t see coming.” Phillip’s wife said that Phillip never came forward for fear it would ruin Tait’s career.
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She told TRR that “it’s always kind of been like, okay, obviously, [Tait’s] gay. He’s a huge name in CCM. I’m sure he feels like he can’t come out of the closet or he’s going to lose everything that he has.” She then explained, “So, we just kind of felt bad for him, in the sense of, you know, that sucks to not be able to be yourself.”
Over the course of his music career, Phillip says he would share with bandmates about his encounter with Tait, and quickly learned of other similar alleged incidents involving Tait.
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