One night in the fall of 2000, Crawford recalled, Tait handed him a shot of whiskey and told him, “You’ll bounce back.” Crawford said, “I told [Tait], ‘Just one,’ and took the shot.”
Crawford explained, “I had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol at the time, but I blacked out shortly after I took that one drink.”
Crawford then claims that when regained consciousness that Tait had repositioned his body so that he could sexually abuse him. “My legs were up in the air, and Tait was licking my anus. I said, ‘What are you doing, dude?’” Crawford then alleges that Tait said, “‘Hey man, did you catch the Colts game last week?’” He said, “Like we were just hanging out, chatting.”
Crawford then immediately left Tait’s house but can’t remember driving home. He is convinced Tait drugged him.
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“I was never the same after that,” Crawford said. “The joy and drive I had for music went away. Suddenly, I had stage-fright for the first time, brain-fog, anger issues, depression, and was even suicidal for a time. It ruined my career.”
In 2020, after years of not interacting with Tait, the then Newsboys’ frontman offered to produce Crawford’s wife’s album. “I had buried the memory of that night for a long time,” Crawford said. He explained that his wife found him “weeping uncontrollably in the shower.”
After sharing what Tait had allegedly done to him, Crawford’s wife helped him seek trauma therapy. Crawford admitted that hearing Jones’ story “broke” his heart.
“I believe we’d both be in the music industry today if it weren’t for Michael Tait,” said Crawford.
