Women Say Top Canadian Radio Promoter Is a Longtime Sexual Predator
WARNING: This story contains allegations of sexual violence and other graphic content that may be upsetting or triggering to some readers.
Former electro-rock singer Noire says her dream of becoming a professional artist ended May 18, 2009, after Toronto radio promoter Adrian Strong lured the then-28-year-old from Toronto to South Carolina with the promise of a potential record deal. Strong, the president of DMD Entertainment — then the premier radio promotion service in Canada for Top 40 records — and a music industry veteran with a history of breaking singles at Canadian radio, told Noire that the founders of a new Atlanta label urgently wanted to meet her in Hilton Head Island, S.C., after he played them her dark-pop demos. Instead, she alleges he drugged, raped and held her captive over an 18-hour period at a Marriott hotel in Charleston, and cut a nearly one-inch-long piece of her scalp.
“The cruelest thing Adrian did was leaving me alive,” says Noire, who asked that her birth name not be used. Now 42, she lives in Los Angeles and long gave up her aspirations of a music career. She tells Billboard she “ran away” from Toronto in July 2010 because she had a mental breakdown. “People are like, ‘Well, you survived that,’” says Noire who wears her hair in a side-sweep to hide the scar and bald patch. “But you don’t understand how I keep my head together: It’s not by telling myself ‘I survived it;’ it’s by telling myself, ‘No, I died in that. This is the afterlife.’”
Encouraged by the #MeToo movement and concerned that Strong — whose company has worked singles to radio by The Weeknd, deadmau5, Arcade Fire, Marshmello, Sofi Tukker, Steve Aoki, Sum 41 and Broken Social Scene — still works in an industry rife with young women looking for a break, Noire decided to go public on Nov. 1, 2019, by posting a photo of him on her Instagram page, @californianoire, with red arrows pointing at his face and the words, “INCEL RAPIST” scrawled in red above him. Accompanying the image was a graphic account of what she says happened to her that weekend in 2009, including her charge that Strong cut “a section of my scalp out as a souvenir.”
The post rapidly circulated around the Canadian music industry but had little impact, if any, on Strong’s career. The holidays came and went, followed by the pandemic. DMD continued to be hired.
Shortly after Noire’s post went live, Strong, who was very active on Instagram and Facebook — where he boasted about the successes of his clients — stopped posting but kept his accounts.
Noire posted about Strong again on April 25, 2022, after seeing a photo of him with other Canadian music figures at that year’s Coachella music festival, where The Weeknd performed with Swedish House Mafia. She reposted the picture, calling out Strong’s “industry friends” and accusing him of being a “Canadian music industry serial rapist” and “this monster who raped and mutilated me.” The following day, Strong’s Instagram, @strongstyles, was deleted; less than three months later so was his Facebook account. (On July 7, 2023, Strong restored his Facebook and Instagram accounts, the latter with all photos deleted.)
(Editor’s note: Bliss, a long-time music journalist in Canada, has known Strong for decades and was able to verify his email and messenger handles. She was also Facebook friends with him and followed his Instagram until they were deactivated.)
Over the three-plus years that followed Noire’s initial post, five women sent empathetic messages on Instagram, telling her they had similar experiences with Strong. Of those, two agreed to be interviewed for this story provided they were identified by pseudonyms. The women — one was 18 when she met him; the other was in her mid-20s — both accused Strong of using his power and position in the music industry to extort sexual favors.
Another woman who is not connected to the entertainment business and initially spoke on the record, said she was raped by Strong the first time they met in person after connecting on the dating site Seeking Arrangement and remained in contact with him for years because she says he had taken explicit videos of her without consent and was afraid he would leak them online. After sharing her story in a two-hour Zoom interview, she decided she was not ready to share full details of her account publicly but confirmed that aspects of her experience with Strong were similar or nearly identical to the other women’s accounts.
In response to emails sent to Strong detailing the allegations against him, he issued a statement through his U.S. attorney, Daniel Watkins, a partner at Clare Locke. “I categorically deny sexually assaulting or drugging anyone,” says Strong, who provided one email, four photographs and one message exchange — which are referenced in this story — that he adds, “confirms that these serious charges are untrue.”
“In the past decade, our industry has gone through a lot of change when it comes to understanding power dynamics,” Strong’s statement also reads. “In my 20s and 30s I had romantic relationships with artists — that were consensual — which was not uncommon in the industry. I am now accused of being sexually abusive and using my position in an exploitative way during that time. I wholeheartedly deny these claims,” he continues, adding, “These allegations have given me pause to reflect on what I have done or could be doing better. I never intended to cause anyone pain.”
In June, Strong took an administrative leave from DMD. Weeks later, the company was shuttered, and two of Strong’s former colleagues opened a new radio promotion company.
The women who spoke to Billboard — their accounts span a 10-year period, with Noire’s being the earliest, and the most recent in late 2019 — provided screenshots of text, email and social media direct message exchanges from Strong, along with evidence of gifts, such as spa treatments and money transfers sometimes in suggestive amounts of $69 or $169. Strong often referred to himself as “Daddy” and asked the women to wear short skirts and knee socks. Those who allege Strong sexually assaulted them say that in the days that followed, he would insist that they “had a good time” and sometimes asked if they were “okay.”
Another five sources for this story, four of them men, say they witnessed Strong exhibit sexually aggressive or inappropriate behavior towards young women. One says he was out of town at a music conference and saw Strong behave “all grabby” towards his employee, a young radio tracker, who later called him “slurring her words and believing [Strong] put something in her drink.” When he went downstairs to the hotel lobby to ensure she got to her room safely, he says he watched security intervene when Strong tried to physically prevent his employee from entering the building.
Another man says his female friend, then a 22-year-old singer, felt so threatened by Strong’s advances during a business trip to Savannah, Ga., that he bought her an airplane ticket to fly home. (The flight receipt was reviewed by Billboard. Through the men, both women declined to share their stories.)
All the women interviewed say Strong dropped famous clients’ names, which they perceived as attempts to impress them. Two of the women were pursuing careers in music at the time; another said Strong claimed he could make her famous using Auto-Tune, even though she couldn’t sing and had no interest in doing so. A fourth was pursuing an acting career.
Except for Noire, none of the women filed police reports. Noire lodged complaints with Canadian law enforcement upon her return home, and later with Charleston police. Copies of those reports viewed by Billboard indicate that the case was closed “due to lack of prosecution” and jurisdiction issues.
Three of the women who spoke to Billboard say they left Canada and their friends and family to rebuild their lives far from Strong. (One has since moved back.).
Since the impact of the #MeToo movement in 2017, considerable strides have been made in the way sexual assault is treated by police, and the willingness of women to go public with their experiences, even years or decades later.
A 2019 report issued by the Canadian government on systemic problems plaguing law enforcement’s handling of sexual offenses and the effects of the #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported movements, detailed a “distrust of the system, from making a complaint through to a courtroom verdict” as a “profound and longstanding barrier to the enforcement of sexual offences.” The report also cited an investigation by national newspaper The Globe and Mail that “confirmed and reinforced victim distrust of the system” and found that one in every five reports of sexual assault made to the police was dismissed and catalogued as “unfounded.” This meant on average 5,000 cases of sexual violence per year were reported, but dropped because the complainants were “not believed.” Quoting the article, the government report posited that this “reinforce[d] damaging myths that women lie about sexual victimization,” which could act as a “deterrent to already low reporting.”
In Canada, there is no statute of limitations for sexual assault. It is also a criminal offense to surreptitiously take, distribute, publish, transmit or advertise intimate photos or video of a person without consent.
According to Strong’s recently deleted LinkedIn profile, he became president of DMD in 2002, and the following year began working radio in Canada for Patrick Moxey’s then-upstart EDM label Ultra. In 2006, he created the music publishing and management company StrongSongs, under which he had a management contract with one of his accusers. In 2010, while still president of DMD, he was named co-president of Ultra Records Canada.
As is typical in radio promotion, DMD’s bigger clients were mostly record labels, such as Ultra, Sony Music Canada and Wax Records, which hired the company to promote their artists’ music. As a result, spokespersons for several of the acts DMD claimed as clients say they had no direct contact with — and in some cases, had never heard of — Strong or the company he ran. Ultra Records Canada co-president Asim “Awesome” Awan, and Wax Records co-owners Ron Morse and Jamie Appleby, did not respond to requests for comment. Sony Music Canada had no comment.
Noire, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and immigrated with her family to Toronto in 1986, met Strong — who goes by his middle name, Adrian, not his first, Nicholas — in Toronto at the Canadian Music Week conference and festival in March 2009. “I had just completed a 10-song album and was at CMW to make connections with people in music who could help me with my next steps,” she says. “I hadn’t released any music but was already playing little shows out in Toronto with two backup dancers.” She says Strong approached her in the hotel lobby, told her he is a radio tracker and offered to introduce her to his contacts.
Over the next two months, Noire accompanied him to industry events and a music video shoot and met key players in the business. She says Strong attempted to flirt with her on occasion, but she had no interest in the then 36-year-old short, balding man she describes repeatedly as “Jabba the Hutt” and “disgusting.” At that time, she believed Strong was genuinely interested in helping with her career and understood their relationship was strictly professional.
On May 17, 2009, the Sunday during Canada’s Victoria Day holiday weekend, Noire says Strong called to tell her he was in Hilton Head and had a big career opportunity for her. He then sent an email suggesting she take a cheap AirTran flight from Buffalo, N.Y. to Charleston so she could meet record execs from a new Atlanta-based label that might want to sign her. At the bottom of the email, which Noire shared with Billboard, Strong wrote that she only needed to take a carry-on bag, followed by: “Sexy lingerie is light right? lol” and a wink emoticon.
She bought a round-trip ticket for $273.90 to leave that same day.
A screenshot provided by Strong’s attorney Watkins that, he contends, shows the “proper context” of the interactions between Strong and Noire, includes five Facebook messages between the two leading up to Noire’s trip to South Carolina. On May 14, she texted Strong in a conversation, “I am so fucking high right now,” and the following day asked, “what are u doing this weekend. I’m going to Ottawa next week…” (Noire says she had not taken drugs, but at the time often used the word “high” to convey a sense of happiness — not intoxication — and was excited watching a Star Trek marathon. Billboard was unable to review earlier messages in the conversation.) On May 16, Strong texted Noire that he was in South Carolina, and on May 18, the day she arrived in Charleston, she messaged him, “No way, I’m in South Carolina too, golly gee,” followed by a smiley face emoji.
When her flight landed in Charleston that night, Noire expected Strong to meet her at the airport for the drive to Hilton Head. He didn’t.
“It was raining terribly when I arrived,” she says, and when she finally spoke with Strong by phone, he said he wasn’t there to pick her up because “it was too dangerous” to drive on unlit roads in the storm.
During the call, Noire also learned that Hilton Head was three hours away, which she hadn’t realized. “That upset me so much I was screaming at him,” she says. “He told me to spend the night at a nearby Marriott and he would be there to pick me up in the morning. He assured me it would be worth it when I was meeting with these label people.”
When Strong did finally show up, at “maybe four, four-thirty” the next afternoon, Noire says, he insisted they go to a restaurant. Although she was fed up with the constant delays, she agreed. She adds that she was “disgusted” by the “‘gator” and fried food on the menu and ate little. When the meal ended, Strong claimed it was too late to drive to Hilton Head. Stressed out from “his unnecessary ridiculousness and time wasting,” Noire says she told Strong she wanted a cup of tea.
He took her to a nearby café, where she says Strong flat-out told her he wanted to be more than friends. “I should’ve recognized [it was] the last chance he was giving me to consent,” she says. “He was like, ‘Why can’t it ever work between me and you?’” and said that being together “was a good choice for my career.” Noire shot him down, insulting his looks and “saw that it stung him.”
When they returned to the car, she was surprised when Strong said that DMD Entertainment would pay for her hotel room that night. “He was being “so, so nice to me, I started feeling like I was being a jackass,” she says.
At the Marriott, they checked into separate rooms. Soon after, Strong knocked on her door. He was eating a chocolate chip cookie from a plastic bag and offered her the last one, which she accepted and ate. She says she began to hallucinate and suspected she’d been drugged. She imagined vampires whispering in her ears; being stuck to the ceiling; and at one point, being on a surfboard in a body of water.
“Why that would be concerning to me is I can’t swim,” she says. She also recalls seeing Strong on a faraway shore and calling out to him before, she says, “It all melted away, and Adrian was holding me on him, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I started pushing him away, and he said something like, ‘No you don’t.’”
Over the next 18 hours, Noire says Strong raped her repeatedly while she passed in and out of consciousness. She also says that he continued to inject her with drugs to keep her immobilized. During one of the interviews she gave to Billboard, she showed scars on her forearms that she says were the result of puncture marks made by the syringe. In a letter, Strong’s Canadian civil litigator Jeff Saikaley of Caza Saikaley wrote that his client “vehemently denies the allegations and asserts that he has never used illegal drugs and even has a phobia of needles.”
At one point, Noire says she tried to move but ended up falling off the bed. Strong, she recalls, looked at her “like I wasn’t even human” and “kicked me repeatedly while I was on the floor, calling me a ‘f—ing bitch.’” She says she then felt him hit her in the head with an object she didn’t see, and she lost consciousness again.
“When I woke up there was a needle sticking out of my chest,” Noire says. “It never healed.” She showed Billboard this scar as well, which she calls “the hole,” along with one on her head, which she says was where Strong cut away a section of her hair and scalp.
About a year later, when Noire was receiving EMDR therapy to treat her trauma at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb of the Peel region where she lived, she was asked by her social worker, a member of the hospital’s Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Services, to recall the “most disturbing” mental image from “the incident.” “Adrian pulled + cut out section of hair, played along with sick fantasy…. Knew he was going to kill me,” she wrote on a “progress note,” dated Feb. 16, 2010, and signed by the social worker, whose name has been withheld at her request. (Noire shared the document with Billboard.)
Finally, Noire continues, “In a desperate, shameful attempt to save myself, I chose to pretend to flirt and act like I liked him and didn’t remember what had happened, to avoid further violence and irreversible damage to my face and body.” The tactic worked. “Once he felt he had complete control over me and my mind and the situation,” she says, “things greatly improved for me.”
She alleges that when Strong finished assaulting her, he covered her with a blanket, gave her water and then curled up on the bed next to her “like honeymooners.” (The woman who chose to share only limited details of her experience publicly also said Strong cuddled her after he raped her.)
Noire says she awoke the morning of May 19, 2009, to find Strong acting like everything was fine. He asked what she wanted to do that day and suggested an outing to the Charleston Tea Plantation (since renamed the Charleston Tea Garden). She recalls he “made her” shower while “in the bathroom with me the entire time,” then helped her dry off and get dressed, even laying out her makeup on the counter. Strong, she says, continued to watch her, “and commented I was being too slow.” She says she was still feeling drugged and “floppy” and looked disheveled when they checked out of the Marriott. She recalls that Strong explained away her appearance to staff by putting his arm around her and telling the concierge, “My girlfriend does a lot of drugs.”
While in the lobby, she says she mouthed “help me” to a passerby but was ignored.
During a trolley tour of the tea farm, Noire recalls Strong had a “dad camera” with him that “looked like a film camera but was digital” and told her to “smile,” then took a photo and showed it to her. She says it was the first time she had seen the camera. Saikaley says his client was trying out a new camera. On their way out, at the gift shop, she says she once again unsuccessfully mouthed “help me” to a cashier.
On the drive to the Charleston airport, Noire says Strong attacked her. “I said something stupid to him, like, ‘You’re not going to get away with this,” which prompted him to pull over, grab her by the hair and rattle her head. “He’s like, ‘What are you going to tell people? We had sex, you fuckin’ slut.’”
When they arrived at the departures area of the airport, Noire says she jumped out of the car and headed for the terminal. She alleges Strong ran after her and grabbed her by the shoulder, which drew the attention of a man she remembers was wearing a “heather blue shirt” and “physically got in the middle of us.” Noire says the stranger told Strong it looked like she didn’t want to speak to him and prevented him from following her into the terminal.
A review of Strong’s Facebook timeline that took place before he deleted his account shows that on the day Noire flew back to Buffalo, he made this status update: “Noire is the new black.”
Strong’s other social media posts dating back to 2008 included mentions of locations described by Noire and other women interviewed for this story, including Hilton Head, South Carolina, Savannah and Marriott hotels.
While reviewing her correspondence with Strong for this story, Noire also discovered a direct message she’d previously missed that Strong sent via Facebook Messenger at 4:24 p.m. on May 18, 2009, when she says they were at the restaurant in Charleston. (She says she didn’t remember seeing this message until Billboard requested any correspondence between them that she could still access.) The message read: “How can I submit an obituary for publication,” followed by the contact information and deadlines to publish a death notice in The New York Times. She has no recollection of any conversation that would have caused him to send this information, and Strong did not provide any explanation when asked about the message.
“If I had known to check Facebook messages, that would have got my attention,” Noire says.
Once Noire landed in Buffalo, she drove herself back home to Mississauga. On May 20, she went to the local Credit Valley Hospital (part of Trillium Health Partners), where she explained that she’d been drugged and assaulted. She says she told the triage nurse, “I need a rape kit.”
She says she abruptly left the hospital because after she told the nurse she had been drugged and raped, she felt the nurse was too focused on her “being on drugs” and “started making me feel like I was in trouble.” She then drove some 270 miles to her cousin Matty’s house in Ottawa, the city where Noire grew up. Matty, who does not want her surname used, says Noire “turned up in the middle of the night unexpected. She was crying, and I was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ She didn’t want me to tell my husband, so we went outside, and we talked for a little bit.” Matty doesn’t recall if Noire gave her the name of the alleged rapist or where the attack took place, but she says, “I knew it was somebody in music because that was when, at the time, she was trying to break out in the music industry.”
Matty and her husband immediately drove Noire to Ottawa Civic Hospital, where Matty worked as an obstetrical nurse. The May 21, 2009, medical report states Noire said she was sexually assaulted and the assailant was known. It noted there had been no police involvement at that point.
At the hospital, though, Noire says she was treated rudely by the nurse who saw her. (Matty says did not go with her into the exam room to give her cousin “some privacy.”) “I showed [the nurse] my embarrassingly gross cut and oozing scalp and puncture marks and asked her to make note of them after she completed my vaginal rape exam,” Noire says. “She refused and told me she wasn’t going to participate in my ‘drama.’” The medical report refers to scratches on Noire’s body; no photos were taken. A partial rape kit was administered, but the nurse concluded Noire couldn’t tolerate the exam, so it was incomplete.
Noire later complained to Ottawa Civic Hospital and others dealing with her case about her treatment. Hospital notes state she was “extremely upset with handling of her SAEK [sexual assault evidence kit] that it was discarded.” The report quotes Noire saying, “I trusted you guys and now I have no evidence.” She shared an email exchange, dated June 16, 2009, between Ottawa Hospital’s Richard Tomlinson, coordinator of the Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program, and Kathryn Dominey, clinical director, Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Services, at Trillium Health Centre – Mississauga, detailing the investigation into Noire’s complaint, which notes her “concerns have been addressed” with the nurse and that a file was opened with human resources. Tomlinson writes, “I asked her if she wanted me to pursue this further and she stated she just did not want this to happen to anyone else. I asked her permission to share her story as a learning experience for her team and she was quite agreeable to this.”
When asked for comment about Noire’s experience with Ottawa Hospital, the hospital’s media relations officer Rebecca Abelson said in a statement, “While The Ottawa Hospital cannot comment on specific patient cases, our Patient Relations team works with patients and their families to gather feedback and provided support where possible.”
Among the 40-some pages of medical and police reports that Noire provided to Billboard, one dated May 21 from Ottawa Hospital, for example, includes details she “was sexually assaulted by someone she works with in Charleston, NC [sic] on May 19. She believes she was given a cookie by this male, ‘Adrian.’ A short time later she started to feel off balance, began hallucinating, & alcohol was consumed. She recalls vaginal penetration. Does not think there was oral or anal penetration.”
After a lawyer friend advised her to file a police report, Noire went to the Peel Regional Police on May 26, where she met with Constable Wayne Fleming, then of the Special Victims Unit. The resulting reports — which were released to Noire with some information redacted to protect the privacy of “the person [Strong] to whom it relates” — states she was “under the effects of an unknown drug. [Noire] advised she was sexually assaulted by Strong, which included intercourse throughout the evening.” (Peel Regional Police would not confirm whether Strong was contacted or spoken to about Noire’s charges, citing privacy obligations pursuant to the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.)
Noire also contacted the Charleston Police Department and spoke to Officer Michael Lyczany by phone on June 26, 2009, according to the report she shared with Billboard. Lyczany asked Noire why she agreed to fly to Charleston to meet with Strong. “She advised that he was an informal business manager. The trip was for professional reasons, and she was hoping that Strong would connect her with business contacts, which he did not do.” Lyczany also asked Noire why she spent part of the following day with him after he assaulted her. “She replied that she was still partially drugged and didn’t know what was going on,” which he believed was “contrary to her recorded interview.”
The Charleston police report concludes that prosecution of Strong would be extremely difficult due to “lack of any physical evidence; incident reported to Ontario Police 10 days after date [editor’s note: it was actually seven days since she returned home, according to Peel Police documents], victim spent part of the following day with the offender without contacting local police; lack of detail of the assault by the victim. In addition to the above, the victims unrelated statements about the physical appearance of the offender in contrast to her appearance, and her high assessment of self appearance would not favor successful prosecution.” It concludes with the line: “This case is closed due to lack of prosecution.”
Constable Fleming told Charleston police he “advised during his interview of [Noire] she did not provide specifics of the assault and, in his opinion, was not credible.”
But the documents provided to and verified by Billboard contradict the report’s conclusion about a “lack of detail.” In multiple interviews, conversations with her friends and family, and in supporting documents, Noire’s account has been consistent with the allegations she provided to authorities in 2009.
After returning to Canada, Noire told her close friend Priya (who requested that her surname not be used) about the assault and subsequent police visits and medical examinations at Credit Valley and Ottawa hospitals. “She told me he had hurt her; he had raped her. She was very distressed,” Priya says. “She couldn’t really articulate what exactly had happened, other than he had raped her. It wasn’t consensual. She felt like she was drugged.”
Priya says that weeks after Noire confided in her, a Charleston police officer called while they were in Noire’s car, and she put him on speaker phone. “She was trying to file a report, but they were being really difficult because [Noire and Strong] had left [the United States],” Priya recalls. “They weren’t being very understanding as to her state of mind at the time because she felt like she was drugged, and her mind was scattered. They basically told her to ‘Shush. It happened; you’re back home now, not to worry about it. There’s nothing they could do.’”
Less than a month later, Noire says Strong called her. She says she hung up and contacted Fleming with the Peel Regional Police. This interaction is noted in a June 15 report by the social worker assigned to Noire’s case: “[Fleming] will be contacting assailant this week in regard to recent contact with [Noire] on weekend.” Noire was advised to call 911 if Strong contacts her again “because the info will be in the system.”
After the alleged rape, Priya says Noire “just checked out.” She wouldn’t answer the phone and was not her typical outgoing self. The following year, Noire moved to Los Angeles, leaving behind Toronto and her dream of a singing career. She says she currently works in sales.
Over a three-week period, beginning March 29, 2023, Billboard asked Strong for an interview more than a dozen times, in person, by Zoom or phone. He indicated he was “travelling,” then “with family over the [Easter] Holidays.” In early April, he was emailed a letter detailing approximately 70 allegations and points of fact contained in this story. On April 18, Strong emailed to categorically deny the allegations made against him, calling them “disturbing, outrageous, unfounded and absolutely untrue.” He also wrote that, “all of those relationships were absolutely consensual.” In a subsequent email, he said he would respond to the questions by May 1. Billboard agreed to the timeline.
Instead, on May 1, Strong requested another extension until May 26, because he was now “on a trip in rural areas of the UK” until May 19. On May 5 he emailed again, writing “I need access to my old laptops and cameras that are currently in storage. Once I can review the content I will be able to formulate accurate replies.”
Billboard agreed to give Strong the requested extension — and again asked him to sit for an interview. He had at one point written, “I would be willing to do so in person provided that my side of the story is included in your planned article.” He was repeatedly assured that his account would be included. On the morning of May 26, Strong wrote that a response would be forthcoming “from my legal advisor addressing these matters … by the agreed upon deadline.”
In a letter dated that same day, Saikaley wrote that his client would not be granting an interview and called the accusations “false and baseless.”
Saikaley then began corresponding with Billboard’s legal counsel and provided a photo of Noire taken on May 19, 2009, sitting fully clothed and wearing sunglasses indoors that Saikaley says Strong took to test a new camera while they were in Charleston. If one magnifies the reflection in Noire’s sunglasses, they will see she is staring at a blank screen on an Apple laptop. The image, he wrote, “distinctly portrays the accuser devoid of any observable physical injuries or harm hours after the alleged incident.”
A few weeks later, Saikaley sent two more photos of Noire with the laptop. The metadata for those pictures indicate that they were taken May 19 between 1:33 and 1:34 p.m. He also sent a photo of Noire, clothed in a black top, under covers in a bed, holding a Starbucks cup with an open magazine on her lap. That photo is dated May 18, 2009, at 6:03 p.m. — the day that Noire alleges Strong raped her and held her against her will.
Noire does recall wearing a black outfit that weekend but says, “I do not recall that photograph ever being taken.” She adds that, “Out of all the photos it was the most alarming to me because when you zoom up on the image and you look at my face, you can tell that that girl is not okay.” She also notes she is “propped up” by multiple pillows and wonders why she would be in bed at 6 p.m. shortly after arriving at the hotel.
After reviewing one of the photos depicting her with the laptop, Noire says she does not remember them being taken. “And upon closer inspection of the photo, it appears that I’m staring at a screen that is completely blank so that computer’s not on,” she says. “I also do not, never owned a Mac computer, so that’s not my computer. What I’m trying to understand is why I’m wearing sunglasses inside while I’m supposedly working on a laptop. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
She says the photos were staged.
Strong’s lawyers also point to a line from a comment Noire made under her original Instagram post that reads: “PS: I filed separate reports with the peel regional police at the time this occurred. One in March of 2009 for suspected stalking and one in May of 2009 for rape.” Saikaley questions why Noire had agreed to meet Strong in South Carolina months after accusing him of stalking.
Noire says the stalking reference had to do with harassing and explicit anonymous texts she received on March 16, 2009, days after meeting Strong at the CMW conference (March 12-14, 2009). She filed a report that day but claims she did not know or think it was him at the time. She says that after what happened in South Carolina, she became convinced Strong was behind the messages.
The police report that resulted from the harassing texts — which Noire provided to Billboard — indicates she “received a total of nine messages between 9.05 AM and 9:30 AM that day, all were of a sexual nature.” Noire believes the phone number, which had a 310 Los Angeles area code, was spoofed — something she determined after calling the number and speaking to the man who answered. She says he was shocked and claimed he didn’t know what she was talking about. He told her his name and that he worked in the music business, which she confirmed by googling him.
Another woman who found Noire’s post during the pandemic when she “googled Adrian’s name out of curiosity” recounts her involvement with Strong a decade ago during which he provided her with money, a laptop and help with her acting career in exchange for sexual favors. She asked to be identified by a pseudonym because she says she’s embarrassed that she participated in the arrangement but recognizes that she was exploited because of her vulnerable situation at the time. She does not claim to have been assaulted by Strong.
Mindy was in her mid-20s when she met Strong in 2012 on Toronto’s Queen Street West around midnight, while walking home from a bartending job at a popular restaurant chain near the DMD Entertainment office, which was then on Elm Street. Strong was walking home too and struck up a conversation at a stoplight where he learned she was pursuing acting. He told her she should do voiceovers.
“He dropped the name Characters [Talent Agency] because they were in [DMD’s building at the time] and his friend has a sound booth [there],” Mindy says. “He wanted to keep the conversation going and said, ‘Let’s go have a drink at my place.’” Instead, she suggested the since defunct all-night diner at the Thompson hotel, where he used a napkin to map out a potential career trajectory and offered to set her up with a demo session the next day at Characters. He then invited her to his place, which was nearby. “Yes, this is a sign,” she thought of their chance meeting.
Mindy says Strong seemed “like a regular guy,” so she went to his condo. It was well past midnight. They started drinking, when, out of the blue, she says, Strong asked her, “How much would it take to get you into that black dress?” — the required uniform at her workplace. Mindy says she told him no, but he kept asking and raising his offer and when he reached $150, she finally gave in. When she put it on, she says she realized Strong “was masturbating under a blanket.” When she expressed shock, she says, he told her, “What did you think I asked you to put the dress on for?” Mindy says that although she wasn’t frightened by the incident, she left within the hour.
The next day, Mindy cut the demo at Characters. She provided an email Strong sent afterwards praising her work. “Next step is to hook you up with voice agents,” he wrote.
Mindy says Strong then started coming into her work regularly and asking servers for her, which she describes as “dreadful.” Nonetheless, she saw Strong another half a dozen times over the next year. Each time they met, she says he asked her to do something sexually or with sexual overtones in exchange for money. “I was kind of desperate for money at a certain point, and I feel like he preyed on that,” she says, adding that after convincing her to put on the black dress, he took “baby steps” toward asking for more, including buying athletic shorts and tube socks for her to model for him and, eventually, agreeing to having sex with him for a new laptop.
“One morning I woke up to him taking a picture of the back of me,” she says. She grabbed the phone and deleted it, saying that she always worried he had a camera. Their encounters ended when she started dating someone. She estimates he had given her close to 2,000 Canadian dollars (roughly at par with U.S. dollars at the time).
Mindy’s roommate and co-worker from that time corroborated her story. “I met him at the restaurant when I was working. I know he offered her an arrangement where she would meet him and wear strange outfits, and he would pay her or buy her things,” the roommate says. “She was in acting and getting work in the entertainment industry, and I remember her saying that she was trying to meet with him because she thought it could lead to something.”
The same year Noire says she was raped, Margaret (also a pseudonym), then 18, met Strong in Toronto. While the age of consent is 18 in Canada, she says she was at “an extremely vulnerable place in my life,” having dropped out of university, with the “blind dream” to make it as a singer-songwriter. She was playing open mic nights and “scrounging pennies to make a record,” she says, but “I didn’t have any connections at all.”
When Strong offered to help her with her career, she says, “It was the most exciting day of my life because I’d never met anybody that works in music.” Like Noire, Margaret spent the next several months hanging out with him, discussing her career and meeting industry contacts.
“We would talk about work and my dreams,” she explained in a lengthy email. “We talked about the artists he worked with, and how I was talented enough to be as famous as them if I were in the right hands.” (She was also interviewed by phone for this story.)
Margaret admits that she was impressed by Strong’s office. “It looked like the Emerald City to me at the time,” she writes. “He had gold and silver record plaques all over his wall with my favorite artists. He knew I loved Arcade Fire, so he gave me Arcade Fire records, along with 20 other records of other artists he ‘worked with.’ He told me he helped ‘break them’ and I believed him. He did seem genuinely interested in my music. Eventually, he told me he wanted to manage me.”
Margaret says Strong introduced her to major players in his music network and after a month or so started managing her through his company StrongSongs. “It didn’t occur to me at all he was interested in me sexually,” she recalls.
One night, Margaret says “everything changed.” Strong took her to a bar, where she used a fake ID to get in (drinking age in Ontario is 19), and she got “super drunk” with him. “He knew the bartender and started feeding me shot after shot,” she says. “I had never drunk so much in my life. By the end of the night, I could barely walk.” Although she was not attracted to Strong, she says, “In my deliriousness, I went back and had sex with him.” The next morning, she panicked, worried he would no longer work with her. She phoned and apologized, saying she was embarrassed and wanted to pretend it never happened. “It didn’t occur to me that the sex we had was technically non-consensual considering the state I was in,” she writes.
Margaret says Strong’s reply was, “‘Well, actually, I did want to have sex with you. And I liked having sex with you. And if you’re not able to do that, then I don’t think that we can work together.’”
“That was the day that it clicked for me that he was an evil guy,” she says.
Margaret says Strong threatened to derail her career, so she agreed to have sex with him again. “The first time was the worst,” she writes. “I cried the entire time, but he didn’t care. The second time was the same, eventually I became more numb to it. He went back to taking me to events, meetings, etcetera. The only condition was that if he called me for sex, I had to oblige.” She says he had explicit photos of her and “he threatened to send them around and show people.”
“Several months of me knowing Adrian was me having this arrangement where I would have sex with him and he wouldn’t screw over my career or drop me from the company,” Margaret says.
On the occasions that she turned down Strong’s requests for sex, she says he would throw a tantrum or fake a panic attack. (Strong’s lawyer says he has suffered from panic attacks for years.) “I would be so annoyed with him that I would try to leave his apartment or his car,” she says. That’s when he would get physically assertive, block and lock the door, she says, “and rage — get all red and scary.” When that happened, Margaret says she gave in.
When she “couldn’t bear to have sex with him again,” Margaret writes that Strong gave her drugs to “numb me.” She added, “One time he even gave me a drugged cookie without telling me and had his way with me when I was basically passed out.”
Much like Mindy’s experience, Margaret also says Strong asked her to “dress in fetish outfits, weird socks, or sometimes gymnastics outfits. He took photos of me and videos of me while masturbating.” She says, “There were no limits. He literally never took no for an answer.”
“The abusive manager relationship went on for almost a year,” Margaret writes. “I fell into a massive depression, but I kept making music, and kept up hope that someday I could get away from him, although I didn’t know how. One day I had finally had enough.”
While at Strong’s house, she refused to have sex with him. “He forced himself on me and I fought him off. I managed to open the door and get away. I was done with him.”
That is, until Strong reminded her of her signed management contract. “I agreed to work with DMD/StrongSongs but I didn’t want to speak to him anymore,” she writes. She was given a different point person at the company, and Strong respected her space for almost two months. She says he would message her sometimes, seemingly apologetic, telling her he was a sex addict and receiving therapy.
Margaret notes Strong’s behaved “in these patterns and waves. So, he would go through these waves of [being a] Born Again Christian and not wanting to be the way he is, and then he would act on his compulsions again.”
In 2011, Strong invited Margaret to see Prince play at Air Canada Centre with two other industry people, promising “no funny business.” After the concert he asked if they could talk. “He wanted to apologize. We went for one drink in a public place, and I don’t know how I didn’t see it coming, but he drugged me,” she writes. She recalls becoming inebriated “very quickly” and went home. “After this I cut off from him completely and decided I needed to get out of Canada altogether.”
She moved out of the country to record an album. Strong let her out of her contract in late 2012 provided she signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Strong’s attorney Watkins provided a 2012 email from Margaret to Strong discussing the termination of her management contract. In it, she indicated that her father was helping her with the negotiations. Watkins contends that the involvement of Margaret’s father, as well as a lawyer who advised her on these negotiations are “relevant” to Margaret’s “contention that Mr. Strong purportedly took advantage of the power imbalance that existed between them.” He also implies that Margaret’s use of positive language in the email, such as “I know you still feel as passionately about this project as I do,” indicates that their relationship was professional and civil.
The former manager who guided Margaret’s career for a period after she extricated herself from DMD/StrongSongs backs up her account, however. He says she confided in him about her arrangement with Strong. He asked not to be identified in this story but provided a statement: “Soon after I began managing [Margaret] in 2014, she shared with me her story of Adrian’s sexual coercion and abuse toward her. I was shocked. We had hired his team [to promote her singles to radio], and when I asked her why she hadn’t opposed this working relationship, she explained to me that she feared he would blackmail her and destroy her career.”
Margaret says she decided to speak out because “I have moved on from that time of my life. I am now an award-winning hit songwriter in Canada, and I use my power in the industry, mostly, to help develop young female talent and help their dreams come true. This is the most rewarding thing I could ever do after everything I’ve been through — to be able to be the person I needed when I was trying to find my way through the industry — the person who could have once steered me away from a monster like Adrian Strong.”
“I have emotionally come to terms with everything he did to me, and for the most part at this point, I’m OK,” Margaret continues. “However, what I still can’t live with to this day is that Adrian is out there as we speak.”
In June, DMD’s owner and sole shareholder Derrick Ross told Billboard, “The company takes the allegations raised against Mr. Strong very seriously” and it was conducting an investigation into his conduct, which he later said was being run by Toronto law firm Paliare Roland Rosenberg. Ross added that “Strong has requested, and the company has agreed to an administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation.” The company also began removing Instagram posts about key artists from its account.
Behind the scenes, former DMD vp Gareth Jones was setting up a new radio promotion company, You Are Hear, which was announced in a July 14 press release that indicated former DMD head of publicity and marketing Matt Attfield was joining him. You Are Hear’s Instagram page identifies the company as “A Gareth Jones Music Promotion Enterprise” and is populated with the names of former DMD clients. Neither Jones nor Attfield responded to Billboard‘s requests for comments.
In the wake of this announcement, Ross told Billboard, “DMD has discontinued operations.” He says the Paliare Roland Rosenberg investigation is ongoing.
If you have information pertaining to this story, please email [email protected].
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, in the United States you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visiting the organization’s website for more information. In Canada, visit the Sexual Assault Support website or call the Assaulted Women’s Helpline 1-866-863-0511. All these organizations provide free, confidential support to sexual assault victims.
Colin Stutz
Billboard
