The woman responsible for signing disgraced singer’s Ian Watkins band, Lost Prophets, has spoken out claiming the move ruined her career.
Julie Weir chose to sign the Welsh rock Band early on to Visible Noise and had been working with them for over a decade before Watkin’s sick ways came crawling out of the woodwork.
The 47-year-old is currently serving 29 years behind bars at HMP Wakefield after he was sentenced for multiple sex offences including the assault of young children and infants and the possession of “extreme” child and animal pornographic material.
READ MORE: Andrew Tate’s brother Tristan donates thousands to jailed UK rioter’s mortgage fundraiser
Click for more of the latest news from the Daily Star.
Julie said the scandal was a huge part of her life and it tarnished the label she had spent over 20 years working on.
(Image: Youtube/UPRAWR Podcast)
On a UPRAWR podcast on YouTube, speaking about when she found out about Watkins’s crimes, Julie added: “I got a call from my manager and I could tell it wasn’t good. We were just about to start a big project with the band and then things spiralled from that. It was a long process really.
“Speaking to the lads, you would imagine people would know and that it was in plain sight. But a lot of things were happening without anyone knowing. Everyone is a really straight down-the-line person in that band and that’s the thing. Out of all the things that could have happened, I never though it would have been that to happen. It’s a real shame because it was one of the biggest bands of that era.
“But he affected a lot of people’s lives. There are people walking around with tattoos on their bodies and it’s insane now. There is still stuff that pops up daily on Reddit and YouTube, I can’t get it off my feed, so it’s a daily reminder of all that happened. For the label, it was absolutely catastrophic. I spent nearly half my life on the label and working with them and it was just really hard to have everything taken away.
(Image: South Wales Police/PA Wire)
“Those people had wives and kids and it was a good living for them but it was taken away in one go. You have to reevaluate you’re life and wonder why you spent so much time doing it. They were a great bunch of creative people and we had some amount of fun through all them years. Mad things happened. It was insane and brilliant but the world has changed. That world is gone.”
Speaking about the financial impact, she said: “I don’t do the label anymore. It was my identity, I spent a long time doing it. It’s still really part of me but the whole impact was we just couldn’t afford to sign another artist. It just wasn’t able to happen anymore so that was really sad, to be honest.
“The label stopped in 2016 and that left a scar on me. I had a bit of a wobble because I thought people were looking at me. I had a crisis of consciousness because I was attacked for all of it as well. I was getting a lot of flack off the internet, messages to the office and photos of the office door – that was the scary one.”
Watkins is eligible to apply for parole in 2031 after serving two-thirds of his prison term, followed by six years of supervised release. Whereas the two co-defendants, the mothers of his victims, respectively received sentences of 14 and 17 years imprisonment.
The full podcast can be watched here.
For the latest news stories from Daily Star sign up for our newsletter.