ABC journalist Frank Elaridi spoke out during Thursday’s episode of his “Quite Frankly” podcast, and claimed Courtney Love groped him after an interview several years prior.
Elaridi said the incident took place “like six years ago” at Coachella when he was covering the music festival for “Nightline.”
“I think I was like 24 or something at the time — naive,” he said. “They send me to Coachella to go do an interview with her. I’m at her afterparty, interviewing her in a side room, and then she’s like, ‘Come hang out with us!’”
Elaridi said he posed for a photograph with Love, and things took an unexpected turn. “And the second the photo’s done, she grabs my crotch, like, really hard. Like, grabs it like that,” he said.
Elaridi went on to describe what it was like for him to be groped so unexpectedly by the rockstar.
“I was like caught off guard. So there’s literally a photo ’cause somebody across the room snapped it, sent it to me,” he said as an image of the incident appeared on screen.
Elaridi’s podcast guest, musician Nahko Bear — who has been accused of sexual abuse but denies all the allegations made against him — asked, “So you’re gonna cancel her?”
Courtney Love is accused by journalist Frank Elaridi for grabbing his crotch nearly a decade ago #accused #Coachella https://t.co/gkteeFeEse
— WhatsNew2Day (@whatsn2day) May 19, 2023
Elaridi talked about today’s cancel culture and how people are now looking back in time and calling out others for actions made in the past. (RELATED: A Fan Grabbed Machine Gun Kelly’s Junk During Concert)
“It would never cross my mind to be like, let me go after her now, 10 years later,” Elaridi said.
“In my head like that would never cross my mind to do that.”
“Maybe we should talk about — is it because she’s a woman and I’m a man?” he said.