Trigger warning: sexual assault Grow Love, a local artist and muralist, took to Instagram last week to share her story of sexual assault and why she no longer participates in Crush Walls, a street art festival located in the RiNo Art District.
In a post shared on Monday, September 2, Love shared her story with her followers. In her statement, the artist recalls first meeting
Crush Walls founder Robin Munro and getting involved with the Crush Walls community in 2017. After her introduction to Munro, they began dating, which is when the assault occurred.
“He violently sexually assaulted me during this time. On one occasion, he was inappropriate with my daughter, who was 8 at the time,” Love shares in her post.
After cutting ties with Munro and the Crush Walls community, Love first spoke about her experience with friends and members of the Denver art community in 2018, a year after the assault.
“I wasn’t really planning on doing anything with the fact that he hurt me. It really messed me up, but I was going to just let it go,” she stated. “But then, I met a woman who he raped. A woman I had met independently had also dated him. We became friends, and then she expressed to me that he had raped her when they were dating.”
After going public with her experience, Love was “blackballed by the community,” as she put it, and threatened if she continued to speak about her experience. She was told to stop sharing her story publicly by other artists and saw her career start to suffer. She was pushed out of the Denver art and mural community while she saw them work to protect Munro.
“No matter what I did, it didn’t matter. He was still going to be allowed to be invited to places,” she stated. “He was still thought of so highly that it didn’t matter that he had been violent toward me.”
Then, last week, Love decided to take to Instagram and use her platform to amplify her story. The post was quickly shared throughout the Denver community, and within days, she was seeing an outpour of support in her comments and DMs.
“This is what I expected the first time I came out, and finally, three years later, people are ready to hear this,” says Love.
She has also received messages and comments from others coming forward sharing similar experiences of violence from Munro. “I dated him and he was sexually violent towards me,” one comment read, adding: “I know you’re telling the truth because it happened to me.”
Two days after Love’s initial post, an Instagram account called @thecoloradowomancrusher was created to share the stories of others who have encountered Munro. So far, the account has five additional stories of violence from Munro that Instagram users have shared.
One post reads: “I’ve been silent for a long time about this … but it’s time that the truth comes out. There’s power in numbers, and it’s time I stand up for myself and other women and men that have been victims of an abuser who is also a powerful man in the Denver art community.”
Love’s story brings to light a larger issue of violence and power among Denver’s art and mural communities. She has been outspoken against the part that the RiNo Art District has played in protecting Munro and blacklisting anyone who speaks out against him or his group of artists.
“I think it’s deeper than people realize,” she says. “The violent people that run this festival, the violent developers that don’t give a shit about the community around them, and the RiNo Arts District.”
Last week,
303 posted an article detailing the violent past of Crush Walls that includes the role the festival has played in gentrifying a historically all Black neighborhood. “
During his reign, he has helped many other local artists in their quests to be professional street artists, but he has also ignored, neglected, abused, and refused a lot of other deserving artists in the process,” Cori Anderson writes about Munro. “It seems as if his core group of friends is always involved in the festival, and that predictable inclusion gives them a sense of grandiose entitlement which they tend to show in ugly ways.”
On September 22, the RiNo Art District released an official statement explaining they’re taking the allegations seriously and “reviewing the matter internally.” Additionally, the statement explains that all work by Munro has been suspended. No official statement has been released by Crush Walls or Munro.
By Kelly Mutz
