Held each summer on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, the Country Thunder music festival has been the scene of sexual violence over the years, as young female concert-goers have come forward to say they were given alcohol and possibly knockout drugs — and then raped by men at the event.
As the Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this year, there was at least one sexual assault reported in 2025, 2024, 2022, 2017 and 2015 at the event, which serves as a large draw for Chicago area teenagers and young adults as country music’s popularity surges in the Midwest.
Recently obtained records provide further evidence that such incidents have not been limited to the Kenosha County locale. Police have fielded reports of two possible sexual assaults involving women at the festival’s Florence, Arizona, location earlier this year.
On April 13, a 24-year-old woman went to a medical facility to report she “was possibly drugged and sexually assaulted at Country Thunder,” according to records from the Pinal County, Arizona, sheriff’s office.
Two days earlier, around 8 p.m., the woman indicated she “was near the main stage area and purchased alcohol at a white vendor tent,” according to a police report.
She “bought a White Claw and the vendor opened it in front of her,” and “she returned to where her brother and his friend were, and placed her drink on the ground while hanging out listening to music.”
“It is unknown how long the drink was out of her control before picking it back up to consume it. After finishing the drink, [NAME REDACTED] felt tired and a little out of it.”
Later, she went to buy more drinks and “on the way back to her brother, she stopped to talk to some unknown people” but does not remember much of “what occurred after that, and woke up the next morning naked in a random recreational vehicle at an unknown campground.”
Upon waking, “there were three men and a woman still partying in and outside of the RV,” according to the police reports.
“While at the RV she could recall being touched by two of the males and she could remember telling them ‘no thank you.’”
When she woke up “one of the men gave her a $50 bill and told her it was to cover her Uber ride, and that it was okay to do the walk of shame,” police records show. “They then called a Country Thunder staff member in a golf cart who took her to the Uber pickup point.”
Subsequent laboratory tests found a DNA strain on a piece of the woman’s clothing, but it didn’t link to anybody listed in a law enforcement database.
Other tests detected benzoylecgonine in her urine, which is an indication of cocaine ingestion, though the woman told police “she does not use illicit drugs and said that she is subject to drug testing in her career.”
The case has been transitioned to “inactive pending discovery of additional evidence,” records show.
During that same festival, which draws tens of thousands of people, another female patron, who was 18, reported a possible sexual assault after she went to a campsite and was given a drink and cocaine in a camper.
While initially “she wanted to proceed with the investigation” and undergo sexual assault testing, the woman later stopped communicating with police, records show, indicating the investigation was then put on hold.
Organizers of Country Thunder, which also holds festivals in Canada and Florida, could not be reached for comment.
Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple, whose agency provides security for the Arizona event, said one sexual assault is certainly “one too many,” but sexual violence has not been what police consider to be rampant over the years at the event.
A spokesman for the Kenosha County sheriff’s office, which is contracted to provide security at the Country Thunder event on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, has said there were no sexual assaults reported at the 2026 festival, which was held near Twin Lakes over four days in July.
The lineup for 2027 doesn’t appear to have been finalized there, but in Arizona it is slated to include pop country star Megan Moroney and the country music duo Florida Georgia Line in April, according to the Country Thunder web site.