Statement on our event on Saturday 15th October 2022

On Saturday night there was an incident which occured at our event at Komedia Brighton where one of our guests was sexually assaulted on the dancefloor.

The perpetrator was apprehended by Komedia’s security team, arrested by the police and taken into custody, where he currently remains.

The survivor is pressing charges and has asked that if there were any witnesses who would be willing to provide a statement, please get in touch with 101 quoting reference number 472 201 932 26. Several witnesses have already come forward and there is CCTV footage from the club which can be used as evidence.

We are in communication with the survivor and will continue to support her in any way that she needs.

We are completely devastated that this incident took place at our event. Our two main aims for Gal Pals has always been to create somewhere fun and safe for women, trans and non-binary people to party.

We're very shaken up that this occurred in our space and incredibly disappointed and saddened at what happened.

It feels like this sacred space has been violated and tarnished by this one individual. Among our team there are survivors and people who have previously worked in sexual violence prevention so this feels incredibly personal, triggering and upsetting.

We do everything we can to safeguard the space. In addition to the venue’s security we have our volunteer Pin Pals who help us keep an eye on the space, look out for people and act as a conduit if people don’t feel comfortable approaching security.

Unfortunately sometimes, no matter how much you do, there are abusers who will perpetuate abuse. This is why we say there is no such thing as a ‘safe space’, we can only try to make our spaces safer.

Something that has become quite clear to us is that people are not reporting when incidents occur, so we would like to take this opportunity to reiterate to all of our guests how important it is that you do.

Please approach someone immediately if anything ever feels not 100% right. Whether that’s security, a Pin Pal, our DJs, photographers or door staff. We will always support and believe you.

Even if none of our safer space policies have been broken, if something just feels off, or someone is making you feel uncomfortable, let us know so we can investigate.

Our community is what keeps us safe and by letting us know you’ll be helping us in preventative safeguarding.

Next Steps

Here is what we are intending to do going forward to mitigate incidents like this happening in the future:

Pin Pals

We will be expanding our team of Pin Pals in January 2023 (Pin Pals are volunteers who help us to monitor the space and look out for people)

We will hire a dedicated safeguarding lead who will coordinate our team of Pin Pals and be on duty throughout the night if any incidents occur

We will give our Pin Pals more rigorous training on bystander intervention

We will make our Pin Pals and any other Gal Pals staff more visible by purchasing light up armbands which they will wear on the night

We will highlight the role of Pin Pals more on our social media and in the emails we send out to ticket holders prior to the event

Good Night Out

We will be asking both of our venues, Komedia Brighton and Lafeytte London, to undertake Good Night Out training on Understanding and Responding to Sexual Harassment and Assault

We will explore undertaking Good Night Out accreditation ourselves as event organisers

The Door

We will do more rigorous checks on the door to ensure everyone coming to Gal Pals understands what the space is, who it is for and what our policies are.

We will hire someone to be a host/vibe checker on the door and ask guests questions to ensure they know what Gal Pals is and what our safer spaces policies are (just to note that we already do this but we will be stricter and more thorough moving forward).

Our aim is to have all of this (minus the work with Good Night Out) in place by our next Brighton event in February 2023.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Komedia’s security team who handled the situation quickly, sensitively and appropriately. One of our Pin Pals who works with survivors of domestic abuse was also able to support the survivor and talk her through the process of going through the criminal justice system, as well as refer her to appropriate support services. We are really grateful to her for all the support she has given us.

We are open to hearing feedback, criticism or anything else you’d like to share, please email or DM us if you’d like to discuss this further.