PARTY TO ‘ABUSE’
Brooklyn sex club ‘lax on assault’
A Brooklyn sex club has become the hottest place to have an orgy in New York City — thanks to its policies on consent and respect for boundaries.
But 10 current and former members of Hacienda have said that the leaders of the group, which operates in a series of Bushwick townhouses, repeatedly failed to take action after reports of sexual assault, violence and creepy behavior, according to The New York Times.
One of the founders, a Brit who goes by Kenneth Play, has also been accused of publicly performing a nonconsensual sex act on a woman at one of the group’s parties about a decade ago — reportedly leading to his being banned from other sex clubs in the city, the report said.
Reached by email Monday, Play denied the accusation.
“I stand wholeheartedly with victims of assault and never want to discredit a woman’s experience or stifle her voice,” Play told The Post, calling the allegations referenced in the Times “unfounded and untrue.”
Accusers wary to talk
The group’s accusers, including women and nonbinary people, said they were reluctant to report the behavior to police for fear of being discriminated — and also felt that making claims against the club would betray its “sex-positive” ethos.
In interviews with the Times, the members claim that the club’s famously freewheeling atmosphere has more than once blurred the lines between a naughty good time and sexual abuse.
The organization and its leadership have vehemently denied the allegations, telling The Post in a statement that it handles any improper incidents appropriately.
“While regrettable instances do happen in the sex-positive community, we have very specific rules and procedures put in place to keep safety at the forefront,” Hacienda said. “Incidents, while rare, are taken seriously and handled promptly.”
The group was founded by polyamorous married couple Andrew Cray and Elizabeth Pelletier, a k a Andrew and Beth Sparkfire. The third founder is Play, a sex educator and ex-personal trainer whom GQ lauded as “the world’s greatest sex hacker” in a 2017 article.
The trio said they set out to create a community where members felt liberated to indulge in nonmainstream sexual proclivities with other consenting adults.
What started as weekly cloakand-dagger sex parties for in-theknow hornballs hosted at the couple’s townhouse grew into a veritable real estate empire — the group snapping up at least three Bushwick brownstones about a decade ago. The properties became private enclaves where members could gather, party — or even live, with tenants paying between $750 and $1,500 per month to rent a room. One such tenant was Jennifer Fisher, who told the Times a guest of an orgy at the house in 2012 “badgered” her into having sex, which she felt had been a rape. Fisher’s loyalty to the community, and the unusual circumstances of the alleged assault, prevented her from reporting the incident to the authorities. “How do you call the police to report something that happened at a sex party?” she said. “They’d come and say, ‘OK, which deviant do I arrest first?’ ”
But even when such assaults were reported some members found leadership’s response to be lacking.
Two women said they had been “slammed against walls” by Hacienda partygoers, claiming the offenders were not punished when they came forward, according to the Times.
‘Threatening behavior’
Three others said they had reported “threatening behavior” but had their complaints “brushed aside,” including one woman who said her identity was later revealed to the person she had accused.
Another woman accused Play of publicly performing sex acts on her at a party without her consent almost a decade ago while she was “visibly intoxicated.”
Hacienda “acknowledged the encounter but said it was consensual,” according to the report.
Play told The Post that the “interaction” happened “in a space where there were . . . people from the community around us and watching the scene play out.”
“Which is a large part of why my community has so fervently stuck behind me . . . there are multiple witnesses who can attest to no wrongdoing,” he said.
Organizers of other city sex parties have banished Play from attending, according to reports, which he and his co-founders told The Post are untrue.
Addressing the litany of complaints, Hacienda acknowledged to the Times that it fell short at times in the community’s early days, but said it had taken steps over the years to mitigate such incidents, including mandatory orientations about consent and enlisting sex party “guardians” to monitor revelers’ behavior.