(no subject)
So, I've spent the last few days working at a homeless shelter. This is a women's only shelter, part of a larger group of shelters organised by redacted. In other words, every woman here has chosen to be away from men for whatever reason. These reasons include experiences with domestic violence and sexual abuse.
Sadly, all of this is relevant. *
On Christmas day, a DJ came in to entertain the guests for a few hours. My first experience with him was when he greeted me with "hello gorgeous", stood far too close, and generally came off as drunk. Later, I had to walk past him while escorting a guest, and he tried to gather our attention by changing the words of a song and singing at us. I told the guest that if he bothered her at all, she should tell us, and she told me she intended to ignore him. On the way back I saw him dancing with guests, which struck me as being slightly inappropriate.
What I didn't see, or discover till later was that he was, while dancing, physically grabbing guests and volunteers. He was also making comments about how lucky we were to have him there, since he was the only man, and that an engaged volunteer was 'useless to [him]'.
He also brought a friend along, and they were very clearly discussing women while leering at them, from the stage and the corner of the room.
Since he was only there for an hour or so, we didn't gather enough information to kick him out before he was ready to leave. At the end of the shift, volunteers were asked whether or not he had made them uncomfortable, and more than half said he had.
I later found out that this was his third year in a row, but due to communication failures, he kept being booked. However, at this point, the shift leaders were in agreement that he was not welcome back.
He then turned up again on boxing day, when he wasn't scheduled, and began setting up. We (in the office) didn't realise he was there until a guest made a complaint. We threw him out, and raised holy hell, making sure that everyone involved knew that he was never again to be booked for our shelter or any other within redacted. Especially after a volunteer witnessed him snorting cocaine after he'd been kicked out.
For me the kicker of the story is that he was a volunteer, too. He wasn't someone we'd booked who saw an opportunity - he was going out of his way to be a creepy bastard.
* Obviously, it would still be creepy if he was behaving this way in any other environment, don't get me wrong. I just want to illustrate just how inappropriate his behaviour was.
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