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The world-famous Brooklyn sex club, The Hacienda, has been accused of going against its ‘sex positivity’ ethos after several attendees accused the club of covering up sexual assault during its wild orgies.

Ten current and former members of Hacienda alleged that the leaders of the group, which operates in a series of Bushwick townhouses, repeatedly failed to take action after they reported violent or creepy behaviour, including one woman who said she was raped and two others who said they were “slammed against walls”.

One of the founders 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 orgies about a decade ago — reportedly leading to him being banned from other sex clubs in the city, according to the NY Post. Play has “unequivocally” denied the accusation.

The Hacienda was founded by polyamorous married couple Andrew Cray and Elizabeth Pelletier, who go by the names Andrew and Beth Sparkfire. The third founder is Play, a sex educator and former personal trainer whom GQ lauded as “the world’s greatest sex hacker” in a 2017 article.

The trio set out not just to create another sex club, but an entire community where members felt liberated to indulge in their outside-the-mainstream sexual proclivities with other consenting adults away from prying, judgmental eyes.

What started as weekly secret sex parties for in-the-know sexy crew grew into a veritable real estate empire with the group snapping up at least three Bushwick brownstones about a decade ago.

 

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But orgies are a messy business, and reporting on sex crimes amid all the madness is difficult.

“How do you call the police to report something that happened at a sex party?” says one of the accusers. “They’d come and say, ‘OK, which deviant do I arrest first?’”

Two different women said they had been “slammed against walls” by Hacienda partygoers, claiming the offenders were not punished when they came forward. Three others said they had reported “threatening behaviour” by guests but their complaints were “brushed aside.” One woman even had her identity revealed to the person she had accused.

In interviews, 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. One woman, Jennifer Fisher, told the Times she was “badgered” into having sex by a guest of an orgy being hosted at the house in 2012, an encounter she felt had been a rape when she woke up the next morning.

The owners of Hacianda, however, deny the allegations according to NY Post. “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.”

Another woman directly accused co-founder Play of publicly performing sex acts on her at a party without her consent almost a decade ago while she was “visibly intoxicated”. In a statement about this alleged incident, Hacienda leadership “acknowledged the encounter but said it was consensual.”

The “interaction” with the woman happened “in a space where there were multiple conscientious and attentive people from the community around us and watching the scene play out,” he said.

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. Some of these steps have included instituting mandatory orientations about consent for all guests and enlisting sex party “guardians” tasked with monitoring revellers’ behaviour.

“While we always aim for zero instances of harm at our organization, the very nature of this kind of sexual expression does have some risk.”