A woman has slammed security working Groovin The Moo Canberra, describing their attitude as “patronising” and “inadequate” after she was reportedly urinated on by a male punter as she attended the festival with her 15-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.
As ABC News reports, Joana Perkins was at the regional touring festival’s Canberra leg to chaperone her son Sam and brought along her young daughter Ema. Ms Perkins told the ABC that she was enjoying the event when she noticed a man urinating on her leg.
“We were enjoying ourselves when I noticed a man come up behind me and I thought I sensed something that he was fiddling with his penis and unfortunately I started feeling urine running down my leg,” Ms Perkins told the outlet.
“I turned around and he had his penis out and was weeing on me, at which point I grabbed him by the arm and said ‘you’re coming with me’ and moved him away from where we were.” Ms Perkins’ daughter was distraught and crying after the incident.
“Two guards came over and asked me what happened and I said ‘this guy’s just peed on me’ and you could see the pee marks and they took the guy away,” she recounted. The mother of two then made for the exit but had to stop when she saw what security were doing.
“Now obviously I had wee down my leg and a crying nine-year-old and I wasn’t going to hang around so I headed out to the exit with my son and carrying my daughter,” she told ABC News.
“I wasn’t heading out to check on what the security guards were doing, but what I noticed is that they were laughing, patted the guy [who] was absolutely over-the-top inebriated or high and let him go off on his merry way.”
Naturally irked, Ms Perkins approached the guards, one of whom insisted they’d kicked the man out of the festival. “At which point one of the security guards looked at me extremely aggressively and said ‘if you don’t shut up you’ll be chucked out’,” she said.
Ms Perkins also claims that a female member of the ISEC security company, who’d been contracted to work the event, told her that she was “at fault” for bringing her children to the event. Ms Perkins now intends to file a formal complaint with ISEC.
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“She was assaulted and it’s their job to keep an eye on her,” Ms Perkins’ son told ABC. “I’d expect the security company, even if someone was just being aggressive and drunk, to warn them or get them to leave. I definitely didn’t feel like I could rely on any of [the security guards].”
Groovin The Moo Canberra was otherwise without incident, with police praising the conduct of most punters. Organisers entrust the safety of their punters to their security contractors and it’s always disheartening to hear about contractors taking that trust for granted.
Tone Deaf have reached out to Groovin The Moo for comment.
