Former Merivale hospitality group staff allege culture of exploiting ...
One of Australia's leading hospitality groups, Merivale, has been accused of fostering a culture that places women at risk, condones drug use by staff and patrons and fails to adequately address claims of sexual assault.
An ABC investigation into the hospitality industry has spoken to dozens of former staff who have detailed a culture across Merivale venues that exploits female employees, including some who say they were not allowed to say no to customers.
One former staff member alleges she was raped by a colleague but was then rostered to continue working with him.
Another former staff member alleges she was grabbed by two men while on shift, including one who placed an arm around her neck, but when she reported the assault to her manager, she was criticised.
"They were allowed to stay, and I still had to serve them," she said.
The former staff member also told the ABC drug use was allowed and at times encouraged while working at the Hemmesphere bar in central Sydney.
In response to the ABC's request for comment, a Merivale spokesperson said: "We have no record of the incidents that you have described. We are therefore unable to respond to what we consider to be unfair questions."
The Ivy nightclub in central Sydney. (Supplied: Merivale)
The ABC has also spoken with two female patrons who say they were put in a dangerous position when they were mistaken for sex workers at Ivy nightclub in Sydney's CBD.
While an internal Merivale investigation into that case found that CCTV vision "does not show any untoward or inappropriate behaviour," New South Wales Police has launched its own investigation.
The hospitality group is one of the largest in the country, with thousands of staff working across more than 80 venues along the country's east coast.
The allegations have emerged as the culture of another major Sydney hospitality group, Swillhouse, has come under intense scrutiny with Nine Entertainment reporting allegations the group ousted female staff after they reported sexual assault, encouraged staff to have sex with customers and take drugs on shift and discriminated against women.
Rostered to work with her alleged rapistA former staff member from Merivale's Coogee Pavilion alleges she was raped by a colleague at his home one night in 2018, and after reporting it to management, said she was rostered to continue working with him.
While having a night out with friends, the former staff member, who has asked not to be named for privacy reasons, alleges she was drugged and raped by her colleague.
"I was just feeling a little bit off considering I'd had one drink … I [was feeling] really unwell," she told the ABC.
"He was much bigger than me and he just kind of pinned me against the wall."
She said she was then raped by her colleague.
"The whole time I was making it very clear that I wanted him to stop, and he wouldn't," she said.
A former staff member alleges a man she worked with at the Coogee Pavilion raped her at his home. (Supplied: Merivale)
The woman, who was 22 at the time, said she decided to tell her manager after the alleged perpetrator approached her the following week during a lunch break at work, holding her leg and seeking her assurance that "we're fine".
"I felt sick because I don't think he felt like he did anything wrong … or he just didn't care."
She said her manager arranged a meeting for the following week with him, another manager and an HR representative from Merivale head office that was held on the rooftop at the Coogee Pavilion.
"I had to go through basically and tell them what happened, which was really uncomfortable. And then once I got to the end, they kind of turned around and said, 'Okay, so what do you want to happen?'"
The former staff member said she didn't know what to do.
"I'm not trained in HR, I don't know how to deal with these issues in the workplace so I kind of was like … the best thing is that I'm not rostered on shift with him, I don't want to see him."
But, instead, she said management told her because there was no police report, there was nothing they could do.
"I just kind of went well I'm not really prepared to make a police report and I had at that point told them that I had already dealt with the police on an issue like this previously and I didn't feel comfortable going back.
"They said, 'Okay well there's nothing we can do then.'"
One of the managers then texted her a link to the Employee Assistance Program counselling offered to all Merivale employees, but she said there was no further support.
"Less than an hour later … [the manager] was asking me if I wanted to work a shift on the Friday," she said.
"It kind of damaged the confidence that I had in what had happened and [my feeling] that it was wrong," she said.
The former staff member said she continued to be rostered on to work the same shifts as the alleged perpetrator for the next "month or two" before he stopped working at the Coogee Pavilion.
"The thing was I didn't know when he was gonna be there … I wasn't happy, I was crying a lot, [and] I was just in a bad way."
She decided to file a police report the following month but later decided not to pursue the complaint.
"It's not okay to think there could be people working there now that are going through the same thing and I doubt HR's changed their processes and it'll keep happening until someone says you need to change," she said.
The ABC's investigation has uncovered other allegations of women being placed at risk in Merivale venues.
One former staff member who worked at Hemmesphere — a Merivale bar in central Sydney — told the ABC she was assaulted by male customers.
While working a night shift in 2021, the former staff member, who asked not to be identified to protect her future employment prospects, said she had been serving two men when one of them grabbed her around the waist.
"They had maybe had one or two drinks … they kept trying to grab me, and I was trying to get away from them, and one of them grabbed me and pushed me against the wall and was trying to kiss me.
"And then when I tried to walk away, the other one of them grabbed me with his arm around the neck to kind of bear hug me.
"When I finally escaped, I went to tell my manager."
Hemmesphere, Merivale's cocktail bar in central Sydney. (Supplied: Merivale)
The former staff member said she told her manager that she felt "really uncomfortable" and that the men had been "really rapey".
"Instead of showing any kind of concern she argued with me, 'rapey is a really strong term to use'. And so I corrected myself, and I said, 'Okay I feel like they're molesting me.'
"And then she said, again, 'that's a very strong term to use'. She didn't see the situation. She didn't ask me what happened. She just argued with me over the terminology, and when I tried to explain to her, she just got frustrated and walked away."
She said the men "were allowed to stay, and I still had to serve them".
The former employee alleges the experience was the consequence of a culture inside Merivale venues that sexualises young female staff.
"The environment was basically to drink and to flirt."
She said if a customer made her feel uncomfortable, she wasn't allowed to say no and instead, was encouraged to sell them more drinks.
"We were supposed to try an alternative, such as, 'let's do some shots first', to try to distract them and get money from them for the venue.
"Now looking back on it, I feel like I was really taken advantage of, and I didn't feel supported.
"I really didn't feel safe."
She also said drug use was common practice at Hemmesphere.
"The managers were fully aware of whatever kind of drugs were being done in the bathrooms. The managers themselves would be doing this in the bathrooms [and] they would be giving it to staff.
"They knew that the disabled bathroom is where all of the guests would go to do it."
She said in her experience, this behaviour was "so normalised" and ingrained in the culture.
In response, a Merivale spokesperson said: "Based on the limited information provided, we are not able to sensibly respond … To that point, we need written consent from any employee (current or former) for Merivale to respond to any questions about anything alleged to have occurred during their employment."
The former staff member declined to allow the ABC to reveal her name to Merivale.
Presented as 'sex workers'A Merivale patron, Jess Helinski, told the ABC of an ordeal she endured during a visit to the Ivy nightclub earlier this year, during which she was asked if she was a sex worker by a male customer after being seated next to him by a Merivale staff member.
The 22-year-old said after initially arriving at the nightclub she and her friend were separated from the rest of their group, and a Merivale staff member approached them outside, offering to help.
"We explained to him that we had lost our two friends and he said to follow him, and he would assist us in finding them," Jess said.
The employee took the two women into a lift, instead of up the public staircase.
"The lifts opened up into a back-of-house area … at that point, alarm bells were kind of going for me," she said.
Jess Helinski. (ABC News: Chloe Angelo)
Jess said the employee took them to a VIP area behind the DJ booth, where they were told to sit on either side of a group of men they didn't know.
"Immediately we were handed drinks by two girls who had light sticks and were pouring vodka into our glasses," Jess said.
Patrons can book a VIP treatment table at various locations within the nightclub.
According to a bookings website the service costs between $880 and $1,320 and includes a dedicated host and bottle service.
Once the employee left, Jess said one of the men leant over to her and asked, 'So, when did you get into this industry?'"
"So, I said, What industry? And then he said to me, 'The sex industry — the man you were just with told us that you're sex workers and you're going to spend the night with us.'"
Jess said the male patron, whose name she doesn't know, was very apologetic when she corrected him.
"He said something along the lines of, 'You girls need to leave, I'm so sorry, it's not safe for you in this situation.'
"It wasn't necessarily a very traumatic experience … I just couldn't make sense of it in my head," Jess said.
Jess told the ABC she felt the staff member's actions were deliberate.
"I felt like that staff member had just picked us out from a group and decided that he was going to put us in this really vulnerable situation and had no respect for the consequences that we would have dealt with if this had gone wrong."
Jess said she went and found her friends and immediately told them what had happened before leaving the venue.
"I was pretty worked up and overwhelmed at the idea of my friend and I being put in this vulnerable position where something could have gone really, really wrong."
Merivale declined to provide on-the-record responses to Jess's allegations.
Company launches investigationJess's mother Libby Helinski contacted the Ivy three days later and raised the incident with management.
"They should never be taken out of the public eye … there's no reason to take anyone to back-of-house because they're never going to find their friends [there].
"It just appeared to be that sort of intentional misleading of them … it was a planned activity."
Libby told the ABC she worries about what could have happened.
"I'm not against the sex industry … I'm not against people being involved in that if it's a consensual mutually understood concept.
"But putting people into an environment where the communication is not understood … I just find it enormously disturbing that a business would do that," she said.
Libby Helinski is still seeking answers about what happened to her daughter. (ABC News: Jesmine Cheong)
Merivale told Libby they launched an internal investigation.
A week later, a Merivale manager emailed her and said they reviewed the CCTV vision which "does not show any untoward or inappropriate behaviour".
The manager said, "interviews have been conducted with individuals who were present on the evening and no information to support the claims has been uncovered".
Jess and Libby said they have never been shown the details of the investigation, despite Libby's requests.
In response to questions from the ABC about Jess's allegations, a Merivale spokesperson said the CCTV vision, which the company allowed the ABC to view, is "plainly inconsistent with the allegations that form your questions".
"Your assertion to the contrary is disingenuous."
The two women said they were appalled at the way Merivale had responded to their complaint.
"I felt as though they were telling me that I'd made the whole thing up and there was nothing they could do … immediately I wondered how many other people this had happened to, how many other people had they dismissed," Jess said.
Not an isolated caseIn March, Jess took to Instagram to ask her followers if they or anyone they know had "experienced sexual assault or harassment at Sydney's famous Ivy precinct or any of the Merivale nightlight [sic] venues".
Within 24 hours, Jess received 48 responses from both patrons and staff, with allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment and drink spiking across multiple Merivale venues.
"A lot of them mirrored each other in terms of how Merivale responded.
"So that was really scary, the fact that people are going to these venues with the hope that they would be safe, and then when something does occur, the management of these venues isn't taking it seriously."
Jess said she worries what this means for the safety of others attending the Ivy.
"It does seem as though there is a culture within Merivale which uses the exploitation of women to their own kind of benefit."
Merivale declined to comment on this allegation.
However, a Merivale spokesperson said the company had "encouraged the patron to report the matter to police".
The spokesperson said the company had itself reported the matter to police and had "supported the police enquiries".
Jess reported the matter to police in April.
NSW Police is investigating the incident and has told Jess that it has reviewed the CCTV footage and is waiting for the staff member to return from overseas to interview him.
In a statement to the ABC, NSW Police said: "Officers from Sydney City Police Area Command are conducting inquiries regarding an incident which is alleged to have occurred at a licensed premise on George Street, Sydney on Saturday 9 March 2024.
"As investigations are ongoing, police will not make any further comment."
