Update: Cosplayer Alleges Retribution After Posting About Harassment At MomoCon

(Update 6/2 at 9:35 p.m. Eastern: MomoCon has released an official statement regarding the incident. The entire text of the letter from founder and co-chair Jessica Merriman, as it appears on various sites like Anime Jam Session, is pasted at the end.)

Cosplayer Luna Lanie expressed on Saturday on various social media venues about the amount of harassment — mainly unwanted touching — she received at MomoCon while wearing her Officer Caitlyn cosplay. According to a video she posted on YouTube this weekend, that was when things got extra disturbing.

Lanie states in the video that after she made the posts, which included her sentiment that she would not be returning next year, she was contact by top MomoCon officials inviting her to have a meeting to discuss things. She has since posted screen grabs of the Twitter DM conversation with the director of cosplay for MomoCon, who set up the meeting, backing up that part of her description of events.

After a meeting she describes as awkward, but in which she said that a much stronger presence of “Cosplay =/= Consent” messaging through signs and banners would be helpful next year, she went back onto the convention floor. Then, Lanie states, she was approached by security staffers who said that they had received numerous complaints about her outfit and she was required to leave and change.

During the previous meeting, Lanie was given the phone numbers of the cosplay director and MomoCon’s co-chair Christopher Stuckey, who had requested the meeting, so she called them to see what the problem was (there being plenty of other skimpy outfits at the convention with apparently no security bothering them). Lanie alleges that Stuckey told her in that phone conversation that she perhaps shouldn’t have posted negative things about MomoCon, and then she wouldn’t have had “these issues.”

The implication is that one of MomoCon’s top officials had security single out Lanie not because of her costume but because of her complaints about being harassed. I reached out to Stuckey directly via LinkedIn email, and indirectly via the general information email address for MomoCon, but no one has replied as of publication time. If we do get a reply I will update this story.

While there is plenty of supporting comments and posts that back up Lanie’s description of MomoCon 2015 as a creeper-filled grab-fest, the allegation of retribution by Stuckey against her for pointing that harassment problem out on social media is ostensibly a “he said-she said.” I say ostensibly, because if anyone in the presence of Stuckey heard such things being said, I would hope they would report it to someone who has authority over him.

Also, neither of Nerd Caliber’s two press members covering the convention this past weekend in Atlanta say they saw Luna Lanie so they can’t confirm her specific tale of being set upon by security after the meeting. But one did say he did hear reports at the con of unwanted touching and various forms of harassment, as Lanie says she herself experienced.

If Lanie is correct or not, MomoCon needs to get in front of this issue immediately. Allowing the blogosphere — few of which will go as far out of the way as we do to make sure everything is noted as “alleged” — to build up into a raging foment is the absolute worst thing MomoCon could do — and exactly what it seems to be doing right now.

Worse, if things did happen the way she describes, then MomoCon needs to remove Stuckey from any seat of authority. Using your security staff as strongarm enforcers of a policy of retribution — allegedly — because someone said they had a bad experience that was not even directly attributed to the con itself is a stupid abuse of authority, and one would like to think nobody at the top of one of the fastest growing cons in the country would be that dumb.

Check out Lanie’s five minute video below describing the alleged retribution.

(Feature image, from Luna Lanie’s cosplay page, taken by Iconiq Cosplay Photography)

(Update) Below is the entire text of the response by MomoCon founder and co-chair Jessica Merriman. Of note, she does not address at all Lanie’s assertions that Lanie called Stuckey and was allegedly told something that strongly indicated he had sicced security on her as retribution for her negative comments on social media.

And, frankly, that is the main issue here. Nobody disputes Lanie experienced harassment, and while Lanie disputes that her costume was in violation of MomoCon dress code, if they say it was, it was. It’s their dress code. But the allegations of one of the top two officials at a con using his power to create security problems for an attendee just for speaking up about a negative experience at the con desperately needs to be addressed.

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My co-chair and I pride ourselves on developing a family-friendly convention that welcomes a diverse group of people with inclusive content such as feminism in geek culture panels and, like any other convention, we have rules on cosplay attire. To ensure the security of our attendees we had more than 900 volunteers, building security and law enforcement on site at all times.

As soon as we saw a tweet from a local cosplayer saying she was harassed, MomoCon co-chair Chris Stuckey personally requested to meet with her so he could apologize on our behalf, provide her his direct phone number, request a description of individual, and have them removed from the convention. Unfortunately she was unable to provide a description at that time. Our security team would have enforced our zero tolerance policy for harassment.

While her attire that day violated our dress code, Chris did not mention it during the meeting because he recognized this would be victim-blaming. The cosplayer says when she left the meeting and returned to the convention some team of security, who would have been unaware of the situation as Chris did not mention her attire to anyone, rudely said her costume did not meet the guidelines. We have been unable to confirm this, but are still actively attempting to find the involved person(s) in order to ensure they are no longer affiliated with MomoCon.

We are extremely sorry this cosplayer had a negative experience, have apologized to her on multiple occasions and offered open lines of communication. The safety of our community is paramount to MomoCon. We take all issues of harassment and victim-blaming very seriously and these matters are always proactively addressed. We strive to instantly respond as soon as we become aware of any incident.

Moving forward, we will clearly and delicately communicate dress code violations in addition to continue to increase the amount of law enforcement and hired security on site. As MomoCon continues to grow we will do whatever is necessary to increase awareness among the general public that cosplay is not consent.

– Jessica Merriman, founder and co-chair, MomoCon