CW: This story contains descriptions of sexual harassment
Eleven Bar’s liquor licence has not been renewed following the Dunedin District Licensing Committee’s decision that the nightclub is “unsuitable” to supply and sell alcohol to students and the general public.
Former bar staff, police and student customers testified against the Octagon nightclub. Allegations included alcohol and drug abuse on the job, lack of adequate staff training, breaching COVID-19 violations, allowing in underage patrons and facilitating an unsafe environment. The proceedings focused heavily on an incident wherein two young female customers were locked in an upstairs room and subject to “unwanted sexual advances” from the owner’s associates.
Margo* was one of the young customers sexually harassed that night, and describes the following legal ordeal as “a total shit show” that’s lasted far longer than she expected. She was 18 years old when the incident occurred and was 20 by the time she testified in court.
It was St Patrick's day and, per student tradition, Margo had been drinking since 9am. “I had recently moved away from my parents and hometown, alone, and was excited for the fresh start of studying in Dunedin and entering this new phase of my life,” she explained. Her face covered in green paint and dressed in an oversized hoodie, Margo says she was “clearly a young student” and “the last person that should have been targeted” by the owner and his friends’ “disgusting actions.”
Margo says the bar had already closed when she was invited into an upstairs space by owner Nikesh Singh. Before she could enter, however, she handed over her phone at the request of a staff member. From that point on, inside, Margo says she and her friend were served free drinks ostensibly “in the hopes of lowering [our] inhibitions” and sexually harassed whilst locked inside “by a group of mostly married men probably older than my own father.” Eventually, Margo says she had to be saved by the bar’s own staff. A female employee approached her for “girl chat,” warning that the men were trying to take them home before unlocking the door to let Margo and her friend out.
One of the men, Margo says, told her he had a wife but had fallen in love with a young girl and proceeded to cry before abruptly telling her “I want to fuck you, very hard.” This statement would haunt Margo for longer than she could know, in a court process she describes as “horrific”.
“I felt super antagonised by Eleven Bar’s defence lawyer. I understand that’s her job, but she was a total pitbull. She kept bringing up the man saying he wanted to fuck me very hard. Hearing that being repeated over and over again, I started crying on the stand. It felt like I was reliving the night.”
The decision reached by the Committee has been a long time coming for Margo, who says she felt disappointed in the venue’s enduring popularity amongst students. However, Margo also understands it was one of the limited bar venues still open for students, a position she believes granted the owners a lot of power.
“At one point, even I felt pressured to return. It was only three weeks later I actually processed what happened. At the time I brushed it off as I assumed being a young girl, this treatment was something I had to accept in these spaces. It wasn’t until the police and my friends conveyed how fucking disgusting it was that I fully realised what happened was wrong.”
Margo said that although she stopped going to Eleven, her closest friends kept attending the club. She told Critic that because of the venue’s cheap drinks and young atmosphere, many students felt it was the only place they could go in lieu of a “proper student bar”. It was a “happy medium”, with the known risks outweighed by the lack of alternatives - even for people who knew what had happened to Margo inside those doors.
While the activity of Eleven Bar has since made waves in the media, including two Critic investigations, local bartenders Rob and Henry say the venue’s “seedy” environment was an open-secret amongst hospitality workers around the Octagon.
“It was pretty much what we expected,” says Rob, a bartender at Albar. “All the bars around here knew how bad it was, you know, creepy, seedy old men. But we knew COVID-19 regulations were what would really get them. We watched police come in and set up cameras. Nothing surprising. People would work there for two weeks and quit, so you had to know something was wrong.”
Henry, a bartender from Social Club, confirmed that “everyone who works in hospo” knew about the “seedy” nature of Eleven Bar: “I’m happy about the decision and that it’s all been put to a stop, and hey, more customers for us.”
*Names changed.
Disclaimer: The subject of this piece is known personally to the author. The events described herein are matters of public record.