Incident Report - May 10 2026 - Follow Up #1

Kink Center recently posted our summary Incident Report dated May 10, 2026 

We’re posting this as a follow-up to describe the timeline of events that led up to our message and our actions, mistakes we made in our processes, and how we’ll improve our processes to help prevent these mistakes in the future

Timeline of Events

On Thursday, April 9, 2026, Chandler met with three individuals regarding the leader of Sanctum Events

On Sunday, April 26, 2026, the Director team learned about the April 9th meeting when Raven pinged Chandler in a Directors channel for information. It was made known that one of the reporters did not want to involve Raven as a possible conflict of interest

Through a friend network, word got to one of the reporters that Raven wanted to meet to learn about the incident. They established direct contact, and Raven worked with them on Discord to schedule time. An in-person meeting was desired, so Raven and the reporters found time for Monday, May 4, 2026

On Monday, May 4, 2026, Raven met with those two reporters to hear their report and talked about what the reporters’ desires were. A timeline for action was discussed at that time

On Tuesday, May 5, 2026, the reporters asked for some feedback around Spotting, as they were concerned over whether their report would stay posted or be taken down by FetLife support. At that time, Raven told the reporters that there was a Sanctum party that Saturday

On Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Raven reached out with specifics regarding the reporters’ concerns around Spotting

On Thursday, May 7, 2026, the reporters told Raven that the report would be posted “tomorrow” (Friday)

On Friday, May 8, 2026, both parties had their own Draft message ready to go. Raven offered to share Kink Center’s draft with the reporters so they would be informed before it was posted publicly. They shared their copy to Raven to review for any obvious issues around Spotting

Raven informed them that Kink Center would send our message (Website/Fetlife/Socials) only after disclosing our intent and actions to Sanctum privately. We decided to not cancel Sanctum’s May 9th reservation, and to deliver messages to Sanctum immediately after it ended. This received thumbs-up emojis and a “that makes sense” response from the reporters. During that Sanctum event, 1-3 Kink Center staff members were present at all times to monitor the guests and hosts

After the event, on May 10, 2026 at 1 a.m., Sanctum was emailed our decision to put them on a hiatus and cancel their May 10 - June 6 reservations at Kink Center. Our posts and social messages were put online. ( Instagram failed to post and that was resolved around 10 a.m. )

Mistakes We Made

1. The first time Kink Center received the reporters’ information was directly to Chandler. In their efforts to honor the request that Raven not be included, Chandler investigated alone between April 11 through April 14. After which, this went on pause as Chandler was moving and had no internet. This meant that Kink Center, as a group, took no action from April 9 to April 26. During this time, multiple events from Sanctum took place at Kink Center

2. On May 8th, while discussing when our posts would go out with the two reporters, the acknowledgement between those reporters to Raven’s posting timeline was incorrectly taken as agreement. While the reasons Raven provided might have “made sense”, that didn’t make them correct. This supported the decision of waiting until after Sanctum’s event on Saturday, May 9th, instead of posting early on the 9th and cancelling that event immediately

Process Improvement

This is our first major report as a group, and we’ve learned a lot already. We’ll likely learn more in retrospect as this continues to develop. Here’s what we’ve learned already

1. Our shared understanding of consent intakes had a lot of assumptions. There wasn’t a clear process regarding expected timelines nor what to do when the reporter explicitly asks for information to be siloed away from a Director

   1. We’ve drafted and are working on a new timeline-based Report Intake process that also details a means for a single Director to share information with all but one Director in a safe and secure way. We will post that in our public policies Google Drive, and make that visible on the site under Policies by May 16, 2026

To everyone

Kink Center is a growing organization and a team committed to humility and growth. We are learning. We deeply appreciate the community members who asked questions, made inquiries, and advocated strongly for us doing better. We hear you and we’re willing to continue working on making our community center better and safer for all

To those who came forward

There are many on the Kink Center team that know what it feels like to make a consent report, to speak against an authority figure, and worry about what repercussions might be experienced if you do. We’re proud and we’re fortunate to be here to listen and hear your truth. None of us can promise that we’ll get it right every time, but we’ll listen to your feedback and we’ll grow and we’ll continue to make ourselves available to support you

Update May 11 @ 9:50pm: We've released a FAQ Post with some questions asked from different places