Announcement - The end of our hiatus and the reasons behind our time away from hosting the community.
TW/CW: mention of poor consent and community harm It is with no pleasure that we come to you with this statement, but feel it is necessary. As facilitators of VFS, we want to make a point of being transparent with the community: Since October of 2022, 4 of the 5 facilitators of VFS had initiated an accountability process with the 5th member. Issues ranged from mishandling events, not being honest with other facilitators and members of the community, engaging in poor DM behavior (raising concerns of safety), and, most egregiously, the two official reports we have received; one regarding mishandling an event and another regarding practicing poor consent with a rope model. We initially brought these concerns to them and gave them a chance to step down and take the time they need to work on improving these behaviors. This was met with denial of the incidents reported, and refusal to take any kind of responsibility. Over the course of 3 meetings, it became abundantly clear that they did not see these behaviors as severe enough to step down, and the 4 of us agreed that they were never going to accept responsibility for their actions. We agreed continuing the accountability meetings in this manner was pointless and drafted up our full range of concerns with again, the option to step back and improve their behavior in the meantime. Ultimately, we communicated that we did not trust this person to continue representing VFS in a high conduct manner. At this point they threatened to initiate legal action to avoid being removed from a leadership position. This initiated the official hiatus since we legally entered a situation called deadlock, where the owners could not agree on a single path forward. All assets frozen. No events in an official capacity. Nothing. We had to get creative at this point to try and figure out a way forward. After several failed negotiations, the 5 of us agreed to essentially split our two groups (VFS & PGHrope) into two separate entities. The 5th member now runs PGHrope, and the 4 of us remain as facilitators of VFS. Due to the unfortunate nature of our split, and the events that led up to it, we feel it necessary to give community members fair warning when attending PGHrope events. In order to honor informed consent, we wanted to share this information freely with the community for each member to make decisions in accordance with what is best for them. Now that you know "the why," I hope you can understand why the hiatus occurred and the final outcome. Please also know that we are not condemning any community member who chooses to attend PGHrope events, but rather that we wanted to give you as much information as possible to, at least, proceed with caution. That being said, VFS is back to being fully operational! However, please also be patient with us, as this entire process has taken a very serious toll on us all. We will be getting back to normal on a very slow start. Thank you for listening. We look forward to hosting you again and most importantly, stay safe, friends.