Hospitality Workers Learning to Play Defense During the World Cup

“What college kid doesn’t want access to free pizza?” Jennifer Kabler asked, as she recounted a horrifying evening from two decades ago.

She was taking a co-worker home, and he said that his roommate could hook them up with the grub. Even though she felt a little uneasy about the situation, Kabler took the guys to pick up the pizza, then drove them back to their apartment.”

“I told myself I was just going to have a couple of slices and get out of there,” Kabler said. “We all sat around the living room, and I remember taking some bites of pizza, and that’s it.”

The next thing she remembers was a disorienting morning when she woke up in a bed in that unfamiliar apartment.

“I quickly found as much of my clothes and things as I could and ran out the door,” said Kabler, now 41 and living in Prairie Village, Kansas.

Kabler wishes she had known about the Metropolitan Organization Countering Sexual Assault (MOCSA) back then.

The roughly 50-year-old organization operates a 24-hour crisis line and provides counseling to survivors of sexual assault. Its programming also includes advocacy, education, and prevention services.

Kabler now volunteers for MOCSA and serves on its board.

Thus, she is among the members of the community who worry about what’s in store when hundreds of thousands of international visitors descend on the Kansas City area in a matter of weeks for the World Cup soccer tournament.

As she knows from experience, vigilance is in order.

“I would just say to anyone, ‘Be mindful of your situations, who’s around you, who do you know, who do you not know, even if you think you trust the person?’”

MOCSA is bringing that message — and training — to restaurant workers in advance of the World Cup.

Tourism officials expect the World Cup to draw approximately 650,000 visitors to the area. Kansas City is scheduled to host six World Cup matches between June 16 and July 11.

Four teams are also scheduled to establish their tournament base camps at facilities in the Kansas City area. They are:

• Argentina: Sporting KC Performance Center, Kansas City, Kansas 
• England: Swope Soccer Village, Kansas City, Missouri 
• Netherlands: KC Current Training Center, Riverside, Missouri
• Algeria: The University of Kansas, Rock Chalk Park, Lawrence, Kansas 

According to MOCSA, research shows that one in four women and one in ten men will experience sexual assault in their lifetime, and one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused by their 18th birthday.

Sporting spectacles like the World Cup can heighten the risk.

One 2022 report, which analyzed the findings of a dozen separate studies, found a “strong correlation between major sporting events and domestic violence.” The studies cited focused mainly on National Football League games in the U.S. and soccer matches in England.

MOCSA has anecdotal evidence to support the research.

When Kansas City hosted the 2023 NFL draft, MOCSA representatives responded to 30 calls for assistance from hospitals during the three-day event. MOCSA typically has 50 to 80 such “activations” in a month. 

Booze is a contributing factor, said Brandy Williams, MOCSA’s director of education.

“Alcohol is social, right? It’s available,” she said. “You can get it easily, and no one’s going to look at you differently or sideways if you’re drinking it.”

That’s why Williams found it “disturbing” that Missouri is allowing bars to sell alcohol 23 hours a day under legislation signed last year by Gov. Mike Kehoe. A similar proposal is pending before Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly. 

Playing it SAFE

MOCSA is training hospitality workers on how to avoid problems during the World Cup through a program called SAFE Training — short for Sexual Assault-Free Environment.

MOCSA has completed 36 training sessions in the run-up to the World Cup, with more on the way. The total number of workers trained thus far is more than 150. 

MOCSA staff member Becca Anderson recently led a SAFE training for staff at King G, a Crossroads bar and deli at 500 E. 18th St.

Anderson highlighted methods abusers use to take advantage of people with alcohol. 

For example, an abuser may insist on buying an uninterested person drinks, or they may stay sober and initiate conversation with a drunk customer.

“We’re trying to offer the highest caliber of service that we can offer,” said King G Office Manager Tika Perry. “And definitely part of that is making sure that our guests are safe while they’re here.”

Perry appreciated the training and saw it as an affirmation of the practices King G already has in place.

She recounted one incident when a group of ladies was giving a male server all he could handle. “So we switched out the server and said, ‘You guys make sure he is not alone with that table tonight.’”

Communication is the key

MOCSA has worked with other establishments before the World Cup, including Up-Down Kansas City, a bar and arcade along Southwest Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, and 916 Hospitality, a Kansas City restaurant group.

Up-Down Manager Andy Fry said the SAFE training is “a great tool for bartenders, servers, bar managers, bar owners to make sure that we’re ensuring the safety of customers and employees alike.”

Fry said you can never talk too much when it comes to employee safety.

“One of my big things is: over-communicate and always be talking to each other,” he said. “Let’s say we have a run-in with a customer that gives us kind of an icky vibe. Then we just immediately start watching out for them.”

At 916 Hospitality, employees communicate through the Discord messaging app, said General Manager Kara Anderson. Employees use a traffic signal approach to flag customers. 

“Sometimes people come in after a concert or after an event,” Anderson said. “Maybe they haven’t had anything to drink here. But the staff might be like, ‘Hey, there’s a girl that’s kind of a yellow light. Let’s keep an eye on her.’”

The MOCSA training stimulated helpful discussions among staff, Anderson said.

“One thing that I saw immediately in the weeks following that training was the staff having those conversations among themselves. … Like, ‘Hey, we didn’t talk about this in the training, but this happened last weekend, and here’s how I handled it. What do you guys think?’ And that has been really helpful.”

MOCSA response

When a sexual assault victim shows up at a local hospital, staff notify MOCSA through its crisis line. 

That prompts an activation. MOCSA had 334 hospital activations last year.

Kabler’s experience at a medical clinic after her assault prompted her to become a hospital volunteer.

“Although I could feel the compassion of the nurse I was talking to, there’s not much that they were equipped or trained to do,” she said. “So I took my prescription, went to the pharmacy, got some weird looks from the pharmacist…and then I had to go figure everything else out on my own.”

Kabler would’ve welcomed the assistance of an MOCSA volunteer.

“That could have potentially helped me gather evidence of what was in my bloodstream, what wasn’t in my bloodstream, and any other kind of stuff they can collect through those exams,” she said. “Then I would have been able to possibly do something about it, right?”

Much of that evening remains a mystery to Kabler.

“I don’t remember what happened, and even to this day, I don’t fully know exactly what happened over those five to six hours,” she said, “and it still haunts me today.

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to clarify Kabler’s encounter with her co-worker and his roommate.