*A Scottish church group says their Carnival Cruise Line vacation turned into a nightmare after a DJ refused to stop playing R. Kelly songs in the ship’s nightclub, despite complaints.
According to a blog post on RevGalBlogPals, an online community for clergywomen, 63 women headed out on Jan. 6 for an 8-day cruise on the ship Carnival Magic. The trip was meant to foster “fellowship and professional development,” the post states via PEOPLE.
Rev. Teri Peterson, a minister at St. John ’s Church in Gourock, Scotland, said in a statement obtained by Fox News that a few of the women of color in their group hit up the ship’s nightclub on the second night of the trip, but when the DJ began to play R. Kelly, the women weren’t having it. They asked the DJ to stop but he reportedly ignored their requests and mocked them.
“His response was to sing and dance along and mock them,” Peterson said, adding that they decided to leave the club.
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According to the PEOPLE report, an anonymous complaint was filed to guest services requesting that the DJ be removed from his job in the club.
“There has been marked implicit and explicit bias at play here, most specifically around race and assault survivorship,” the anonymous woman tells PEOPLE.
“The response of the management on the ship was lackluster until the white women in our group also got involved,” the reverend Peterson, who is white, told The Scotsman.
The clergywomen met with officials on the ship to discuss better training of employees and the removal of “offensive and triggering” music from the club’s playlist.
The DJ was eventually removed on the fifth day of their eight-night cruise but Carnival reportedly refused to remove Kelly’s music from the playlists, the report states.
The company also credited each woman involved in the incident $100.
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