At Renaissance Festival, women recount years of harassment
Published 8:49 am Friday, August 31, 2018
By Marianne Combs
MPR News/90.1 FM
The annual Renaissance Festival’s fanciful world of jousters, jesters and jokesters is well underway.
But its longtime entertainment director is not attending.
Carr Hagerman, who made a brief court appearance Thursday morning, is facing criminal sexual misconduct charges alleging he raped a freelance photographer on festival grounds in Shakopee last year. His next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 11.
Hagerman, 60, who worked for the festival for four decades, has denied the charges.
Those charges and a lawsuit initiated by two female former employees led eight other women to come forward to MPR News to recount what they said were years of abuse and harassment when they worked at the festival, now in its 47th year.
Some also allege the festival’s management did too little to help.
“From the top down, they don’t believe women,” said Megan Culverhouse, who worked at the festival for a decade. Several of those years she worked as a member of the security team.
Hagerman’s attorney, Piper Kenney Wold, declined to make her client available for comment.
“The incredible allegations and rumors against Mr. Carr continue to evolve,” she wrote in an email to MPR News. “What hasn’t changed is Mr. Carr’s consistent denial of wrongdoing of any kind. Importantly, our investigation supports him.”
Woman: Jokes about ‘casting couch’
The festival, owned by Mid-America Festivals, is known for immersing patrons in a bawdy and fantastic world, a mix between Jolly Olde England and a fairytale land. While there’s plenty to entertain the kids, there’s also lots geared for the adults.
Waitresses are called wenches, and alcohol is a core feature of the day. Events include daily pub crawls, as well as “the Bawdy Beer Show,” “Much Ado About Mead” and “Wild for Whiskey.”
Besides working as entertainment director, Hagerman also appeared as the Ratcatcher, a filthy street performer who hurled insults at passers-by. At any given time, he oversaw up to 500 performers.
Linda Clayton-Behr described her first encounter with Hagerman at a cast party in 2003, when she was still new to the festival and playing the part of a fairy. She said he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh and made a joke about his “casting couch.”
“I froze,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. And you know, when he put his hand on my thigh, he told me, ‘I can’t believe you let me do that’ — so now it’s my fault. And I’ve done something bad and something wrong.”
Clayton-Behr said Hagerman preyed on vulnerable women, persuading some of them to pose nude for him because they believed he had control over their performance contracts.
She’s also part of the lawsuit that charges the Minnesota Renaissance Festival knowingly fostered a hostile work environment.
In the criminal case, Hagerman is charged with assaulting a young woman on festival grounds toward the end of its 2017 run. She was working as a freelance photographer. She said Hagerman showed her to an upper storage room where she could get a good vantage point for her photos, then beat and raped her until she lost consciousness.
When performer T. Lake, who agreed to be identified only by her last name and first initial, read an article detailing the rape charges — which outlined how Hagerman called the victim a “whore” and other vulgar names — she said she was immediately reminded of a phone conversation with Hagerman years earlier. She had called to tell him her act would not be returning to the Renaissance Festival. She said he exploded, using those very same words.
Read the entire story at: www.mprnews.org/story/2018/08/29/women-recall-years-of-harassment-minnesota-renaissance-festival