A central Vermont group has launched a social media campaign aimed at exposing the past behavior of an owner of Rabble Rouser, a chocolatier and bar that opened in a 4,400-square-foot storefront in downtown Montpelier last fall.
While Jaquelyn Rieke has apologized for appearing nude in front of staff at work in 2013, that’s not enough for a group calling itself the Vermont Transformative Justice League, which has described her behavior as sexual abuse.
“Horrified that a sexual abuser would now occupy one of the largest and most visible spaces in our dear downtown, we began coming together to provide each other support and solidarity and to try to figure out how to prevent further harm to the community,” said the Jan. 18 message on the Montpelier Front Porch Forum, one of many online community information services run by a Vermont company. According to FPF, the message was submitted by Kim Myers. “Our group, the Vermont Transformative Justice League, formed out of this and decided to take action.”
FPF quickly took that message down, apologizing for a staff error that led to its posting in the first place.
“Generally, business recommendations and reviews among neighbors are welcome on each local FPF and we see many thousands per year,” said Michael Wood-Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Front Porch Forum. “Personal attacks, however, are not permitted on FPF. Sometimes in local communities the line between a business review and a personal attack is fuzzy and challenging to discern.”
Messages denouncing the Rabble Rouser owner have been circulating on Facebook since last summer, when Rieke and her partners announced they were expanding from their original business site, the chocolate store Nutty Steph’s in Middlesex. And in September, Nicole Grenier, who owns the Stowe Street Café in Waterbury, emailed some contacts advising them she would stop buying the granola and chocolate she uses at her business from Rabble Rouser after learning of the allegations against Rieke. She said in the email that she became aware of the charges in two meetings at the offices of the Sexual Assault Crisis Team in Washington County.
“In these meetings I have bared witness to the painful accounts of individual and shared experiences with shocking similarity to the reports,” Grenier wrote in her email.
“These acts are reported to have been going on for many years, with attempts to address the concerns being dismissed repeatedly, and even by blaming the employees for not being ‘sex-positive,’ when these actions were unwelcome, non-consensual, a clear abuse of power, and completely illegal.”
Rieke thinks Grenier’s involvement with the matter might have something to do with their business relationship.
“She owns a competing cafe and craft store in Waterbury,” said Rieke in an interview. “She formerly owned a chocolate company, from which a worker joined our business when she shut it down.”
New store for small business
Rieke and her business partners announced last summer that they were expanding their small Middlesex business by opening a bar and chocolate shop in the long-vacant downtown Montpelier space. That’s when reports of Rieke’s conduct as a manager began to circulate on Facebook.
Worried about the impact on Rabble Rouser, which has about 30 full- and part-time employees, and anxious to conform with a company vision that supports workers and abhors harassment, Rieke and her co-owners responded to the Facebook reports of harassment and trauma by taking part in a series of meetings last autumn. One was with the Sexual Assault Crisis Team and another was with the Barre Community Justice Center, a nonprofit set up to help resolve conflicts.
Rieke says that she’s a nudist who didn’t understand, when she started her business, that appearing naked in front of her employees — and discussing sexual and other topics that are inappropriate for the workplace — could traumatize them.
Rieke said she wrote a letter of apology in 2013 to a former employee, Vini Kate-Divine, who worked at Nutty Steph’s for six weeks in Middlesex in 2013. In a column published Jan. 27 in the Times Argus newspaper, Rieke acknowledged that she sometimes appeared nude in front of her employees. She added that she also misunderstood how to behave as an employer and lacked the skills of professionalism, consistency, good planning and clear direction that are necessary for a comfortable work environment.
She added she never intentionally hurt anyone or committed illegal behavior.
“I had terrible professional boundaries in my first 10 years as an employer,” she wrote. “I have always been more comfortable naked than clothed and my home was next to the workplace. As long as I believed that someone was ‘cool with it,’ I did not hide my body even as they were expected to come to the house to check in or conduct some manner of business. I learned that my lack of professionalism could cripple someone’s belief in their own professionalism and strip them of their sense of dignity.”
Since then, Rieke said, she has changed her behavior and instituted a process at work that enables workers’ concerns to be heard by managers.
“I’ve known her for two years and have never seen her genitals and have never felt manipulated at work,” said employee Sara Peterson, who took part in conversations between the Barre group and the VTJL in December.
Rieke provided a list of the VTJL’s demands, including that Rieke leave the business and admit wrongdoing and that Rabble Rouser hold a public event naming the accusations and its remedies. It also calls for the establishment of a reparations fund. And it demands that Rieke refrain from patronizing a Barre Street business that is across the street from the home of someone who feels victimized by her.
“That’s the tricky part,” said Liz Knapp, another Rabble Rouser co-owner, noting that some of the demands don’t have anything to do with the business. “When I wrote back to them, I said as a business we can’t help you with these demands. But it’s also a tricky place because at this point one of the leaders of our business has been called a sexual predator, and she’s not a sexual predator in any way, but the community doesn’t know that,” she said in an interview. “The community I’m seeing on different Facebook posts is wondering what is going on, and nobody wants to support someone who is called a sexual predator.
“I do believe survivors,” Knapp added. “I do believe the two people I met with felt trauma from their interactions with Jackie and I would in no way want to diminish their feelings of trauma or shame them for their feelings of trauma, either.”
‘The time for negotiation is over’
But the people behind the VTJL want more – including PayPal donations from the public. On Facebook posts, some later deleted, the group is also asking the public to write postcards to employees of Rabble Rouser. More than 500 people have signed on to the campaign’s Facebook group.
“The time for negotiation is over,” the group says. It is not clear how many people are involved outside the Facebook group. On the social media site, it also calls for people to talk to community members about the claims.
Kate-Divine and Claire Wheeler, both Montpelier residents, said they are associated with the VTJL. They said in an interview Jan. 28 that they hoped to continue negotiating with the co-owners of Rabble Rouser, but declined to release specific objectives. Wheeler, who said she works as a meeting facilitator, said she hasn’t worked at Rieke’s business but has met Rieke. The two said there are about 10 people in the VTJL, but emphasized they were only speaking for themselves as individuals, not for the group.
“We care about the workers there,” said Kate-Divine, who works in substance abuse treatment. “We don’t want the business to close but we do want to keep further harm from happening. We can’t tell you what that looks like because we’re trying to involve a lot of people in the process including the community.”
Nicole Grenier, who owns the competing business in Waterbury and who sent out the email saying she would stop buying granola and chocolate from Rabble Rouser, responded to an email query to say that “the group is anxious to speak with the press, specifically to VTDigger. However, I am unable to comment further at this time.”
Rieke said in her column that the campaign has cost the business thousands of dollars. Her husband Rauli Fernandez, a business co-owner, said Jan. 27 that some customers have tracked down the owners to express support. But others, including some businesses, have said they need to take their business elsewhere, he said.
“Some of them have come and hugged us and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what is going on, but in order to protect our employees we’re just not going to do business with you.’” Fernandez related. “They said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, I have known you for years, I don’t believe any of this.’”
Ryan Stevenson, a coordinator who has been working with the parties at the Barre Community Justice Center, declined to comment, saying all information about the negotiations is confidential.
The long-running episode is not the first in Montpelier to use social media to damage a local business. Last year, there were several posts on the forum attacking working conditions at a Montpelier restaurant. The restaurant has since closed, although the owner did not mention social media attacks as a cause.
Rieke hasn’t discussed the possibility of suing the group that is raising claims about her conduct. But the kind of speech circulating about Rabble Rouser has generally been protected by the courts.
“I have been, and remain, prepared to talk with any person who feels hurt by me in a space of their choosing, with a mediator of their choosing, if so requested, if I may be of service,” Rieke said in her Jan. 28 column.
