‘This is Australia, not a Muslim country’: ‘Middle Eastern’ security who ordered bikini-clad sunbaker to cover up at her apartment complex’s private pool have targeted MORE women

From the Australian edition of the Daily Mail. and 2GB Radio. Other Australian newspapers have this story behind their paywalls.

Kristy Miller, 39, on Wednesday told how she was ordered by a security guard to leave the pool area at Emerald Park in Zetland because her Calvin Klein swimsuit ‘wasn’t to pool standards’.

‘This is Australia, not a Muslim country,’ Ms Miller told the Daily Telegraph on Thursday – adding that the ‘Middle Eastern’ security guard didn’t target men wearing budgie smugglers. ” . . .  a lovely man approached me after and let me know the same guard did the same thing to his girlfriend just prior,. . . Who is a security guard of Middle Eastern descent to tell me what I can and cannot wear? I pay $600 a week to live here, I should be able to wear whatever bikini I like.”

‘Please reach out if he also harassed you so we can ensure females aren’t humiliated and degraded in the place they live.’

More women have come forward to share ‘mortifying’ stories of how they were ordered to cover up after wearing bikinis at an inner-city apartment complex’s swimming pool.  Irishwoman Lynne Courtney was sunbaking face down and alone beside the pool one morning in late September when she was told her ‘cheeky’ cut two-piece was exposing too much of her backside’.

Emerald Park has three swimming pools: a lagoon with a spa at the back of the complex, a lap pool in the middle section and a smaller one on the rooftop of the main building on O’Dea Avenue. Strata bylaws printed on signs at the complex stipulate that ‘users of the pool are adequately clothed’.

And Ms Courtney is not the only one to have her pool attire picked apart by security. A 25-year-old Sydney woman, who did not wish to be named, said she was ‘beyond mortified’ when a security guard approached her at the pool and asked her to change out of her ‘inappropriate’ swimwear . . . The woman, who was visiting a friend who lives in the complex, was lying alone while her mates cooled off in the water wearing a bikini she has worn ‘a thousand times’, with ‘cheeky’ cut bottoms and a classic halterneck top. ‘Acceptable on any beach right across Australia and most parts of the world, but he asked if I had “anything else I could put on”,’ she recalled. 

‘When I said I didn’t because I was visiting a friend’s house and didn’t have a spare pair of clothes lying around, he asked if I could “cover myself up a bit more”. ‘I translated that to mean “put my towel over me”.

Kristy told Ben Fordham of Radio 2GB  it was a “really humiliating and intimidating” experience. “It was a normal bikini, not a g-string bikini. I heard from several residents that the security guard was actually taking photos of all the women at the pool, on the day, as evidence.”