First and foremost, we would like to sincerely apologize for all the confusion and stress we have brought to you and the Anirevo community for the past few days. Know that we will not stop working towards building and making Anirevo a safe and fun event for everyone.

Over the past few days, Anirevo has received a number of concerns regarding two individuals during its Anirevo 2019 event.

The claims that have been made thus far:

1. Anirevo allowed convicted sex offenders and/or pedophiles into its event
2. Anirevo allowed a convicted sex offfender/pedophile into its organization

Shortly after receiving reports on social media regarding the presence of both individuals within the event grounds, our team acted swiftly to locate both individuals to ensure the safety of the attendees and all parties involved. One of the individuals in question, with the cooperation of this individual’s handler, and two Vancouver Police Department officers, agreed to leave the event grounds and not return for the remainder of the event at the recommendation of the Anirevo team. Our staff team failed to locate the other individual as this individual has left the event grounds shortly after the social media posts were circulated. Per our knowledge, no staff, attendees or participants were physically harmed during their brief presence at the event. 

Regardless of the outcome and in light of new information, Anirevo has decided to move forward with imposing a ban on both individuals for the safety of the attendees and all parties involved. 

There is also some misinformation we would like to clarify with regards to one of the individual’s relationship with the event. We would like to clarify that this individual is neither a part of the event staff, nor a sponsor of the event in any capacity. The Individual’s name listed on our sponsor page is a bonus perk from one of the tiers we used to market, labelled “Personal Sponsor.” This tier was simply an idea we took inspiration from other Japanese companies, that allows attendees to extend their support for the event. To prevent any future confusion, we phased out this tier at the beginning of 2019. In the event that we introduce a similar initiative, we will take extra care in labelling it to avoid any future confusion.

To our knowledge, there is no one in our event staff pool that is a convicted sex offender/pedophile. If you have knowledge of anyone who may be a danger to our event, please do not hesitate to contact us so we may launch an investigation into the matter.

We understand that our policies regarding alleged offenders are inadequate, and we sincerely apologize for that. The safety of all our attendees is our priority and we have greatly underestimated the level of unease generated by having these individuals present at our event. Henceforth, we will be more proactive in dealing with these individuals and strive to make our event a safe and secure place for all our panelists, artists, vendors, staff and most importantly, our attendees.

With regards to the issue of harassment of disabled individuals and service dog handlers, we are unable to comment on that at the moment as this issue is still currently being investigated. We work towards making Anirevo a place of acceptance, so we will do whatever we can to ensure our staff are educated and trained on the matter, and our attendees to feel welcome at our future events.

We hope that we were able to provide some clarification regarding these matters. We are aware of several incidents that happened this weekend. We are a convention run by volunteers and we have a lot to learn. All of your feedback is carefully read and considered, in hopes that we can strive to make Anirevo a safe and welcoming place for the community. All of your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any further information regarding these incidents, we ask that you please contact us at helpdesk@animerevolution.ca

Thank you so much for all your patience and support. We look forward to bringing you more amazing events in the future.