Editor's Note: The Kyiv Post on Sept. 4, 1997, tried to piece together the events that prompted 11 beauty contestants to withdraw from the Miss Europe 1997 contest held in Kyiv. Some of the women complained of being forcibly dragged from their hotel rooms and sexually harrassed...as well as being served bad food. Here's the news story:
Eleven contestants in the Miss Europe beauty pageant scheduled to begin this week in Kyiv have fled from the event’s accomodations and are planning to return to their respective home countries as soon as possible, Western diplomats said Sept. 3.
The women were concerned for their personal safety as well as generally unsatisfied with the conditions at their hotel on the outskirts of Kyiv, according to multiple sources as Western embassies. “The young lady is upset about the conditions of the accomodations and worried about her security” one Western diplomat said about their country’s contestant. “She is afraid for her safety and she will remain in the embassy until we can get her onto a flight home … we will deliver her directly to the airport.”
Little information was available Wednesday about the exact nature of the women’s concerns. But event organizers confirmed Wednesday afternoon that contestants from England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway had bowed out, leaving 28 women to participate in Saturday’s competition.
One spokeswoman for the event said some of the contestants did not feel safe in their hotel rooms. “The women left because people were trying to break into their hotel rooms,” said Isabelle Marianne, a press spokeswoman for Mondial Events Organization, one of the organizers of the pageant.
More disturbing reports of actual violence were surfacing as the Post went to press Wednesday. According to two separate reports, one from a diplomatic source and one from a Swedish journalist, several of the contestants were forcibly taken from their rooms to a casino and forced to dance with their abductors.
Officials for the event were apparently initially caught unawares by the development. “There are only three from the United Kingdom leaving, and that is in connection with Lady Diana’s funeral” competition organizer Viktor Pensky told the Post early Wednesday morning. “Every one else will be participating” said Pensky, although two hours later he conceded that the Scandinavian, Irish, German, and Swiss contestants were in fact also gone when they failed to show up for a Wednesday lunch at the Provence Restaurant.
Western diplomats also described difficult housing conditions and in some cases strong-arm tactics by competition officials against contestants as causes for the walk-out. “The women complained about attempts to break into their rooms and the security people did nothing. When the girls tried to contact their embassies competition people threatened contestant and prevented them from making phone calls” a Scandinavian diplomat said.
“I receive updates every half hour from the sanatorium where the women are staying. There were no attempts to break into any rooms and there are no real problems” competition security boss Andrey Filipov told the Post Wednesday. Other contest personnel confirmed that someone was rapping on contestant’s doors at odds hours of the night, but argued that it was not break-in attempts but misunderstood gentle knocks that frightened the eleven contestants.
“We made a small mistake in that we allowed some people to try to contact some of the girls late in the evening to invite them to participate in some non-obligatory events. They (the women) were tired and probably did not understand that the invitation was optional and not obligitory, so they may have become upset and misinterpeted the knocks at their doors. But at no time were the girls alone with any men and at all times they were under the supervision of a forty-year-old woman,” said a competition hostess who asked that her name be withheld.
No competition official would say specifically who exactly it was knocking on contestants’ doors or what “optional activities” were offered. Many of the remaining contestants had no complaints about the event when interviewed Wednesday afternoon. “Everything is fine and there are no problems” Leonie Boom (Miss Holland) said, adding that she thought her competitors left the pageant because of too much stress and also because of difficulties in dealing with Ukrainian cuisine.
“The women who left were nervous and in many cases they just were just overreacting to the food and conditions here (in Ukraine) … It is just that the schedule for the girls is very rigorous and not every one of the girls could hold up. After all, they are very young,” said a French competition hostess who also declined to give her name.
“There were bugs in the food at the sanatorium” one Western diplomat told the Post.
“If you ask me they (the women who left) were complaining about nothing. We spend money, we buy them excellent food, we do everything for them, and all they do is complain. The girls that are leaving are just overreacting to normal conditions here,” said a Ukrainian competition hostess who identified herself only as Svetlana. As of the Post’s press deadline, most of the eleven former contestants were presently holed up in embassies throughout Kyiv while waiting for a government car to take them to Borispol’, and to date have declined comment.
