The wellness chain World Class Romania brings the taboo topic of discrimination against gay people into public debate, after the company and its employees were subject to accusations of homophobic behavior in several press articles and in social media at the beginning of September.

“We do not discriminate against anybody and our goal is to help people improve their lifestyle regardless of their genre, sexual orientation, religion or any other criteria. In fact many of our staff and managers are gay. I was sad to hear that we are accused of being homophobic,” said Mikael Fredholm, CEO of World Class Romania in a press conference, on Tuesday.

This was the company’s first official reaction after a media scandal that broke last week in which the company is accused of allegedly discriminating against a gay couple. According to the media reports, two gay members of the World Class Academy Downtown were allegedly verbally abused by another member for having brought their 3-year daughter with them in the men’s locker room. After this incident, the company posted an announcement saying that it’s strictly forbidden to bring children of the opposite sex in the locker rooms.

World Class representatives admitted that there was such an incident in March this year, but that no company employees  were involved in it. About the new rule that was introduced following the incident, the company said: “Throughout the years there have been numerous complaints from members of World Class Romania, who expressed their dissatisfaction with the discomfort created by the presence of opposite sex minors into the locker rooms. These complaints, as well as the incident in March, led us to adopting this rule.”

“Generally, we do not publicly comment on disputes between our members, but in this case the information that was wrongly presented contradicts the very principles upon which we conduct our activity. More than that, it affected the image of some of our employees,” Fredholm added.

He also said that the World Class clubs will implement family locker rooms, which parents will be able to use to change children of different sex and that such spaces already exist in the Marriott and Downtown clubs.

The amplitude the scandal took via the social media also prompted to company to hire a PR firm, Saatchi PR, to help it solve the communication issues.

World Class is the largest network of wellness clubs in Romania, with 11 centers and 26,000 members. The company plans to reach 20 centers and up to 50,000 members by the end of next year.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com