A “Transgender Café” in Germany was shut down after multiple reported cases of sexual abuse, including from a former staff member.
The “Trans*Café Bremen,” a pro-LGBT meeting and support group for gender-confused individuals, recently announced on its Instagram account that it will permanently close due to safety concerns regarding past sexual abuse cases. According to Reduxx, the meetings took place twice a month at a bar called “KWEER” at the “Rat & Tat Zentrum für queeres Leben.”
“There have been at least four incidents of sexual abuse that we are aware of,” the statement read. “Three of these took place in the vicinity of the Trans*Café, and one incident is directly related to the Trans*Café.”
“This case involves a perpetrator who was a member of the Trans*Café team at the time.”
“As a result, we decided last November to temporarily close the Trans*Café and sought outside help. With this help, we were able to write a code of conduct for the café’s guests and a stricter one for us as the bar team. We wanted to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” the operators of the café said.
However, after reopening, multiple “minor incidents” occurred, like a person who was banned from the premises for sexual misconduct showing up at the venue.
“Unfortunately, there was also a major incident that we do not wish to discuss in order to protect everyone involved,” the operators stated. “This is also the incident that prompted us to close the café permanently.”
The café said its team was split by the process, with some wishing to keep the events going.
“We reacted very slowly to the first case of sexual violence,” the cafe admitted. “We were overwhelmed and behaved incorrectly as a team. At the same time, we tried to create an awareness structure that would make it possible to deal with such cases in the first place. All perpetrators we know of have been banned from the premises. And it remains our ambition to expel all perpetrators and those who protect them.”
“We are aware that the space has enabled perpetrators and their protectors to network, and we are trying to expel all individuals involved in such or similar structures from the café.”
“We would like to reflect on whether we are partly responsible for this dynamic and what needs to change in the future to prevent something like this from happening again,” the group said.
“It is a bad time to close a trans* space in these times. Nevertheless, the work we are currently undertaking is essential to make such a space safe. Unfortunately, we cannot answer whether a trans* space will be reopened, and if so, in what form,” the operators concluded.
As reported by Reduxx, The Rat & Tat Centre, the pro-LGBT organization that hosted the Trans*Café meetings, received €446,470 per year ($516,390) in funding from the city-state government of Bremen in 2024 and 2025. In 2024, a German pastor had to pay 5,000 euros ($5,783) to The Rat & Tat Centre over a “hate speech” legal dispute. The pastor called homosexuality “degenerative” and “demonic,” and called out the “homolobby” during a marriage seminar speech posted on YouTube.