In July 2012, Genevieve Valentine, an attendee at imaginative literature conference Readercon 23 (July 12–15), reported an incident of harassment by another attendee, René Walling, to the Readercon 23 committee and the Readercon board. (The committee is composed of the conference organisers; the board is the body that controlled the conference over multiple years.) On 27th July 2012, the Readercon board told Valentine that Walling would be issued with a two-year ban, in contravention of their own policy: They initially refused to issue a public statement, but issued one later on the 27th.