London -
The mother of a seven-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome who was thrown out of a British cinema for laughing too loudly has called for a boycott of the company.
Ema Louise Brown, 28, said she was “disgusted” that her daughter Sienna was asked to leave a Cineworld venue in Birmingham for disrupting the film.
Sienna, who has the mental age of a three-year-old, was laughing at The Croods along with other children when she was “rudely” asked to leave by a member of staff, her mother said.
Brown said the man approached them last Saturday while they were watching the children’s comedy.
She wrote on Facebook: “I said to him that she has Down’s and is quite loud at times but was only laughing. He said: ‘Well I need you to leave’. I said: ‘I want to speak to your manager’.
“The manager came over, I told her what happened and she said for me to leave. I said you’re discriminating against my child and targeted only her. She laughed at me and walked off and the man said: ‘You shouldn’t take your child to the cinema’.
“I shouted: ‘So because my child has Down’s and is loud with her laugh, because she doesn’t understand to laugh quietly that I shouldn’t take her out. He laughed again.”
Brown then called for a boycott of the company and complained to them. Hundreds of parents have since taken to Cineworld’s Facebook page to complain about the way the family was treated.
A Cineworld spokesman said: ‘We were extremely sorry to hear about Ema Louise Brown’s experience with her family.
“We are arranging for her to meet our senior management team and share views on how we can handle these situations more sensitively.”
The policy with any noisy customer is to “respectfully” ask them to leave the auditorium, the cinema said. Because it was dark, it is understood people were unaware of Sienna’s disability. - Daily Mail