One of the complainants, Garth Rodger, said it was “mind-boggling” that a New Zealand council could allow such a mural in 2016, especially when the toilet block was opposite the local school.
“It’s simply not clever or funny to paint images of girls and boys with their pants down on a public toilet.
“We all know what’s going on inside the toilet. It doesn’t need to be drawn on the outside for us.”
On Thursday morning, the mural attracted a raft of photographs from passing tourists. A ‘work in progress’ sign was displayed above one stall image.
Hagar New Zealand operations director Sarah Scott Webb, whose organisation works with abused women and children, said the image was inappropriate, and helped feed sexualisation and objectification messages.
“It has the potential to put young women – and if men are going to be on it too – at risk. We know a lot of sexual assaults happen in public toilets.
“It feeds into this whole general message that our culture is perpetuating that this kind of tongue-in-cheek stuff is ok, when in fact it isn’t.”