no, but several folks I know do. its a pretty small community out here.
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If you look up their business on the state of Oregon’s website, it appears that they took Jeff’s name off the business. He is previously shown as “president” and that was changed on April 16th, Shelley is now the president. Seems as if they were preparing.
Which is totally wrong and morally reprehensible. If he was grooming and having sex with minors, the Court should and will look behind this hiding of assets. What a stomach turning group
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I have received a lot of private messages, both supporting my comment and offended by it. To be clear, I am not critical of any amateur or junior who rides there. It is and has been a wonderful program that works well for almost all clients. I AM critical of pedophiles, and people who protect them. The trainer who has been suspended by Safesport has been rumored to be a pedophile for many years. I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but an alleged victim has now come forward in a very visible and brave way, and he has been suspended by Safesport. Allegedly there are others. I do not know what Safesport knows, but to have suspended this man means they have serious concerns about his behavior. I wasn’t a fan of SS for a long time but have come to have respect for it. My comments would not be better tolerated if I used a pseudonym, and we have to, as a group, condemn not just pedophilia, which is what he is accused of, but also abusive behavior. I encourage people to use your own name and condemn abuse and pedophilia. We, the children, the horses, and everyone involved in the sport need to insist on proper behavior. Legal behavior. Behavior that does not injure children. We have to be better and we have to do it as a group.
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To be clear Suzane _michael, pedophilia is characterized by “a sexual interest in Prepubescent children or attempts to have sexual relationships with Prepubescent children.” The SafeSport website clearly does not say that is why this this person is temporarily suspended.
I always find it stunning when people chime in to split hairs over exactly which kind of illegal, sexual, power-imbalanced relationship with a minor a person is guilty of.
Like, thanks so much for that, I bet it makes the victim feel a lot better that at least she wasn’t 11.
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Not trying to split hairs as I have no skin in this game, but the use of language that shows clear bias would cause a holy war if used to describe any of the alleged victims.
What kind of biased language would be even remotely appropriately used to describe minors who were in a (by legal definition) non-consensual sexual relationship with their teacher? I guess I take issue with a comment essentially downplaying the severity of a situation, and being the only substantial comment from any given poster, a bit… Odd? Of all the things to be concerned about in this situation, it’s clarifying that the man having sex with minors likes his minors older than prepubescent?
Also, I am curious if you’re using the word “alleged” because you are unsure if he had sex with a minor(s) or you don’t believe the minor(s) was a victim?
Just seems like neither of those are really up for debate based on the facts shared and the law regarding sex with minors. But maybe I’m wrong and some are actually denying that it happened?
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In some circumstances it would be worth distinguishing between someone who had a fixation on truly prepubescent children, versus someone who targets teenagers who are sexually mature, though obviously not emotionally or socially mature. However, recognizing a difference does not mean we don’t take each equally seriously.
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I think I can understand distinguishing between those in some circumstances. What gets me in this case is the extremely few posts on the thread, and those that exist seem to exclusively undermine others who are speaking of supporting victims and cleaning up these inappropriate relationships from our sport. Of all the possible takeaways or responses one could make given the sadness of the situation, it sure seems like poor taste to me.
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“He’s not a pedophile, he just likes to sleep with teenage girls!”
I guess in some circles that’s an argument that works.
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Mayhap they’d prefer “He’s not a pedophile, he’s a rapist.”
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I agree that grooming and assaulting teenage girls is abhorrent, and indeed young adult women who are in a power relationship with the predator (so college professors sleeping with students even if the students are not quite minors any more).
But I think the psychosexual dysfunction is different between the true pedophile and the person who goes after teens and young adults. I think it’s a different sexual orientation so to speak. I think many adults would find a number of teens objectively attractive, but obviously most adults have the self knowledge and moral understanding not to cultivate and harbor those feelings and certainly not to act on them. Note that we as a culture choose teens and very young adults as our icons of beauty as models and entertainers.
I would say that this makes teens and young adults extremely vulnerable because a much wider range of men are going to be attracted to them. Also there is more room to manipulate young people of this age into thinking sexual exploitation is actual love or a boyfriend, etc.
So I feel like the risks to teens are much wider than the risks to small children, because many more men are going to see them as attractive and hence there is a larger subset that’s going to try to act on it. So safeguards and consequences for predators need to be strong and effective.
I realize “pedophile” is our current term of opprobrium and that rhetorically we might want to extend it to men who assault 16 or 17 or 18 year olds. But we should see grooming/ assaulting /seducing a teenager as horrific in and of itself. We don’t need to call it pedophilia.
We do need to see it as behavior rooted in power, control, and a toxic level of male entitlement. We do need to see it as wrong, and realize there is no meaningful consent in those situations.
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this is disgusting, are you serious??? [that’s rhetorical, I know you are…but good grief]
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I’m not sure how the general public could identify a pedophile that doesn’t act on their sexual drive towards children.
I have to agree that in a counselling framework it might be useful for such people to work through their feelings without being branded a pedophile in a negative criminal sense.
For the rest of us, if they keep their hands to themselves and don’t buy child porn, none of us will know what’s in their secret hearts.
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I hadn’t noticed the “restrictions” segment of the Safe Sport page. People who can’t coach “unsupervised” have “travel restrictions” etc… 
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