Here is why I think the announcement of the ban happening before the decision to appeal/arbitrate actually works in favor of the accused. In an unintentional, backhanded sort of way.
Presuming that the accusations are true, the accused has probably by hiding this secret for a long time. Sometimes people say “everybody knew” but ‘everybody’ tends to mean the inner circle. Out here in the hinterlands of clinics and online coaching, we are part of the public that feeds into the accused’s income. And we did not know, we had no opportunity to know.
Now here comes SS with a ban and tells everyone why, although extremely briefly and with no specifics. The terrible secret is out. No one will want to touch the accused with a 10 foot pole.
Or is that the way it is? Now the accused can say “SS has issued this ban without my even having a chance to have a hearing. Because SS is biased, unfair and mean.”
That “haven’t yet had my say” resonates with many who hear it. It undermines SS’s credibility. People prefer and expect the leaders of their community to not turn up in the middle of a SS scandal. They’ve had ears on true-crime podcasts and documentaries that highlight wrongful convictions. Anything that sounds like "I didn’t get to ___ " sounds like a bureaucracy gone wrong.
For many, that’s better than this guy being a child molestor.
The audience prefers not acknowledging there is a predator in their midst. They don’t know much about SS, don’t keep up with horsey social media, don’t read COTH, are too busy with their lives to keep up with a topic they don’t think .
Every other sport seems relieved to have sexual predators / offenders removed from their midst. Why is it that equestrians get outraged when it happens?
SS would only investigate their relationship if Debbie filed a complaint that she had been victimized. Since that’s clearly not the case, they have nothing to worry about WRT their marriage. And that being the case, it’s really nobody’s business how old she was when they met or what the age difference is. It’s not like she married him at 14 ffs.
People still have this strange idea that SS chooses to “go after” whomever they choose. They have to first receive a report and then find enough indication that the report is credible and can be substantiated before they can even open an investigation.
If eight months ago, or whenever the investigation started, SS considered RM a current risk, they should have issued an interim suspension pending the investigation. They didn’t.
Now that the announcement has been made, parents know to steer clear of RM, even if he is not interim suspended pending appeal, which is supposed to happen within 30 days.
Not knowing RM at all, and having a great deal of confidence in SS, I fully expect his appeal to fail. However, I’m not married to the man. I remain unoffended that his wife of 42 years has declined to presume that he is guilty at this point, prior to the conclusion of his appeal. That’s partly because, unlike most people, I consider the arbitration phase to be the primary impartial adjudication phase of the process.
I would like to follow up on this idea of @OverandOnward regarding SS operating “in favor of the accused” in a backhanded, unintentional way.
After a confidential investigation, SS announces a lifetime ban on trainer X. Let’s assume that trainer X is guilty, because any arguments below are just strengthened if he is innocent.
While trainer X is guilty, he has been dealing with a single organization which took the report of misconduct, followed up the report by beating the bushes to see if there were other reporters who wanted to come forward, interviewed witnesses, including trainer X, then after a months or years long investigation, assessed its own investigation in a report. All in-house in the same organization.
Since SS issues the ban, effective immediately, after reviewing its own confidential investigation, trainer X starts to bitch and moan to his friends that he had been set down by this monolithic organization, and while SS views the allegation as credible, no impartial third party (impartial in the sense of not partial to either the respondent nor to SS) has even set eyes on the evidence or conducted a hearing.
The bitching and moaning that the respondent has not had the benefit of a hearing or adjudication by a third party impartial to respondent AND SS is legitimate.
If one wanted to COUNTER this complaint and support the legitimacy of the SS process, there are two different strategies:
Say clearly that it is the job of SS to advocate for vulnerable athletes and to conduct the investigation and assess whether they find “the allegations credible” or not. Further, state that SS is NOT taking the role of adjudicator in assessing whether the respondent is culpable; that is the role of the independent arbitrator. The respondent can implicitly admit guilt by declining to appeal. If the respondent maintains his innocence, he does that by filing what is called an appeal, at which point an arbitrator (impartial re: SS vs respondent) reviews the SS investigation with fresh eyes.
All that needs to be done to counter the pushback on SS is to drop the assertion that SS is supposed to play both the role of investigator and the role of adjudicator, and clarify that his “day in court” is his option for arbitration.
One can continue to be mentally hog tied by the fact that the word “appeal” is used for the arbitration phase and continue to insist that based on what the word “appeal” means in the civil and criminal context, the fact that the word “appeal” is used somehow means that the respondent received an impartial adjudication by SS itself prior to the announcement of the ban. Claim that this adjudication is impartial because the investigators and the head of SS are different people who just happen to work in the same organization (???). Based on the use of the word “appeal” fall for misinformation spouted by Bonnie Navin and “educate” others that the respondent cannot bring evidence to actively defend himself in the appeal because the appeal is limited to reviewing procedural mistakes made by SS in its investigation. Endorsing anything Bonnie Navin says tends to make SS look bad, but in this case, she, like you, are basing your claim of how the “appeal” works by assuming it is similar to an appeal in the civil or criminal system. (She is in a position to know that the appeal is not limited to procedural issues, so she is actively spreading misinformation, while you, as outsiders are merely being duped.)
People who attempt to support SS by taking strategy 2) are unwittingly undermining the legitimacy of SS, in my view.
But a step further, not just makes others feel unsafe, but who has been deemed by an impartial third party investigation to pose a real threat to the community.
sidetrack: I cant help but think that george morris actively threatening witnesses in his case, witnesses who then went public, helped to pound the nails in his own coffin.
When the respondents and their supporters go after victims and witnesses, they only lend credence to the argument that their presence in sport is injurious to athletes.
Yes, in the argument of whether or not SS is legitimate (which it is), but even if SS wasn’t implemented, I’d still rather not be around someone who is “creepy.” Regardless of whether a government instituted third party says so or not. There is so much inappropriate behavior that goes under the radar.
Unfortunate that some choose to be willfully blind.
People have already told you the investigators are not the people making a decision and imposing sanctions. You clearly want to believe what you want to believe, whether it’s true or not, so there’s no point trying to reason with you.
Are you pointing out that it is different individual people within the SS organization that do the investigation and make the report?
I understand that. I still see the legitimacy of a respondent claiming that the person within SS organization who makes the report is not reliably impartial wrt the investigators in the same organization.
In contrast, an independent arbitrator from outside the SS organization I do see as impartial.
I’ve read this whole thread, and the GM one in the h/j forum. I personally thought that Moo was saying that riders/trainers at the top of the game, ie RD and the like, are playing mental gymnastics to ensure their friends/“contemporaries” look innocent. RD’s letter uses a lot of words and says nothing-- only Moo could confirm though, and she doesn’t need to. Why spend your life taking everything as a personal offense?
And I’ve been expressing a minority opinion to the effect that there is a glimmer of a legitimate complaint in RDs post to the effect that at this point — prior to the conclusion of the arbitration phase—RM has not had the benefit of a hearing conducted by an impartial third party as to whether he is culpable.
The issue is whether a report made by someone within the same organization can be considered to have provided an impartial review of the evidence gathered in the investigation conducted by the organization, even if the person conducting the assessment comes to work wearing a different hat than the people who conducted the investigation.
I don’t think it is “mental gymnastics” on the part of RD and company on this issue. I think it is a genuine grievance which they often express poorly.
I did think the post was directed at me, but will delete my response, anyway.
The real positive of finally having 3rd party oversite is that no matter how much members elect to be wilfully ignorant of the rules and the process, they are still bound by them, regardless of how important the club–or they themselves–believe them to be.
Your assumption that SS is not impartial is just incorrect. And I don’t care if they aren’t 100% perfectly unbiased. If you’re acting inappropriately, I don’t think you should get to participate in the sport, particularly as it’s dominated by younger women.
WHY are we still defending men in this sport acting inappropriately? To the benefit of whom? What do you benefit from defending RM/RD/GM on a public forum that they likely will never see? Surprise, they’re not going to call you up and offer to take you to the Olympics.
I’m saying that the most effective way to BASH/COUNTER/DESTROY the criticism leveled against SS by Dover to the effect that a report made by the SS director assessing the evidence gathered in a SS investigation may not be impartial is to stop claiming that the SS report is supposed to be construed as the respondent’s metaphorical “day in court”. The part of the process in which the respondent gets to make his case is the arbitration phase, not the investigation phase.
Why do you think it is that the SS announcement is simply “We have investigated the allegations and found them to be credible”. Do they say, we have judged you and found by a preponderance of the evidence, you are guilty? No, they don’t.
The way to undermine the legitimacy of SS is to say “I don’t care if they aren’t 100% perfectly unbiased”.
You, like RD, are using a lot of words and saying very little. I want less poor behavior from men in this sport and I’m not picky on how it gets done. SS seems pretty effective to me, for what it’s worth, or it’s at least a good start.
The “old men as gods” worship practice in this sport is, for lack of better words, gross. There is no shortage of competent trainers that haven’t been investigated by SS. Just take your *ing pick.
