They did. They absolutely did.
Otherwise we wouldn’t need Safe Sport.
Otherwise Epstein wouldn’t be a thing, and otherwise we wouldn’t have the Me Too movement.
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I beg to disagree.
What I think is that the times were of more naive people.
Many didn’t talk about things like medical diagnoses, or sexuality, so many cruised thru life without much of an understanding of all that you didn’t talk about in polite society.
I am hard of hearing, so that went double for me.
People had to spell out what was going on that were just rumors and what those meant, that went over my head.
There were many in my same situation, not aware of all those things going on that were not right.
The difference with now is not that people were knowing exactly what was going on and accepted any of it, but that they were not sure of what all those undercurrents were.
Until now in the information age, where we get every topic hashed out in details that many require brain bleach.
We now have a clear idea of what all is out there and that it needs to stop.
I think that is where me-too and SS and any such today fits.
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My heart absolutely breaks reading everyone’s brave stories of how they encountered abuse. I think a lot of us feel this is such an important time to make space for those who have been afraid for years.
My mom says you can never go wrong with having compassion. I do have compassion for many of the professionals, who guided by misinformation, are really afraid right now. I don’t think everyone who is responding negatively is afraid bc they are pedo’s as well.
My question is how do we make it easy to get more @HoolieB s (thank you for your terrific post!). How do we change the tide of fear and misinformation? I wholeheartedly agree that the sordid details need to be private. The victims have already been put through enough. But that plays into the hands of folks who are whipping everyone up into a frenzy.
Telling people to read whats on the SafeSport website is not working. I’ve spent the last few weeks doing that on FB and it is NOT getting through.
I don’t know if it’s going to require someone of stature walking people through the process or what. I felt like this was an opportunity for Robert Ridland to step up and he kind of played dodgeball with it. Beth Raisen’s piece in the COTH this week is a good start, but not everyone reads the print edition.
Before these allegations, I myself was a big fan of both Rob Gage and George Morris bc I had great experiences with them. In reading these pages, I have also come to see the unbelievable destruction they wreaked in people’s lives. I stand with SafeSport and I wish there were a way to reassure more folks that this is the medicine the sport really needs.
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I struggle with all of the arguments about what the age of consent was. Consent is not an automatic given just because someone is of a certain age. A person still must CONSENT to the activity-- which means acting free of duress or coercion. Even if the age of consent is 12 or 15 or whatever, can that person really be said to be able to consent to sexual contact or activity? Especially if the person wanting the sexual contact or activity is an adult, someone in a position of power or influence.
Just because an activity might be or have been legal does not make it right-- there is the oft commented situation of the legality of the atrocities committed in/durng Nazi Germany.
Just because someone is of legal age to consent to sexual contact or activity does not mean that they did consent. Whether their consent is valid in any given situation depends on that situation entirely.
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You are absolutely wrong. People may not do something to stop someone for many reasons other than believing that the things they’re doing are acceptable.
Power differential is a huge reason. Believing that there is nothing you can do to stop a person who has exponentially more power and wealth than you do.
Fear of physical harm.
Fear that speaking up against your child’s well-connected, powerful, wealthy rapist will end up being worse for the child than the rape itself.
The only way to get people to speak up to “stop someone” is to eliminate the things that keep them silent. That’s a big reason SafeSport’s promise of anonymity is so important.
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Oh come on Jealoushe, take the red pill! Lol
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oh I prefer VOAT 
lol
Just an observation, but on this thread alone we have, how many posters who were victims of abuse themselves?
And people think it is really a stretch that these people are victims? Clearly, abuse is a lot more rampant than society would like us to believe.
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I personally don’t think it was ever accepted…
people just didn’t want to get involved. To point the finger at someone and accuse them of something, is not something people are comfortable doing.
To cause conflict, causes anxiety. It was easier just to warn girls to “ stay away from that guy”.
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Originally posted by greysfordays
Telling people to read whats on the SafeSport website is not working. I’ve spent the last few weeks doing that on FB and it is NOT getting through.
I don’t know if it’s going to require someone of stature walking people through the process or what.
I have a feeling it’s going to take at least one BNT with the guts to stand up and say publicly that they unequivocally support SS and I don’t think that’s going to happen unless and until GM’s appeal is denied and he’s really, finally booted out.
Can anyone think of someone of stature who wasn’t named in GM’s book as being a “dear friend to this day”, a good friend with whom he did some fabulous horse deal or other, or at least someone he caroused with? I said somewhere up thread that I thought his book was intended as a warning to everyone as to just how far reaching his influence was and now I think I’m really believing that.
Come to think of it, are there ANY BNTs, named in “the book” or not, who have come out with a solid statement in support of SafeSport?
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I think a lot of this is arguments about semantics.
When I say “socially unacceptable,” I am referring to the fact that society knew sexual interactions with minors (I’m going to stick to this topic) was wrong. Otherwise, why would we be having all these conversations about parents/adults ignoring it, and those sexually abusing minors doing it behind closed doors?
To me, “socially acceptable” means that society on a whole agrees on a set of values, whether or not they do anything to protect and enforce these values.
At no point in the past hundred years (and even beyond that), would someone admit in their social circles (outside “circles” of other abusers) or in public that they were sexually abusing minors. They KNEW it was wrong and they didn’t flaunt it.
That’s why we have all these people defending George Morris by saying he’s a nice guy, etc. He kept his proclivities behind closed doors. If it was “socially acceptable,” he wouldn’t need to hide it.
Hiding a behavior or action is a clear indication that a person is doing something they interpret as socially unacceptable.
Now that’s my definition of the term, and it’s fine if you feel differently. However, it’s silly to go round and round telling people they are wrong because they don’t define something as you do.
With regard to how victims feel, I think we are overlooking the innate shame and embarrassment felt by victims that has nothing to do with society, now or then.
I didn’t understand it until I was sexually assaulted last year. I am in the most open, welcoming, and supportive environments someone could have both at home and at work. However, I still felt embarrassed and ashamed after the assault and debated whether to tell anyone.
These feelings are just as important to consider because they are just as likely to keep people from coming forward and one more reason why we need to provide safety and privacy for victims who have come forward.
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Exactly, it makes so many people uncomfortable they would rather let someone else deal with it.
I find this even myself, people ask me something and if I even start to tell them what happened to me, they immediately get this look on their face like they are so uncomfortable and just want me to stop. So many people don’t want to know about the ugly truth in the world.
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Deep breath. I really try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they haven’t taken their argument to its furthest logical conclusion and don’t realize the conclusion they have reached, which seems so obvious to them, relies on a flawed underlying premise.
You have a MSW which gives you a depth of knowledge and tools for analysis in just this type of situation that far exceeds what the vast majority of people have available to them. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that most parents do not have a MSW in their back pocket. Hypothetically speaking, if SafeSport ONLY conducted investigations and published their conclusions (withholding any details to protect victims) and no further consequences followed (e.g. no sanctions imposed, no impact on whether they can participate in their sports NGB). Just a publicly available list with names and their infraction (e.g. John Smith - Sexual misconduct with a minor) and then SafeSport hands over their information to law enforcement. Law enforcement elects not to proceed with charges because a statute of limitations applies to the incidents with the strongest, most irrefutable evidence (let’s say letters containing confessions by the accused written in their own hand writing) whereas the evidence for the most most recent incidents is not strong enough to obtain a conviction.
So you, with your MSW, visit John Smith and in your well informed opinion feel he is not a risk to your children. You are able to be present at the barn and supervise every moment he is with your children. You decide the skills your children will learn outweigh the likelihood they will come to harm and take the calculated risk of enrolling them in his lesson program.
I happen to have done my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and have a MLIS. Let’s assume I am better than the average bear at researching John Smith’s history, evaluating the quality of the sources and critically examining all of the available information. I decide based on his show records that he is very successful, there are no suspicious gaps in the timeline of the show records, I can find no indication of any animal welfare issues, no records of criminal conviction, and no suggestion that he has gone by any other name in the past. Just his name and an infraction on the SafeSport list. I decide to meet with John Smith. By all indications I have done my homework, more than the average parent does I suspect, and I should be able to make an intelligent evaluation of him. However, I admit that I have crap judgment when it comes to men. I ask him about SafeSport and he gives me a sob story about how it was a long time ago and he was 20 and she was 16 and now he knows it was wrong and would never ever do something like that again. I fail to notice him eyeballing my 12 year old son and think how nice John Smith is for offering to give him a free first lesson right then and there. John goes on and on about how super impressed he is with how my son rides and how he really has a future in this sport. He offers to make a special exception and let my son join his elite junior team at a steep discount. And guess what? Next month they’ll be traveling out of state and my son can stay with the other boys in their hotel room because he always provides the kids with their own hotel room!!
Ugh. I feel dirty just writing all that. Just because you feel confident in your ability to determine whether an identified child abuser is a risk to your child, doesn’t mean every other parent has that same skill set and ability. My point is that SafeSport is about protecting as many children as possible in as many different sports as possible. SafeSport, #metoo and breaking the culture of silence is bigger than the individual and their right to choose, it’s bigger than one man’s business or reputation, and it’s bigger than horse sport and industry.
It’s about breaking the cycle and ending a plague that has reached epidemic proportions while everyone whispered and decided that money and fame and reputation were more important than abusing children. Child abusers aren’t created in a vacuum. People don’t wake up one day with a hankering for children. They think it’s “normal” or that’s “just how it is” or “it only was a few times and they won’t remember 10 or 20 years from now” or they wouldn’t be where they are today if that didn’t happen because in all likelihood they experienced the same thing themselves.
Go look at the “most popular” lists on any of the popular free porn and erotica websites (hint: the majority do not feature a plot line about a husband and wife engaging in passionate love making). WE HAVE A PROBLEM HERE. And we need to stop whispering and looking the other way because god forbid some old white guy might not be able to teach a few clinics, drug some horses or endanger horses and riders (by his own admission in his autobiography).
And since I don’t want to make a separate post on this. PSA!! There are exceptional riders and trainers who are immaculate horsemen/women and admirable human beings outside of the upper echelons of the h/j bubble. You actually can get “George” quality training elsewhere without compromising on things like basic ethics and animal cruelty and child abuse. I didn’t know who GHM was until a few years ago and was totally perplexed by his cult following. The man came across as an obnoxious bully and the things he was teaching are not earth shattering concepts if you diversify and try using a coach from a different discipline or different continent.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to intelligently respond to some of the … more interesting posts here. Clearly the “if you ignore it maybe it will go away” approach isn’t serving the best interests of the collective “we” anymore.
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AK…and look what happened to her.
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This is in response to those still trying to put SafeSport under criminal law. SafeSport will report what is found to appear to meet a violation of criminal law to the appropriate authorities who may or may not follow through. SafeSport is like any group that is subject to a Code of Conduct or Code of Ethics. In the military, besides federal, state, and local laws there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. In that CODE, there is a section on “moral turpitude” among many other military specific codes. Many of these affect military discipline. All government agencies have ethical standards, administrative procedures, executive procedures, etc. Professions such as licensed engineers, lawyers, certified public accountants, licensed plumbers or electricians, etc. education, all have standards or behavior and skill including ethics that if violated can lead to a loss of licensing and an inability for anyone to hire them to perform a function requiring a demonstrated and licensed proficiency. These have been all over the court system. SafeSport is established by federal law with written procedures with an appeals process through a separate unaffiliated organization that is commonly used. Trying to test the water to see if support can be drummed up by presenting it a certain way has already been tried and failed. These Natuomal Governing Bodies (NGBs) of which USEF is it for equestrian must carry out what SafeSport comes up with. It wouldn’t be necessary had the organizations, trainers, parents, and peers had taken care of the problems. For whatever reasons, that didn’t happen. Now we have SafeSport and I support it because we need it. No organization is perfect but it followed a a path set by many other agencies long before and already challenged in court. No doubt it will be and maybe tweaked but on the whole it will stay intact. Already people are pointing out too many loopholes where kids aren’t protected enough and new legislation is strengthening not lessening the law. George Morris has one more appeal under an established system and we will see if SafeSport met its standards.
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Originally posted by Jealoushe
AK…and look what happened to her.
Right you are. Lost sight of that in all the mud-slinging.
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That isn’t the point at all. I was explaining how recent the age of consent laws are as an indicator of how society thinks about these things. Until relatively recently, alcohol consumption and cute panties were indicators of consent. Still wrong, but definitely indicators of how people thought.
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Accepted and acceptable are two very different things. Acceptable implies that there is a power to accept that is exercised. Accepted just means not doing anything.
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“Accepted” and “acceptable” are two very different things. “Acceptable” implies that there is a power to accept that is exercised. “Accepted” can mean not doing anything, i.e tolerating it.
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I agree that this is, in part, an argument about semantics. But semantics are important when it comes to communication and our analysis of how to prevent future issues.
“When I say “socially unacceptable,” I am referring to the fact that society knew sexual interactions with minors (I’m going to stick to this topic) was wrong. Otherwise, why would we be having all these conversations about parents/adults ignoring it, and those sexually abusing minors doing it behind closed doors?”
The law knew it was wrong. Parents knew it was wrong. But it was accepted that it was the way to get ahead. That’s not naiveté - that’s acceptance. We point at these parents now as anomalies, but they weren’t really - the same way it was tacitly accepted that in order to get ahead as a woman in the workplace you were going to have to sleep with some uglies.
Was it right? No. Did anyone think it was right? Absolutely not. But it was a thing that we accepted as a culture.
What else would you call that? What else would you call the Hot for Teacher video? Or the Pepsi commercial (look it up) or the Jailbait porn videos (labeled as such). They were so common that everyone knows the term “Girls Gone Wild” or the “Barely Legal” series. If we had any sense of non-acceptance, those would be considered as abhorrent as the people with videos of even younger children, which were not considered a felony before 1992. I’m sure if pressed, people would have said those things were sick in 1980, and yet we, as a society, didn’t do anything.
There’s a difference between knowledge of right and wrong, and acceptance. In this case (sexual abuse of minors) I absolutely agree that both the perpetrators and the bystanders with knowledge knew it was wrong. But they all accepted it. They didn’t go to authorities (that would be the big sign of non-acceptance). They rationalized it as the cost of “being close to GM” or “getting that new position”. They silenced victims. They supported perpetrators. They knew.
I agree that we should provide privacy, I’m not sure how you’re interpreting any of what I have said to be the opposite.
As a fellow rape victim, I bore a ton of shame, wrestled with whether to tell or not. I still haven’t “outed myself” to those close to me (although those who know my screen name IRL now know, I suppose). Those bruises that I bore post-rape go deep. I do 100% blame my rapist but I also blame a society that sees women and children as possessions of men.
I see our attitudes as complicit in my rapist thinking he was entitled to my body, and when I came home with bruises on my arms no one asking me what had happened. Those who saw me surely knew that something bad had happened, even if they didn’t know a sexual crime had occurred. Their silence, borne of embarrassment or not wanting to get involved or whatever the case may be was a tacit acceptance of what had happened to me.
It wasn’t naiveté, you’d have to be a fool to believe that a 20 year old female comes home with thumbprint bruises all over her arms and a bruise on her cheek and think that it was just a “happy night out”.
I am NOT conflating things that don’t belong together - they absolutely do. I lived in the town where Sandusky was a predator. The town claimed that Joe Paterno was “naive”. While he may not have known for certain that Sandusky was buggering boys, he most definitely knew that there was smoke. Society said that unless you can prove it without a reasonable doubt, the doubt belongs on the accuser. This was commonly accepted during the time of the reporting - Penn State was not special in this way. It happens in Universities and Schools all across the world. This is woefully, dreadfully common and it has been until now an accepted behavior of the perpetrators. Which is why they needed sanctions, fines, and a big ol’ set of training videos to get it through to people that just maybe it shouldn’t be accepted anymore.
Silence is acceptance.
If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t need Safe Sport.
We need Safe Sport.
Because we, as a society, need to change.
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People didn’t want to get involved for sure. When I was little - 5 or 6 - I used to have night terrors where I would scream at the top of my lungs. Apparently, it was plenty loud enough for people up and down the block to hear if the windows were open. We moved away, came back for a visit maybe 10 years later and one lady asked me “did your parents used to beat up on you?” Not outraged, just like she was curious. I said no - why would she think that and she replied “well, we used to hear you screaming all the time.” Never thought of doing anything, though, I guess.
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