To circle back around to the original topic for this thread, I wonder how the appeal is progressing? We’re coming up on the 30-day mark now.
I was just thinking…it’s not only GM who has a lot on the line here. If his appeal is upheld and he is reinstated, there will be no convincing anyone that SafeSport has any teeth as far as the horse business is concerned.
You’re absolutely right- SafeSport has more on the line than GM does. But they knew that when they issued the ban. Strategically, if they only had so-so evidence against him, it would be a bad bet to attempt to ban an 81 year old icon if there were significant risk that the ban would be overturned. I am assuming they would not have put themselves on the line by issuing a ban unless they had rock solid evidence.
Just out of curiosity, does SS or USEF make an announcement of the result of an appeal (like a press release) or do you just have to keep checking the list to see if “subject to appeal” is removed?
I think someone mentioned that they don’t make an announcement but because it’s GM I think we will hear about it. Especially with the New York Times article, never mind COTH.
I agree 100% with Yankee Duchess. SafeSport must know it has to win this one.
One thing I’m not clear on (and yes, I reviewed the rules) is the confidentiality obligations imposed on the respondent/accused.
To what degree can the accused reveal the allegations against him?
For example: in the process of finding supportive witnesses, could the accused call up a colleague and say, “The allegations relate to the time I coached Sally at the Happy Acres show… remember you were there and saw me coaching her?” If the accused is allowed to do this, then is the contacted witness under any confidentiality obligation?
I would think the accused would tell investigators or their attorney about any and all people who could exonerate them and the investigators or attorney are the ones who call. I don’t think they themselves are allowed to call people.
If you had a case with a gag order on it would you let your client just randomly start calling people to help you collect evidence? Doubt it.
That may be… my thinking is that the process of gathering supportive witnesses could spread knowledge of the allegations pretty wide. Some of those potential witnesses may themselves have a confidentiality obligation (i.e., active members of USEF) but others may not.
From what I gather it’s in everyone’s best interest to not publicly discuss it. However if they do they cannot make false statements and SS reserves the right to correct the misinformation. Obviously they don’t really care about Kathy Serio and her rant on Facebook. She did open the door for Safe Sport to go public about her husbands case. The only thing completely and totally restricted are the documents, statements and other forms of evidence.
For example no one can post on social media or go to a news outlet with copies or recordings used as evidence.
Its not a gag order but I would assume, the respondent and their people are advised to be quiet. Basically in a long winded way you can talk about it to any third party just be accurate and don’t supply duplicates of the evidence.
At least that’s my interpretation of the rules.
It will be dark days ahead for SS and any child that’s been used by a BNT if he’s reinstated.
Nope, she added a word that completely changed the tone. Funny that you should accuse me if not reading
When chisamba in post #3373 said: “Congratulations on victim shaming any survivor who handles it differently from you.” in response to when
ladyj79 in post #3351 said: I’m happy that that was the case for you, and that it became just an interesting story to tell." In response to my post #3350.
ladyj79 in post #3374 responded with: ”As with dags, you are attributing sentiment to me which is a direct quote. I’ll let it go, because that post I am directly quoting from was certainly long and difficult to get through.”
And NoSuchPerson in post #3375 said: “ladyj79 was directly quoting the victim herself. She didn’t just come up with that statement on her own. This discussion has developed a serious lack of reading for comprehension.”
However, both of these statements asserting that it was a direct quote from me are false.
Here is the direct quote of what I said about using dissociation for when you are required to testify:
“If you think of it in the third person, it makes for an interesting story. This makes it so retelling the story is not reliving it.”
Note that neither the word “just” nor “became” appear in what I actually said. Her statement was most definitely NOT a “direct quote” and it would appear that ladyj79 was unwilling to actually go through what I wrote in order to demonstrate that she was making a direct quote (possibly because she knew that it wasn’t a direct quote, since I had already pointed that out in my response post #3357, but maybe because she was just too lazy).
And it would appear that NoSuchPerson is willing to parrot ladyj79’s false assertion that it was a direct quote without actually going through what I wrote to discover whether it were true (which it isn’t). Perhaps because NoSuchPerson has, as she suggested herself, “developed a serious lack of reading for comprehension.”
Because not only was it not a direct quote, it didn’t even express the same sentiment.
BTW, as an aside, this is how falsehoods often get promulgated. One person lies, and then another person repeats the lie without checking the underlying evidence. Underlying evidence, I might add, that they DO have access to. And then the lie takes on a life of its own with countless people parroting it. We should all be careful not to repeat everything we hear without “fact checking.”
So hopefully people will now stop parroting that ladyj79’s words were a direct quote from me. They weren’t. And ladyj79 will stop telling that lie as well.
That said, I did not consider ladyj79’s original response to me to be victim shaming, since I am not quite sure why “I am happy that…” and “I wish you peace” should be interpreted as shaming. I assumed that she was sincere in her sentiments of happiness and well-wishes. That is, after all, what she said.
I, too, am happy that testifying at the trial of the man accused of attacking me was easy. From what I have heard here, for other people it often isn’t. Which is why I wanted to share some of the techniques that worked for me for making it easy in the hopes that these techniques might make testifying easier for other people faced with the same challenge.
Since much of this discussion about Safe Sport and its procedures revolves around how difficult it is for victims to tell of the abuse they have been subjected to, and an unwillingness to report it for fear of having to face their abusers and to relive the abuse in the retelling, I considered it worthwhile to share my own experience with how to make it easier.
And that is the ONLY thing that I talked about…how to make testifying easier. So, to clear up another misunderstanding:
When Jeloushe, in post #3363 said: “I also disagree with this poster and I don’t think dissociating yourself with the event is healthy in the long run”
Let me clarify. I was not speaking about “the long run” I was speaking about testifying. And whether that testimony lasts 15 minutes of 9 hours, neither amount of time qualifies as the long run.
None of the insights I provided were intended to address what may or may not work in the long run. They were intended to help witnesses get through their day in court. Or days, since often you don’t have to testify only once.
However, the reason anybody is called to testify is that the court is interested in what you have to say. So yes, it IS (at least one hopes that it is) an “interesting story.”
Think how much worse it would be if nobody WERE interested in it. In fact, I THINK that is what Safe Sport is all about…reassuring victims that there are people who are interested in what they have to say and will listen.
If I understand correctly, George Morris’s inappropriate behavior has been the “hunter/jumper” community’s dirty little secret for a very long time, but nobody was interested in doing anything about it. At least not interested enough. Victims of abuse need to be able to generate interest in their stories of abuse if anything is to be done about it. There is nothing “just” (using just to mean “only” and not “fair”) about interesting.
I hope what I have said might give other victims the ability to tell their interesting stories without being destroyed in the process.
As another aside, the DA in my case was able to secure a conviction and a 178 year prison sentence in the trial where I testified as a witness, including 12 years for the defendant’s attack on me, so it is a bit of a stretch to say that she wasn’t doing her job by not “prepping” me. Maybe the reason she was able to have this success was because her witnesses’ testimonies did not come off as rehearsed (I don’t know, because, like all witnesses, I didn’t hear any of the testimony, other than my own).
Was this thread locked?
I know this topic has been beat to death, but I read something in a review of She Said by Meghan Twohey and Jodi Kantor about Harvey Weinstein that really hit home. I know many people who knew JW and RG and rode with them, people I really like and respect who all say essentially the same thing, that the girls wanted to ride the good horses and get the attention so they were not victims but willing participants.
Here’s the quote that got to me:
”…that so many of the people that Kantor and Twohey spoke with seemed to assume that women willingly trade sex for career advancement in Hollywood is chilling.”
It is chilling and I really hope minds will change in the horse world like they are beginning to change in the entertainment industry.
The whole point of statutory rape laws is that a minor under the age of consent does not have the legal ability to consent; doesn’t matter a bit if she is “willing”, thinks she is in love, wants to ride the best horses, idolizes the trainer, etc. In the case of a minor under the AOC, the adult is legally (as well as morally) required to shut it down, no matter how “willing” the minor is.
I am perplexed that the supporters of JW, RG, etc just don’t get this.
Right? Like hello, the ADULT is responsible for not allowing it to happen. They are the ADULT in the situation. Saying that the CHILD was “willing” does not mean that the adult in the situation has the right to take advantage of that. They aren’t some poor helpless victim in this, they are an adult who is willing to screw a kid. And most of those kids were probably groomed to be “willing” participants. That anyone can defend that makes me sick to my stomach. Like those who question why Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard didn’t just “leave” their captors.
Has there been any news yet regarding the appeal?
Not that I’m aware of. I keep checking the SS page to see if the status has changed, but as of yesterday, it still said “subject to appeal/not yet final”.
The following is related to Safe Sport in general, but wasn’t sure it warranted its own thread.
There was an article in last Saturday’s WSJ saying the the Justice Department is perusing wide-ranging criminal investigations into US Olympic sports organizations. Equestrian isn’t specifically mentioned.
Here’s a Reuters link since WSJ seems to keep everything behind a paywall.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-olympics-idUSKCN1VZ01F
Happy to see this, the lower tier sports have been under the radar for too long…of course the NFL is right in your face bad to the bone and no one seems to be able to rein them in.
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