I wonder if at the arbitration, the witness list, for SS was numerous other victims. Some probably high profile in the sport. They just remain Anonymous due to the backlash of the industry. SS only needed one person to come forward to fill out the complaint. The other victims can remain nameless.
I’d bet there was numerous other people. It wasn’t just JS word against GM. It was most likely GM’s word against many others.
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It is assumed that GM has denied it. All I have read is that he claims he never hurt anyone. He evens states in his book that he likes them young.
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Callahan has filed a lawsuit against SafeSport, as well as the Lopez brothers.
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In the NY Times article it says
The lifetime ban came after at least two people came forward to report that they had been victimized as minors during Mr. Morris’s coaching career.
I don’t understand this. signing? If one is a member of x organization and a term of that membership is dispute resolution via arbitration then it is like “signing” an agreement. And there has to be an agreement to go to arbitration. I think I missed the point of your post. GM had a dispute with Safe Sport. GM was a member, SS settled disputes via arbitration. Both parties must agree to arbitration for it to happen.
Technically there is signing, the award must be signed. But I’m just being smart a** here.
The decision is signed by the arbitrator/judge.
George is not a member of SafeSport. He is a USEF member. The U.S. Center for SafeSport is an independent nonprofit created from The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017. Read the SafeSport Policies and Procedures. There is a detailed explanation of how the arbitration works.
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Yes, I know who the award/decision is signed by.
Thanks for the info.
But as a member of USEF people agree to arbitration because they agree to follow the policies and procedures of Safe Sport by agreeing to the rules of the USEF.
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I had to make an account to comment here. As a European who moved to the US in the 80s and gradually stopped showing over fences and eventually competing at all due to the expense and cliquishness of the US H/J scene this is very interesting. I never understood the weird cult like worship of some coaches here that had quite frankly, questionable, horsemanship skills and seemed to extract an awful lot of money from their clients for what the clients got horse-wise and results-wise. If you even asked a question people jumped all over you. It all makes a lot more sense if it was wrapped up in illegal activities and a general sense of insider/ outsider and secrecy. It also does shine a light on comments made to me back in the 90s by some prominent women who knew this clique well about advancing through the ranks if female could only be done with money but young men got a leg up. Naive me thought that was sexism.
As an outsider I would have to conclude this is a lot bigger than just GM and am interested to see what comes out next.
Now no horse scene or group of people is perfect, but the fact he was so prominent and people just said nothing for decades because he was a coach is ridiculous. It will be good for the sport to get this out in the open. I don’t think his attitude of elitism or the general attitude of hero worship towards coaches did the sport any favors and I hope it goes away for ever. Riding should be affordable, fun and enjoyable for kids and families, not a source of stress and fraud and mental and physical abuse.
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I think we need to separate what GM did for the American forward seat and equitation from his heinous behavior. Like it or not he was damn good.
I highly doubt Europeans are immune from looking the other way to work with someone at the top of any industry.
The thing people are grappling with is the person they think they know, the education they received, and the real person behind all that.
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OY! The FB comments after the CoTH article are appalling. Why can people not accept that he freely wrote in his book about having sex with underage boys? He f*****g admits it!
I had to put the bookdown…I am no prude, but I thought I was going to read about, well, horses. Not his sex life, gack
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I found this part of the NYT article interesting:
“Only one of Mr. Morris’s accusers has gone public: Jonathan Soresi, a former student and an assistant trainer to Mr. Morris, is himself a registered sex offender. In 2007, Mr. Soresi pleaded guilty to a felony count for the possession of child pornography. He was also barred by SafeSport but was reinstated last week.”
Why would Soresi be reinstated? Esp. if he’s a registered sex offender.
As I said before, it’s possible his guilty plea has been quietly tossed out or sentence modified to a lesser one, in exchange for cooperating in a legal investigation and pending court case against GM, but his case has been inactive in the system for years, so we won’t know until there is some legal documentation about it in the NY courts. By their own rules, it should not be possible for SafeSport or USEF to reinstate him without such an occurrence, as SS does not have the legal authority to change his offender status, which was bestowed by Onondaga County in NY. SS works with and passes on information to various law enforcement agencies that would be involved in this multi-state and multi-county investigation, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s going to be something coming down the way for Georgie Boy.
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Well… not always “stupid,” per se.
Read the NY Times article where the father of a (now-deceased?) WS of Morris’s explained: This was a helluva opportunity for a middle-class kid from Minnesota. Dad thought he was supporting his son in his athletic or career endeavors by sending his kid to be a live-in WS with Morris in New Jersey.
And I think you’d find the same phenomenon among the parents who had Larry Nassar treat their daughters.
The USEF cannot do a whole lot to curb an industry that makes people desperate enough for an opportunity that they deny (to others or to themselves) what is really going on. But it can take perpetrators finding victims and power within the industry out of the game. In addition to preventing cruelty to horses, I would think this agenda would be at the top of what a worth-while governing body with a thorough and expert investigation process would do for its members.
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Some crimes put a person on the sex offender registry for a certain amount of time, not forever. It might be what happened in his case. I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.
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Welcome to COTH and, belatedly to the US. Especially now, you can see the decadence of this empire. It is an embarrassment, all that rot, and it’s happening in so many areas.
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Yes, but I think charlieTBD said just that about Europeans not being slavishly cultish about their top pros.
But to imply, then, that “Europeans, too, would look the other way” about the serious breech of morality we are discussing in this thread is pretty bad. It’s not like Morris stole some pens from work or even did some clever and successful embezzling. To my mind, this is a much worse (and longer-lived) transgression to “look the other way” from.
But maybe charlieTBD can clarify-- Do you Eurotypes have your Harvey Weinsteins, Jo Paternos and George Morrises? Those bad actors who are known but somehow tolerated and allowed to stay in their respective, comfortable positions?
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In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I did a quick internet search with respect to Soresi’s conviction, and came across a report from a Syracuse news site dating back to August 2007 that gave the following detail…
[I]“Horse trainer and equestrian show circuit judge Jonathan Soresi was sentenced today to 10 years’ probation for possessing child pornography on his computer when he was in town for a horse show last year.
Soresi, 50, of New Jersey, pleaded guilty in April to a felony count of possession of an obscene sexual performance by a child, admitting he had 16 digital images and one digital movie depicting sexual activity by children on his computer.”[/I]
Given previous discussions on these threads related to an entirely DIFFERENT individual who was convicted in the state of NY for a crime that placed them on a sex offender registry, it is my understanding that sometimes individuals do come off that registry after a specific official duration as part of their original plea deal, depending on the facts of their original case. The other banned individual came off the registry after 10 years… and his crime involved an actual sex act with a minor - he plead guilty. I might be wrong, but my assumption is that penalties for an actual sex act with a minor would be MORE severe than penalties related to possession of child porn.
Interestingly enough however, that individual is STILL on the Safe Spirt banned list, even though he is no longer listed in the sex offender registry. So it does not seem like this situation is simply a matter of an individual’s sex offender registry status (nor should it be).
I will say that none of us actually know what precisely was involved in Soresi’s case, nor do we know how that related to the GM case. Bonnie Navin has made a public comment on FB that implies Soresi got some sort of a “deal” from Safe Sport for providing testimony against GM. There doesn’t seem to be much else in the way of public information related to this matter, one way or another, though. So I take her comments with a HEAPING teaspoon of salt.
Personally… I wouldn’t hire Soresi to coach my kids, given his conviction, regardless of whether or not he is on that list. However, my heart breaks for the young teen he once was, and the fact that he lost a father at age 6, and the allegations he has made that he was abused by an older man… allegations which were apparently thoroughly investigated, and challenged, and upheld following an independent arbitration process. I do think all the finger pointing now at Soresi’s guilty plea with respect to possession of child porn is a bit of a false equivalency when compared to actual sexual relations by an adult male coach with an underaged, emotionally vulnerable, male student.
People are justified in wondering what exactly was behind Safe Sports decision on Soresi… but I don’t like how that is morphing into victim blaming and general nastiness and harassment. And it is. Soresi was a victim.
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Totally agree. For something a little lighter, to relieve all this difficult discussion, I just wanted to comment that a teen is eventing a cousin of my horse. My horse is Appy/Arabian, 16.2, dressage horse. This other horse is Appy/OIdenburg. She’s started at Intro, then Beginner Novice, now is going junior novice. The horse is only about 6 at this time. So, first of all, she’s on an Appy. However, GM has several times in the past noted that he likes Appies and that the only horse he still owns (ed?) is an Appy. BUT…and I love it…this kid goes cross country in total shocking pink: breeches, shirt, saddle pad, galloping boots, ear bonnet, helmet cover, everything. Every time see a video of her, my first thought is, “Someone should send this to GM. He’d have a coronary.” Sigh. It was a lighthearted reaction and now kind of sad.
I never like his attitude, but respected his expertise. Read his autobiography and thought it was fairly damning. Did he think he was untouchable?
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Did he think he was untouchable?
The answer to that question is yes, I think he did. We talked way back on this thread about how the book seemed like a rush job that was hurried into print. I think he knew this was coming down and the book was an in your face, touch me if you dare, see how practically every Big Name in the industry is my “good friend” - a pre-emptive strike, if you will.
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