If there is any organized collective push-back against SafeSport within other sports, it is largely under the radar at this time. Given the team-oriented nature of most other sports and the fact that they - for the most part - do not have the symbiotic self-perpetuating (or incestual, if you prefer a more dramatic term) high-dollar business at their foundation, it’s not likely that such a thing will happen for such sports. Gymnastics and Figure Skating, the two sports that do have something like that - and also have a verified serious problem like the Equestrian sports do - have not organized collectively outside of their respective governing bodies, which are taking their own “dig-in and see what happens” positions against SafeSport, which doesn’t have the resources to handle the volume of complaints they are getting, especially from those two sports.
Absolutely valid and a fair point. And I will admit that I am QUITE aggravated by the entire article, and probably have gone overboard in attacking it. If you’ve read the entire thing, the writing professor in you will probably have many other issues that make you feel a bit nuts.
BUT…
I just went back to grab the first 2 sentences to copy and paste here for you to get your opinion on them. It honestly was the very first sentence from DC that got under my skin… her answer to the very first question posed. For me personally… my opinion admittedly went downhill from there.
In the process of circling back to quote, I noticed something that made me chuckle…
Yesterday the article opened with…
Question from Interviewer:
”Why was Athletes For Equity In Sportcreated?
Answer from DC:
“The simple answer is to affect equity in SafeSport procedures.”
Today it seems to have changed…
Question from Interviewer:
”Why was Athletes For Equity In Sportcreated?
Answer from DC:
“The simple answer is to effect equity in SafeSport procedures.”
:winkgrin:
In all fairness though… maybe that first sentence wasn’t DC’s fault, and just a minor editing issue. I will own that I am the sort of person who tends to zero in on things like that. And criticize. In all fairness though… DC has many many other comments that were grammatically challenged.
Livestream available for tonight’s USHJA Safesport Q & A at 6:10pm Eastern
https://cdn.digitalservices.online/USHJA-2019/
That was the strangest question from DC about sex with an underage person with a fake ID. Really? Maybe have some morals as a professional & not jump into bed with someone you meet for the first time at a bar.
If I had young riders & I found out their trainer was out catting around at night… that would be enough for me to find a new trainer. That’s very unprofessional, but also, not the type of morals I would want my kids thinking is normal.
Also. A professional trainer needs to be smart & maybe if they meet someone they like at a bar. Get the persons number & ask them out on a real date & meet & talk with them outside out a bar /alcohol setting. This is just common sense. If you hop into bed with someone you don’t know, there maybe bad consequences.
Shows a serious lack of judgement and impulse control.
Totally agree and would like to amplify. In the university setting, also therapist/patient, while it is not illegal (I believe) for a professor to have a romantic/sexual relationship with a thesis student when the thesis student is an adult (generally over 22), the university code of conduct specifies that it is very seriously not OK for the faculty member to allow any relationship of any kind (beyond strictly professional) to develop. Tenured professors can be fired for this.
SafeSport code is similar. A sexual relationship that develops when one person (trainer/professor) has the advantage of professional power over the other is forbidden. If the weaker party is also underage, that makes it worse, but is not the only issue.
I also believe that the defense “She said she was 18” is explicitly NOT allowed in the statutory rape laws of most states. The onus is on the purported adult to not engage in sex with a minor, including figuring out whether the person is or is not a minor.
With regard to the fund raising, I have no problem with anyone raising funds to pay the arbitration fees or pay lawyers to defend these pedophiles. I will not be contributing.
I assume money was no object when GM appealed his ban. Despite any number of highly paid lawyers, the independent arbitrator upheld the ban. Much better for SS that GM lost despite his high powered representation than if he could cast doubt by whining that he could not afford a lawyer. It’s a clean win for SS.
So if these apologist idiots want to waste their money funding lawyers for pedophiles, I say go right ahead.
I don’t support their desire to change the SS legislation, but since they can’t even articulate any concrete changes, much less come up with coherent arguments supporting the changes, again this seems to amount to nothing more than a waste of (their) money.
Both of these fund raising efforts seem pretty harmless to me.
Trainers just have to be professional. Be respectful, don’t drink on the job, or do drugs, or gossip about clients, drug horses, pad bills, ask for huge commissions, lie about how wonderful they are and of course keep your love life away from your job. Clients won’t be pissed and safe sport will be watching someone else. .So simple. ;
Framed into the context of George’s book, it’s not that strange of a question. He admits to sneaking students into Studio 54. Maybe it was done with the use of fake IDs, but as others pointed out, a trainer would know how old his clients were with or without a fake ID.
Thank you for your time to provide this answer. 
But … It is important to note that this did not answer the actual question posed by DC. This answer presumes that the Young Trainer knows the underage bar patron. But in DC’s scenario the Fake-ID Teenager is not Young Trainer’s student and not someone known to Young Trainer.
By specifying that “Young” Trainer is “about 25”, DC is implying that the age difference isn’t noticeable and so Young Trainer honestly doesn’t know that Fake-ID Teenager is a minor.
I think that is the real point of DC’s question - Young Trainer has an excuse! He/she didn’t know! Young Trainer’s judgment may be questionable, but does it merit SafeSport sanctions? It’s actually a good question.
Hypothetical Scenario: Large multi-day horse show is in full swing with competitors attending from a wide region. They don’t all know each other.
Young Trainer goes out to bar. Fake-ID Teenager equestrian who ‘looks and acts older’ (20’s), who Young Trainer does not know, is at the same bar, using a fake ID to drink. They meet. Knowing little about each other, they go somewhere and have consensual sex.
[DC’s “consensual” scenario is also key to DC’s question, even though legally a minor may not be able to consent. But the scenario is that Young Trainer doesn’t know Fake-ID Teenager is a minor, thinks Teenager is in his/her 20’s and therefore old enough to consent.]
Later, Teenager (or possibly Teenager’s enraged parents) files a complaint with SafeSport of sexual victimization by Young Trainer.
The question is not “What standard of behavior should Young Trainer follow?” but rather, this happened, and now the ball is in SafeSport’s court.
What does SafeSport do?
Although I think I know the answer, I’d be interested in hearing it from SafeSport.
I think the simple response is, show me the person whose been banned because one time they unknowingly took an underage person home from a location where there is an age limit for admission, and then were reported to safe sport by that person, or a witness.
It doesn’t exist. It likely will never exist, because of how the safe sport process is structured.
The people who have been banned to date actively preyed on people they knew were underaged, because that’s what they like. Many of these survivors were WELL under age. Because most of these banned members are pedophiles, with some ephibophilia thrown in for those who would like to quibble,
These people love a good straw man argument, and they have absolutely no shame.
And this is not important, but it kills me every time I see it and hear it. That book is about a sexual predator victimizing a young orphan girl. And yet somehow society read that book and decided that she is to blame.
And gives her name to other young minor girls they view in the same light, reversing the roles of predator and victim.
Maybe that was part of your point, if so I apologize for taking this remark to task.
I wish people would read that book with enlightened eyes. The author Nabokov was masterful at creating a predator who grooms us all into seeing him as a likeable character, in spite the honest account of his horrendous ongoing crimes against this young girl. It is a disturbing look into how a predator works, and how a victim survives until she’s old enough to escape.
In some ways the book may be all too insightful into how a Jimmy Williams or a George Morris did what they did for so many years. Victims feeling trapped in the system, not even experienced enough in life to understand how this is working. Appeasements through gifts and making it seem the victims have the power, when they have no real power and the predator controls their environment and their chances in life.
And the takeaway the public has on that book is, if possible, even more disturbing. I wish people would stop using “Lolita” as a descriptive term for girls too young to fill the role of conniver that we so unkindly ascribe to them.
Maybe she does mean “affect change”.
“Affectation” - definition is “speech or behavior that is artificial and intended to impress”.
Perhaps there is no intention of effective change. Perhaps it’s all an affectation of wanting change.
Calling it “Athletes for Equity” and splashing around the fact that she has named herself president of her newly created non-profit seems pretty darn affected to me.
More likely that her instinct was to write “effect change”, then she decided that the (statistically) less frequently used word would make her sound more articulate and switched it to “affect” change.SafeSport is effecting change.
DC et. al. are trying to affect the change that SafeSport is effecting. To push it in a different direction - or really, squash it altogether.
Is that correct? Grammatically? Factually?
:winkgrin:
I think everything in this post is part of DC’s whole point.
It seems to me that DC’s crowd would like to keep horse sport just as juvenile, high-spirited and no-holds-barred as it maybe once was, back in the 60’s & 70’s. When girls and young women were informed “this is part of life, deal with it”.
DC’s group definitely don’t want their behavior back in the day to be held accountable now. Even though there are clearly many people who have not gotten past the trauma that was inflicted on them long ago.
I shouldn’t speak for SS, but I don’t see how this is in their jurisdiction. If young trainer and minor with fake ID meet up in a bar and did not previously know each other, much less have a trainer/student relationship, the trainer does not have the undue power over the younger person.
I think the minor, or the outraged parents could pursue it with law enforcement, though, as “I didn’t know he/she was underage” is not a defense in statutory rape cases, I believe.
I also agree with ladyj79 that there are enough “gray area” factors in this scenario (age 25 vs claimed over age 21) that this would not warrant a second glance by SS unless it were part of a well established pattern.Back in the 90’s a well known former GM student came up to my area to teach a clinic. Of all the students, their was one he recommended would be the type of student that GM would love to have as a working student and offered up that opportunity. It seemed odd to us as this wasn’t the most talented or dedicated junior…but it was the only tall, slim boy. The parents turned down the offer…but was that clinician procuring for GM? Seems likely in hindsight. Which makes it likely both that he was still offending in the 90’s and that other professionals may be sanctioned for enabling him.
Honestly? Said young rider with fake ID needs to be held accountable too. Fake ID–illegal. Bar now in trouble for serving minor, trainer in trouble with sex with a minor—if girls and guys are out there wanting to party, then guess what? Consequences come when you lie about your age. So, I think Safe Sport needs to make that a ruling too–if you lie about your age at a horse show, you get banned. Perhaps this is something that needs to be stated that said competitor lying about their age will be punished by Safe Sport along with legal bodies in the location.
This is a joke right? Banned for using a fake id at a bar? Children are often wreckless and thoughtless, that’s why adults need to take extra care to be thoughtful and diligent and not serve them alcohol or have sex with them.
So how did an independent arbitrator over turn JS’s ban, but Safe Sport was do deal with GM’s ban and did not over turn. Why didn’t GM get an independent arbitrator?? With no bias? And folks, just because JS has no victims coming forwards, does NOT mean he is safe to be around kids. For GM, if he is still a predator, he would have young victims currently that fall under the SOL, so I find that also a mystery.
Thanks for clarifying ISWG meaning—I thought it was some sort of organization in the US to protect Junior Riders! 
I love GM’s equitation books and his philosophy of teaching in the books and articles he wrote. I did NOT like his manner with people, how he treated people in clinics and how egotistical he was/is. While I feel this ban from Safe Sport seems a bit sloppy, I agree he should be banned given his actions. A trainer/coach does NOT sleep with their students. End.Of.Story. I don’t care who the hell you are. I am having a hard time though with JS getting an independent arbitrator and they allowed his reinstatement, while GM was not given an independent arbitrator. That is more what I am frustrated with. The fact that JS has a record, is still on a registry in Florida----and is able to judge at USEF sanctioned shows—that is a lawsuit in the making if they ever find indiscretion. I think I would have had many provisos, one of which that JS could only judge adults and teach adults upon his reinstatement. I think that would have been far better.
I will state again, I support Safe Sport, but feel that they need to be involved with law enforcement. There needs to be clear directives, clear rules (because apparently some people think they are above the rules), and clear punishments for those who commit crimes, and sadly, that includes the athletes. Specifically if riders choose to use fake IDs to gain access to bars, and then sleep with people , creating serious legal ramifications for all involved (remember too, the bar would also be liable for serving a minor). Athletes needs to realize they hold a responsibility too, regardless of their age. Lying is wrong, and they know that. Having a fake ID creates many legal ramifications on everyone else, it’s about time it also makes those holding them more than just a fine. I think a month long ban if any athlete is found using a fake ID, from their sport would be a sufficient punishment and deter them from making that choice.
Children need to also learn lessons. I think a month long suspension (Sorry, ban was the wrong term) from their sport in question would be quite a lesson for them. Fake ID use is a serious crime. Kids will be kids? Yeah, let them learn that if you break the rules, there are punishments, which include losing the right to your sport if you are caught doing this within a competition outing.
