George Morris on the SS list

[kirbydog]

@Darkwave

One of the interesting things to me is that, as I understand it, SS was indeed supposed to cover a range of behaviors that include sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and bullying. And yet all of the investigations and suspensions that I have heard of, regardless of sport, revolve around sexual misconduct. I’m guessing that’s because it’s the most black-and-white version of misconduct? A bit less in the “eye of the beholder” than something like the difference between forceful coaching and bullying?

SS does cover bullying. I am safe sport compliant, and I actually just did the renewal. It seems to me that a lot of people are spouting off without actually understanding all that safe sport does. It’s not just about sexual misconduct, although that is a huge part of it. It’s about verbal abuse, physical abuse, hazing by team members or coaches. Get information before you judge

[Denali6298]

@YankeeDuchess

@Denali6298

Interesting. If someone presented me with quote-science-unquote (which I assume means absolute crap masquerading as science), I would counter it with actual science. While the research described in the LATimes article may not yet be published, I doubt PhD microbiology researchers affiliated with UCLA medical school are making grand conclusions based on single observations. Of themselves.

I’m not going to research a tangent not related to the thread. If they want actual science, we can take it to PM. I suggest reading Backlash because people have an agenda. Especially when the posts reek of homophobia.

[fargaloo]

@MissCoco

I took some time on my lunch hour to follow up on IdahoRider’s look at the SafeSport disciplinary lists for several sports, because I do think it is worth thinking about if the issue of sexual misconduct and other SafeSport violations is particularly pervasive in equestrian sports, or if this undercurrent is common to other youth sports.

Interesting; thanks.

I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned before, but I think one of the most important factors that contributes to abuse of minors in equestrian sports is the intense emotional leverage that comes with horses themselves. A youth soccer player may dream of going to the Olympics, but they are not passionately, deeply emotionally attached to their cleats or uniform. When a kid is in love with one of your horses – there’s a hell of a lot of leverage for a abuser.

[YankeeDuchess]

@Texarkana

I agree about not issuing a sanction that wouldn’t uphold appeal, but…

I said they are quick to back down because when speaking with some of the vocal SafeSport critics with firsthand investigation experience, I was told some really interesting stories. They may be all hearsay. I hate to repeat them here if they are hearsay.

One incidence I can substantiate is Luis Rodriguez’s removal from the list:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport…ns/1597259001/

SS issued its ban after the trial was concluded. When he paid to share the trial transcript with SS, they dropped his ban. Surely they knew the trial results prior to issuing the ban, so what was their reasoning on applying the sanction only to reverse their stance so quickly?

To be clear, I’m 100% in support of SafeSport. I’ve just become skeptical of their ability to maintain their position if serious pressure is put on them.

You also said you expected that GM would get the ban overturned on appeal. I found that surprising, as I’m assuming they would not have handed down the ban without rock solid evidence.

[YankeeDuchess]

@Denali6298

I’m not going to research a tangent not related to the thread. If they want actual science, we can take it to PM. I suggest reading Backlash because people have an agenda. Especially when the posts reek of homophobia.

What is Backlash?

[Texarkana]

@YankeeDuchess

You also said you expected that GM would get the ban overturned on appeal. I found that surprising, as I’m assuming they would not have handed down the ban without rock solid evidence.

Right, I did say that. Because from other people’s stories + Rodriguez’s case, it seems that they sometimes DO hand down bans, then reverse their stance in appeals. And lawd knows, GM and his supporters are not going to let this one rest. If they waiver on lesser cases, will they hold their ground on this one? You believe yes, I remain skeptical. That’s all.

[Denali6298]

@YankeeDuchess

What is Backlash?

A book written by Susan Faludi filled with scientific studies funded by the government about how women are weak. In a nut shell. The backlash happened in the 80’s. It’s why I’m skeptical about scientific studies that seem bias compared to my own life experiences.

[Tackpud]

@AngryAlter

I am shaking while I am typing this. Me. Me. I am the adult who has always been so conscientious about anyone around my child. Me. Me. I allowed my child to be emotionally and psychologically abused by someone in the horse industry and got sucked into the abuse as well. It’s a long story. The repercussions are still there for both my child and me and I will never again trust any trainer. I am angry. I was smart, I was knowledgeable, I was aware, I was involved and it STILL HAPPENED. I hate myself and especially this trainer for what happened. I. Hate. Her. No one warned us and after we left, we had so many people approach us and tell us what happened to them. This rabid victim shaming that’s going on right now is one of the reasons we will never report her to Safe Sport. That and the fact that she’s loosing her business and can’t hold on the clients.

I am so sorry this happened to you and your child. Another example of why SS is way past due in our industry - we have to shed light into the dark corners and make our sport professional.

[RugBug]

@Virginia Horse Mom

Read the Chronicle article that just came out with Q and A directly with USEF and Safe Sport about this.

This one that seems to have come out in January 2019? It completely missed my radar and feels like it was just released

[Denali6298]

@AngryAlter

I am shaking while I am typing this. Me. Me. I am the adult who has always been so conscientious about anyone around my child. Me. Me. I allowed my child to be emotionally and psychologically abused by someone in the horse industry and got sucked into the abuse as well. It’s a long story. The repercussions are still there for both my child and me and I will never again trust any trainer. I am angry. I was smart, I was knowledgeable, I was aware, I was involved and it STILL HAPPENED. I hate myself and especially this trainer for what happened. I. Hate. Her. No one warned us and after we left, we had so many people approach us and tell us what happened to them. This rabid victim shaming that’s going on right now is one of the reasons we will never report her to Safe Sport. That and the fact that she’s loosing her business and can’t hold on the clients.

Please don’t beat yourself up. We all get bamboozled. Big hugs.

[poltroon]

@MissCoco

I took some time on my lunch hour to follow up on IdahoRider’s look at the SafeSport disciplinary lists for several sports, because I do think it is worth thinking about if the issue of sexual misconduct and other SafeSport violations is particularly pervasive in equestrian sports, or if this undercurrent is common to other youth sports.

There are a couple of issues to figuring out how pervasive these violations are in any particular sport
The first problem that I came across is that when considering participant numbers, it’s hard to find data on how many violators/players were around in a given year, since most data on youth sports participation is x number of players in a given year.

Another very important caveat to this look at some numbers, is that we have no idea if these numbers represent the actual number of violators in a given sport.

That said, and to give a very very rough and deeply flawed reflection of the relative “pervasiveness” of this issue I counted the number of safesport violations for a particular sport, and then tried to find the most recent number of youth (under 18) participants. I used cited numbers (ie published in peer reviewed journals, or from SFIA reports).
Then I divided violations by current participants to give a single number summary.

Here is what I found:
soccer has about 6.8 million participants under 18 in the US and 58 SafeSport violations
That is 8.5*10^-6 violations per participant (0.0000085)

Also, because people have asked about it, I did notice that soccer had quite a few violations that were physical misconduct (and one ethical violation), which I didn’t notice in the other sports I looked at. Sexual misconduct and criminal disposition -sexual misconduct were still the most common violations, but less of an overwhelming majority than in other sports.

Tennis has 4.3 million participants and 19 SafeSport violations
4.4*10^-6 violations per participant (0.0000044)

Equestrian sports have about 2 million youth participants (cited in several studies, but I couldn’t find any cited numbers after 2000) and 27 SafeSport Violations
1.4*10^-5 violations per participant (0.000014)

I had a lot of trouble finding statistics on youth competitive swimming, but a number around 2 million showed up in a few discussions, I think this number is likely higher, since swimming is also among the most-played youth sports in the US (ranking higher than tennis on several lists based on large and well-distributed samples), so I used 3 million for my math.
Swimming has about 186 SafeSport violations, I may have accidentally double counted or missed a few violations while scrolling.
6.2*10^-5 violations per participant (0.000062)

I wasn’t able to come up with a number for gymnastics participants, but I think it is worth mentioning anytime a discussion of sexual abuse in youth sports comes up. There are 211 listed safesport violations.
I also failed to find plausible participant numbers for figure skating, with 18 violations listed.

I don’t think there are any conclusions to be drawn from this, except that SafeSport is necessary.
My other observation is that swimming, the sport that is in the same order of magnitude as riding with regards to violations per participant has had a somewhat recent scandal regarding USA swimming failing to appropriately respond to reports of sexual misconduct in the sport, and it seems the past couple years have been a period where a lot of previously disregarded reports have been brought to light.

Hopefully this is not too much of a tangent for this thread.

Thanks for the time you took in compiling numbers.

One other thing to consider is that equestrian is pretty unusual in that you can coach in this sport with no connection to the national federation or really any rule or compliance agency. Most are self-employed and even with respect to labor law, exempt from many standard provisions as ag employers. By contrast, nearly every swimming, soccer, and gymnastics coach is either an employee of an educational institution, an employee or owner of a member club, or a volunteer of a member organization. IE, in some way supervised. So, that trainer teaching up-down lessons at their own farm that doesn’t show or goes to local shows is extremely unlikely to be reported to SafeSport, meaning our denominator is probably artificially high in that analysis.

[Figment]

@jetsmom

Hopefully, they are all brought down.

Does anyone think that maybe parents will start accompanying their kids on the show circuit, and not letting them travel alone with trainers? I know my parents refused to let me go alone with my trainer as a teen, and it was a female married trainer.
I see a lot of kids allowed to go show without their parents. Seems like that could be putting them in risky situations…even if not to be assaulted, but being around after parties, drinking.
Has anyone seen any change at shows?

I totally agree! I will not take anyone’s child to a show without a parent or parent -appointed guardian. It just isn’t smart. Anyone can make up anything about anyone, and as we sort of see, it’s guilty til proven innocent. Why would/did trainers put themselves in that situation? Just good ole common sense folks. If a parent can’t work it out, their child can’t go. Not worth the risk to anyone.

[Denali6298]

@Figment

I totally agree! I will not take anyone’s child to a show without a parent or parent -appointed guardian. It just isn’t smart. Anyone can make up anything about anyone, and as we sort of see, it’s guilty til proven innocent. Why would/did trainers put themselves in that situation? Just good ole common sense folks. If a parent can’t work it out, their child can’t go. Not worth the risk to anyone.

Umm so an investigation had been on going without public knowledge. How is that guilty before innocent? Who made stuff up?

[Palm_Beach]

@poltroon

Thanks for the time you took in compiling numbers.

One other thing to consider is that equestrian is pretty unusual in that you can coach in this sport with no connection to the national federation or really any rule or compliance agency. Most are self-employed and even with respect to labor law, exempt from many standard provisions as ag employers. By contrast, nearly every swimming, soccer, and gymnastics coach is either an employee of an educational institution, an employee or owner of a member club, or a volunteer of a member organization. IE, in some way supervised. So, that trainer teaching up-down lessons at their own farm that doesn’t show or goes to local shows is extremely unlikely to be reported to SafeSport, meaning our denominator is probably artificially high in that analysis.

Another thing to remember is that abuse may be more likely to happen in sports where there is individual coaching instead of team practice sessions. With a team situation, either the whole team goes to a competition or no one goes. With individual sports, it’s possible that only one person, or a handful of kids, go to a competition. Therefore there is more opportunity for predatory behavior that depends on isolating an individual. And with team competitions, many parents usually travel with the team, so there are many eyes observing things.

[BITSA]

@Denali6298

The process is pretty transparent. A flow chart has been posted numerous times.

Where in the flow chart does the alleged perp get interviewed and a chance to present evidence (is it before a sanction is imposed?) and a chance to confront and cross examine?

[sdlbredfan]

@Denali6298

I’m wondering, Jonathan has a conviction for child pornography. Most people with convicts are straight up banned. Maybe him being on the suspension list rather than the ban has to do with him singing like a canary about GM? Maybe it won’t be overturned so easily.

Johnathan who?? Surely I am not the only one who wonders, simply because I do not have time to read as much as some of you apparently do…

[Bristol_Bay]

@Denali6298

A book written by Susan Faludi filled with scientific studies funded by the government about how women are weak. In a nut shell. The backlash happened in the 80’s. It’s why I’m skeptical about scientific studies that seem bias compared to my own life experiences.

What?!?!

Backlash is a non-fiction book on the cultural phenomenon of a backlash against women’s rights following a period of progress. It specifically called out cultural conservatives for suppressing women’s equal and reproductive rights after the women’s movement of the late 60’s and 70’s. It calls out the Reagan justice department for abandoning enforcement of laws protecting workers’ rights. It’s a fantastic book still worth a read.

[Denali6298]

@Bristol Bay

What?!?!

Backlash is a non-fiction book on the cultural phenomenon of a backlash against women’s rights following a period of progress. It specifically called out cultural conservatives for suppressing women’s equal and reproductive rights after the women’s movement of the late 60’s and 70’s. It calls out the Reagan justice department for abandoning enforcement of laws protecting workers’ rights. It’s a fantastic book still worth a read.

Yes. It is. I related it to the “science” being presented. Agree. What I meant was it outline “science” to bolster the backlash to the women’s movement.

I explained it badly I’m sorry.

[boosma47]

@BK6756

If you’ve followed any of the other threads you would see that the rules regarding criminal prosecution are very different than the rule regarding safe sport sanctioning. Criminal prosecution has a statute of limitation (varies depending on the state and the crime), Safe Sport does NOT.

And thus the inherent problem. SS operates outside the rule of law. It sets itself up as beyond established precedent with the power to destroy the accused based on unproven/unprovable allegations about events decades in the past. The statute of limitations exist for a reason. That SS does not recognize this basis of the law does not make what they do justified. They are able to operate with impunity, without possibility of Supreme Court rulings in the extreme, unless an accused fights back through the court system. Not unlike a shadow government. BTW, I am deeply sympathetic to true victims, but motivations for SS charges can run the gamut from vengence to insult. Where does the authority of SS expose these? How do they prove a crime has been committed years ago? Hearsay? Faulty memories? Don’t think so…

[IPEsq]

SS (the code) covers bullying and other non-sexual misconduct. But from what I’ve seen in the various statements released in recent months, non-sexual complaints are not handled by SS (the Center) but referred to the NGBs.