:lol:
enjoy the rest of your evening.
Not all parents are great parents. Their kids still deserve protection from sexual abuse. SafeSport policies and guidelines are one way that even kids with crappy parents are less likely to be sexually abused by their trainers.
14 Likes
I totally agree! Which is why I approve sanctions for the parents. I would absolutely call the police if a kid disclosed abuse to me. I don’t give a crap who the trainer is. In this day and age, the hero does fall. But the parents need to be accountable, not just the adult amateurs trying to enjoy their leisure time. The irony is that the kids probably have to take the SS course, but the parents don’t…
1 Like
So do we have to go round and round with this on the dressage board now? I think some of the same people who are popping up here to question safe sport also posted previously on the HJ board? #groundhogdaymovie
The original USEF safe sport training took me under 90 minutes. I suspect that anyone taking two hours is probably multitasking.
May I recommend the USEF safe sport page, complete with Myths and Facts and a 24-hour helpline? https://www.usef.org/safe-sport
Or the Chronicle’s summary of Michael Henry’s presentation to the USHJA meeting- https://www.chronofhorse.com/article…-michael-henry
21 Likes
Hmm, I’m not sure how you get from my post to sanctions for the parents, but whatever. I think that SafeSport is actually about trying to hold all adults interacting with minors accountable, especially the trainers.
Equestrian sports are a bit unique because I don’t think as many other sports have adult competitors regularly interacting with minor competitors. But I also don’t think it’s a good look for our sport that adult amateurs who are being slightly inconvenienced to protect children seem so upset about it.
5 Likes
It’s Steffen. S-T-E-F-F-E-N.
Yes, Steffen married Jeremy’s girlfriend. About 15 years ago.
But Jeremy’s views (personal and professional) about SP pre-date the crossing of relationships.
There was a time when both men were on the same path when it came to competing in dressage. Both aspired to be top riders. Then one began to see the disconnect between the foundation of dressage which he had been taught, and the industry of competition dressage. Professionally, it was the fork in the road.
Jeremy was invited, and he accepted, the invitation to express his opinions in a national magazine. However, COTH edits his columns for brevity, so sometimes the point he’s making gets misconstrued. Had he made the US team, it’s safe to say that dressage politics wouldn’t have allowed both gigs.
It’s interesting that after many years, both JS and SP, who are exceptional riders, have achieved their success in ways that resonate with the path they chose in this lifetime. One is a gifted teacher/instructor, the other an Olympic medalist.
6 Likes
exactly. What small barn trainer would risk it? Not one with any sense.
i never made any claims about emergencies. I doubt USEF is targeting my childhoood scenario but really…few trainers are going to feel ok about “discouraged” activities. Of course it is a deterrent.
That is fine…the kids matter more than anything else, but it is still an over inclusive rule and the whole “working student” culture will be gone. IMO that ship has sailed anyway, as USEF teams are now populated by superrich ammies.
1 Like
Sorry to tell you that she returns the ones who don’t work out to that same owner.
You still don’t get me. There are not that many kids in dressage. It’s a huge burden on many people for a few and, even then, the parents need to be accountable and they probably don’t even have to take the SS course. What SS does is hold the mass accountable for a very small fraction of bad behavior. I agree that any abuse is unacceptable, but you cannot prevent it all unless you make the parents get more involved. Now, with SS, no one can be alone with a kid, so there must be SOMEONE accountable for the child. Someone must be there. If I were taking clients, I absolutely wouldn’t have any kids in my program without the parents agreeing, in writing, to be present 100% of the time. SS doesn’t require this. My issue is simply with the shifting of responsibility away from where it should primarily be and where the conversations should primarily be had.
And you are right–I am unhappy about giving up two hours of my leisure time to take a course that I shouldn’t need–any decent human shouldn’t need this course.
3 Likes
Responding to the part I bolded.
The safe sport guidelines are not meant to be punitive or to punish people who have not abused children. I see the training as more about learning to follow the guidelines, defining inappropriate behavior, and informing people (mandated reporters) what should be reported and when. It’s not two hours of “don’t have sexual contact with minors” because I really don’t think safe sport training is going to make a pedophile (or a hebephile or an ephebophile) change course. And it’s not two hours anyway.
As far as requiring a large number of people to take training when only a small number of them are violators, people in academia or corporate America have these required trainings all the time.
13 Likes
I would say it’s specifically decent humans who need to take the course. It talks about grooming and spotting it. As someone who has never been molested or known I was around anyone who molested others, there are signs I would 100% miss without somehow being taught about it. I would rather learn through a horribly created training than through hearing about abuse of minors I knew.
I haven’t been competing, and haven’t yet finished SS. I tried to take it while on travel for work since I didn’t yet have high speed internet at home (my neighborhood was too rural for the option.) I was streaming Netflix and hulu in my hotel room, but the IT aspects of SafeSport were so poorly done that after 2 hours it still wasn’t done. I was not multitasking, it just ran that poorly in what was a good internet connection. Hopefully it will be improved when I get around to doing the training in full since I hope to show two horses this year.
I think SafeSport has many flaws, and I’m still going straight to the police if I hear of abuse. But I think because of my lack of exposure, I am exactly who needs it to be aware if anything fishy happens anywhere I go. It definitely had me thinking about things I might not have noticed otherwise since it’s just out of my realm of experience.
13 Likes
@netg That totally makes sense about the slow internet. I’m now trying to remember if I had to go to my secondary browser in order to get the safe sport training to work.
1 Like
I’m kind of surprised so many people apparently took the training but still didn’t understand it, or complained about it taking so long. I did it at work, let the videos run while I was working on something else, then read the transcript before going to the next section. Took no time at all, and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it all. Pretty much all of it was common sense.
Also, what the heck is a boutique-style training program? (In JS’s bio in the article)
6 Likes
I was another who lived rural - I could NOT get SS to stream on my rural, SLOW internet - and spent DAYS trying to get it to run. SS tech support was absolutely useless - they told me to get a new browser (didn’t work, but ate up several more hours downloading Firefox), then they told me to get a new internet provider (yeah, right - it took me years to get one that provided ANY level of reliable internet in my area). When I pointed out to them that they simply needed to compress the files so ALL users had better access, they were really rude. This is basic technology - Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, they all understand that not all viewers have huge internet capacity.
Meanwhile, for me, giving up 2 days really is a lot of time - and I STILL hadn’t completed the course. And in rural areas, there just are not a lot of options - in my entire county, there were minimal options - even Starbucks (which was 20 miles away) didn’t have fast internet. The library (open M - F, limited hours, and only during work hours) required appointments to use internet, and limited to 30 minutes at a time, AND it was no faster. Welcome to the (well documented) digital divide in our country.
For those who say “just do it at work” - not all of us have that option. In my case, I am in front of people the entire time I’m working. There are a lot of people who don’t’ have access to internet while working, who are on a clock, who have to actually WORK - not everyone is in an office setting.
SS had not done their homework at all - any video techie could have told them this was going to be a failure for a decent chunk of the US population. The digital divide is a very real issue. They could very easily have provided a flash drive option, or a paper option. Heck, I have friends (who show) who don’t even HAVE internet. At all!
Also agree with the comment - IF I see anything (highly doubtful since I show from my trailer when I do show, and am not in a barn with any kids), I’m going to the police. AND if I know the family, I’m going to the PARENTS… That is where the training really needs to occur, with parents AND children. When it was rolled out, that should have been the very first focus - education of victims (potential victims) and their immediate family are the highest of priorities.
You have to give Jeremy credit - he is tackling some difficult topics - opening some wormy cans that others have passed over. It is uncomfortable, but in some cases, it is at least discussion worth having.
5 Likes
I haven’t read the JS article - the format of that reader is very hard for me and I gave up trying to enlarge it enough to be readable on the device I’m using. But I do think this is a very challenging and worthwhile topic to discuss.
I don’t know anyone who is not in favor of trying to protect children from abuse. I also don’t know anyone who thinks SS is perfect. And I agree with whomever said it is pathetic that it took a government action to address this problem.
However, as a person whose entire opportunity to ride and learn horsemanship as a kid came from the kindness of a few trainers and barn owners who let me hang out/help/earn rides etc, I am truly sad to know that anyone offering similar opportunities to kids today would be placing themselves at what is probably an unacceptable risk. And I am sad that the practical implication of these rules is that only kids who have parents that can/will monitor all of their activity at a barn will get to have those opportunities. My parents didn’t suck; they both WORKED. I rode the bus to the barn in the afternoon and walked back to school to catch the late bus home in order to get my barn time. My parents were not hanging around waiting to drive me around or supervise me during a private lesson (or the hours I spent mucking stalls, grooming /tacking /untacking horses to earn that lesson time.) I spent a lot of 1:1 time with the trainers I barn ratted for. I suppose I was very lucky that for the most part they were all very good experiences.
I get why the rule is designed the way it is. It just makes me sad that a kid like me won’t be able to do what I did.
And for the record, the original SS training took me over 2 hours as well, because they had significant technical issues when I was trying to take the course. I have done any number of similar trainings in corporate settings over the years and none took as much time as SS. Not the end of the world for sure but at the rate that I normally bill, it was a bit expensive in terms of time invested.
5 Likes
I understand misspelling a well-known person’s name in a thread title. That’s easy to do and half the time, it’s the fault of autocorrect.
But it’s weird leaving it misspelled for six pages of replies, over nearly that many days. It seems pointedly insulting to do that, so maybe that’s part of the agenda here.
Steinberg / Steinburg / Shmeinberg? Or something like that?
4 Likes
Most say “by or on the order of”,so there is some wiggle room. Though I do agree that this is honored more in the breech than not in some barns.
But many of those places have complicit DVMs, so plenty of room to spread the blame.
1 Like
I think you’re wrong there. Look at gymnastics (Nasser, anyone?) and figure skating.
I’m under the impression that equine sports are a smallish fraction of the total under SS.
It’s just that the fuss being kicked up is inordinately from this small fraction.
6 Likes
Kids can still do what we did as kids…I have them here all the time and don’t worry about being charged with anything. Barns all over my area do as well…and don’t worry about “risk”. Why? because WE aren’t doing anything questionable. I don’t get the whole over exaggeration thing about what the future holds. The system is designed to take out the bad people who were known to be diddlers etc. It holds them more accountable than a lot of the people who KNEW what was going on and ignored.
6 Likes
Ditto. Perhaps he also sells equestrian clothing and accessories?
1 Like
