I don’t think many offenders view their actions as innocent pursuit. I think they generally know their actions are unwanted and they a) dont care and b) feed on that terror.
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If she admitted she knew about it…I mean, there are all sorts of reasons why she might not want to do that.
Not least of which in many states there is no statute of limitations for victims under 16 IIRC though some start the clock at age of majority. I don’t know if accessory-type allegations can be pursued under that theory, or what the laws are for civil liability.
Anyway, I wouldn’t read too much into it one way or the other. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she buried her head in the sand on purpose or because of her own victimization. We will probably never know.
she also doesn’t exactly say the allegations aren’t true. She says she doesn’t believe them. That is sort of different, IMO.
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Um…I don’t know. I have dealt with employees who had persistent unwanted attention. In the good cases…when the offender was clearly told to back off, they were completely surprised that their advances where unwelcome. What happens when the offender is never told directly? They see it as the time worn, and oft celebrated, tradition of pursuit.
Just to be clear: I am NOT talking about JW and his underage proclivities, but cases of harassment between adults.
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I think women are conditioned to be polite, and men who have poor social skills largely garnered from watching sitcoms and movies might be shocked that women aren’t flattered like they are in the movies. I would NOT at all presume this is reflective of either men in general or serial sex offenders.
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Stereotypes are useful when we want them to be, right? But usually the situation is more complex.
I know plenty of women who were pursued by current SO’s or who like being pursued. I know men that are the same way. Women may be conditioned to be polite, but they are also conditioned to play hard-to-get. Men are often conditioned to chase…and it’s not just the ones with poor social skills.
Some men target women that fit their idea of attractive. Some target women they find non-threatening. Some don’t give a flying fig about which person they choose. I wouldn’t presume to understand why sex-offenders do the things they do, other than recognizing common threads found in most situations.
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And this has WHAT to do with Mr. Williams going after underage teens?
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One had to be living under a big rock in JW heyday to be unaware of this issue. And are still under that rock if one thinks is was onlt that trainer and that trainers are not still playing with young riders…
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Let’s leave Susie out of it; it’s not about her. Yes she was with Jimmy for many years, and is still devoted to him, even though he’s passed. As someone else posted, she’s an adult woman, and it’s her choice. None of the victims in the article named her as having anything to do with what happened to them. Chances are she’s going through her own hell now, just as the victims are revisiting theirs.
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Quite a bit actually but I’m not going to summarize if you can’t follow the conversational thread. I suppose we could just close this thread now because I haven’t really seen much contradiction to the feeling that JW is a sexual predator. I guess we could just say that over and over and over in different ways. That’s fun, right?
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This is an important thread; how about if those who are engaging in passive aggressive back and forth cat fighting take their problems to PM?
I’m wondering if the NJ trainer you mention is the same NJ trainer I know of who slept with as many of his teenage boarders he possibly could back in the 1980s, although (sadly) it’s not like there couldn’t be more than one of them.
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I can think of one too but honestly if there’s one there’s probably 3 or 30 
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Doubtful. Someone in his 40s now would likely have been a teenager at the oldest in the 80s.
I wonder how many had bad experiences with a southern trainer, who then became a midwestern trainer, moved to chicago, and keeps moving, Daughter won the medal. Initials MB.
NeedsAdvil talked about a trainer who WAS well into his 40s when the events happened, not IS in his 40s now; he “eventually married one of the girls”, which makes it even more likely that sleeping with the teenagers happened long ago. But like vxf111 implied, there are likely so many of these types that it would be impossible to know if we’re all talking about the same one.
NeedsAdvil talked about a trainer who WAS well into his 40s when the events happened, not IS in his 40s now; he “eventually married one of the girls”, which makes it even more likely that sleeping with the teenagers happened long ago. But like vxf111 implied, there are likely so many of these types that it would be impossible to know if we’re all talking about the same one.
I know for a fact that there was a well-known NJ trainer in the 1980s who slept with as many of his teenage clients as possible.
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Perhaps “beauty” is a factor that some pedophiles and some gropers/rapists of adult women consider. However :mad: doesn’t just going there make that a conversation and an excuse for predatory men? Unfortunately the president of the U.S. has compared the physical appearance of women to his tendency to “hit on” them.
God help the women who are in court, who were assaulted, that don’t live up to most pervert’s admitted standards of attractiveness, whatever “looks” are required by these children and women for them to be assaulted by these hideous excuses for men.
Well, you’re not pretty enough to be assaulted honey, we just don’t believe that he would do that anyone so ugly as you… Yuck.:no:
The powerless, the poor, mentally challenged, the not beautiful, are victimized exponentially.
Discussing the appearance of anyone that has been sexual assaulted and/or intimidated is ignorant and non-productive, and IMHO wholeheartedly disgusting.
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How gross to insinuate that someone denying the credible accusations of others and defending a known sex abuser is suffering in any way the same amount as the people whose lives he ruined.
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Hopefully this will spur a wake up call for current trainers, parents, and their young children that this sort of behavior is absolutely NOT ALLOWED, any time, any place. Perhaps other people who “know” about certain behavior with trainers will be less reluctant to let other clients know about it, rather than what these kids in the past “sort of knew not to be alone with ______.” Not acceptable at all. Also, it’s now true that JW, while a wonderful horseman and coach who produced and inspired an entire generation of riders, will also now be known as JW, the pedophile and child molester.
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I’m going to guess that’s a certain equitation trainer whose Maclay-winning wife has since divorced him? I wonder if he’s back to his old tricks…
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The whole atmosphere that surrounds this kind of predation is toxic. Predators operate in a world where there is a horrible silence and a great deal of denial around their actions. It is unlikely tThe hat what they do is not known, more likely that it is well known but not acknowledged, papered over, ignored. A conspiracy of silence is what allows the predators to carry on.
The real power of #metoo is breaking the silence. Not only in the horse world, but everywhere.
Because this does go on everywhere. The frequency of the predation might be horrifying, and hard to fathom, but it is reality.
My junior high and high school were rife with teachers preying on students, having sexual relationships with them. Everyone knew. No one did a thing about it. No one. As a potentially vulnerable teen, that made my distrust of adults severe. I did not know the names or labels to call the things around me, but I sure knew that they were going on, and I knew I felt unsafe, and had no idea where to turn. It certainly resonated with me when reading something by Simone de Beavoir that society regarded women as prey. That is how I felt. Prey. This toxic atmosphere took its toll on me-- something I can really only realize now, across these many years, and all of the #metoo stories that are coming out. I was not directly sexually assaulted or molested. But I lived in fear of it. Deep inside I feared my new womanly body, and I became very very thin through excessive exercise and restricted eating— passed off as devotion to long distance running. I used to cry myself to sleep at night because of the hunger pangs I had, and the fear I had, and of having no one to turn to about any of this. Any adult I approached just did not want to know.
I was deeply miserable, suffering, riddled with anxiety. I knew I had to get out of that atmosphere-- and so I became an exchange student to a foreign country for a year, in a school system where pedophile adult teachers would have been caught and shut down, not tolerated and permitted. Free of that toxic environment, I blossomed. I was a different person, radiant, confident, happy. I still did not have names or labels to explain my experience, but I could tell the difference in the atmosphere.
I hung onto that inner strength when I returned to the toxic school, with one semester before I graduated. I fought against being put in the classroom of one of the toxic teachers, refusing to enroll in it. He insisted I had to be in his class, I refused, a big hullabaloo broke out with my parents and the principal and the teacher all involved, trying to force me into his class. I refused. I couldn’t say why, it just seemed dangerous. I still lacked a vocabulary for the things and events around me, but I fought back against being silent and fearful prey again. I was told I had a bad attitude, that I had changed for the worst from being abroad, that I had been such a nice and compliant girl before and now I was a rebel. I stood my ground.
I managed to escape that horrible school without being molested. Somehow. But my point is-- even if a person is not directly molested or assaulted they still suffer. Perhaps not as much or in different ways than those who are molested and assaulted.
The horse world is toxic any where and any time this went on and was not called out. It is not only girls who can be molested and assaulted, boys can as well. Any child or teen that operated in a toxic world of molestation and assault that had a blind eye turned to it has also suffered. It is not only about calling out individuals who molest and assault, it is about calling out the dysfunction of an environment that allows this kind of thing to go on and on.
This has been very hard to “say” out loud on this forum. Even after all these years. Kudos to the people who do speak out, it takes tremendous strength and courage to do so.
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