Charles “Chuck” Maslin of Maryland has been added to the Safesport list, with a temporary suspension. Unless you’re old school, you wouldn’t know who he is, but he was a rider during the glory days of GM and is the son of a renowned and beloved woman who has her own history with the sport. It’s likely related to the numerous instances of sexual abuse that he’s been charged and convicted with, which were back in the 70’s and 80’s. His first conviction was overturned, but the second stuck and he is not allowed to be around children. He was removed from the Maryland Sex Offender registry in 2014, because the crimes pre-dated the registry and the courts in Maryland decided that offenders convicted of such old crimes cannot be on the registry, but he has continued to operate a food truck business that takes him around children and has been charged with violating his probation. He has a presence in Florida and can be found on that state’s Sex Offender registry, per their laws regarding such offenders from other states.
Chuck Maslin. Haven’t thought of him in ages. Lotta hat, no cattle. Is he even still around the horse business?
Beyond his food trucks, I’m not sure what he’s up to, though there’s no overt sign that he’s involved in anything horse-related and his posting from a few years ago simply talked about the food trucks and still owning the farm, without any horses on it. From the look of things, his Florida presence is in Palm Beach and you can figure out the rest, I’m sure.
Not to cross-post (put this on the Fellers thread too), but bears repeating for the idiots at the back…
“Let the legal system deal with it.” 
The system isn’t perfect. No system is. What do you propose instead that would be free from human error? This is clearly not ok and that’s why the OIG issued the report. But no system is perfect 100 percent of the time.
Interesting. I only know Darrin through 6 degrees of separation/friend of an acquaintance type connection & Bill not at all. So I can’t speak to their position on Tom Navarro. While my mind can easily be changed in the face of evidence to the contrary, I’m inclined to give them some benefit of the doubt, and here’s why: wtf ever heard of Tom Navarro? I sure hadn’t until this thread. And it took me even longer to put 2 & 2 together & figure out we were talking about a dude whose farm is a mere 10 minutes away. The property has long looked like utter crap, as do most along Route 15. Unlike Darrin & Bill, I occupy a decidedly unrarified economic tier.
These are schooling shows offering divisions up to 4’3". Lots of folks not bringing trainers with them or who are trainers riding young horses. There’s no announcements, you have to look on IG to find the pinnings, and I swear they don’t even bother pinning above 2’6" half the time. The shows are just about cheap, safe mileage. Sign up is on Strider. Iirc, the trainer name is optional. It’s not out of the realm of plausibility that they don’t know who he is. Only after looking on FB this evening did I realize that I saw him at a previous schooling show. He was not dressed to ride – had on cargo shorts, sneakers & T shirt. Looked overweight & unfit. But…he was relatively quiet & undemanding. And that’s likely his ace in the hole.
I’d like to think I’m not altogether ignorant in these matters. I’m a single parent & my SO is a retired state police violent crimes detective. I worry. I check & double-check. I’ve sometimes dug up stuff that paid background checks miss. Tom Navarro is not easy to dig up. You can’t see his record on the USEF. I searched 16 different ways on the VSP sex offender registry & came up with nothing. Tried VA digital court case search with the understanding that the records may be sealed if the victim was a juvenile. Nothing. Maaaaaybe a speeding ticket. That could’ve been his father, though. Tried his aliases. Also tried Kentucky, Texas, & North Carolina. ( Florida does not make their court records public. ) tried googling variations of Tom Navarro + Sodomy. Nothing.
By contrast, there’s a local trainer people were waxing poetic about on another thread recently. Trains some juniors. I would run that trainer off my property with my .22. You can find a pretty damning part of that trainer’s record on the VA state database. And everyone knows who they are, anyway.
All this to say that I don’t doubt he did it. It just weirds me out that I can’t find out anything about it despite being paranoid & having master’s degree in a field where advanced research skills are essential. So, I hesitate to say that others like Darrin absolutely should know.
TN is registered in NY and FL (also, previously VA) as part of the reciprocity clause in their state code regarding offenders. That’s why Chuck Maslin is registered in FL, even though he’s off the MD registry.
I’ll look. Why is he not registered in VA, which is his home address, though? MD shows offenders that committed their crime in MD but live in VA.
He went to the Loudoun County courts and said “I ain’t dun nuffin yer honah, so pweese take me off uh-duh sex uffendah list, mmkay?” and got himself removed, per the allowances in Virginia state code. Though it has been under the radar, the people who own the farm are now trying to evict him from it and collect money he owes them and he’s had a few “You owe me some money and I’m here to collect!” types after him over the past few years, with some additional cases pending. He’s a deadbeat living on borrowed time, which is why he’s trying to get up in the local scene, to latch on to someone else with money, anyone really.
I double-checked the FL registry and he’s been removed from there, likely because he no longer has occasional temporary residence there, for horse shows.
I was unable to locate him on the registries of either NY or FL. Methinks the property owners of his barn need to get on the radar asap & warn others in the area exactly why they’re kicking him out.
Yeah, he’s now off every open registry that he was required to register with, though he may still be on the non-public ones accessible only to law enforcement, for low-risk offenders. The people who own the farm have no connections to the horse community and are Americanized Muslims living in the burbs, so they don’t go anywhere near horse people. I’m honestly not sure why they have the farm to begin with, but they have multiple odd businesses registered in their name, possibly for illegitimate purposes, given the variety and number of them.
I double-checked the latest NY rules and he was taken off at the 20-year mark, which was last year, as offenders of his type are required to have a 20-year registration, which is why he would have been removed from FL as well, no longer being on the NY registry after removing himself from VA. His going to court against Safesport was clearly a further step in trying to rise above his station.
How long ago was the crime in question? And where?
Late 1999, was when he was charged with Sodomy in Westchester County, NY. He didn’t get sentenced until early Summer of 2000, so he would have been removed from the NY registry in 2020, also removing him from all reciprocal registries such as VA and FL, though he already removed himself from VA through the court in the county he resides in, having moved there in 2003 and removing himself from the registry a few years ago.
Seems like the best thing to do would be to simply approach Darrin & Bill and ask if they’re aware of the nature of his criminal record & the USEF ban. It’s not well known as near as I can tell. I even know of some people that boarded & trained with him. They left; possibly in response to the USEF ban. I never asked. Also possible they moved on to bigger & better and/or because the fences were falling down & face onto a road where cars regularly travel 60 mph.
Problem is that many people don’t show, or don’t show at USEF rated shows. He could bluff his way right through.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they would take anything about him seriously, coming from anyone they didn’t know well enough or at least socially respect. The farm’s social media shows that he’s been putting money - someone’s at any rate - into sprucing up the place over the last year, adding amenities to the indoor, new jumps, etc. and he’s got a crew of young and old females who are going out into the local Equestrian community, particularly the Hunt Country crowd, singing his praises and spreading the word about his “greatness”. Given that the owners want him gone, I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, but he’s definitely going to try to jump ship somewhere else. They are going after him and two people named Jan and Kim Murphy and he’s going after Jan and Kim himself, but has strangely added Riverchase Equestrian Center as a Defendant with them. It’s all very bizarre. The adjacent property, The Manor at Courtland Farm is also for sale and they used to own the Riverchase Farm property, so that might be related to why he’s being forced out.
I don’t show at USEF rated shows, but have heard about him from MULTIPLE other people in the area over the last few years, all of whom do show at rated shows.
When he first came to the area, someone looked him up and found at the time that he WAS still on the Virginia sex offender registry back then. The information was shared amongst multiple people… the original crime involved sodomy with a teenaged girl in NY…
Anyway, he was putting together a program at Riverchase that was targeted toward tween/teenaged riders. People were alarmed by a person on a sex offender registry doing so. At some point, the IHSA team with George Mason was affiliated with RiverChase as well… but apparently his record came to light and they moved elsewhere. As of a year or two ago though, he was still trying to participate with the IEA program, even AFTER his SafeSport bans.
Anyway… his name has come up multiple times on these SafeSport related threads over the last few years… mainly because he’s such a weird guy, who continues to try and grow his youth coaching business via multiple pathways, and infiltrate the sport, regardless of his lifetime SafeSport ban.
I understand the whole “he’s a minor player who does nothing but schooling shows, so who cares” argument. But here’s the thing that is so darn ALARMING about him…
Despite his criminal record, despite a SafeSport ban, despite a number of other local coaching options for riders of all levels in that immediate area, despite a number of knowledgeable people from the grassroots level on up in the area at shows who are indeed aware of him…
He still has a coaching program, and is taking a trailer full of kids to local shows.
I find that alarming.
He did his time for his crime, and I guess is falling off various sexual offender registries given regulations and the time that has passed… but he was CONVICTED of sodomy involving a minor. Female, I’m pretty sure. He shouldn’t be a trusted coach to barn full of tween and teenaged girls. No way. He should go find a different career path. One that doesn’t involve young girls.
It’s just discouraging that the sport can’t even figure out how to effectively marginalize this guy.
That wasn’t my argument
And that’s why I’m encouraging you & others to reach out & talk to Beverly. Because throwing up your hands & saying, "Welp! Lots of people know! So everyone should know! "and “they’re loaded so obviously they wouldn’t give a rat’s patootie!” is an ineffective assumption. You’ve been around long enough to know that horse folks don’t check on sh-t. There was a woman floating around here up until last year getting hired by barn after barn despite a court record several pages long & a recent arrest for…wait for it… her involvement in one of the area’s largest animal cruelty cases in at least a decade! Even more incredible, many of the BOs hiring her were good friends. Not a one of them as much as mentioned it in passing to another.
Ever since a previous farm I bought came with a “tenant farmer” fresh out of the pen for a violent felony condition, I always do my digging on people before I get involved. At least the SafeSport ban is there to help out anyone actually checking. Because, he was obviously off the VA registry. I then checked the registries of a few other states with which he had an association based on Google hits. Nothing. Checked FL & NY after LexInVA said he was on them. He’s gone off those as well. No criminal court records other than a few mild traffic offenses. Finally found him on the Civil court’s dockets with the info from Lex.
Even creepier question is how many people are floating around out there under the radar with no Safe Sport ban to put them on the radar? I know of a handful. Including one who people were recently waxing poetic about on another COTH thread. I was also not particularly surprised when the story broke about GM; one of my teenager’s coaches disliked him intensely based upon her interactions with him in her youth. Sure, he was rude. But there was something else there, too…
I hope you’ll reconsider your position and work to get the information out there. I didn’t know. And I’ve lived here my entire 45 years save for undergrad, been riding here since I was 6. While I’m no social butterfly, I do have more of a network than many because of my job. If I didn’t know, it’s very likely a lot of others don’t either.
Not to be snarky, but a serious question - why can’t you reach out and talk to Beverly yourself? It doesn’t sound like Virginia HorseMom has any connection to them to make them any more likely to listen to her than you.
