One has no freedom of speech right with respect to an entity like the USEF or SS. Only with respect to the government. So there is zero free speech issue - no constitutional issue at all - involved in sanctioning people who are at once so vicious as to say these things about victims and so idiotic as to do so on public fora. Especially given that that kind of behaviour is spelled out as prohibited. Sanction away and off they f*&^!
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I believe they can just go after the account. If an account has posts saying vicious things, repeatedly, about victims, the account owner is sanctioned. If they make some sort of excuse that it wasnât them who posted, etc., then buck up and take better care of your accounts. Itâs out there under your name. Either clean up your act and donât let âother peopleâ post on your account, own that it was really you, or take the consequences for being so careless that you let hideous trolls completely lacking in empathy post through your account under your name - AND you leave those posts up for days/months/years AND let it happen over and over again. Really, there would be no colourable argument that it wasnât the account owner if it happened more than once. Thatâs just not believable of a functioning adult.
Weâve all had friend actually have their accounts hacked and they post immediately saying things like, âMy account was hacked; donât open messages from me,â etc. If an account has a history of posts as described by Virgina_Horse_Mom then no reasonable person is going to believe it wasnât the account owner.
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I think though that it actually falls squarely in their purview as an NGB to deal with enforcement of these lesser aspects of SafeSport code. I might be mistaken, but thatâs what I recollect.
As far as proving someone wrote something on Facebook⊠if itâs a public comment made from their personal account, and is reported to USEF as bullying and harassment of a known victim⊠a theoretical way of handling that is a a policy where a USEF rep reaches out to the person who posted the comment, and if it is still up on public social media for all the world to see, asks them to delete the comment or face a short suspension for engaging in bullying.
People can then dodge it by saying, âGosh⊠I think my account was hacked and some random person posted that and I will delete it immediatelyâŠâ and they face no repercussion other than embarrassment⊠which actually might help prevent them from doing more of the same in the future. Or, they can try and fight with USEF over their right to leave their comment up. Last time I checked though, as members of the private club, we all agreed to abide by SafeSport rules. So that fight for the right to disparage victims of sexual assault? Thatâs a dog that wonât really hunt, in my opinion.
USEF already seems to have lots of staff devoted to all sorts of communication, marketing and branding issues and initiatives⊠I think they can devote a little of that manpower to this issue. In the best interests of maintaining a positive image with respect to the sport in general. Because honestly⊠all these folks who keep on going online and making a fuss defending notorious figures in our sport who have sexually abused minors? Itâs really not a good thing for marketing the sport or the brand⊠and itâs pretty widely a consensus in the bigger SafeSport conversations about Olympic Sports in general that equestrian sports are on par with gymnastics and figure skating in terms of having some really ugly long term issues with athlete abuse by major names, and a culture of making excuses for it, and for it being a bit of an open secret at the top of the sport.
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I just have a difficult time believing that USEF has the resources available to police this.
There is also the question of jurisdiction since this behaviour is out of competition.
They must know this is happening, apparently people have reported it.
I wonder if the people who have sent screen shots to USEF have followed up, and what USEF said to them.
Iâm not a member of facebook so I donât see any of this stuff. If itâs as bad as it sounds then people need to send USEF the screen shots, make their feelings known and press for answers.
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It might be time they need to find it. This is outrageous and so bad for the brand. If someone at the top really cared about victims, about the members truly abiding by SS standards as they all must, and about cleaning up the sport, theyâd find the cash. Hell, the people horrified by all these comments could easily report it and do most of the work for them.
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I believe you are an actual lawyer in real life. Thanks for weighing in and clarifying and putting a stronger/more accurate point on what I was trying to voice. 
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But @skydy - I donât know if they really do need to police it. Maybe they could just address it when people submit actual complaints about this specific sort of bullying, and those complaints are accompanied by screenshots, and the posts are still sitting out there on Facebook⊠even now.
Essentially, they could police it reactively, not proactively.
Truth be told, after watching some specific, REALLY ugly comments come down from FB, related to a previous case, I wonder if they arenât already doing some sort of activity like this. But I am taken aback that there is still a lot of this activity going on with this particular caseâŠ
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I donât know where or to whom people are sending screen shots.
I do know that Mary Babick is not tolerant of bullying. If the PTB are ignoring complaints, she will listen. Even if it is not her area, she will notify the people whose area it is.
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I got that, but I thought there was part of SafeSport code that delegated responsibility to NGBs to handle lower tier complaints and offenses⊠such as the bullying behavior I am describing. I might be in error, but I thought that the Center was a clearinghouse for complaints, and that they handled all complaints concerning sexual misconduct, etc. But some lesser complaints over issues like this sort of bullying, which didnât require full scale investigations, were actually referred back to the NGB to handle?
If Iâm mistaken⊠thatâs on me. I donât want to put misinformation out thereâŠ
Perhaps the complaints and screen shots need to sent to Safe Sport first, so they can refer it to the NGB. There would at least be a record of the complaints to Safe Sport and USEF might have to act.
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FWIW, mary babick is ushja, a subsidiary of usef, but not the ngb
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I know. She did contact the PTB even though it was not her area.
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I personally know of a case where screenshots of flagrant bullying and disparagement of a publicly known abuse survivor, AK, by two other current USEF members, who are prominent participants in recognized sport was sent in to SafeSport. But no additional information was provided to the 3rd party reporter about how/if this was actually handled or addressed.
Do you know if the person contacted USEF as well? Itâs so difficult to know who knows what.
It is true, and unfortunate, that sometimes nothing will be done unless people make a big noise about it and donât let up.
By writ of the code, Safesport will, on occasion, leave the USEF to handle specific matters and dole out punishment as they see fit and low-grade bullying may fall into that narrow range of situations. Though they have the authority to handle everything under the Safesport umbrella, they donât always do so, because the resources are finite and the organizations themselves are supposed to have their own internal mechanisms and such, even though that isnât always the case. Again, this circles back around to the ever present question from the last 19 years: Is the USEF really doing anything?
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Nope. This complaint was not taken directly to USEF. Because then the reporting party wouldnât have the anonymity they did when reporting to SafeSport.
The top of the sport is all interconnected⊠with long term friendships. Itâs the nature of it. And those folks are indeed connected to many people within USEF. But this also makes it quite intimidating for 3rd party reporters, who are âlittle peopleâ to call out and report some of the big names openly engaging in this bullying conduct on Facebook, by going directly to USEF. Thatâs a fact.
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It seems then PERHAPS Shelley Fellers, wife of Richard Fellers, shouldnât be going on FB and calling Maggie a âtoxic personâ when her husband was in JAIL for sexual abuse of Maggie / a child. I truly hope SS reviews their case against SF and bans her for life. In addition, I hope she gets jail time as the childâs coach. SF is the Ghislaine Maxwell of this case.
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What?!?! Parents often live in the same home as the victim and the abuser. It is far easier to believe an abuser than a victim. Much tidier. Much more simple. Only one person suffers. All good. Add to that the emotional abuse/brainwashing of victims by abusers and those things become even more real. âIf you tell they wonât believe youâ is used because it works and victims know it works.
I lied on an 8th grade anonymous survey about abuse because the fear was so ingrained . 20 years later I finally had the guts to tell my parents. I was deemed a liar who wanted to break up the family. 20 years after that I was finally believed because my abuser came clean. That finally gave me the strength to walk away from that crap.
Asking where was the support system is round about victim blaming. Our system is not set up to support victims. We are getting there with the help of things like Safe Sport, but we are nowhere near done the hard slog of breaking down societal misogyny.
Until we stop questioning what is wrong with the victim our forward progress will be impeded.
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I think you are misunderstanding her comment. I canât seem to multi-quote, but hoopoeâs original comment was about people who seemed to have a lot of inside information about the case and wondering why if they knew so much about what was going on they hadnât stepped up and reported the offender earlier. So, not victim blaming, but bystander blaming - wondering why no one around the victim provided her support by informing the victimâs parents or officials about their suspicions.
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Oh, huge hugs to you. People who havenât been through it canât understand that some families are all about circling the wagons, and suppressing victims from speaking up, because the truth is so messy and the fallout so hard. Then the child is left with no safe place in the world, and nowhere to turn, and unconditional love is something they donât get anymore⊠even though every child deserves unconditional love.
Again - gentle hugs to you. Thank you for speaking up and trying to explain to others why this stuff can be so darn complicated sometimes, and why speaking up can be so hard for victims in specific situations. I hear you.
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