And people need to respect those rules and follow them, even if it seems unnecessary, over the top, or just disrespectful to the coach that everyone loves.
Just for the reason illustrated above - as said.
We think we know people. We think we can rely on the impressions of other people who know people. But the truth is that we don’t really know anyone.
For that very reason, I feel parents and teens 13+ should be required to take Ss. I would like to trust coaches etc to follow rules but parents need to keep up and teens need to be empowered
There’s a thread on the waterski forum, where AWSA required SS online training for any 18+ member, and I was amazed with how much pushback there was. I think there’s a general understanding of how to possibly mitigate some of these situations and we’d be silly not to implement them. I’m glad there’s justice in this case.
I just finished watching the Hulu documentary Betrayal: The perfect husband. This was a teacher of the year multiple years, who was having numerous affairs and also abused several students. The third episode featured one of his now adult students discussing what happened from her point of view and it was eye-opening. All I could think of is very much what we see in the horse sports. I encourage everyone to listen to the podcast and watch the documentary.
It was also quite eye-opening on how many people he was manipulating along the way.
I so agree. Supposedly there is a kids course for SS but I have had 0 luck finding it, but you may have to be a junior to find it?
I think it would be so helpful for teens to understand the basics (in an age appropriate way, of course) of grooming, abuse, what to do if a friend discloses something to you etc. so that if it ever happens, the child can catch it early enough to recognize the warning signs.
I believe there is a course for kids (or maybe multiple courses for kids of different ages) and also a course for parents, but I’ve never looked for them.
It might be helpful, but for teen me, I’d’ve ignored it. If an older male I admired showed interest in me at that age, I’d’ve been all for it, major trauma in the future and all. Doesn’t make it right, of course.
True. I think true for a good percent of teenagers. But maybe some peers would notice enough to speak up - if they had the language or the knowledge that the warning bells in their heads might be valid.
I have sympathy for people who were taken in by the charming abuser and then struggle to believe that they committed crimes. It is very difficult to reconcile your version of the likable, charming coach with the sexual predator and pedophile and it can take some time to get your head around the reality that they’re the same person.
The big, broad, bright line for me is if you attack the victims. That’s beyond the pale.
You can grieve your relationship with the person you thought you knew without ever saying:
“Those girls weren’t all that innocent, they threw themselves at him.”
“Where were the parents?”
“She just wants the attention.”
“She had a crush on him and is accusing him out of jealousy.”
Etc., etc., etc.
If you perpetuate the idea that young women are prone to make false accusations to further their own agendas, that women that come forward can’t be credible or believed; you are fostering the culture that allowed the abuse to occur in the first place, and you suck.
Is this WaPo story about the rowing coach linked to the one they put out a year or so ago about a girls rowing coach who worked with a prestigious prep school and club program who had been accused, and yet the school and club were incredibly slow to react, blaming the teenaged girls?
Also… rowing is finally dealing with the massive scandal that was waiting to blow up for years. Ted Nash. He’s the male figure from the HBO movie “The Tale.” He’s a Jimmy Williams level figure in that sport. The whole situation is eerily similar… Nash has passed away, and now a few victims have come forward and nance him, and people are attacking the victims motives and reputations.
And someday, perhaps, Harvard’s Harry Parker will be in the spotlight. From what I’ve heard, that’s another massive scandal that was kept under wraps.
Wow. Very very sad.
It is interesting to see the pushback and denials with some of the women’s rowing stories that are coming out now. I think there is a socioeconomic class element to some of these situations that is very similar to some of the well known jumper related abuse situations in Equestrian sport.
I think some of the other upper middle class/upper class families who had teenaged daughters who rode with the same BNT trainer, or rowed with this or that prestigious coach or Ivy League connected program? They seem to have trouble dealing with the fact that they were totally in the dark about what a scumbag the trainer/coach was. And that seems to translate into a lot of minimization in terms of public comments about these cases. It’s sad. And unhelpful.
Ooops. Nevermind about my other post. The WaPo investigation I am remembering had to do with Kirk Shipley (women’s rowing coach linked to a Bethesda area program). Not Conal Groom.
Both stories are awful. The Shipley one really stunned me at the time. No one took the initial complaints seriously. So sad.
That article is upsetting and has a lot of similarities to what I saw in girls’ rowing. I believe that at a previous job, the coach I mentioned also was able to take his team to regattas unsupervised.
At my daughter’s programs, we always had parents on the trip and we enforced curfews rigorously.
"“He had been at Whitman for so long that parents were okay with him taking nine girls [from] a boat on a trip by themselves and staying with those kids in a hotel or an Airbnb,” said a rival coach, who, like other coaches interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the charges against Shipley. “That’s how established he was.”
What really bothered me after the fact was that my daughter could have been targeted. Like the other parents on the team, we though the coach was our daughters’ ticket to rowing for a great college program and, in fact, that part of it worked. But we didn’t fully understand the price.
Now, to be fair, I saw unscrupulous equestrian trainers when I was growing up, many of whom had relationships with either students or married women . . . and at the barn where I rode, there were Olympic riders who we all idolized and wanted to impress. I have never heard of them stepping over the line with a physical relationship, but in retrospect, some of their behaviors (such as rating the girls at the barn on an attractiveness scale) were seriously creepy.
Ugh yeah. Sadly, many of our parents didn’t have good emotional bandwidth / emotional maturity and even generally poorer communication skills. Been there: 14 interested in 18 year old friend of my older sister’s. 18 interested in 26 year old that I met-cute my first year of college. 22 interested in 35 year old (he was my professional mentor - ugh yikes) …
I went to therapy and learned that none of those situations were balanced or healthy.
I observe parents of juniors and recently aged out juniors (18 and under as well as 22 and under) at my barn instilling since YOUNG tween age: "if so and so is more than 2-3 years age difference from you, they are not interested in YOU but what the dynamic does for them, etc.
I love seeing more parents have emotional maturity to have these open, two way conversations with their kids and actually explain reasons, etc.
I think we underestimate youth’s capacity to understand these topics and heed these warnings when they have a MUCH more emotionally supportive and acknowledging home life than we (in our 30s or older) had.
I’m a bit late to this thread but this statement hit me …
Sexual exploitation of children and young adults and the cover-ups are horrible. But the fact that it happens so often that it’s hard to keep up with all the alleged/convicted abusers makes it even worse, IMO.
No kidding.
Yep. It’s always “which coach that sexually abused their students?” It’s sad that there are so many, in all sports.
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