Here’s the thing. Having different severity within the law doesn’t need to be said. To state that only makes people less likely to come forward. People aren’t going to focus on you saying it’s wrong they are going to be focused on the “but.”
You are not an attorney relevant to the case nor are you the judge. You are the public. There should be no but and sure as s*** well at least she wasn’t raped and he stopped.
Hello everyone - sorry for being MIA. As you could only imagine, the past week has been incredibly busy. I am incredibly grateful for Ashley’s bravery and courage. I just wanted to add a bit of clarity for those in this forum to those who may not be as familiar to John Coughlin’s case (long story but I have very strong ties to the case):
At the time of his death, John Coughlin had been accused of sexual misconduct by three different women, two of which were minors at the time of the abuse. Ashley Wagner was not one of those three original SafeSport accusers. Bridget Namiotka (his former pairs partner and the first survivor to come out publicly) was one of the original accusers.
The MO described in Ashley’s account (John goes into the room of a sleeping girl, crawls into their bed, initiates sexual contact without their consent, etc.) fits the profile of the other survivors. Sadly, John “allegedly” didn’t always listen when the girls woke up and told him to stop (I can’t provide more details on this without sharing confidential info).
Ashley is one of the biggest names in US figure skating in recent history (post Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan era). Her coming forward has definitely changed the narrative regarding John’s “case”. TBH it is very sad that it takes a big name in the sport for people to start believing survivors of abuse.
@McGurk it really started way earlier.
I think a thousand posts involved the “well I wanna know what specific sexual assaults Rob Gage committed against children so I can assess for myself whether his ban was warranted.”
This recent ranking is just a rehash of that conversation.
@FiSk123 if you read back through the last 3 or so pages, there is public opinion. “We agree it’s wrong, but…”
No. It is not even a teeny weeny bit grey.
A girl was asleep in a bed. A minor. An adult male crawled into bed with her and started kissing her and feeling her up.
Now, I’m glad he stopped when she said NO. But he had no business even opening the door to the room where she was staying. Did you notice the part where she felt so unsafe and was racing in her mind the safest way to get out of this situation?
If boys grow up thinking this is appropriate behavior then we’re doing it wrong.
This is a very good video about consent:
“Unconscious people don’t want tea.”
Wagner’s essay is so compelling, and again doubly so knowing the history, where, in the wake of his suicide, people shouted angrily that Coughlin was at most guilty of dating a teenager when he was a young adult. That SafeSport was wholly in the wrong. They thought they knew the whole story and didn’t. Knowing about one situation that might be questionable does not mean you know about all the situations. And instead, what we see is exactly why SafeSport was needed - because he was a person given access and trust to a lot of young women and he abused that trust.
So this is an interesting question and I want to dissect it a bit and push back.
First, there are two issues in play. One is punishment, and one is protection of the community.
Second, there’s a limit to what a group like SafeSport can do in terms of either. It’s not that we’re going to fine tune some theoretical punishment to the exquisite details of the crime; rather, we’re going to draw a line and say, behavior worse than X means you can’t play with us any more. Some will be over that line more than others.
People were banned from our sport for killing horses and defrauding insurance companies. Did we need a “less bad” punishment for different degrees of that - how many horses, or how much fraud? No, we really didn’t. One is too many. There’s no “Oh I’m so sorry you might not have realized killing horses and defrauding insurance is unethical, but you only did it once, so here’s a two month suspension.”
Straight up, hearing this story once means that I would never allow Coughlin to be unsupervised around young female athletes ever again, not even asleep. Not because it’s punishment, but because he can’t be trusted. But punishment is reasonable as well, because he did harm to a fellow athlete.
Point of note, the criminal justice system would mete out different penalties for the two cases, and that’s okay too. They have a different toolbox of penalties and a different framework with which to act.
Just like Anne Kursinski, and just like the gymnasts. You couldn’t (and maybe still can’t) make an accusation until and unless you are more accomplished (via medals and championships) than the person you accused. And even then, you’ll still be dissected, especially if you are female.
Ashley is not wrong to think it would have derailed her skating career to accuse him at the time, and I think if Anne had made complaints at age 18 when she left Flintridge to train back east she would not be an Olympic medalist today. That’s the sad, awful truth.
You’re not. Or, maybe you are, but you have more support than you might think based on the comments.
In the same way that Hillary Ridland changed the narrative regarding RG’s case.
I just want to reiterate to people way in the back, and maybe you should move to the front, that this forum pops up on google. So if y’all are not willing to say what you write here to victims faces, I strongly suggest you talk amongst each other in PRIVATE. Again, anything I have ever posted on this forum I would say to someone.
One might argue that you are indeed the best person to discuss it–you know what the hell you are talking about.
Thanks for jumping back into this thread. I was hoping you would speak up with some perspective.
After reading the USA Today articles, I did take note of the mention of Bridget Namiotka in them, and that she had made allegations as well. Something I read this morning (I can’t remember what article) mentioned she had spoken up on Facebook.
So I looked her up, and saw a few posts she made back in May. And the comments absolutely attacking her were stunning. Very very very similar to the reaction within parts of the Hunter Jumper community in the wake of Rob Gage’s suicide.
Thank you for the warm welcome. I also want to make it clear that multiple women outside of the SafeSport cases have accused John of sexual misconduct (I personally know of more than 10 but less than 20). Bridget’s case is absolutely heartbreaking.
I agree 100% with poltroon’s assessment. As someone who is heavily involved figure skating, I HIGHLY doubt that Ashley would have become a three-time national champion and a World Silver Medalist had she come forward in 2008. Not due to a lack of talent but essentially due to political maneuvering. What really bothers me is that when Bridget came forward in May, almost no public figures who had defended John acknowledged her. Now those same people are praising Ashley for coming forward. IMO both of them should be commended for their bravery. I have very good reason to believe more women will be coming forward in the near future.
I am thankful you found this forum and that you are posting here.
Thank you Ghazzu, for your comments. And poltroon, for your posts. I really thought I was going crazy, that I had stepped through a wormhole and was back in the 70s.
del
From what I saw on Facebook, multiple people SHREDDED Bridget when she commented in May about Coughlin. There were comments calling her a “has been” who was trying to remain relevant. There were comments mocking her for having a job as a barista recently. And there were multiple people posting photos of her from years ago that showed her and Coughlin in the same picture smiling… and essentially alleging she was making it all up because if he had really abused her, she wouldn’t have been friendly with him.
It is really sad to see that. I’m sure people can find photos of a young Anne Kursinski standing next to her coach from many decades ago and smiling as well. Or a young Hilary Ridland standing with Rob Gage decades ago. That doesn’t mean that abuse didn’t happen. It means that they were young vulnerable girls once upon a time, who were indeed close to someone who was older, successful, and had a degree of stature and respect in a given sport, and that the other person exploited this relationship and contact with the minor female athlete, and used it to sexually abuse them.
The political factor involved in success at the top levels of a sport, or when advancing a career in many fields is very real. And it is certainly part of why many people who have suffered abuse as minor athletes have kept quiet. But I think we do the issue a disservice if we focus on that angle alone to the exclusion of another…
The focus of the Safe Sport legislation, and the stories that have come out over the last few years in multiple sports mostly have one thing in common - they involve MINORS. The psychological and emotional experience of a minor who goes through something like this is different than an adult. A minor doesn’t have a lot of life experience, or perspective. Also, when a minor is intense about something such as their participation in a competitive sport, and there are major goals and dreams and aspirations involved… the whole “small social circle” dynamic that Wagner describes in her interview is a major issue. Experiencing abuse at the hands of someone else who is a part of this same small social circle in a particular sport, and coming forward with an accusation, well - this has the potential to disrupt and upset the majority of the small social circle. To minors, adult coaches or even people who are only a few years older but are “adults” and “widely respected” in a given sport - well - these people can seem GIANT. And the idea of lodging an accusation against a GIANT, an accusation that is certain to be very disruptive and upsetting to anyone involved in a small social circle… a circle which in many cases is the sole experience a minor has with a social circle at that point in their lives…
That’s incredibly stressful and frightening. So staying silent and keeping up the appearance that nothing is wrong, doing their best to just avoid the abuse, and trying to ensure that they are still “accepted” within this small circle? It’s very understandable that a minor who is unsure of how to cope with something like this would default to that response initially. Even for a few years. Until they have more life experience and confidence, and a broader social network, and are maybe at a different stage of an athletic career… and then they would choose to speak up.
It pains me to see the public inability to truly “get” this when it comes to so many of these cases. People continue to say over and over, “Why didn’t they speak up then, and are only coming forward now?!?” Uh… because they were young, and sports and their goals and dreams at the time were their whole world… and they were scared that they would lose out not only on sports, but also be shunned by the sport’s social circle that was pretty much the only world they kne if they spoke up with an accusation. And tragically… they were probably right. So they kept quiet until the time seemed right to speak out.
I understand many many others who have spoken up on this thread have had terrible experiences in terms of having their personal cases be doubted and dissected and minimized when they reported abuse or an assault at some point in their lives. But I think when we try to understand why minors with very little in the way of life experience choose to stay quiet about abuse or assault they have experienced as part of their participation in a given sport… we need to zero in on what is of immediate importance to kids at that stage and age. And it’s their immediate goals and dreams, and acceptance front their immediate social circle for the most part. Those two issues are INCREDIBLY powerful for teenagers.
As far as Anne K goes… she probably wouldn’t have had the same career she did if she had made an accusation against Jimmy Williams many years ago. But one thing is certain… she would have been shunned by many who rode at Flintridge at the time. And been persona non grata at that Riding Club. And when she was a teenager…, that was her whole world. The folks in California who still want to make noise about how speaking up about what Jimmy did years and years after the fact, when he “isn’t alive to defend himself” and claim that it’s sad and wrong? They all know that’s true. She would have been shunned as a teenager if she spoke up at the time. Never would have had the career she did either. But my guess is losing out on horses and losing all her friends mattered a lot in her early teens. It does to most minors.
So today this article came to me, and I learned that some of my college classmates were abused by a former Olympic athlete who worked as a coach and an educator. I knew this man and interacted with him; I don’t remember much about it. It is a long article. It echoes so many of the things we are talking about here, except his prey were young men, young men who were so convinced by his charm that they didn’t even always realize what was really happening.
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/sto…ormer-olympian
More than 40 years later, Sharples can’t recall how long the alleged abuse lasted. At the time, he didn’t think of it as abuse; Mainwaring used clinical language, never sexualizing the “physiotherapy.” Sharples doesn’t remember why Mainwaring stopped, but he says, “When it did stop, I remember feeling almost rejected.”
“How bad do you want the Olympics?” Mainwaring asked.
“More than anything,” the boy said.
“What are you willing to do for it, how much mental energy are you prepared to give?”
The California contingent weren’t just social friends; they also raised a lot of money for her so she could get named to her first Olympic team in 1984 (as the alternate).
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