By definition, consent cannot be given by a minor. True now and true in California even back in the day. Way back in the day—1859, IIRC. I’m assuming California since that’s where he’s worked and had businesses, aside from clinics.
Even if a minor agrees to a sexual encounter with a trainer or other important figure, there is still a power dynamic that makes it unequal.
There was more than one claimant (established upthread) even before the most recent one in the RG case.
Some of the facebook stuff stuff doesn’t even make mathematical sense—saying it happened in 1980 and RG was 23 or 20 or 18. He was born in 1952 (source his Facebook, but I have similar-aged friends who were in his HS class) so would have been 28 in 1980.
Also for what it is worth … this may be a little bit tough for some people and for that I apologize …
We do not know if RB’s suicide was a direct result of the SafeSport action. Only if he left communications saying why he did what he did do we know.
In the search for understanding and answers there is a tendency to focus on the recent events that occurred before a suicide. But sometimes a suicide was planned well before and has been building up for some time. There may be other reasons that were uppermost in the suicide victim’s mind, and the events of even a few days previous may not have made much difference to a decision already made.
Sometimes there is just no way anyone can know. That can make it hard for those that loved him.
Unless something left by RB is shared with the public, we can’t know for sure. If there is anything of that nature I don’t expect that it will be publicized.
OverandOnward, your post was excellent but I do take exception to the above. I was a child from that time period. A teenager in the 80s. At barns. I was told by my parents about bad men who prey on little girls and to never let myself be alone with men unless it was in public view (other than my father, of course). People have known about pedophiles for as long as there have been pedophiles, so I’d say that’s a pretty long time. Ancient Greece anyone?
For all those talking about the The 70s and 80s as if they were the dark ages where virginal girls were happily offered up to the feudal lord, they really weren’t that long ago. We did have computers and mobile phones back then, lol.
I think what people are really saying when calling the period “a different time” isn’t a reference to ignorance about pedophilia and predators, it was that the liability and the responsibility to protect one’s self wasn’t an ever-present concern. People didn’t consider the risk because, well, people weren’t trained to think in risk terms. That’s a relatively new part of society. Think about the time period: we rode without helmets and sometimes in sneakers. People drank and drove without much thought. Unprotected sex. Used certain words in everyday speech. Expected a woman in an office to dress sexy and make the coffee. The list could is quite long when we consider things that were pretty common and caused little fanfare not that long ago that we’d hesitate and probably avoid today.
Can we please stop the myth about predator ignorance in the 70s and 80s? It was not universally considered OK for an adult man to date or have any kind of suggestive encounter with a young girl or teenager back then. Sure a few people did it, but there are few people who do things today that the rest of us would find reprehensible.
What responsibility do licensed officials have vis a vie safe sport? This was posted on facebook by a USEF steward in one of the recent threads:
“Some people will do anything for blue ribbons Once they get them , they forget what they were willing to do for them And then the stories begin. I’m disgusted with women crying wolf”
That steward should know better and lose their Stewards card.
A person in a position of power should not accept sex as payment/incentive for helping someone not in a position of power, particularly a youth. It does not matter if it was offered. Youth are accepted as not knowing the consequences of their actions, and employers/coaches/mentors need to be held accountable for taking advantage of youth even if arguably consensual (and obviously a youth cannot be held legally able to consent).
we had computers but there the internet was really only for the truly nerdy. I started college in 1989 and they weren’t issuing college emails addresses. I got my hotmail address my 3 rd or 4 th year. Cellphones? They were gigantic and for calls only and very few people had them because they were so expensive. The first smaller phone was released around 1989.
The 60s and 70s were very different for some as far as sex, drugs, partying was concerned. It doesn’t excuse sex with a minor, but pretending the climate is the same is giving history some rosy
Then you lived in a different place than I did, and you definitely don’t have adult memories going back nearly as far as I do. There was profound predator ignorance where I lived, and that included a broad swath of the population of the United States. It wasn’t a thing. Most parents did not have a spiel to give their children, particularly teens during the 70’s & early 80’s, about ‘what to do if’. There was DENIAL. Ancient Greece didn’t come up, either. No one said anything about virginal sacrifices or feudal lords - you are just inventing and not engaging in discussion.
Adult men dating teenage girls is not the same as other predatory behavior I was referring to. That is mixing up a confused sexual connection with more assaultive behavior, as well as ‘secret romance’. The encounters I was referring to, both consensual and non-consensual, were NOT visible to the public. They were hidden and secret. In the case of consensual relationships, they were kept secret precisely because there would have been an intervention had the girl’s parents been aware. But many of the encounters I became aware of were matters of intimidation, not consent.
No, there were not computers and mobile phones in the hands of the general public until nearly a decade later! What planet is it that you were on in those days? A few people had the original Apple desktops, people that were better-educated and often connected with academia, and they had to program their own computer, so it wasn’t widely used.
My more technically advanced friends got mobile phones in the late 90’s, I got my first mobile phone in 1999, and that was before most of my colleagues, friends and family had one. I used to tell the ones that had a mobile that they had to keep it turned on or it wouldn’t work. Gigantic desktop computers were first seriously emerging in the 1980’s and most people didn’t have one at home. Their introduction was creating trauma in the workplace. I got my first home desktop mid-90’s and again I was ahead of most of my colleagues/friends/family (and I knew A LOT of people, in the Wash. DC area at the time). Copy machines as we know them today were becoming more widespread during the 80’s as well, making life so much easier than the typewriters and carbons that I had learned. There was a massive OFFICE technology jump from the late 70’s to the late 80’s, but not so much at home. The HOME part happened during the late 1990’s and on into the 2000’s.
There was NO internet available to most of the public (no technology to deliver it in most of the US), the most widespread source of public information on predatory behavior. That proliferation began in the mid-90’s and it was woefully under-powered then.
America’s Most Wanted premiered in 1988, and that was many people’s first introduction to the more sensational types of crimes. It was an education for many people including myself.
Maybe a benchmark of change - Women were beginning to make serious inroads into the college-educated workforce in the early 1980’s. At the entry level, because the glass ceiling was still pretty low.
Even in the late 70’s it was a struggle to get people to accept the facts of child abuse and domestic abuse, generally. Those topics were breaking through in the media. In the early 70’s where I lived people had never heard the word ‘liability’, wouldn’t have known what it was or even been able to pronounce it. They had never heard the word “pedophile” either.
Yes, you live in an era of profound societal change within the span of one lifetime. Something like industrialization, only in this case it is technology that has revolutionized the way people live and what they know about life.
(None of my nieces and nephews can dial a rotary telephone or read a map. You would be only slightly older. )
Geez you all are quick with the snap. I take back my earlier compliment.
Because my post is being poo-pooed, let me clarify: [INDENT]1. I never mentioned the internet.
You and RugBug have confirmed that computers and mobile phones existed. Not sure why you both felt the need to tell me about your own personal technology experiences. Should I share mine now? I had a computer at home. Early 80s (an Apple) so I guess I beat you there by a decade or so.
But back to the comment. I said they existed simply to point out that the time period wasn’t that long ago. Thank you for confirming my comment was indeed accurate. Never did I say every member of the public had them, only that “we” as in the world, had them. Case closed on that comment.
The history lesson was not necessary, thank you. It’s actually rather strange that you felt the need to post all that based on what I wrote above. Perhaps you might want to re-read what I wrote to better understand why I wrote what I did?
I said Ancient Greece and virginal girls for feudal lords. First reference was mine. Wasn’t quoting anyone, didn’t invent. It was there for emphasis. Actual line was, “For all those talking about the The 70s and 80s as if they were the dark ages where virginal girls were happily offered up to the feudal lord, they really weren’t that long ago. We did have computers and mobile phones back then, lol.”
We had a rotary phone in my house as well as many, many maps. I still have many maps. How is that relevant?[/INDENT]
I’m happy to hear that you are much older than I am and were an adult during that time period. It’s nice that you learned about bad people when America’s Most Wanted first aired in 1988. I learned about them as a child in the 70s because my parents warned me.
The argument is that the girls weren’t victims because it was a time when everyone thought it was OK. I’m saying that I grew up and would have been “of target age” during that timeline and was distinctly told it was not OK. I wasn’t the only one in my circle either. We were told about such things to help protect us.
Perhaps I hail from far savvier stock than you? It was DC so it can’t be location.
^ For context, I can share when I first learned that there was a problem with adults… or even older teens touching children (or much younger children) in an inappropriate way. It was in 1989, in public school, in 5th grade, and was part of the D.A.R.E. Program at the time (I think that came from a Nancy Reagan initiative).
In the state of Virginia. So not far from DC.
Anyway, a school resource officer came to the classroom and spoke with us about a few different topics. Don’t do Drugs. Don’t smoke cigarettes. Don’t drink alcohol under 21. And last but not least, it’s wrong for someone to mess with your private parts.
My parents had given me zero education on this topic prior to this point. I come from an upper middle class, educated family, and my father was a lawyer. Times were different in some ways. I, and most parents I know, all talk to our kids much more these days. And are more vigilant. But I don’t really accept that my parents were “naive” back then. Anyway, I learned about sexual predators and this sort of abuse because the school resource officer dealt with the issue by telling us a story about a young girl who lived with her divorced mom, and the mom had an adult boyfriend who periodically was at home alone with the girl. And when he was, he “bothered” the girl. And the girl didn’t know what to do to make it stop or who to talk to. And the boyfriend swore up and down that the girl’s mom would be angry at her if she spoke up. And that the mom might kick the girl out of the house, and the girl might end up homeless. The girl felt really stressed and sad and overwhelmed, her Mom noticed that, and asked questions. And eventually the girl broke down and did tell her mom that she didn’t want to be left alone at home with this adult boyfriend of mom’s anymore. And the Mom dumped the boyfriend, reassured the little girl that she was loved no matter what, and everyone lived happily ever after.
I remember this whole thing VERY clearly, because that was the exact moment in time I realized that uncomfortable stuff someone had been doing to me in private was not just a small secret… but a big one. And regardless of the reassuring story the D.A.R.E. Program was telling me, my case was different, because is whole lot of people would be very upset if I spoke up. The person abusing me would without a doubt deny it… so I concluded the best thing to do was to stay quiet.
So I’m not sure looking back on it if the school program helped me… or oversimplified it so much that it harmed me. But we were not totally ignorant as a society in the 80’s. It was being addressed in 5th grade public school classrooms as part of a nationwide program.
Maybe… Maybe it’s not the culture that was different, so much as our understanding of the many ways predatory behavior can manifest has improved. Things were ok then not because they were right, bit because people weren’t as aware
Unfortunately, though people are now more “aware”, victims are still afraid to speak. Some people would rather their child shut up about being abused by a family member due to the social discomfort the “family” will feel if the abuse comes to light.
Some people would rather protect Uncle Ernie the molester, and keep his child victim silent.
Many of the Facebook posts in his defense claim that he and the woman in question were only a couple of years apart in age. But then they go on to say that she is about 55 now, while I believe his obituary said he was 66. That sounds to me like an 11 year difference. I’m not sure how the age gap changed over the period of 40 years. Regardless of all the other things that are hard to prove after so many years, that seems like a pretty verifiable fact.
I just wanted to thank everyone who has shared their personal stories in this thread. I am saddened, but not surprised by the pervasiveness of abuse not just in the industry, but also outside of it.
What did surprise me a little are the number of commentators on public Facebook posts–not just on personal pages but also on the Chronicle’s and several others–who are fuming about SafeSport, yet show no compassion for victims. I know, I know, Facebook is toxic…I realize it’s not a scientific measurement of attitudes…but still…
Screenshots have been taken and Safesport and USEF notified. A friend was at the horse show at Ox Ridge after the news broke. She met up with some well known establishment names who were visiting the show. They also were commenting “Poor Rob”. To her credit, she suggested they consider that victim shaming isn’t a good idea…
And those fb comments conveniently ignore the fact that SafeSport has been clear there were MULTIPLE accusers who were minors, and that the offenses were considered serious, hence the lifetime ban. So those people only know part of the story, and only want to know part of the story.
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