Here’s something else I pondered. The H/J end of horse sports is chock full of beautiful women with money who are willing to overlook a lot in order to have a man who is also into horses. There is a dearth of attractive straight men in the business. A straight guy in the horse business doesn’t have to try very hard or offer very much in order to far overshoot what would be his normal range out in the real world.
So why? Why even go there?
I keep on having posts with links in them get unapproved and stuck in “jail.” But in all fairness, I’m sure the Mods are very busy and this thread is a serious headache for them.
Anyway, I am trying to upload a document detailing an appeal Randall Cates made to the Court of Appeals in Kentucky two years ago, after he was given a lifetime ban by both the UPHA, and USEF. The USEF ban came about in 2015, and was one of their very first. Anyway, the Kentucky court upheld the bans, and he lost his appeal, and they stated in the ruling that he WAS afforded due process by USEF during his hearing. Unless I am reading things wrong.
This seems sort of relevant.
I’m curious as to what some of the lawyers make of this decision with respect to all the arguments floating around on Facebook about due process, etc etc.
Furthermore… I find it rather ironic that one “Randy Cates” has weighed in on Bonnie Navins recent post. He really agrees with where she is coming from, and supports her. I’ve tried to link to both a USA Today article and the USEF ruling concerning the details of his case… but the posts are getting stuck in jail. Regardless… for those of you who don’t know, there was a lot of evidence he had sex with a 14 year old student when he was 40. Thousands of text messages and diary entries. Though he and the girl denied it and an argument was made that all the evidence was “fabricated” - and the girl didn’t want to cooperate with prosecution, so the prosecutor never brought the case to trial. But USEF did look at all the evidence the police gathered during the investigation and gave the guy a lifetime ban. That was under the process that existed before the Safe Sport Center was in place. Regardless, the ban still stands.
Good for USEF.
So yeah… I’m annoyed with Bonnie Navin’s legal crusade. Because based on the comment he made on her post, he thinks that he and Bonnie Navin are in it together, fighting the good fight against USEF. And guess what? Over 15 other people gave Randy’s comment a supportive reaction. They are apparently all in it together, with Randy Cates, fighting the good fight against the jerks at USEF handing out bans.
Bonnie, to her credit, has not given a supportive reaction to his comment. She has said nothing. My opinion of her would improve if she would reply to him with the following:
”F*ck off, Randy!”
But I guess she just doesn’t care about my opinion. Or the opinion of that 14 year old girl in Oklahoma’s parents, and the opinion of the police who investigated it. Nope, she is busy fighting the good fight against USEF, and too important to notice the slime ball who has glommed onto her effort.
INEXCUSABLE.
I’m a bit late to this (and I DID read this whole thread, that was an undertaking), but I honestly just don’t understand what people are so upset about (not people here, but the ones screaming for blood on facebook). From the COTH article, not only did the USEF make it clear that they were banning RG because of the decision of SafeSport (therefore getting mad at USEF is completely useless), but apparently Bernie Traurig (sp?) said that RG had been optimistic about the appeal UNTIL he found out someone else had come forward, AND found out who it was. To me, that screams something that he couldn’t handle facing. It’s always sad when someone takes their own life, but that doesn’t seem like a “he took his life because he was so depressed about the whole thing” situation. Something about who the person was seemed like it was a trigger. That could be completely not the case, but that was the impression I have been getting. And I know that people suffering from depression suffer silently, but…this seems different.
You ought to post that as a reply to him on her page. I tried to but do not have posting privileges.
Do you have particular tweaks in mind? In any event, I completely agree with you-- just because a great horseman or friend who “always seemed nice” goes through the process does not mean the process is unfair. What we should be interested in is an objective appraisal of the Safesport process, backed up with facts and statistics. Hopefully Safesport will do this. Perhaps they could also interview some of the JAMS arbitrators to get their evaluation of the process, given that JAMS people are generally respected retired judges with lots of experience.
The comedian Ron White used to do a terrible but funny bit about Michael Jackson’s penchant for young boys. To paraphrase him, less funnily, he said he didn’t want to speak to the truth of the allegations against Jackson, but somewhere, there was a guy in a white panel van with a case of candy bars thinking “This would be a whole lot easier if I were a rich guy with my own zoo and amusement park.”
So after reading all this, I can only say that somewhere there’s a guy in a trenchcoat lurking around a girl’s locker room thinking “This would be a lot easier if I were one of those hunter horse trainers.”
EXACTLY!!!
Hammer hitting nail on the head…
Well I feel the emails should go out to the accused in the morning not at night. Any unprofessionalism by investigators should result in termination. Other than that? I got nothing as it mirrors the criminal justice system.
Truthfully I think you see gaping holes in the process because “horse trainers are special people” and therefore exempt from what normal people comply with daily.
There also was a comment that RG lost a brother and a parent in the last year. Perhaps that also contributed to his depression?
I agree with you on the last part. I don’t think ‘we all’ get what she was trying to do. Because if we all actually understood that, quoting Safe Sport is no real response. But…in the almost incoherent jumble of what BN posted, maybe it’s not fair to blame people for not completely grasping what she was saying. 
True!
Because a “relationship” (I use that word in the ironically tragic sense) with a child is about an entirely different power dynamic than two mature adults engaged in a relationship, even if one of them has a shit ton more money than the other. #butyouknewthat
As a straight guy in the horse world, what the hell are you even hinting at?! This is a ludicrous statement.
The mothers who are commenting on Facebook about how they would show their child the way to “make things right”, remind me of those mothers on the show Intervention, whose children went to them while being abused by someone in their family, and the parents tell the kid to just “pray”, or ask for forgiveness, and completely ignore what is happening. Then the child grows up and becomes a drug addict…in my opinion there is only person to blame.
Turning your back on a child who is being abused is the worst crime possible, in my mind.
Or perhaps we wait until Monday when their barns are closed and they will have time available to call their lawyer?
Maybe a hand delivered certified mail for those that do not use computers or know how to access email? (please note sarcasm).
I agree that “horse trainers are special people”. The complaints about including an adult on a text or “having to ask permission to touch a rider’s leg”, or I can’t hug a client just prove how “special” they think they are. I rode in a clinic in the early '80s, and the clinician came over and said, “I’m going to move your leg to where I want it to be” before he touched my calf. When I took golf lessons 15 years ago, the golf pro walk towards me and said “I’m going to move your shoulders.” That is professionalism and did not take one ounce of extra effort from either person.
What you dont agree? :lol:
that was quite the interesting post. While I am trying to stay away from most of this discussion on FB, this poster is a friend and has many viewpoints I respect. While I don’t think the post you are mentioning was on target, I do think you’ve chosen a thought that makes it look much worse than it was.
FWIW - I think he was describing a situation when a teen may decide to make choices of their own about who they are sleeping with (sexual agency) but that they may be making mistakes in those decisions due to their inexperience.
For as much as we’d like to say that a minor is incapable of making the choice to have consenual sex of any kind…and the law may support that, do we really believe that? Is any teen that chooses to have sex before they are 18 making a terrible choice? Did you feel that way if you had sex before you were 18?
As a society, we’ve chosen 18 to be the age of consent…but is that an arbritary age? Physiologically, our bodies say it’s earlier. Some 17 years olds are more mentally mature than 25yr olds. The 25 yr old can sleep with as many people as they want, but not the 17 yr old. The 17 can’t legally consent, but they also can’t legally consent with another 17 year old. I don’t find that portion of the law to be supportable. IT seems outdated and antiquated.
What is at issue is the power dynamic. That the 17 yr old might not understand why they are so attracted to that 30 yr old coach. That the attraction is most often the luster of power/authority/opportunity. And that it really could be a mistake on the girls part to want to sleep with the coach.
Please note: this post is solely in regards to older teens who are still minors making consenual choices. This is NOT about the adult in the equation at all. Because that’s a whole different set of circumstances…
What disturbs me a lot about BNs annual diatribes in support of her awful clients is they just reinforce that we have enough horse dopers and kiddie diddlers in the horse world to support a lawyer who seemingly exclusively and very publicly caters to that demographic, so it doesn’t matter how many not awful people she alienates, her income is secure. ugh.
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