According to Wikipedia,
The age of consent in California is 18. It is illegal for anyone to engage in sexual intercourse with a minor (someone under the age of 18), unless they are that person’s spouse.
That’s as of 2017, I doubt that it was any higher 30 years ago.
It was my understanding that RG was in CA then, someone correct me if that’s wrong. But if that’s the case, then what he did even with one 17 year old was actually against the law at that time.
First, once again, I thank you for a civil response. I will respond to your points one by one.
1.: Safesport isn’t a court of law and the standards are more similar to civil rather than criminal cases.and consequences are not as severe. The most severe thing they can do is ban someone for life from participating in an Olympic sports organization.
2.: The incidents took place in California where the law defined the age of consent as 18 then and still does now. It was illegal then and has remained so until the present. The stature of limitations for statutory rape in CA until recently was the victim’s 40th birthday. I don’t know if any of RGs victims are still under 40. California has now done away with any limitations but only applies to crimes committed after January 1 2017.
3.: This isn’t one (possibly vindictive) accuser, it’s multiple over a period of time.
4.: Due process here: Safesport received at least one initial complaint which they investigated. Once they believed that the complaint was credible, they temporarily banned and notified RG. During the course of the investigation, other victims came forward adding credibility to the first. Safesport decided that the evidence was sufficient to permanently ban RG from Olympic sport. RG had the right to appeal and had decided to do so. RG was given access to the identity of his accusers. During the appeal, the accused would be able to ask questions of the accusers, though it may have had to be through the arbiter.
5.: Time elapsed is irrelevant as this isn’t a criminal proceeding. In this case, multiple victims shows a clear pattern of behavior. That is sufficient to ban someone from a sports club. Protection of children is the higher concern here.
6.: Sorry, I think this is a straw man argument.
7.: I disagree and so does Congress who passed the Safesport law. Again, this is not a criminal prosecution. It’s only a lifetime ban from a sports club.
I understand trying to protect individuals from malicious prosecution/persecution or the weaponization of Safesport. In this particular case, there are multiple victims. At least the 5 who came forward at The Oaks, though we don’t know if any, some, or all were part of the Safesport case. At least two were 13 and 14 at the time of their abuse.The standard required for Safesport to ban someone is lower than a criminal court and the consequences are also less. Preponderance of evidence is enough to ban someone from access to children in Olympic sports via Safesport. I just don’t see a problem with that. The goal is to protect children today. If there is evidence that someone was involved in sexual misconduct with multiple minors, it shows a pattern of behavior. Just because it might have been 30 years ago (as far as we know) doesn’t make any difference. Study after study have shown that people who engage this type of behavior are the most resistant to therapy to change their behavior.
Me too. The idea that the arbitration group argued that USA Wrestling was supposed to enumerate permitted and nonpermitted sexual activity and define consent in its rules to have any ability to sanction or act over an incident of one athlete raping another is just sickening.
They might have had an assault or other element in their rules; I know USEF has for many years… leading to one of the most interesting Notices of Penalty ever, where “members of the Hospitality committee” were found to have engaged in “unsportsmanlike behavior” for beating one of the competitors to a pulp. True story!
But maybe the lesson here is that those are not appropriate arbitrators for a case like this, if they are so behind on understanding what rape and consent is.
And we are back to the assumption that it was a one time affair with a 17 yr old 40 years ago…
I won’t copy and paste the lengthy post, but I would also like to commend oneequestrienne for her thoughtful and civil responses to the points raised by OwnTooMany. This is a great discussion!
I would note that I think oneequestrienne is right–some of OwnTooMany’s arguments may be moot with respect to Gage if what we are hearing is true, i.e., that there were victims aged 13 and 14.
Nonetheless, these are difficult issues that are sure to reappear as SafeSport works its way through what is apparently a backlog of accusations of improper behavior involving people in the horse industry all over the country. There will be much continuing discussion about fairness, notice of what constituted prohibited conduct, due process, rehabilitation and restitution, and the many other issues that have been raised in the course of this discussion.
that seems to be how many college campuses are handling abuse. They are outlining very strict rules on what constitutes consent, including express verbal consent for each individual act. The arbiters may be looking at colleges for guidance…
In case you are interested and missed it earlier, this article is about university handling (originally posted by HL Mom): https://www.theatlantic.com/educatio…policy/538974/
Thank you for taking the time to summarize this in layman’s terms. I think you sum up what so many understand but cannot express as eloquently.
I just keep coming back to “the law is reason free from passion” on this one. What was the USEF rule at the time is an interesting question. What other retroactive rules could be applied in the future given this precedent? Could a drug rule change happen in the future for something like Equioxx, and then applied to existing specimens in the lab? Given this precedent, any rule of today could be applied to any activity from yesteryear, and that’s an interesting conundrum.
I am not sure how USEF/SS can protect the victim but also act without today’s subjective feelings and opinions when considering the charge of something that occurred so long ago. It would be like arresting a parent today for not seat belting their child in 30 years ago. We know today that its extremely negligent, yet it was commonplace to roam around our station wagon and do what we pleased. The world changed. I would have been a DFaCS case for multiple abandonment and child endangerment 20x over and would have been sent to foster case. However, if my mom knew at that time how wrong it was, and society had enforced it, I am positive she would have never put me in such danger. It wasn’t considered a danger at that time to leave an 8 year old at home when they were sick, or to let your 9 year old child at home alone sell the family Pop-Up camper to hippies in a microbus because mom and dad were at work, or to let your child walk a mile to school unassisted. My mom let a German man at our barn shower me with gifts and kiss me on the lips as well. Different times. How do you help a victim and make them feel safe while also being honest about what the rules of the sport were and what the social norms were at that time? I’m not sure.
I truly feel bad for all involved.
Wait, what? We are??? Where?
And also so victims who remain in the sport don’t have to hang out with their abusers every weekend.
win-win.
Well, I also think it may be an example of how the justice system (courts, arbitration panels, etc.) is not well-designed to handle accusations of sexual misconduct. A fundamental problem is that since sexual conduct often takes place in private, you end up with just two witnesses–the classic he said-she said. Because the legal standard is preponderance of the evidence (or higher in certain kinds of cases), the judge/arbitrator can only find for the victim if he/she identifies a reason to believe the victim over the accused. They can’t just assume the victim is telling the truth and the accused is lying.
In some cases there will be physical evidence or perhaps other witnesses who observed aggressive conduct by the accused, but if it comes down to just two people earnestly telling different stories with no way to decide who is truthful, the victim will lose.
I find one big flaw in your reasoning here.
quote. Consensual sex between an adult and a 17 year old minor is not illegal in most states.
[/quote]
That isn’t what happened and that’s not why SafeSport sanctioned Rob Gage.
What was and wasn’t legal at the time is a red herring.
An adult instructor or coach in a position of power over the teen-aged athlete engaged in a sexual relationship with that teen. That’s an entirely different problem than what you’ve described.
Would a high school teacher or coach in the same situation lost their job over a relationship with a student in the 70s and 80s? YES, THEY WOULD HAVE. And they might have lost their teaching license as well had a parent or school system been willing to push it that far. Mostly they just had to find a new job in a different school district.
Safe Sport isn’t concerned with a high school senior dating a high school junior, or even a college kid still dating his underage high school girlfriend. The age difference is slight and there’s no imbalance of power.
What happened here was about the power and influence a prominent, well known rider and coach had over his horse and riding crazy teen students. That’s what makes this different, and worthy of serious sanction.
I was involved in a trial with physical evidence. Most of the jury discounted it as not enough. “Her face wasn’t bruised enough” “That hair could have just fallen out” “She was drinking”…I could go on.
Wow, that is disturbing.
I do think colleges have made great improvements in this area. At my daughter’s college, the kids are taught that they must ask consent for each step of physical contact. My daughter recently described a situation where her roommate agreed to go to a boy’s dorm room to talk after a party, and he began kissing her. Nothing terrible happened (she said no and left the room), but all the girls agreed it was wrong of the boy to try to kiss her without asking her permission first. Of course I’m not naive and I realize the rules aren’t followed all the time, but I LOVE that these girls feel so empowered and entitled to give or withhold consent at every step. So different from my day…
It was very disturbing and you know who was coming up with all of these scenarios as to why the victim was lying? The women on the jury. We were dealing with reasonable doubt and I understand that but still the victim blaming was sickening to me.
So, hypothetically, if you are in a state where age of consent is 16 AND your employer/organization has no rules about fraternizing, then has something illegal or terminable occurred? Do states have laws about fraternization or is that up to employers/organizations to define? There are obviously laws about harrassment, but if a relationship is consensual*?
So, if USEF didn’t/doesn’t have rules about fraternization/abuse of power AND we are talking before the advent of SafeSport…AND we are in a state where age of consent is not an issue (which it is concerning RG…but this is a hypothetical)…did a violation occur?
*Most employers have rules about fraternization just because consensual can become non-consensual so easily and the power dynamic makes things very murky (and actionable)
The victim was 24? Or 14?
I am not aware of a place or time in my lifetime when a sexual relationship between a teacher/coach and a student wouldn’t have resulted in job loss or sanctions for the teacher.
There’s a couple of red herrings in this argument now.
Why are we talking about what was or wasn’t legal? It’s not relevant. This is a case of a NGB of a sport banning someone from participating in their events. Their club, their rules. If their rules indicate purple fringed chaps are a form of moral turpitude, they can ban you for wearing purple fringed chaps. But this isn’t about purple fringed chaps, it’s about sexual relationships with multiple teenage students. Has that ever been acceptable?
And why are we still talking about the hypothetical 17 year old?
We have statements from victims that they were 13 - 15 when the behavior occurred.
I understand that because of grief and emotion; a lot of people want to rationalize that this wasn’t that bad.
I’m sorry, it WAS that bad.
We have four, very brave, very strong, very courageous women who came forward with full knowledge of the vitriol and victim shaming they would face to say yes, it was EXACTLY that bad. Maybe they came forward because they knew this kind of backwards rationalization would be the next step.
Think beyond the case with RG. That’s is what I’m asking here…and what I tried to point out in my post. If you can’t, that’s fine. Others can.
I’m not rationalizing that ‘it wasn’t that bad’ because the accusers feel it was, and I do believe them.
I want to talk bigger picture, some of the what ifs that leave holes for the Bonnie Navin’s of the world.
Teachers lose jobs when they have relationships with students past the age of consent, not because it’s illegal, but because it is in the code of conduct that they signed at some point. So, if it wasn’t there, like it may not be there for USEF, what then?
Is there any transcript of that event? Or news coverage? It seems like all the accounts I’ve seen of it are very third hand.
Don’t they usually have some open ended statements that could cover it though? Whether it be unsportsmanlike conduct or something similar.
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