https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/tommy-serio-added-to-safesport-suspension-list
I saw that. Hard to believe he is innocent if he’s back on the list again, although I guess I should keep an open mind.
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Wow. Assume, much?
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I’m wondering if it’s the same case as before and the center received more evidence/information.
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His lawyer is Bonnie Navin. Isn’t she an outspoken critic of Safesport?
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I tend to agree with @BAC. It is hard to believe. Note that she didn’t say “wow that creep is terrible” - that would have been an assumption. But it’s not an assumption of guilt at all…just that innocence is hard to believe when someone ends up on the list twice.
Contrary to all the SS critics, you don’t end up suspended willy nilly. Is it possible another person is set to take him down by faulty accusations? Possible. But hard to believe.
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The article said it was only a 3 year suspension if upheld, not a lifetime ban like most. Someone on FB said it’s the same case, but who actually knows?
I’m also with @BAC. It’s a lot harder to believe innocence when you’ve been on the list twice, though I hope that is the case.
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It’s her bread and butter. She bathes in the adoration of the misguided.
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Are you talking about the same Bonnie Navin that successfully ferreted out the “problems” with the USEF drug testing and enforcement and forced the USEF to completely shut down its drug lab and turn over testing to a neutral third party?
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I’m with BAC. He still can appeal on the merits of the case, apparently. But in addition to the interim suspension two years ago on the same charge (lifted after 2 weeks), he has been sanctioned for drugging horses on two occasions. His wife always takes to social media with outrage; on the drug charges, someone else administered the drug, or it was the manufacturer’s fault, we were told the supplement did not have GABA. On the previous interim suspension for power imbalance sexual misconduct, it was a disgruntled former employer making things up out of spite.
Bonnie Navin uses the previous interim suspension as an example of how SS can be weaponized by spiteful people to “take out the competition”. This changes my prior on the previous interim suspension to view it as more of an unproved accusation as opposed to a completely baseless accusation.
It will be interesting to see how Bonnie Navin and Athletes for Equity respond to this.
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Yes. And she uses Tommy Serio as the poster child of an innocent man wrongly accused by a spiteful former employee to undermine SafeSport.
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Thanks. It’s been a while since I’ve read all the Safesport threads. I find people who are attempting to undermine Safesport disgusting.
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The previous occasion was an interim suspension, before evidence was fully gelled. This case has gone further, to a finding and the three year suspension. It can still be appealed, but this is a much more serious place to be than the earlier situation.
I do not know him and have no knowledge of the accusations. However, I have always been troubled by people taking his wife’s social media posts at face value. At best, she has a stake in the outcome and if he is guilty of misconduct it’s unlikely she’d know or want to believe it.
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I’m sure she does. But he was cleared and removed from the list quickly. Doesn’t that actually show that the process works?
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It does but that’s logic and BN doesn’t like logic if it interferes with her agenda.
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I think it is an example to show that the process works, but I don’t think it’s correct to say that he was “cleared” – only that the interim suspension was dropped. There are a lot of reasons that could have happened other than an affirmative finding that the accusations were without basis. SafeSport does not say.
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I’d be a spiteful disgruntled former employee if my boss used his power against me or sexually harassed me.
At some point where there’s smoke there’s fire.
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As Poltroon said, he wasn’t so much “cleared” as the interim suspension was lifted. So at that point, the onlooker doesn’t know whether it was a outright false accusation or a situation in which something happened but there was not enough evidence to move forward. Since SS doesn’t comment, Kathy Serio and Bonnie Navin jumped in to control the narrative and assert (with great outrage) that it was a completely baseless accusation.
Truth be told, my personal take was that it was more likely a murky case than a completely fabricated case, but what with the whole innocent until proven guilty thing, I think you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and provisionally assume that perhaps it was a false accusation.
With this new information, though, it seems much, much less likely that it was ever a fabricated case.
I think that BOTH the fact that 1) SS lifted the interim suspension when it did not have sufficient evidence at the time, and that 2) two years later it has completed an investigation resulting in the suspension speak to the credibility of the SS process.
I also think that Bonnie Navin made a serious tactical error in trying to tear down SS for supposedly suspending someone based on a false accusation, given that SS now appears to have a solid case. She defended Rob Gage as well as Serio.
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Keep in mind that interim suspensions are supposed to be used if there is a belief that the individual poses a risk to others if they are allowed to continue participating during the investigation. It may be that the interim suspension was lifted because the arbitrator found there was not a risk to the general equestrian community if this was a person to person incident not involving minors. It seems to me that the investigation may have continued but there wasn’t sufficient reason to exclude him from participating until the investigation completed.
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True. It seems that most people who end up banned or suspended are not on an interim suspension while the investigation is going on.
While I was not completely convinced by the loud protestations of Kathy Serio and Bonnie Navin that the original accusation was baseless, I guess I had been assuming that SS had concluded that they didn’t have the evidence to continue with a full investigation. I had no idea the investigation was continuing. It’s pretty brazen of Serio and Navin to bash SS with great moral indignation for (briefly) suspending someone based on what they claimed was a false accusation, if, at the time, they knew that the investigation was continuing! But Bonnie Navin has routinely made brazen, false claims. Such as, to the best of my recollection: “in the early days, 90% of SS bans were overturned on appeal.” Or: “the appeals process only looks at procedural issues, not at the merits of the case.”
Credibility of SS: ⬆️
Credibility of Bonnie Navin: ⬇️
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