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greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

C.A.H.A suspension link

Post by greybeard58 » Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:39 am

Would be nice if a type of link could be available for at least suspensions for the most serious offences especially those for Safesport's violations

http://www.caha.com/suspensions.pl

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

"How many more cases and cover ups of abuse need to occur for USOPC to finally take sexual abuse seriously?"

Post by greybeard58 » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:20 am

"How many more cases and cover ups of abuse need to occur for USOPC to finally take sexual abuse seriously?"

An American think tank that studies child sexual abuse and prevention is asking the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USPOC) to suspend Stan Bowman from his position as general manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team while he faces allegations that he helped cover up the sexual abuse of two Chicago Blackhawks players.

In a Sept. 10 letter to USPOC chief executive Sarah Hirshland, Marci Hamilton, founder of the advocacy group Child USA, wrote that Bowman, who is also the current GM of the Blackhawks, should be suspended by USA Hockey.

“I write to you today to request the suspension of Stan Bowman from his position as general manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team and that an independent investigation into Bowman’s behavior in his role as general manager of hockey operations of the Blackhawks NHL team be conducted,” Hamilton wrote.

Child USA provided TSN with a copy of Hamilton’s letter, which was also addressed to USOPC chair Susanne Lyons, its board members, and Elizabeth Ramsey, executive director of the USOPC’s Athletes’ Advisory Council.

Hamilton said in a phone interview on Saturday that she decided to engage in the Blackhawks’ scandal because she sees it as evidence of a repeated pattern.

“This is the paradigm we keep seeing,” Hamilton said. “Not only do we have a perpetrator, but powerful institutions are essentially ignoring the fact that they have an abuser in their midst. This isn’t just a church or a boy scout problem. It’s a societal problem and this is a great example of that.”

Spokesmen for the Blackhawks and USA Hockey did not respond to requests for comment. A USOPC spokesman said he was unaware if the committee's leadership had received the correspondence.

Copies of Hamilton’s three-page letter were also sent to U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal and Jerry Moran.

Blumenthal and Moran led an 18-month investigation into systemic abuse within the U.S. Olympic movement and advocated for the passage of the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act, which was passed in October 2020 and imposed reforms in the Olympic world, forcing more oversight of the coaches and executives who control the sports.

The act permits Congress to dissolve the board of directors of the Olympic committee and to decertify offending national governing bodies.
“What we’re seeing now with the Blackhawks and USA Hockey is shocking not because of the behaviour of the predator,” Hamilton said in an interview. “What’s shocking is that it’s been 19 years since we learned, thanks to the Boston Globe journalists, how the bishops in the Catholic church repeatedly covered up sexual abuse by priests. This hockey case is shocking because by now people should know the proper way to respond to allegations like this.”

The Boston Globe's team of investigative journalists in 2002 published a series of stories detailing a pattern of sexual abuse of minors by priests and a widespread culture of cover-up.

Congressional hearings to discuss reforms of the USOPC are scheduled for Wednesday and Hamilton said that her staff has scheduled time with Blumenthal and Moran’s staff before then to make sure they are briefed on the Blackhawks case.

“I know that the senators are going to be interested in this,” Hamilton said in an interview.

Hamilton’s letter recounts allegations made against Bowman and his Blackhawks management colleagues in a pair of lawsuits filed earlier this year in Chicago against the team.

One lawsuit, filed by a former Blackhawks player referred to as “John Doe 1” in court documents, alleges that after the team’s management was informed that former video coach Brad Aldrich had allegedly sexually assaulted two players during the 2009-10 season, the team allowed him to remain employed through the end of that season, and refused to report the allegations to police.

A second lawsuit filed by a former high school hockey player in Houghton, Mich., who is referred to as “John Doe 2” in court documents, alleges that the Blackhawks gave Aldrich a positive job reference that allowed him to secure positions within the hockey department of Miami University in Ohio and later as a high school coach in Houghton, where in 2013 he was convicted of sexually assaulting the then-16-year-old player.

The Blackhawks have claimed in court documents that the team investigated the allegations and found them to be meritless. The team said in a court filing on Friday that the former Blackhawks player’s lawsuit should be dismissed because of limitation periods, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The Blackhawks also said the former high school player’s lawsuit should be dismissed because there was a lack of evidence to support the claim the team provided Aldrich with a job reference, The Sun-Times reported. The newspaper reported that the NHL team has asked the former high school player’s attorney to withdraw that lawsuit.

With media scrutiny over the scandal increasing, the Blackhawks in June hired Chicago lawyer Reid Schar to look into the claims. The Blackhawks say the investigation is independent and that they will make Schar's findings public. The NHL has said it's awaiting the results of Schar's investigation before taking any possible action.

“This investigation is not neutral,” Hamilton wrote in her letter to the USOPC. “A truly independent investigation cannot be funded by the organization whose executives reportedly covered up Aldrich’s abuse. Miami University has opened an internal investigation, but the scope is limited to the four months he was employed at the University.

“Bowman is still the general manager of the Blackhawks and earlier this year he was appointed as the general manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team for the 2022 Beijing Games. How could Bowman, who has been publicly accused of covering up the abuse of a serial predator, be allowed to lead USA Hockey and represent our country at the international level?”

Based at the University of Pennsylvania, Child USA has lobbied federal and state governments in recent years over issues including expanding statutes of limitations to provide victims of childhood sexual abuse with more time to file lawsuits related to their abuse.

Hamilton wrote the first draft of the Child Victims Act, which was passed in January 2019 by New York state. Accusers in the state can now file lawsuits until they are 55. Before the new law was approved, victims of childhood sexual abuse had until they were 21 to sue the institution where the abuse took place, and until 23 to sue their attacker.

Hamilton also referred in her letter to the USOPC to disgraced USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced in 2018 to 40 to 175 years in prison after more than 150 women and girls said in court that he sexually abused them over two decades.

“Just as there is a public demand for accountability and transparency from USA Gymnastics in light of the Nassar abuse case, I ask for accountability from USOPC regarding Bowman’s alleged role in covering up Aldrich’s abuse,” Hamilton wrote. “It is unacceptable to allow Bowman to serve in his role as General Manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team while an investigation is ongoing.

"…I request that Bowman be removed from USA Hockey, or at the very least be put on leave while a truly independent investigation considers his response to Aldrich’s abuse. How many more cases and cover ups of abuse need to occur for USOPC to finally take sexual abuse seriously?”

It’s unclear whether the USOPC has the legal ability to force USA Hockey to place Bowman on administrative leave, said a person familiar with the matter.

At the least, the USOPC could refuse to provide him with a credential to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the person said. Given the Olympic reforms passed in congress, if any elected officials show an interest in the case, it would be more likely the USOPC would pressure USA Hockey to address the allegations against Bowman, the person said.

Advocacy group wants Bowman suspended from U.S. Olympic team
Read more: https://www.tsn.ca/rick-westhead-advoca ... -1.1693176

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

SafeSport, The USOC's Attempt To Stop Child Abuse, Is Set Up To Fail—Just Like It Was Supposed To

Post by greybeard58 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:50 pm

SafeSport, The USOC's Attempt To Stop Child Abuse, Is Set Up To Fail—Just Like It Was Supposed To
By
Diana Moskovitz
7/24/18 9:25AM
As he was questioned by lawyers in 2015 over and over again about what he did and did not know about sexual abuse suffered by Olympic athletes, then-U.S. Olympic Committee lawyer Gary Johansen made a choice. No matter the question, no matter which lawyer asked it, Johansen did not say “child abuse,” he did not say “sexual assault,” and he did not say “rape.” What he did say, over and over again in his deposition, was “SafeSport.” The USOC, he said each time, wasn’t responding to a crisis of rampant sex abuse. No, he said, these were “SafeSport issues.”
The choice of the phrase stands out. It is, for one thing, a pleasant-sounding euphemism for a horrible set of acts. It is, for another, a phrase the USOC trademarked in 2012, before it took serious steps toward opening an “independent” arm to investigate sex abuse, before the latest round of Congressional hearings, and before Larry Nassar became a household name for his decades of preying on female athletes. By using the phrase over and over again, Johansen was able to erase people’s very real pain and suffering and replace it with a catchphrase. (Johansen, who has since retired from the USOC, did not return a message left at his home.)


Over time, the phrase SafeSport has come to mean several distinct things. It is the name adopted by various governing bodies whenever they have a sexual abuse scandal and need to promise to do more education and prevention. It is a program of sexual assault education and prevention in various Olympic sports. It is—and this is what people are most likely to think of when they hear the word SafeSport, if they know it at all—an actual, physical center in Denver that handles reports of possible sexual abuse in Olympic sports. But above all, SafeSport is a brand, and it functions as one.
Even if it was perfectly engineered, SafeSport would have difficulty achieving its aims, and it is far from perfectly engineered. Records, interviews, and an examination of the relevant history show that while basic groundwork has yet to be laid to protect athletes from abuse, SafeSport has already been deployed to make any parents’ concerns just go away.

First there are the logistics. The caseload number, as given to Deadspin, is 19 cases per investigator, more than half again as high as the general recommendation for caseworkers in state-provided children’s services. (That number is itself arguably far too high.) The budget for education, intended to prevent future abuse, is just $1.5 million and the overall budget when the SafeSport CEO spoke to Congress was a paltry $4.6 million. (For comparison, anti-doping agency USADA had total expenses in 2016 of close to $20 million.) Child abuse is a problem that can be significantly mitigated with money, and yet it seems that nobody—not even Congress—can be bothered to do just that.
Then there is the center’s claim to be independent from the USOC. The word “independent” or “independence” came up nine times at a congressional hearing earlier this year. But no matter how many times SafeSport CEO Shellie Pfohl promises independence, the center’s history tells a different story. The center is not only reliant on funding from the USOC and other national sports bodies, but is a root-and-branch creation of the USOC. Meeting minutes for the first two years of the SafeSport board, reviewed by Deadspin, show that many of the USOC’s top people, including lawyers like Gary Johansen, were present at meetings offering the SafeSport board guidance and direction. Among them was current SafeSport chief operating officer Malia Arrington, who once said in a deposition that she had no authority to make USA Taekwondo ban a coach despite evidence of sexual abuse. She was, while on the USOC’s payroll, SafeSport’s acting CEO for most of 2016, the key person leading the board through questions about how the center would work and what its priorities would be. She’s still there, as SafeSport’s COO. The USOC even controlled SafeSport’s bank account, meeting minutes said, until last year.
SafeSport disputed questions about its independence, with a spokeswoman saying in a statement: “There are a lot of people who are thankful for the center, its mission and work in the movements.” When asked why so many USOC people were included in the creation of SafeSport, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said SafeSport “was an idea created by the USOC,” an answer that ignores decades of work of by athletes and activists, especially Champion Women CEO Nancy Hogshead-Makar, demanding the USOC do something to respond to the abuse crisis in Olympic sports.
The USOC exists because of an act of Congress, the Ted Stevens Act, which chartered the organization and gave it nonprofit status. Congress could step in and rewrite the rules that structure Olympic governance; it could fund the SafeSport center to levels that would allow it to protect children in Olympic sports; it could acknowledge that child abuse happens across all walks of life and make the entire issue a national priority.
But Congress itself can’t be bothered to fund the SafeSport center (and, it’s worth noting, has previously held hearings to berate Olympic leaders that accomplished little beyond generating headlines and press releases). It has provided zero dollars directly to SafeSport and instead set up a grant that the center has to apply for—via the attorney general’s office, the same one that recently played a role in separating immigrant parents and their children. That grant, which SafeSport will have to spend time and money to get, is for about $2.2 million. It’s telling that even Congress, the very architects of the American Olympic movement, can’t be bothered to do more than the barest of minimums.
For all the hoopla and all the press releases and all the hearings where elected officials scowl for the cameras, nothing has changed, with the notable exception of the SafeSport brand suddenly appearing everywhere. No children are any safer.
“If you want to molest kids, the USOC is like Disneyland,” said attorney Jon Little, who has played a part in multiple lawsuits against various sport governing bodies, including lawsuits filed earlier this year against USA Taekwondo and USA Diving. “The SafeSport center is just a way to whitewash it.”
________________________________________
If it weren’t the Olympics—shrouded in flags, patriotism, our national anthem, and tear-jerking video montages—the structure of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the organizations it “charters” to oversee each sport would be understood as what it is: A strange, shell corporation-like setup that may not launder money but does, conveniently, dodge liability. In fact, that might be the most important function that the USOC provides within the Olympic movement: a quick and easy path to plausible deniability for any higher-up who needs to tell a reporter or a lawyer that whatever horrible human actions have been uncovered—like the many cases of young Olympics being abused and raped by their coaches—aren’t their fault.
That’s why, when there is a scandal, the USOC is quick to point out that it doesn’t run the sports it oversees; that is done by the national governing bodies, which it charters and partially funds but which largely run themselves. That’s why, when convenient, the USOC will say it can’t tell NGBs what to do, even though through funding or the threat of decertification, it can. That’s why they will insist, over and over again, that there is no such thing as a USOC athlete; the athletes belong to the national governing bodies, or NGBs. (USOC communications director Christy Cahill once sent Deadspin a correction request for using the phrase “USOC athlete” in a blog post. “The NGBs, in this case USA Taekwondo, manage all of the athlete relationships and no athletes are ‘USOC athletes,’” she wrote.)
“If you want to molest kids, the USOC is like Disneyland. The SafeSport center is just a way to whitewash it.”
According to the USOC’s own tax returns, it’s largely a tax-exempt funnel for cash. The most recent tax return for the USOC, from 2016, tells the story. Their No. 1 expense is giving money back to the NGBs (who pad their executives’ salaries while not paying athletes); their No. 2 expense is running the Olympic training center, which one report found was mostly used by non-Olympians; their No. 3 expense is sending athletes to compete; No. 4 is supporting the Paralympics; and No. 5 is “broadcast properties.” The USOC’s tax returns describe that duty, which costs them more than $10 million, as a mix of working to “secure and nurture” its relationship with broadcast partner NBC (which also sponsors SafeSport) while also growing and developing digital platforms for the Olympic movement, like the TeamUSA.org website.
Another $4 million is spent on “communications,” more than $2 million on international relations, and $4 million on drug control. By their own accounting, the USOC spends a lot of money on public relations. A big part of its job is being a tax-exempt marketing agency. And that’s on top of the CEO’s million-dollar salary and the more than a dozen executives below him earning six figures in 2016, including a chief marketing officer, not one but two managing directors of marketing, and a chief of communications.
Here’s what the USOC does not do: “The USOC does not train and develop athletes, train and develop coaches, train and create officials, run events, develop grassroots programs to allow children to enter sports, create national physical testing programs to determine an individuals athletic proficiencies or capabilities, establish or develop any facilities in any sport (not that they should ) ... or really have any real influence on the ultimate success of our athletes in Olympic sport,” said Mike Jacki, who was USA Gymnastics president from 1983 to 1994.
The USOC made this argument itself in a recent response to several Nassar-related lawsuits against it. USOC lawyers argued that it should be dismissed from several lawsuits because it has no control over USA Gymnastics. “At an organizational level, USA Gymnastics is not an “affiliate” through which USOC operates, unlike the local soccer organizations in US Youth,” the motion to dismiss reads. “To the contrary, under the ASA, USA Gymnastics is an independent, autonomous organization that exercises complete control over its sport ... In other words, control of USA Gymnastics is alleged to reside with USA Gymnastics itself.”
Nonprofit watchdogs will tell you that a wishy-washy descriptor of what an agency does is usually a warning sign, and the USOC’s own description of itself to the IRS is a battery of empty language: “To support U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes in achieving sustained competitive excellence while demonstrating the values of the Olympic Movement, thereby inspiring all Americans.”
In other words, the USOC spends a lot of money on largely vague purposes, plus its own expenses. And “sexual-abuse allegations represent a threat to this steady stream of commercial success,” in the words of one recent lawsuit filed against USA Diving and Ohio State for their failures to prevent sexual abuse by a coach. “For this reason, the USOC tries at every opportunity to suppress the public from recognizing that the USOC is a complete sham.”
And that stream of commercial success is all about broadcast partnerships. In 2016, the USOC received more than $172 million in revenue from broadcast rights. The second-biggest source of income, at more than $120 million, was royalties. Revenue from broadcasting went down in 2015, a non-Olympic year, but royalties didn’t. They still generated about $101 million that year, according to tax returns.
So it fits with a morbid pattern that the USOC, which functionally ignored child abuse for decades, has responded to an abuse crisis with a branding campaign. That’s what public relations and marketing are for—turning negatives into positives.
One timeline put together by attorneys and advocates for athletes dates the first report of sex abuse by an Olympic coach all the way back to 1990. In 1991, the topic of preventing sex abuse came up at a meeting of a USA Swimming ad hoc committee, according to documents obtained by the website Swim Vortex. The documents showed no action taken on that issue. More scandals emerged across multiple sports over the decades, but little changed.
Then in 2010, a series of reports aired on ABC and ESPN exposing how little USA Swimming did to protect its athletes from sexual abuse: There were no pre-hiring background checks, many people never thought to report warning signs they saw, and many others willfully looked the other way because they put winning first. In response, USA Swimming started a program it dubbed SafeSport, which the entire Olympic movement later adopted.
From there came lots of meetings. First, the USOC started a task force. That task force issued a report in September 2010, and gave quotes to reporters about how they would get it right this time. A year later, in 2011, there still wasn’t a robust training program, or a centralized model for education across all sports, or a way to make sure bad coaches weren’t jumping from sport to sport to avoid detection, all of which the task force had recommended. But the USOC did file an application for a trademark on the name SafeSport. The application provides the best insight into what the USOC really wanted SafeSport to be. From the application:
Educational services, namely, conducting classes, seminars, presentations, workshops and providing education and resources (both printed and electronic) to prevent the maltreatment of athletes in organized sport; developing, publishing and promoting practices, policies and procedures to prevent the maltreatment of athletes in organized sport
A few months later, they amended their application to include “promoting awareness of the need to prevent maltreatment” and “developing voluntary standards.”

Over and over again, the phrase “voluntary standards” pops up in the trademark application materials. A year later, in 2012, they added what looks like a printout of a very cheerful website.

The application for a trademark was approved in August 2012. A month later, the Wayback Machine first captured SafeSport.org looking a lot like what was described in the trademark application. By then, the USOC had also hired Arrington—a lawyer who said under oath in a deposition that she had no prior experience as an attorney working with sex-abuse victims—to be their senior director of ethics and SafeSport. She described her duties to stop sex abuse this way in a 2015 deposition:
Trademark in hand, Olympic officials could now bring up SafeSport as needed.
In 2013, when US Speedskating had to settle with a group of athletes who said they were abused by their coach, the USOC promised to expand the nebulous SafeSport program and create an independent agency to address the issue. The people in that discussion included the then-CEO of USA Gymnastics, Steve Penny, who eventually left in disgrace over how he’d handled the Larry Nassar scandal.
In 2014, a group of 19 female swimmers said they were sexually abused by their swim coaches, forcing the International Swimming Hall of Fame to rescind an invite to the head of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus. And what did Wieglus trot out in defense of his reputation? SafeSport. A statement from Wielgus said, “While USA Swimming developed its groundbreaking SafeSport Program, I championed the work of our national governing body. I talked about all the good that USA Swimming was doing in the fight to eradicate sexual abuse.”
Later that year, when Outside magazine reported extensively on the ongoing issue of sexual abuse across Olympic sports, especially swimming, Olympic leaders once again called on SafeSport. The article notes the SafeSport center will open, eventually, and goes into detail about the success of the SafeSport program in USA Swimming, overseen by Susan Woessner. (Woessner resigned earlier this year after the Orange County Register reported that in 2007, she was part of a USA Swimming sexual misconduct investigation that cleared swimming coach Sean Hutchison, who Woessner had kissed three years earlier. The swimmer in that case, Ariana Kukors Smith, has since said Hutchison was abusing her.)
But the brand was already on full display. The USOC held a SafeSport summit in 2014 that, per its own press release, “left each attendee inspired to take action.” What didn’t make the press release is the fact that that, as Outside reported, former short-track speed skater Bridie Farrell said at the conference that she had been sexually abused by a fellow skater, Andy Gabel. Gabel admitted to misconduct in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, but didn’t lose his lifetime membership to US Speedskating until 2016.
In June 2014, the SafeSport website had existed for two years. As captured by the Wayback Machine, it offered this advice on how to handle a report of possible child abuse.

It does not mention calling law enforcement or any authority outside the Olympic system.
In her deposition, Arrington would use the website as one of the big results of her work. (Estey refers to the lawyer for the one of the plaintiffs.)

When the Government Accountability Office did a report on abuse in athletics in 2015, the USOC once again trotted out SafeSport. They told the GAO that SafeSport was its “athlete safety program.” The physical center that had been promised still did not exist. That same year, according to USOC tax records, the organization finally amended its bylaws, “requiring members to comply with safe sport policies of the USOC and the independent safe sport organization designated by the USOC to enhance safe sport practices and to investigate and resolve safe sport violations.”
In 2015, USA Swimming held its own SafeSport conference. Dani Bostick, who was abused by her swimming coach in the 1980s, was invited to speak there. She described the experience as having little to do with preventing sexual abuse, and mostly about marketing.
“It was them using me as a victim show pony,” she said. “There was no significant content on actually preventing sexual abuse, and I left the conference going, ‘Why does this even exist?’”
In 2016, though, when the story of abuse in gymnastics first broke, the first solution proposed by the USOC was SafeSport, with Arrington giving quotes to reporters. That same year, SafeSport did an inquiry into a diving coach sexually abusing a young diver, according to a lawsuit filed by the diver this month.

In 2018, the USOC documented the transfer of its trademark on “SafeSport” to the SafeSport center—the same center that is supposed to be independent of the USOC.
Asked for comment, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky asked to speak on background, and said he couldn’t answer all of Deadspin’s questions within the 30 minutes he had allotted. Over email, he promised to look into why the USOC holds the trademark on SafeSport, and he sent a link to a 2017 letter to two senators from then-USOC CEO Scott Blackmun, which said delays in opening the SafeSport Center were due to it “[taking] more time and effort from more people than we expected.”
Asked to address the critique that the USOC is largely a marketing agency that now has been tasked with addressing sexual abuse, he wrote back: “The vast majority of our staff are dedicated to elite sport performance, including coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, physiologists, chiropractors, strength and conditioning experts, to name a few, all dedicated to delivering against the USOC mission of supporting athletes in achieving sustained competitive excellence.” As for the trademark, Sandusky said it was secured “to protect the name of the center for safe sport, not for marketing reasons.”
For the SafeSport center to have a chance, athletes need to believe in its independence. Otherwise, SafeSport will run into the same issue that has plagued law enforcement, child services, Title IX officers, and human resources departments: Victims avoid reporting to enforcement offices that they view as prioritizing the reputations of their institutions over individuals. Independence is hard enough to sell given that SafeSport existed for several years as little more than a USOC trademark, a website maintained by the USOC, and a nice catchphrase to trot out when another sexual-abuse scandal broke. But documentation of the earliest meetings of SafeSport board show that any assertion of independence is, at best, magical thinking.
First, there’s the matter of the SafeSport board of directors. USOC chief of sports operations Rick Adams is not on the board, but his own USOC biography page says that he “led the hiring of a CEO and a nine-member, independent board of directors” for SafeSport. Adams is accused in a lawsuit filed against the USOC and USA Taekwondo of knowing about “the numerous complaints of rape and sexual assault made by U.S. athletes against the Lopez brothers” and doing nothing. He would later go on to apologize before Congress for the USOC’s failings, but his fingerprints on SafeSport remain. (A USOC statement on the Taekwondo lawsuit did not specifically address any of the allegations.)
The first SafeSport board members included Fran Sepler, who, according to USA Gymnastics, was hired to interview gymnast Maggie Nichols in 2015 about Larry Nassar abusing her under the guise of medical treatment. Sepler told Sports Illustrated that she wasn’t there to do an investigation, just to “conduct interviews.” But USA Gymnastics’ statement about Sepler’s role was more vague, and Nichols’ dad said he was under the impression that Sepler was with law enforcement. Sepler has since left the board.
For the SafeSport center to have a chance, athletes need to believe in its independence.
Still listed as on the board is Megan Ryther, who spent four years on USA Swimming’s board of directors—the same organization that’s still plagued by sex-abuse cases. There’s also film producer Frank Marshall, who says on his own website that he was a member of the USOC for more than a decade. For his work with the USOC, he has an Olympic shield and was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. He also at one point was a board member for USA Gymnastics.
Dozens of pages of meeting minutes from the first two years of the SafeSport board do little to support the claim of independence. They do, however, line up with the idea of SafeSport as a USOC brand created to make parents feel better and make reporters go away. They show an organization—started by the USOC, given orders on what to do by USOC employees, and staffed in key positions with former USOC employees—that talked more about branding, market positioning, and how to handle a media crisis than child abuse or protecting athletes. Like this meeting on March 18, 2016:

The first meeting was held on Jan. 28, 2016, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the USOC is located. Along with the board of directors, six other people attended, according to the meeting minutes. Almost all of them worked for the USOC:
• Malia Arrington, USOC senior director, ethics and SafeSport
• Meredith Yeoman, USOC coordinator, community outreach and communications, ethics, and SafeSport
• Gary L. Johansen, USOC associate general counsel, legal, and SafeSport secretary.
• Stephen Brewer, USOC controller, finance, and SafeSport treasurer
• Chad Sunderland, USOC director of business intelligence, strategic planning
• David P. Kunstle, outside counsel for SafeSport from the law firm of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie
Arrington, the USOC official who said sex abuse had to be handled at the sport level, was the person guiding the SafeSport board as it created the SafeSport center to investigate child abuse. Johansen, the man who said the USOC doesn’t have athletes and dubbed sex abuse a “SafeSport issue,” was there as well.
Over and over again, in the minutes from early meetings, it’s impossible to ignore the influence Arrington had over the very foundation of the SafeSport center. In that first meeting, per the minutes, she is thanked for “getting the organization up and running.” Arrington gives the board a presentation about SafeSport. She goes over NGB and USOC bylaws. There is a discussion of the center’s possible policies done, according to the minutes, “under Malia Arrington’s leadership.”
When the meeting picked up again, the next day, the same USOC people were there, plus more:
• Rick Adams, USOC chief of Paralympic sport and NGB organizational development.
• Scott Blackmun, then-CEO of the USOC
• Blanton Jones, USOC vice president, annual and major gifts, development department
• Martha Johnson, USOC associate director, NGB fundraising development, development division
• Pam Sawyer, managing director USOC human resources department
Outside counsel aside, there was only one person without a USOC title, Paralympic athlete Rudy Garcia-Tolson. And the very first item noted on the minutes was Blackmun telling the board that SafeSport would get a few million from the USOC but, otherwise, “would need a dedicated and focused effort to raise funds in order to execute its mission.”
The very next speaker was Arrington.
For a second day in a row, her name starts many of the action lines described in the meeting minutes. She lays out the factors for SafeSport’s success. She leads a discussion on possible services SafeSport can provide. She tells the board that actually the USOC owns the trademark—true at the time, per federal records—but will transfer it over to this new organization. The motion to have Arrington sign such a licensing agreement passes unanimously.
From there, more USOC people talk. Adams, Jones, and Johnson bring up how to raise money based on their USOC and NGB experience. Sawyer talks about how to look for a CEO. Arrington talks about the struggle to get insurance for the center. The board agrees to keep on Arrington and Yeoman as a loaned CEO (from the USOC) and a loaned community outreach/communication coordinator (from the USOC), with their salaries paid by the USOC through July. And the board agrees that the center—the independent center for the independent investigators that won’t be influenced by the USOC—should be in Colorado, close to the USOC. There’s talk about branding, as Arrington is worried that SafeSport could be construed as having to do with concussions or equipment safety. Near the end, the board decides to break into three working groups: communications and marketing, executive search, and fundraising.
And on the second day, they already were talking about branding.

From there, the USOC’s fingerprints all over SafeSport only grow heavier.
The next meeting, on March 18, 2016, lists almost exclusively USOC people in attendance, outside the board, save for one person—USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny, who is described as speaking about the “challenges that were presented to USA Gymnastics in providing a safe sport environment.”
Arrington dominates the conversation. She talks about the importance of “establishing a sound reputation and gaining stakeholders’ trust.” Arrington tells them that a USOC vice president has agreed to help their fundraising efforts and another USOC person might be willing to serve as a liaison to SafeSport. There’s talk about “draft mission,” a “market strategy,” and “mission statements.” SafeSport, multiple times, is described in the meeting minutes as a “company” and Arrington and the USOC’s Chad Sunderland at one point is described as talking about “organizations that could serve as customers or key partners.”
The second half of the meeting takes places the next day and starts with this discussion:

There’s talk about creating a corporate donor policy, limiting a corporate sponsor to at most 15 percent of the center’s operating budget. No such limit is placed on the USOC. And in this, just the second board meeting, SafeSport’s programs already are seen as funding opportunities:

The meeting minutes do not reflect any prolonged conversation about how to best prevent sex abuse.
The last seven items discussed all start out with talking points from Arrington. They talk about bylaws, standing committees, advisory boards, possible key hires, compensation philosophy, starting a 24-hour hotline, a case-management system, and even where to put the SafeSport offices.
Their next significant meeting is spread across two days in late June 2016. Again, outside of the board members themselves, only USOC people were present. They agree to have their executive search done by Korn Ferry, a search firm that has worked with the USOC before. The executive search committee says it has gotten information from the USOC on “traits that might be useful in USCSS staffing.” Arrington discusses a staffing plan and branding, and the USOC’s Yeoman talks about marketing. The board members talk about the importance “of telling a positive story.”

There is still more talk about fundraising. Arrington reports that she has talked to the NCAA, but no details are given about how that conversation came about or how it went. The USOC’s Steven Brewer is relieved of his position as SafeSport’s treasurer, so that position can be filled with a board member. And even though the center hasn’t even opened its doors, it already has a crisis plan.

At the meeting, the shared services agreement with the USOC is extended through the end of the year. A little more than a month later, the Indianapolis Star publishes its first story detailing how USA Gymnastics ignored decades of reports of abuse by coaches. The board meets by phone weeks later, on Aug. 15; there is no discussion, per the minutes, of that story. They do authorize Arrington to sign a lease on an office for SafeSport in Colorado.
And who gives quotes to reporters a day after the Star story, telling reporters that SafeSport will come to the rescue? Arrington.
Kate Brannen, a SafeSport spokeswoman from PR firm Hill Impact, said the USOC wanted a member of the working group on the center’s staff, and the board chose Arrington. “Her experience and dedication to ending abuse in sport,” she said, “was invaluable in getting us to where we are today. Arrington sent her own response to an email asking for comment, saying that in her deposition in the USA Taekwondo case, “I spoke to the many ways I learned about important aspects of sexual assault over the years (and have since published in this area); unfortunately, a sliver of what I said was misused, sensationalized, and has since been carelessly repeated as if it is fact. I am not going to engage in a back and forth over personal attacks. To do so would distract from the important work of ending sexual abuse in sport and developing a culture that champions respect.”
The meetings continue like this. In September, a month after the Star story’s publication, the meeting minutes still show exclusively USOC people in attendance. Arrington is still the person presenting information to the board and guiding NGBs on the possible changes coming up. There is no mention of the Star story in the minutes. But there is the first mention of an “operational readiness plan,” with a start date of Jan. 1, 2017, and the board talks about “the need for an approved plan to guide [SafeSport’s] public and media relations.”
Again, the USOC is offered as a place for advice on fundraising, with board member Dr. Angelo Giordano saying one USOC vice president, Christine Walsh, “would be available to offer advice as to fundraising efforts.” There is discussion of making an offer to a candidate for CEO, but the meeting minutes don’t give a name.
On Dec. 9, 2016, the board thanks Arrington for her service as they welcome Shellie Pfohl as their CEO. But Arrington stays on, moving to the COO role. The tax records for SafeSport from 2016 say her “reportable compensation from related organizations” was $210,129 plus another $15,706 in “other compensation.”
In the first meeting of 2017, Arrington—the longtime USOC employee who helped build SafeSport and then became a SafeSport employee—brings up concerns about conflicts of interest. She suggests a two-year waiting period before an investigator from an Olympic or Paralympic organization can work for the organization. There is a great deal of talk about fundraising, and Pfohl brings up the idea of relationships with American sports leagues as well as “rebranding” SafeSport training and educational materials.
That March meeting is the first one where the guest list includes people who don’t have USOC titles. And while the center still has not opened its doors, there is another discussion about how to handle the media.

Board members get another media update at the next meeting, in June of 2017:

In late 2017, the USOC people largely fade away from the SafeSport board meeting minutes, and the minutes get shorter. There were no minutes from 2018 published on the SafeSport website. But the foundation had been laid—by people paid by the USOC.
When asked how they reconciled their independence with what the meeting minutes showed, SafeSport public relations provided this statement: “The Center’s history is something that we’ve been very transparent about and it’s well established that it was originally chartered by the USOC. Its independence comes from its governance, independent board of directors and bylaws. This is similar to the way the USOC initially established USADA, which today is an independent entity.” (Less than one-fifth of USADA’s budget comes from the USOC.)
Conflicts of interest have long been a concern for critics of SafeSport. Even before the center opened its doors, Hogshead-Makar, CEO of ChampionWomen, and Marci Hamilton, CEO of Child USA and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had sent multiple letters critiquing the proposed SafeSport code that the center would be in charge of enforcing. They went back and forth on several issues, including whether coaches should be allowed to be alone with children, who was covered by the SafeSport code, and how the organization could guarantee its independence. They mentioned this in their third letter:

Hamilton said she doesn’t hold out much hope for what SafeSport can accomplish, and has even less hope than when she wrote those letters. She is still concerned by how SafeSport works, especially the lack of transparency in what it finds, because it means nobody but a select few people will ever know how systemic the issue within the Olympic community truly is. Without that type of transparency, Hamilton said, “you can’t get the poison out of the system.”
“The more I think about it, the more I think this is just not the way we get to where we need to be,” she said, “which is maximum transparency and maximum justice.”
So what does the SafeSport center actually do? According to its own code, it has exclusive authority to investigate sexual misconduct and other conduct prohibited by the code that “is reasonably related to the underlying allegation of sexual misconduct.” That’s it. It cannot investigate bullying or hazing or emotional abuse or physical abuse or essentially any form of abuse, outside of sexual abuse. All those other forms of abuse? They are the province of the NGBs—hardly an encouraging thought for anyone considering reporting abuse given the track records of multiple NGBs.
This structure also ignores how much of the Olympic system happens beyond the official confines of the NGBs, in private clubs, leagues, and teams.

According to its guidelines, the only way the SafeSport center can take on an investigation that isn’t connected to sexual misconduct is if it receives a written request from an NGB or USOC. Even then, any action would be at the center’s discretion. And there are many more gaps that SafeSport simply can’t fill. It has no jurisdiction over NCAA sports. It doesn’t have jurisdiction over who owns a private sports club. It can’t ban a person from showing up at private events, which already has become an issue with banned volleyball coach Rick Butler. And it can’t stop individual parents from waiving concerns aside because they want their kid to win.
Operating perfectly, SafeSport will, by design, at best handle a fraction of abuse cases, while standing at a remove from some of the central elements of Olympic sports. As is, SafeSport is not set up to operate perfectly.
In her deposition, Arrington went over how much of the Olympic movement, by design, is beyond their control (the questions are from attorney John Little):
After some objections from a USOC lawyer, Arrington gives another answer on the topic.
So, from the outset, the SafeSport center is, at best, limited. What is will be excellent at, though, is keeping the details of horrifying sexual abuse at the highest levels of Olympic sport out of the court system—where depositions like Arrington’s can happen and become public.
“If they can head off the civil lawsuits,” lawyer Stephen Estey told me, “they’re never going to make any real, substantial change.”
When Deadspin emailed SafeSport using the supplied media contact information, the responses came from Dan Hill and Kate Brannen of SafeSport’s PR firm, Hill Impact. Hill said that about 19 percent of SafeSport’s investigations are done by contract investigators. The names of the investigators would not be provided but their background, he said, was in “law enforcement, legal and investigations. Some come from Title IX.” They are not allowed to have worked previously for an NGB or the USOC, he said. In a separate email, Brannen said that the average investigator has 10 to 15 years experience on sexual-assault cases.
But here’s what the backgrounds of people who say they work for SafeSport shows: Pfohl doesn’t come from a child welfare background. All her previous jobs have to do with encouraging eating healthy and physical fitness among children; her most recent role was as executive director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Asked why Pfohl was selected despite her lack of experience working with victims of abuse, Brannen responded that she “is a more than capable, hard-working executive with significant experience in the nonprofit sector and the development of sport-related programs for youth.
Then there’s SafeSport’s former director of legal affairs, whose title was changed to director of investigations and outcomes shortly before Deadspin inquired about his background. Michael Henry says on his LinkedIn profile that he finished law school in 2012 at Texas Tech. He spent a few years doing Title IX work at Texas Tech, then joined a prominent Title IX consulting group, NCHERM, before taking over at SafeSport. Until at least June of this year, records show he was called the group’s “legal affairs director,” which sure makes him sound like a lawyer. He’s referred to with that title, sourced to his LinkedIn page, in an Irv Muchnick blog post earlier this year in which Muchnick referred to him as the “chief lawyer for the agency.”
“Legal affairs director”—is also how ZoomInfo catalogued Henry’s business information. And in a letter Henry sent, dated June 5 of this year, he signed it as“legal affairs director.” The letter was an exhibit filed in Richard Callaghan’s lawsuit against SafeSport to stop his interim suspension for sexual misconduct. Here’s the top of the letter:
And here’s the bottom, with his title:

Henry, though, isn’t a practicing lawyer. Deadspin asked SafeSport for the bar number and issuing state for Henry. SafeSport responded that Henry never took the bar and was never the general counsel, and that his title was “director of investigations and outcomes.”
In response to follow-up questions about why his title had changed, SafeSport responded that the center knew that he wasn’t a lawyer when he was hired and the title change was due to a recent reorganization in which the center hired a “chief of response and resolution,” to whom Henry reports. That new employee, W. Scott Lewis, was announced via press release on July 5. Lewis also came from prominent Title IX consultants NCHERM.
Deadspin also found one woman who publicly identifies as a SafeSport investigator on LinkedIn and, as with Henry, has experience only at the collegiate level. She says that she did Title IX work at the University of Hawaii for about three years and, before that, worked at the University of Phoenix. One of SafeSport’s contract investigators also was named through her emails to the lawyer for Callaghan. The investigator in that case is another Title IX lawyer, Kathryn “Kai” McGintee, with Maine law firm Bernstein Shur’s Labor and Employment Practice Group and Education Practice Group. McGintee has been quoted as a Title IX expert in the past, and her name is mostly comes up with her sexual-assault investigations at Phillips Exeter Academy, which parents sued over how the elite prep school handled reports of sexual assault.
________________________________________
Hill, responding on behalf of SafeSport said he couldn’t set up an interview with Pfohl within Deadspin’s timeframe, but did offer to set up an interview with Katie Hanna, director of education and outreach for SafeSport. With a member of the group’s PR team on the call, Hanna talked about her plans for the educational component of SafeSport. The current staff is extremely small, just a few people, and their budget is $1.5 million.
Overall, Hanna—who has a background in working to end sexual violence—sounded extremely positive. She talked about creating “a learning community” where peers and coaches teach each other best practices and reaching out to coaches who wanted to be part of the change. She said, “There are so many coaches who are working to end abuse in sports.” And several NGBs, she said, had indicated they wanted to go above and beyond what SafeSport required. So far, they had consulted with Coaching Boys Into Men and Athletes As Leaders for guidance on building positive environments.
“So much about what works in prevention is having ongoing assistance and training to make sure it’s effective,” she said.
Asked what she could do about NGBs, like USA Swimming, that have been called out for having poor or even dangerous SafeSport materials, Hanna said, “We will provide best practices to NGBs.” The SafeSport center does have the authority to do random audits of NGBs to see if they are in compliance with the SafeSport code, and can issue consequences if they are not, but those consequences hadn’t been finalized when we spoke.
“If they can head off the civil lawsuits, they’re never going to make any real, substantial change.”
Asked about the sheer size and demand of what they were being asked to do—end sex abuse in sports—and with so few resources, Hanna answered with the positivity common to people who provide perpetually underfunded services for women and children. “We’re up for the task,” she said.
SafeSport’s recent hires surely want to do good work. But can they make a difference? Pfohl’s testimony before Congress last month showed how overworked they are. Between the time the center opened in March 2017 and April of this year, the group received more than 800 complaints, covering 38 out of the close to 50 NGBs. As of June, SafeSport had 14 employees: five full-time investigators, nine staff that work in other areas, and seven “external, contracted investigators. (Pfohl insisted these investigators were qualified, although she would not go into many detail about what made them so.) The entire budget, she said, is “a little more than $4.6 million.” When asked if this is enough money and people to investigate every complaint thoroughly, Pfohl quickly replied, “No.” (Since that interview, SafeSport has hired a chief of response and resolution, and have posted five job openings.)
The lack of funding isn’t new, even if members of Congress act surprised in front of the cameras. From the Colorado Springs Gazette in April 2017:
In a March interview, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun said the delay in opening SafeSport was primarily financial. The USOC will provide $10 million to fund SafeSport’s first five years of operation.
Raising those funds was challenging.
“We thought we would be able to raise financial support for this program faster than we were able to,” Blackmun said.
Pfohl brings up the delay question without being asked.
“Gosh,” she said, “we all wish it would have happened faster.”
Those limited dollars explain why Pfohl had to give answers like this, when asked about how SafeSport will be able to audit how it is doing. “I would say,” Pfohl said, before taking a long pause, “our resources are limited in that area in terms of self-audits, if you will. But our goal, and I know it is a high priority for our board, we will find the resources to be able to do it.”
Since then, SafeSport says it has received more than 1,000 complaints. Brannen said the center had issued almost 300 sanctions and made more than 149 individuals permanently ineligible.
The money SafeSport does have comes largely from organizations it is tasked with policing or that have relationships with the Olympic movement. The center itself didn’t have its own tax returns, known as 990s, until 2016, when it reported having less than $1 million in net assets and $1.5 million in revenue. Most of that—$1.07 million—came from “related organizations,” meaning the USOC, which said on its own tax return that it gave SafeSport $1.07 million that year for “furthering Olympic and Paralympic support.” SafeSport also gets money from the NGBs, although those figures are much smaller. USA Swimming president and CEO Tim Hinchey, for instance, told Congress that his organization, which is one of the larger NGBs, gave about $43,000 a year.
Public records don’t yet detail how much the USOC has given SafeSport more recently. SafeSport’s website, though, lists their sponsors: two Olympic organizations; the NBA and WNBA, which work with the Olympics; ESPN, which has Olympic ties too; and NBC, the network that broadcasts the Olympics. It’s difficult to understand how SafeSport can be considered independent—no matter how many times Pfohl and told Congress, “I don’t answer to anyone at the USOC”—when so many organizations that benefit from the Olympics are cutting the checks.

It didn’t have to be this way. One version of the United States Center for Safe Sport Authorization Act, filed by Sen. Bill Nelson and Sen. John Thune in 2017, included a provision to give SafeSport $1 million each year. That’s not nearly enough to cover everything, but such a setup would at least represent a start. The final version of the bill, which passed earlier this year, contained no language about how to fund SafeSport, forcing the organization that’s supposed to make millions of children across America safer to go out and find its own cash. So while members of Congress go through hearing after hearing worrying about SafeSports’ conflict of interest, they leave how they themselves contributed to it.
Deadspin asked spokesmen for Nelson, Thune, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein why appropriations were left out of the bill; a member of the Commerce committee staff responded to the inquiries by saying the funding language ended up getting replaced with a “DOJ competitive grant included/funded in the omnibus.”
That grant, according to the bill that passed, is for $2.5 million, while the 34-page solicitation puts it at about $2.2 million. The SafeSport Center, in theory, is a lock for the funds because the program is earmarked for “an eligible nonprofit nongovernmental entity in order to support oversight of the United States Olympic Committee, each national governing body, and each Paralympic sports organization with regard to safeguarding amateur athletes against abuse, including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in sports.” But they still have to apply. And wait.
What about in the coming years, especially after 2022, the last year mentioned in the funding bill? Will there be more grants? That is up to Congress, the organization that created the USOC and its entire system of buck-passing.
Given the distinction between the SafeSport center and SafeSport as a program, most of what SafeSport is and does will, ultimately, take place at the sport level. And as anyone who’s read coverage of NGBs like USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming, USA Taekwondo, or USA Diving over the last year and a half knows, this is an issue. These are the very bodies that have failed to act on, or acted to cover up, reports of abuse.
“Right now, all the power resides with what some people refer to as the suits—the administrators and the Karolyis—and none of the power resides with the athletes,” Hogshead-Makar said. “It’s a zero-sum game. So how do you move it from them to the athlete?”
It’s hard to know where to begin with the list of problems that make that movement so difficult: the lack of oversight of coaches; the incomplete lists of banned coaches; and the lack of significant change at many NGBs, where a leader can easily survive a sexual-abuse scandal, are among the most serious. Perhaps unsurprisingly, even the very people hired to execute SafeSport at the NGB level can raise red flags.
“I have a huge problem with how most NGBs hire people to work in SafeSport, and that is they don’t hire people from outside sports. They hire marketing people,” Hogshead-Makar said.
A visit to several NGB’s SafeSport websites shows most are bland collections of graphics, brochures, and hotline numbers. One of the more robust online programs belongs to the sport that started SafeSport and one of the largest NGBs: USA Swimming, where it’s already been called a farce and a sham. Swimming promoted Susan Woessner to oversee SafeSport, even though her prior job had been in business operations; she resigned after the Orange County Register reported that she had kissed a coach accused of sexual abuse. Think Progress dove through USA Swimming’s SafeSport materials and found plenty of troubling messages, like one exercise that said, “It’s coaches’ jobs to care about you!”
And the downright glibness of the SafeSport Activity Book, a coloring book that USA Swimming puts out quarterly, shows SafeSport at its conceptual worst, functioning as literal public relations. (According to the website, the coloring book is meant to start conversations about “all the reasons to love the sport of swimming.”) Let’s go through the most recent issue.



The coloring book adventure concludes with our guides sending us off, saying we are ready to be SafeSport champions.
Bostick, the former swimmer who came forward about her abuse, has expressed her concerns to USA Swimming about these materials as well their program overall. When people see the logo for USA Swimming, Bostick says, they “think this is someone who will help me be healthy, someone I can trust. This isn’t someone in a broken-down van with a puppy offering you candy. It inspires trust.” (USA Swimming did not respond to requests for comment.)
Add to that the power of a catchy brand, like SafeSport: “When you see SafeSport, you are going to assume it’s the best material out there in terms of athlete safety and prevention,” Bostick said. “Instead, it’s terrible. It’s a marketing arm of USA Swimming, but with people’s lives on the line.”
Or look at USA Gymnastics, another one of the largest NGBs. Its president, Kathy Perry, recently spoke at a regional gymnastics meeting, and the full audio was aired by the podcast GymCastic. Perry talks about exercises to describe what words best describe their core values. She says “empowerment” a lot, plus “safety” and “culture” and “SafeSport.” Perry hits every buzzword that’s expected. It all sounds good, but it’s difficult to point to anything concrete substance beyond the expected marketing speak.




USA Gymnastics President Assures Membership That Everything Is In Chaos And The Situation Is Excelle...

Kerry Perry hasn’t sat down for any media interviews since coming on as president and CEO of USA…
Read more
________________________________________
“We’re not here today to tear down the sporting world,” said U.S. Rep. Diana L. DeGette, whose district includes the SafeSport center, during one of the many recent rounds of Congressional testimony.
That is part of the problem. Ending child abuse both within and beyond sports is about tearing things down, and about remaking the world. Hamilton, who has studied child abuse across multiple institutions, wrote last year on what she has learned from seeing the same crimes committed over and over again in different institutions, different states, and different walks of life but always with the same horrifying details “because child sex abuse is as old as humankind and just as entrenched.”
This tectonic shift cannot happen when discrete organizations are left to their own devices, no matter how good their intentions, because unaccountable organizations (and that is what an organization governing itself is) will devolve into scenarios of self-protection and adult preferentialism. The law has set up organizations to these ends, actually: The boards of directors have fiduciary obligations to the organization, the leadership is awarded for its success for the organization, and the fans of the organizations have an insatiable appetite for its public achievements. When you add to that the ingrained tendency of adults to put adult interests like reputation and career ahead of children, the result is that children continue to be institutionally incapable of overcoming these biases against protection.
Instead, America has been given SafeSport.
It is, in some ways, a distinctly American creation—born from the rib of a marketing agency, given a gargantuan task, forced to figure things out on the fly with little oversight, and to pay for itself. It’s not surprising that SafeSport is underfunded and overworked, that it may employ people who are under-qualified, or that it has been heavily influenced by people who appear to care more about trademarks and preventing lawsuits than protecting children. You could apply the same observations to plenty of child welfare agencies across America. What’s surprising is that anyone thinks SafeSport will somehow turn out different than every other attempt to help children.
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SafeSport, as currently constructed, will not accomplish its lofty goal, but it will make for great marketing. Give the lawyers a good phrase to say—something cleaner than “sexual assault” or “rape” or “abuse”—and trot out all the usual people to insist that there’s nothing to see here, that their handpicked people will take care of it just like they always have, and you can get away with a lot. Given the USOC’s own history, there’s no reason to think this was ever about anything else.
https://deadspin.com/safesport-the-usoc ... 1826279217

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

USOPC says SafeSport is the appropriate organization to investigate allegations against Bowman.

Post by greybeard58 » Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:10 pm

USOPC says SafeSport is the appropriate organization to investigate allegations against Bowman.

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) has rejected an American think tank’s request to suspend Stan Bowman from his position as general manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team while he faces allegations that he helped cover up the sexual abuse of two Chicago Blackhawks players.
In an email to TSN on Tuesday, USOPC spokesman Jon Mason wrote the U.S. Center for SafeSport is the appropriate organization to investigate allegations against Bowman.
“The U.S. Center for SafeSport was created as an independent organization dedicated to receiving and investigating reports of sexual misconduct and harassment, and emotional and physical abuse within the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movements,” Mason wrote. “The Center has the exclusive jurisdiction over participants, and to investigate and resolve allegations involving child abuse or sexual misconduct, including failure to report such allegations.”
Mason refused to say whether the USOPC would consult with the center for SafeSport about the request made on Sept. 10 by Marci Hamilton, founder of the advocacy group Child USA, to suspend Bowman from his position with USA Hockey.
“At this point, I’ll have to direct you to the center for any additional information,” Mason wrote.
Hamilton had asked the USOPC to commission an independent investigation into Bowman’s behaviour as GM of the Blackhawks.
In a text message to TSN on Wednesday, Hamilton wrote she is awaiting an official response to her request from USOPC.
“SafeSport doesn’t select the summer and winter Olympic coaches and SafeSport has an opaque, slow and ineffective system,” Hamilton wrote. “That’s USOPC once again avoiding its own responsibility for athlete safety and for the sex abuse that runs through athletics.”
Hamilton’s letter recounted allegations made against Bowman and his Blackhawks management colleagues in a pair of lawsuits filed earlier this year in Chicago against the team.
One lawsuit, filed by a former Blackhawks player referred to as “John Doe 1” in court documents, alleges that after the team’s management was informed that former video coach Brad Aldrich had allegedly sexually assaulted two players during the 2009-10 season, the team allowed him to remain employed through the end of that season, and refused to report the allegations to police.
A second lawsuit filed by a former high school hockey player in Houghton, Mich., who is referred to as “John Doe 2” in court documents, alleges that the Blackhawks gave Aldrich a positive job reference that allowed him to secure positions within the hockey department of Miami University in Ohio and later as a high school coach in Houghton, where in 2013 he was convicted of sexually assaulting the then-16-year-old player.
The U.S. Center for SafeSport is aware of the Blackhawks scandal. In June, an intake coordinator for SafeSport contacted a lawyer for John Does 1 and 2 to inform her that the centre had received a report concerning Bowman’s alleged misconduct that her client, the former Blackhawks player, may have witnessed, or personally experienced.
It’s unclear whether the centre has officially opened an investigation.
The Blackhawks have claimed in court documents that the team investigated the allegations and found them to be meritless. The team said in a court filing on Friday that the former Blackhawks player’s lawsuit should be dismissed because of limitation periods, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The Blackhawks also said the former high school player’s lawsuit should be dismissed because there was a lack of evidence to support the claim the team provided Aldrich with a job reference, The Sun-Times reported. The newspaper reported that the team has asked the former high school player’s attorney to withdraw that lawsuit.
With media scrutiny over the scandal increasing, the Blackhawks in June hired Chicago lawyer Reid Schar to look into the claims. The Blackhawks say the investigation is independent and that they will make Schar’s findings public. The National Hockey League has said it's awaiting the results of Schar’s investigation before taking any possible action.
“This investigation is not neutral,” Hamilton wrote in her letter to the USOPC. “A truly independent investigation cannot be funded by the organization whose executives reportedly covered up Aldrich’s abuse. Miami University has opened an internal investigation, but the scope is limited to the four months he was employed at the University.
“Bowman is still the general manager of the Blackhawks and earlier this year he was appointed as the general manager of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team for the 2022 Beijing Games. How could Bowman, who has been publicly accused of covering up the abuse of a serial predator, be allowed to lead USA Hockey and represent our country at the international level?”
Hamilton’s three-page letter was also sent to U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal and Jerry Moran.
Blumenthal and Moran led an 18-month investigation into systemic abuse within the U.S. Olympic movement and advocated for the passage of the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act, which was passed in October 2020 and imposed reforms in the Olympic world, forcing more oversight of the coaches and executives who control the sports.
The act permits Congress to dissolve the board of directors of the Olympic committee and to decertify offending national governing bodies.
USOPC rebuffs request to suspend Bowman
Read more: https://www.tsn.ca/rick-westhead-usopc- ... -1.1693863

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Steve Penny's Silence Allegedly Allowed Larry Nassar to Abuse More Girls

Post by greybeard58 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:39 pm

Steve Penny's Silence Allegedly Allowed Larry Nassar to Abuse More Girls
BY ALLISON CACICH
JUN. 24 2020, UPDATED 1:34 P.M. ET

On June 24, Netflix released its latest documentary, Athlete A, which follows the team of investigative journalists who exposed USA Gymnastics (USAG) physician Larry Nassar’s long history of sexually abusing young females in his care.

The 56-year-old has been accused of molesting at least 250 girls, many of whom were underage when the assaults occurred — but Nassar isn’t the only villain in this story. Steve Penny, who served as the president and CEO of USAG for nearly 12 years, allegedly covered up the extent of the doctor’s crimes for over a year.


Where is former USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny now?
The disgraced sports administrator is currently awaiting trial in Huntsville, Texas on a third-degree felony evidence tampering charge. He was arrested in October 2018, more than a year-and-a-half after he resigned from his position in USAG’s governing body, for allegedly ordering the removal of documents pertaining to Nassar.

According to former USAG Senior Vice President Rhonda Faehn, Penny instructed National Teams Manager Amy White to pick up several boxes of medical records from Karolyi Ranch, the team’s training center, in November 2016 — two months after Nassar was fired from his faculty position at Michigan State University.

The documents taken from the ranch reportedly contained sensitive information about Nassar and his treatment of athletes. If convicted of evidence tampering, Penny — who has pleaded not guilty and is out on $20,000 bail — faces two to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Court documents state that Penny first learned of Nassar’s crimes in June of 2015 when U.S. national team member Maggie Nichols told her coach about the sexual abuse she endured.

However, the CEO kept the allegations quiet until September 2016, reportedly allowing 40 young girls to be molested by Nassar during that period. Penny was permanently banned from USAG following his arrest.


Despite his firing, USAG is still trying to protect Steve Penny.
In February, USAG proposed a $217 million settlement, which would award Nassar’s victims one of four different sums based on the location of their assaults:

$1,250,757 for gymnasts abused at the Olympics, Worlds, national team training camps, or other national team events.
$508,670 for non-elite gymnasts abused at USAG-sanctioned events.
$174,401 for gymnasts abused at non-USAG locations.
$82,550 for individuals with "derivative claims."
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The settlement would also release Penny, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and former national team directors Bela and Martha Karolyi from all claims filed against them.


John Manly, an attorney representing dozens of Nassar’s accusers, expressed outrage over the suggested agreement. "What [USAG] is saying [is] if we place a known pedophile in that gym and that individual rapes your child, then your child is worth $82,000," he stated.

"This is the most disgusting, reprehensible, vile view of children I can imagine," he added. "Steve Penny was so bad USA Gymnastics banned him for life, the Karolyis, every one of them, and they pay nothing. They have no consequences. What message does that send to the next Steve Penny?"

We sincerely hope that these brave survivors receive the justice they deserve.

https://www.distractify.com/p/steve-pen ... astics-now





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greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

McKayla Maroney U.S. Senate testimony

Post by greybeard58 » Wed Sep 22, 2021 6:02 pm

Content warning: The following u-tube video contains material that maybe harmful or traumatizing to some audiences!

McKayla Maroney U.S. Senate testimony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHpjA_qS_-w

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Here is the link to the Darkness to Light

Post by greybeard58 » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:56 pm

Here is the link to the Darkness to Light: Child Sexual Abuse | Sexual Abuse Prevention | Darkness to Light - Darkness to Light
or d2l.org
ALY RAISMAN: DARKNESS TO LIGHT
September 14, 2021
| By Darkness to Light
Categories: Child Sexual Abuse Survivors, Guides, News and Events
| Tags: Aly Raisman, Flip the Switch, Survivor Stories, Viewing Guide
Champion gymnast and Darkness to Light partner Aly Raisman will premiere a three-hour documentary special, Aly Raisman: Darkness to Light, on September 24 at 8p/7c on Lifetime.

This special reveals the tumultuous journey to healing from the perspective of sexual abuse survivors, following the three-time Olympic gold medalist as she advocates for survivors while sharing personal accounts and coping strategies that have helped on her own journey of healing.
Raisman meets with individuals who have suffered abuse, revealing the trauma that lasts from childhood to adulthood, and the triggers that affect them – and her – physically and emotionally. By sharing their stories and insights gleaned along the way, their experiences are validated, and survivors are reminded that they are never alone in their journey and that there is hope.
“The inspiration behind this project is to show support for survivors and let them know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Raisman. “Our society has a long history of enabling abusers instead of supporting survivors and this is a huge problem. I hope people will tune in to learn some tools to recognize and help prevent abuse, and understand just how important it is to believe and support survivors. And for all the survivors out there, please know that you are not alone, you will not feel like this forever, and that there is hope.”
Raisman addressed her abuser, Larry Nassar, in a Michigan courtroom in January 2018, rallying other survivors to step forward and demand justice and accountability. Her voice helped set off a tectonic shift, exposing the pervasive system of abuse and enabling that has harmed America’s youth. Nassar is currently serving a 60-year federal prison sentence following his conviction on multiple charges of sexual assault.

Aly Raisman: Darkness to Light explores one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in the country where a beloved community pediatrician abused several generations of children and showcases the aftermath for the survivors in Johnstown, PA, follows conversations with a male survivor of the Ohio State abuse scandal, and details how disabled and transgender communities can be specific targets of abuse.
In addition, the special features an exclusive conversation with meToo founder Tarana Burke, in depth information from experts from RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network) and the nonprofit Darkness to Light, whose mission is to empower adults to prevent, recognize and react responsibly to child sexual abuse. Aly Raisman: Darkness to Light closes with a roundtable discussion with experts and advocates–including Raisman, Anton Gunn (Darkness to Light Board Member, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama and the world’s leading authority on Socially Conscious Leadership) and Rachael Denhollander (attorney, author, and sexual abuse advocate)–on how to help prevent child sexual abuse while providing tools on how to move forward.
Child sexual abuse can be a tough subject to face, but there is good news: now that you know the truth what your kids or friends could be facing, you have the chance to be a changemaker. Your response could make all the difference for someone going through a tough time!
________________________________________

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

In Larry Nassar’s shadow, a larger sex abuse case at the University of Michigan

Post by greybeard58 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 4:02 pm

In Larry Nassar’s shadow, a larger sex abuse case at the University of Michigan

Lenny Bernstein
Today at 8:00 a.m. EDT

U.S. senators listened intently last week as four world-class gymnasts told Congress of the harrowing impact of sexual abuse by former Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar.
When the testimony was done, they lauded the women’s courage. The director of the FBI, also at the hearing, apologized for his agency’s shoddy investigation.
“I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Maggie Nichols. “And that is inexcusable.”
Sixty miles from Nassar’s one time office, a similar but much larger case of sex abuse is playing out with little of the same attention. More than 950 people have come forward to accuse the late University of Michigan doctor Robert E. Anderson of abusing them while he was on staff between 1966 and 2003, according to lawyers who represent the survivors.
That total surpasses the scale of the molestation at Michigan State, as well as similar incidents at the University of Southern California and Ohio State University. Attorneys for the University of Michigan survivors contend the allegations against Anderson constitute the largest example of sexual exploitation by one person in U.S. history.
A number of Anderson’s alleged victims, most prominently former football players, have publicly told stories of the physician fondling them and repeatedly performing unnecessary rectal and genital exams during their years at the school. As a result, his conduct over decades as the football team doctor has drawn the most attention since the story broke in February 2020, a dozen years after his death.
But the small group of attorneys bringing the case said they also have claims spanning decades from athletes on the wrestling, basketball, track and field, hockey, swimming and tennis teams. Pilots and air traffic controllers have accused Anderson of abuse during physicals he conducted in his private practice for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Anderson, who died in 2008 without facing charges, also allegedly molested nonathlete students as a physician for the university’s health service; men who sought Vietnam War draft deferments by claiming to be gay; the estranged son of iconic football coach Bo Schembechler, who said he was violated when his father sent him to Anderson for a sports physical at the age of 10; and a former chairman of the university’s Board of Regents, who was a student at Michigan in the 1960s, according to investigative reports and public statements from survivors.
The vast majority of survivors are men, but Anderson also is accused of abusing women, including a player on the first Michigan women’s varsity tennis team in 1973, who has spoken publicly.
In public accounts and two investigative reports, the survivors said they complained to coaches, trainers and administrators, and nothing was ever done. The Washington Post contacted each of the named victims in this story or their lawyers and all affirmed their accounts.
“The university knew, the enabler, the institution — not one time, not 10 times, but knew for decades,” said Mick Grewal, who said he represents about 250 people who have reported abuse by Anderson. “ . . . How can you know this and not report this to law enforcement?”
The university has apologized for the pain survivors suffered and is in mediated talks with their attorneys about how to compensate them. It also has instituted a number of reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.
One factor that unites Anderson with Nassar and other doctors accused of abusing people on college campuses, lawyers and an expert said, is the easy access they had to a large number of young and powerless people.
“Medicine is unique among professions in that every physician has the right to say, ‘Please undress, we’re going to be alone in a room together and I’m going to touch you’,” said James DuBois, director of the Bioethics Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis, who has conducted one of the few recent reviews of physicians who commit sexual abuse. “Every physician has the means to abuse that other professionals do not.”
Such abusers prey on people they believe are least likely to report, lawyers said, including athletes required to have physical exams to keep their spots on a team.
“You’re at a very powerful institution, away from home, required to see a prominent doctor, first of your family to go to college, you’re probably under scholarship, and this doctor was able to have his way with you,” said Parker Stinar, an attorney who said he and his colleagues represent more than 200 claimants.
Other students were on their own for the first time in a place that had promised to meet their medical needs.
One woman who alleged she was abused by Anderson when she was a freshman in the 1970s said she had been through a “quasi-legal abortion” after she was raped by an acquaintance during high school and told Anderson about it at the exam.
“He knew two things instantly from my story,” said the woman, who asked that her name be withheld. “I had no idea what rape was and . . . I had no one in the world to take care of me.” The Post generally does not name victims of sexual abuse without their consent.
Robert E. Anderson in the 1970s. (Robert Kalmbach)
Now the survivors of Anderson’s attacks are focused mainly on two issues: Who in the administration of one of the top U.S. public universities allowed Anderson’s conduct to continue for nearly four decades? And how will the school, which has acknowledged his behavior, resolve their claims?
Beyond a financial settlement now under mediation, some survivors want an apology, evidence of culture change, and possibly money for research dedicated to preventing sexual abuse by others.
In response to written questions, university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said in an email that “we offer sympathy to all of the victims of the late Dr. Robert Anderson. We thank them for their bravery in coming forward. We have repeatedly apologized for the pain they have suffered, and we remain committed to resolving their claims through the court-guided, confidential mediation process that is ongoing.”
Neither side would discuss the mediation between attorneys for the survivors and university lawyers, which is being overseen by a federal judge.
On July 15, Michigan announced “sweeping revisions” to its approach to sexual misconduct, including “the creation of a new unit focused on care, education and prevention, in addition to investigations; a cultural change journey; new policies that prohibit supervisors from engaging in romantic relationships with those they may supervise; and other changes” to university policy, Fitzgerald said.
Two investigations released over the past 19 months — one by a university detective and another by the law firm WilmerHale, which was hired by the school but given free rein in its review — as well as the public firsthand accounts provide strong evidence that school officials were repeatedly alerted to Anderson beginning in the late 1960s.

At least four people claim they personally complained to Schembechler — the late coach immortalized by a larger-than-life statue outside the university’s football headquarters — among them his estranged son, Matt. Others said Don Canham, the athletic director who, with Schembechler, built the modern Michigan football program into an athletic and economic powerhouse, was also made aware. Canham is also dead.
One administrator told investigators he walked into Anderson’s office in 1979 and fired him after hearing accounts of his conduct. But records show Anderson never left the university’s employ. The discrepancy remains unexplained. The administrator died in February.
On team after team over nearly four decades, Anderson’s behavior was so widely known and openly discussed that the WilmerHale report called athletes’ trepidation “an open secret, or perhaps no secret at all.” Nicknames for Anderson abounded, including “Handy Andy” and “Dr. Drop Your Drawers Anderson,” the report noted.
The Schembechler and Canham families defended the now-deceased athletic officials, saying neither knew about the doctor’s behavior.

Members of Schembechler’s family said in a statement that “Bo had a clear and compelling sense of right and wrong: he would not have tolerated misconduct, especially toward any of his players, family members, coaches or to anyone associated with the University of Michigan’s football program. If Bo had known of inappropriate conduct, we are certain that he would have stopped it immediately, reported it, and had Dr. Anderson removed from the University.”
The Canham family said in a separate statement that Don Canham “sent many of his family members to Dr. Anderson without reservation — something he would not have done had he been aware of the allegations. It is our belief that, had Don known of any allegations of improper conduct, he would have investigated them fully and taken all appropriate action to protect the student athletes to whom he dedicated his life and career.”
Anderson remained a university physician — while also at times maintaining a private practice in town and training young doctors from Michigan’s medical school — until he retired in 2003, five years before he died.
There were “people with authority at various levels, up to the highest levels in some of these institutions, who knew and covered up and failed to protect,” said David Share, a physician and retired executive for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, who has accused Anderson of abuse.
Now 70, Share said Anderson assaulted him shortly after he arrived as a freshman at Michigan in 1968, when he went to the student health service complaining of a sore throat. He became somewhat withdrawn that year, he said, and suffered psychological problems for decades.
“It’s really important to understand how large, powerful, moneyed institutions behave, for good and for bad, how they go astray, and how people are harmed,” Share said.

Survivors tell their stories

In February 2020, the Detroit News asked the university about a claim of sexual abuse against Anderson that dated to 1971. The accusation came from former Michigan student Robert Stone. Prompted by reports of sexual assault by Nassar, Stone told the newspaper, he had reported Anderson to the university in the summer of 2019, but was stonewalled when he sought to learn what had been done. That’s when he brought his story to the newspaper.
Within hours of receiving the inquiry, university officials told the newspaper that a campus detective had conducted a secret, exhaustive investigation of Anderson that began in 2018, based on a tip to the athletic department from former Michigan wrestler Tad DeLuca.
Although the investigation turned up account after account of Anderson’s alleged abuses, county prosecutors had determined that no charges could be brought because of time limits on prosecution set by the law at the time. Victoria Burton-Harris, the county’s chief assistant prosecutor, said the decision was made by a previous administration, but if new evidence is brought to her office about criminal sexual conduct, it would be reviewed. Steven Hiller, who held the job when the decision was made, declined to comment.
The university put out a call for complaints of abuse by Anderson after revealing the investigation. Over the next 18 months, reports — most private but some eventually very public — poured in. Lawsuits followed.

Tad DeLuca, who was on the University of Michigan wrestling team in the 1970s, speaks during a 2020 news conference at which he identified himself as the whistleblower in the Anderson case. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
DeLuca, for example, detailed his 10-page letter to his wrestling coach, written in 1975, which complained of the multiple “genital, hernia, and prostate examinations” he received from Anderson when he sought treatment for cold sores and a dislocated elbow. The letter was forwarded to Canham, according to the WilmerHale report and DeLuca’s own public comments. DeLuca was booted from the team over ongoing conflict about his injuries and stripped of his scholarship before he hired a lawyer and won it back.

Chuck Christian, a Michigan football player in the late 1970s and early 1980s, filed a lawsuit in May 2020, contending that Anderson subjected him to painful rectal exams during his physicals. For many years, he avoided prostate exams until symptoms forced him to take one in his 50s, he said. He now has terminal prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of his body, according to his lawsuit against the university.

At a news conference in June, Richard Goldman, a student radio broadcaster from 1981 to 1983, said Anderson grabbed his genitals, tried to remove his pants and began to perform a physical exam at his three visits to the doctor for treatment of migraine headaches. Goldman said he confronted Canham about Anderson’s conduct after each incident.
After Schembechler heard the commotion of the last confrontation in Canham’s office and demanded to know what had happened, the coach engaged in a shouting match with Canham, Goldman said. But nothing changed, even when Schembechler succeeded Canham as athletic director in 1988.

At another June news conference, former football players Daniel Kwiatkowski and Gilvanni Johnson said they suffered repeated abuse by Anderson. Kwiatkowski said after the first assault he told Schembechler, who warned him to “toughen up.” Johnson recalled coaches threatening players with a visit to Anderson if they weren’t working hard enough.
Also in June, however, more than 100 former members of Schembechler’s teams signed a letter defending him. They contended that if he had known about sexual abuse, he would have immediately halted it and made sure anyone responsible was removed from the program. Current Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, who played for Schembechler in the 1980s, has said the same thing.
Asked for comment from Harbaugh, Fitzgerald cited the coach’s June 3 response to another reporter. “I can tell you this: Bo Schembechler . . . he never sat on anything, he never procrastinated on anything. He took care of it before the sun went down. That’s the Bo Schembechler that I know.”
Women said they also were abused by Anderson. The woman interviewed by The Post said the doctor had her take off her clothes during a freshman-year visit and subjected her to an extremely painful vaginal exam, telling her he had purposely squeezed her ovary. The woman said the trauma contributed to a suicide attempt in her 20s and has affected her to this day. At the time, she told only her boyfriend, she said.
In another interview, Michigan tennis player Cathy Kalahar said Anderson fondled her breasts during her first physical exam of freshman year. He suggested she have them reduced or become a lesbian because men would not like breasts as large as hers, she said. He referred her to a therapist who told her the events did not occur and were a sexual fantasy, she said.

Demands for accountability

When a team led by DuBois, the Washington University researcher, who also consulted on the WilmerHale report, looked at 101 doctors who had committed sexual abuse, they found remarkably few “red flags” that could be used to predict such behavior.
“Cases commonly occurred without obvious signs of a personality disorder, they occurred in both solo and larger medical practices alike, and they involved patients who were particularly vulnerable, as well as patients who exhibited no special vulnerabilities other than being a patient,” his team wrote in a 2017 paper.
DuBois found that all the doctors were male, the vast majority were older than 39, and most abuse occurred in private doctors’ offices, rather than in academic settings. Virtually all the cases involved multiple victims and incidents of abuse continued for more than a year.
DuBois said the first instance of abuse is very difficult to stop. But institutions need to make reporting sexual assault easier and must believe victims when they speak up.
“Where we could do a lot better is the repeat offenses,” he said. Survivors “don’t know who to report to. And the people who receive it don’t know what to do with it.”
The result is legal and criminal sanctions that are imposed years, and sometimes decades, after the fact, if at all.
Nassar, the Michigan State doctor, is now in prison, essentially for life, and Michigan State has agreed to pay his victims $500 million. Richard Strauss, who abused Ohio State wrestlers from 1979 to 1996, died by suicide in 2005. Ohio State has paid out more than $40 million to survivors so far. At USC, George Tyndall, who allegedly assaulted young women seeking gynecological care, was dismissed and USC has agreed to pay more than $850 million to survivors.
Tyndall faces 35 criminal charges. Leonard Levine, Tyndall’s criminal attorney, said the doctor continues to deny the accusations and intends to take the case to trial.
The university’s Board of Regents is scheduled to hear from survivors at its meeting Thursday. Some have filed a lawsuit contending the board is illegally limiting the number of speakers at the session.
Many want the administration to stop blaming a dead doctor and coaches, more fully acknowledge the impact of the abuse and institute additional reforms that will keep this from happening again.
“This goes well beyond Dr. Anderson as an individual,” Stinar said. “It’s an institution that failed their students, their athletes and members of the state of Michigan. My clients want accountability and change.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/r ... 052-f541-1

greybeard58
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Coach’s SafeSport suspension is 14th sexual misconduct punishment in Massachusetts youth hockey

Post by greybeard58 » Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:46 pm

Coach’s SafeSport suspension is 14th sexual misconduct punishment in Massachusetts youth hockey
By Bob Hohler Globe Staff, Updated June 12, 2021, 11:26 a.m.


No Olympic development sport in Massachusetts has had more individuals in its ranks sanctioned for sexual misconduct than ice hockey.

No Olympic development sport in Massachusetts has had more individuals in its ranks sanctioned for sexual misconduct than ice hockey. JIM DAVIS/GLOBE STAFF
A prominent girls’ ice hockey coach in Central Massachusetts has been suspended by the US Center for SafeSport, marking the 14th time a person involved with youth ice hockey in Massachusetts has been disciplined for sexual misconduct after investigations by SafeSport or USA Hockey, the sport’s national governing body.

With the suspension in May of George J. Barrett Jr., the former owner and operator of the Worcester Lady Crusaders, no Olympic development sport in Massachusetts has had more individuals in its ranks sanctioned for sexual misconduct than ice hockey.

Nationally, the only state that has amassed more disciplinary actions for sexual misconduct in youth hockey is Minnesota, with 16. In the rest of New England, four individuals have been punished, two each in Connecticut and Maine.

The high number in Massachusetts has raised questions about the screening, training, and monitoring of coaches, referees, and players by USA Hockey’s state affiliate, Mass Hockey. In all, 11 of the 14 who have been sanctioned in Massachusetts have also been convicted of crimes, including rape, or face criminal charges.

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“It’s very unfortunate to see how many young people have been victimized by Massachusetts hockey coaches,” said the young woman who was the target of Barrett’s alleged sexual misconduct. “It is clear that Mass Hockey and SafeSport are not doing an adequate job of screening coaches and holding perpetrators accountable.”

The Globe does not identify victims of sexual misconduct without their permission. The young woman in Barrett’s case is now an honors law student who plays collegiate hockey and aspires to be a federal prosecutor of sex crimes and human trafficking.

Mass Hockey would not publicly discuss the matter, instead issuing a statement defending the organization’s policies and enforcement practices.


‘It is clear that Mass Hockey and SafeSport are not doing an adequate job of screening coaches and holding perpetrators accountable.’

“Any allegations of misconduct received by Massachusetts Hockey are taken seriously as the safety of Massachusetts Hockey participants is of paramount importance,” the statement said.

Six of the 14 cases in Massachusetts were adjudicated by USA Hockey before Congress established SafeSport in 2017 to sanction sexual misconduct in Olympic sports. USA Hockey forwarded those cases to SafeSport, which posted them on its public disciplinary database.

Barrett, 51, of Westminster, was found by SafeSport to have made non-consensual sexual contact, sexual advances, and sexual comments to the young woman while he was coaching her, beginning in 2017 when he was 48 and she was 18.

Barrett declined to be interviewed by SafeSport investigators. Efforts by the Globe to reach him were unsuccessful.

The athlete he allegedly mistreated participated briefly in the Lady Crusaders program of the New England Girls Hockey League. Barrett then began coaching her privately in his SweedHands personal training business.

In 2019, the young woman received a court restraining order against Barrett after she alleged in a sworn affidavit that he digitally penetrated her through her clothing, as well as sexually harassed her and made numerous requests for sexual favors. In addition, according to the alleged victim and SafeSport’s findings, he sent her photos of his genitalia.

A screenshot of a webpage of the Paterson (N.J.) Times showing the photo of a body bag that George Barrett allegedly sent to the hockey player.
A screenshot of a webpage of the Paterson (N.J.) Times showing the photo of a body bag that George Barrett allegedly sent to the hockey player. SCREENSHOT
She also alleged in the court document that Barrett, after their relationship deteriorated, sent her threatening messages, including an image of a body bag, and told her he “could make anyone’s death look like a suicide.” She stated she feared for her safety.

The Worcester district attorney’s office chose not to prosecute Barrett, to the distress of the young woman and her parents. The alleged victim and her family said the police and DA’s office indicated to them that they did not believe they had sufficient evidence to proceed.

Read more: Former star figure skater and local coach Ross Miner suspended for sexual harassment

Barrett sold the Lady Crusaders organization to the Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center in 2019, after the woman filed the SafeSport complaint against him and received the restraining order. The new owners renamed the program the White Hawks.

USA Hockey published a story in 2016 lauding Barrett for creating opportunities for girls in Central Massachusetts to play the sport competitively. Now he is prohibited from participating in any capacity with any Olympic sport for one year.

SafeSport also ordered Barrett to serve three years of probation after his one-year suspension, and to have no contact with his alleged victim over the four years.

The woman decried SafeSport’s punishment as too lenient.

“Honestly, it is on their moral compass if he goes out and preys on another young girl. The system is corrupt,” she said.

She criticized SafeSport for permitting Barrett to continue coaching, with adult supervision, while he was under investigation, “even though I had a restraining order against him because he was sexually harassing me.”

SafeSport records indicate Barrett had no prior history of misconduct and that no one else has come forward with allegations against him.


‘It is on their moral compass if he goes out and preys on another young girl. The system is corrupt.’

Victim of George Barrett

Dan Hill, a SafeSport spokesman, said, “A suspension of any kind sends a message, and it’s something the Center takes seriously . . . If there are reports on an individual who has been suspended previously, the Center will take those seriously as well."

In all, SafeSport’s database lists sanctions against more than 1,500 individuals in the United States, including 43 in Massachusetts. The other Olympic sports in the state with the most people disciplined are USA Swimming (9), US Soccer (5), USA Gymnastics (4), and US Equestrian (4).

Mass Hockey is one of the larger youth sports organizations in the state associated with the Olympic movement, typically with more than 55,000 players, coaches, and officials participating. But the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association, for example, which is affiliated with US Soccer’s national governing body, has about 163,000 registered and affiliated players and adult participants. And the five individuals involved with youth soccer who have been disciplined by SafeSport had ties to programs other than Massachusetts Youth Soccer. Other major youth sports organizations in the state, such as basketball, are not fully affiliated with Olympic governing bodies.

The SafeSport disciplinary list does not include former Duxbury High boys’ hockey coach John Blake, who was fired in April after he was accused in a civil suit of repeatedly raping a male middle-school student in 2006.

Mass Hockey has summarily suspended Blake and forwarded his case to SafeSport. Blake has denied the allegation.

Blake’s alleged middle-school victim, Parker Foley, developed a drug addiction “to escape the mental pain and anguish,” his parents stated in a lawsuit against Blake and the Duxbury Public Schools. Foley died of a drug overdose last year at the age of 27. Late this past week, Blake filed a counterclaim against Foley’s parents, saying they destroyed his reputation with their accusation.

SafeSport’s list also does not include Carl Gray, who founded the Assabet Valley girls’ hockey program and was accused by numerous former players in Globe stories in 2020 of making crude comments about their bodies, initiating unwanted physical contact, and entering their locker rooms without notice.

One former player, Estey Ticknor, told the Globe that Gray initiated a sexual relationship with her while he was coaching her in 1981, when she was 17 and he was 43. She reported the allegation to SafeSport, which informed her in October after a preliminary investigation that it could not proceed because the alleged misconduct occurred when “there were no applicable community standards [law], USA Hockey policy or SafeSport policy in place.”

Gray has denied mistreating his former players. Of Ticknor, he said only, “We were best of friends. I respected who she was.”

Read more: Elite youth hockey coaches at Assabet Valley suspended after abuse complaints

Read more: Carl Gray, founder of prestigious Assabet Valley hockey program, comes under fire for treatment of players

Read more: Former Assabet hockey player recounts alleged sexual relationship with coach Carl Gray

USA Hockey assigned a five-member investigative committee last August to consider complaints from Ticknor and the parents of former Assabet players about Mass Hockey’s handling of allegations against Gray and other Assabet coaches.

The investigation is ongoing and is expected to be completed this summer, according to USA Hockey spokesman Dave Fischer. He said the process has been delayed by committee members contracting COVID-19.

Several parents who filed complaints called the delay unacceptable.

“We expected action, there was none; we expected follow-up, there was none; we expected communication, there was none," said Fred Isbell, a former Assabet coach whose daughter, Katie, told the Globe last year that Gray made unwanted physical contact with her and sexually charged remarks about her appearance.

The offenders on SafeSport’s disciplinary list include Andrew LeColst, a former ice hockey coach at Masconomet Regional High School who also owned a youth hockey club. LeColst pleaded guilty in 2020 to three counts of raping a girl he coached, beginning when she was 13.

Also sanctioned, in 2018, was Christopher Prew, who operated the Hot Shot hockey academy in Winthrop and faces nine counts in Essex Superior Court of indecent assault and battery on boys under the age of 14. Prew has pleaded not guilty.

A youth hockey referee also was disciplined. Brendan Kessler, of Plymouth, was sentenced in 2015 to 63 months in prison for possession and distribution of child pornography.

All the other hockey figures from Massachusetts on the SafeSport list are coaches, except for a former Braintree High School player who in 2002 pleaded guilty to raping a 15-year-old girl.

Because SafeSport provides no details about the alleged sexual misconduct of those disciplined, information about their cases is generally drawn from news reports. SafeSport’s database also does not disclose the damage done to the alleged victims.

The database states, for example, only that Robert Richardson, of Dorchester, was permanently barred in 2019 from USA Hockey activities because of sexual misconduct. SafeSport disciplined Richardson after a Globe story in 2017 detailed the emotional trauma that a former professional hockey player, David Gove, suffered because of Richardson allegedly raping him repeatedly as a youth.

From 2017: A hockey pro dies, and coach he said raped him is free

Gove’s family and Suffolk County prosecutors said Gove, who won the Stanley Cup in 2006 with the Carolina Hurricanes, never escaped the anguish of the alleged sexual abuse.

Like Parker Foley, Gove struggled with a drug addiction. He died of an overdose in 2017 at the age of 38.

***

Many youth sports organizations are affiliated with a national governing body affiliated with the US Olympic and Paralympic Movement, such as USA Hockey, US Soccer, USA Swimming, and USA Track & Field. If you have experienced abuse or misconduct by someone in the US Olympic and Paralympic Movement — or if you have a reasonable suspicion of abuse or misconduct inflicted on, or by, someone in the movement — this link directs you to a reporting form: safesport-i.sight.com/portal

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/06/12/ ... th-hockey/

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

The link for Safe Sport's Centralized Database

Post by greybeard58 » Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:05 pm

Centralized Disciplinary Database

Last Updated: 09/28/2021 10:50:36 CDT

The U.S. Center for SafeSport’s Centralized Disciplinary Database is a resource designed to keep the public informed when individuals connected with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Movements are either subject to certain temporary restrictions pending investigation by the Center or are subject to certain sanctions after an investigation found them in violation of the SafeSport Code. The database also contains certain eligibility decisions made by the National Governing Bodies (NGB), their Local Affiliated Organizations (LAO), or the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), including those rendered prior to the establishment of the Center.

Users can search the database by Name, City, State, and/or Sport Affiliation(s). Enter as much (or as little) information as you know. Search results will include the Participant’s Name, City, State, Sport Affiliation(s), Decision Date, Misconduct, and Action Taken.

Learn more about the types of records published and the information included within the Centralized Disciplinary Database.

Read about the types of misconduct handled by the NGBs, LAOs, and USOPC, and what’s included in the Centralized Disciplinary Database.

IMPORTANT: By accessing and using the Centralized Disciplinary Database, you agree to accept the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s Terms and Conditions.

https://uscenterforsafesport.org/respon ... -database/

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Breakdown of safesport database:

Post by greybeard58 » Wed Sep 29, 2021 7:38 pm

Breakdown of safesport database:

18 out of 60 in Minnesota: 30%
145 USA Hockey out of 1,612 total: 9%

60 disciplined coaches in Minnesota:
1 National Wheelchair Basketball Association
5 U.S. Bowling Congress
1 U.S. Figure Skating
7 U.S. Soccer
5 U.S. Tennis
1 U.S. Ski & Snowboard
2 USA Basketball
1 USA Curling
7 USA Gymnastics
18 USA Hockey
4 USA Swimming
2 USA Taekwondo
1 USA Triathlon
2 USA Volleyball
1 USA Water Skit & Wake Sports, U.S. Tennis
2 USA Wrestling

145 disciplined coaches affiliated with USA Hockey in the nation (1,612 total):
2 Alaska
6 California
11 Colorado
1 Connecticut
3 Florida
1 Georgia
2 Iowa
2 Idaho
6 Illinois
1 Indiana
18 Massachusetts
1 Maryland
2 Maine
12 Michigan
18 Minnesota
4 Missouri
1 Mississippi
3 Montana
1 North Carolina
1 North Dakota
1 Nebraska
6 New Jersey
9 New York
1 Ohio
1 Oklahoma
1 Oregon
6 Pennsylvania
1 South Dakota
1 Texas
3 Utah
6 Virginia
6 Washington
5 Wisconsin
1 West Virginia
1 Wyoming

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Maggie Nichols from Little Canada complete opening statement

Post by greybeard58 » Sat Oct 02, 2021 2:25 pm

Maggie Nichols complete opening statement - YouTube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFXLziupgCY

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

At a quiet Senate hearing, four U.S. gymnasts made sure the truth was loud and uncomfortable

Post by greybeard58 » Thu Oct 07, 2021 3:08 pm

At a quiet Senate hearing, four U.S. gymnasts made sure the truth was loud and uncomfortable
Listen to article
4 min





Gymnasts say FBI failed them in emotionally-charged testimony
In a Senate hearing on Sept. 15, four gymnasts condemned the FBI’s handling of the investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by coach Larry Nassar. (The Washington Post)

By
Candace Buckner
Reporter
September 16, 2021 at 8:16 p.m. EDT
400
We’ve seen them before, the four women who spoke Wednesday morning in a room full of U.S. senators.
We’ve watched them adorned in glossy gold, flashing those megawatt smiles they’ve been trained to wear since youth, standing atop Olympic podiums and mugging through NBC promotional shots. We’ve consumed the airbrushed advertisements for everything from crackers to body-positive lingerie. We’ve even joined in on the joke, imitating the “not impressed” face while turning one of the four gymnasts into a meme.
To the senators, to officials in law enforcement and the Olympic movement, and to anyone watching Wednesday’s hearing, these women demanded more than just an audience. Instead of seeing them merely as the smiling, ponytailed pixies we pay attention to every four years, they made us listen, really listen, to the horrifying stories about their time as unprotected girls in USA Gymnastics. Because for far too long, no one did.
Before McKayla Maroney began her opening statement to a Senate Judiciary Committee gathered to probe the FBI’s failure to properly investigate serial pedophile Larry Nassar, she looked to her right and commended her friend and former teammate Simone Biles on her “really powerful” testimony. However, her microphone was muted. Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) reminded her to push a button on the mic, and Maroney glanced up and smiled, asking: “Are we on?”
Maroney certainly was.
As she looked to her phone to read prepared notes, her voice was steady, no hint of a quiver. Yet still emotional. A voice forceful enough to reveal the strength of a survivor of sexual abuse but also quickened and raised to make plain her urgency for justice.
“Enough is enough. Today, I ask you all to hear my voice,” Maroney said. “I ask you, please, do all that is in your power to ensure that these individuals are held responsible and accountable for ignoring my initial report, for lying about my initial report and for covering up for a child molester.”
Sally Jenkins: Larry Nassar is in jail. Why isn’t everyone who ignored his crimes?
The four women — Biles, her sport’s most decorated athlete; Maroney, a member of the 2012 U.S. gold-winning team at the London Games; Maggie Nichols, a world team and NCAA champion; and Aly Raisman, the two-time captain of the American teams that won Olympic gold — shared testimony about the hell they went through as minors, as the agencies and law enforcement organizations sworn to keep them safe stood by and did nothing. Senators on both sides of the aisle took turns heaping praise on the gymnasts, using a litany of words to describe them.
Young women. Victims. Survivors. Witnesses. Heroes.
For more than an hour of opening and closing statements, the politicians talked. And spoke about bravery. And offered apologies. And injected their favorite letter — “I” — into the women’s ghastly reality, as if it was their own. But these lawmakers, like all of us, needed to just shut up and hear their words. Even when it was difficult to listen.
We’ve watched Biles stick the most difficult move in the world, and yet she described being in that room as more challenging than completing the Yurchenko double pike vault.
“To be perfectly honest, I can imagine no place where I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you and sharing these comments,” Biles said.
The greatest gymnast of all time, who has chosen to use her star power to keep the pressure on for a thorough investigation of USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the FBI, introduced herself to the room, then she went first.
Simone Biles to Congress: ‘I blame Larry Nassar, and I also blame an entire system’
It was upsetting to hear Biles get choked up when saying the words “Larry Nassar abuse.” She whispered an apology into the microphone and then went on to say she blamed Nassar but also the whole system that enabled him to molest hundreds of young people.
It was disturbing to hear how Nichols’s national team dream died once she reported the abuse to USA Gymnastics in the summer of 2015, eventually becoming not the Olympic medalist she was on track to be but rather “Gymnast 2” and “Athlete A” in the work done by investigators.
And it was excruciating to hear the details of Maroney’s experience with the FBI, how she had told an agent things she hadn’t yet revealed to her mother — that as a 13-year-old, within minutes of meeting the doctor appointed by USA Gymnastics at a camp, he had inserted his fingers into her vagina — and that the agent’s idea of a follow-up question was: “Did his treatment help you?”

U.S. Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney testifies during the hearing. (Pool/Reuters)
After Maroney delivered a barrage of body blows, name-dropping the most incompetent and spineless in this mess, Raisman lit a torch to everyone else involved; USA Gymnastics initially allowed Nassar to retire with his dignity intact — and to find an estimated 100 new victims.
“It was like serving innocent children up to a pedophile on a silver platter,” she said.
Raisman concluded the testimony, and the senators had the floor again to make comments and pose questions. Unfortunately, too many of those politicians decided to keep on talking.
With all due respect to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), we didn’t need to hear how he has two athletic daughters or his fears over their safety. Neither was the apology from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) given on behalf of all adults necessary. We needed to hear the women. A handful of lawmakers did ask questions, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). And while in the spotlight, the quartet of survivors surrendered their own privacy to share real lessons on what trauma looks like.
In response to Booker’s question about what the gymnasts would like America to know, Raisman turned on her microphone and dropped her heart-wrenching truth about not even having the energy to stand up in the shower in the days and months after sharing her story for the first time, instead having to sit on the floor to wash her hair.
We’ll never see that kind of pain behind Biles’s smile on the cardboard cutout for Nabisco still displayed in grocery stores, nor as she’s presented by the other corporate sponsors of USA Gymnastics. In explicit terms, the four women at the witness table shattered the polished PR version of what we once imagined was their Olympic dream.
They publicly recalled the worst moments of their lives at the risk of triggering pain they may need months to recover from, as Raisman achingly pointed out, because they know accountability doesn’t happen until somebody brave enough steps forward and speaks up. Their stories should compel senators to take action. And as uncomfortable as it may be to hear such raw truth, they should compel all of us to listen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... y-hearing/

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

deadspin article

Post by greybeard58 » Sat Oct 30, 2021 10:11 pm

Welcome to hell, NHL! Your stay is long overdue
A sex assault cover-up case in Pittsburgh and the Paul Montador lawsuit follow Chicago's disgrace
By
Jon Hoefling
Today 12:35PM
Alerts
The NHL is not in a good place, and that’s good. For too long have victims of high-ranking members in NHL front offices gone unseen and unheard.
The biggest storyline surrounding the NHL currently is the Chicago Blackhawks’ series of cover-ups regarding the sexual assault of a former player in 2010.
As the investigation has progressed, several current Blackhawks front office members have been ousted and attention has turned to multiple other NHL higher-ups, specifically, people who were involved with the Blackhawks’ organization while the Aldrich situation was going on in 2010, meaning that after the NHL investigated Winnipeg Jets’ GM, and Blackhawks’ assistant GM in 2010, Kevin Cheveldayoff, for playing a role in the decisions made by the organization involving Aldrich and the former player that Aldrich assaulted, we would finally see Cheveldayoff receive his comeuppance...or not.

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As of yesterday morning, the NHL has determined that Cheveldayoff was “not responsible for the improper decisions made by the Chicago Blackhawks related to the Brad Aldrich matter in 2010.” Therefore, Cheveldayoff will receive no disciplinary action. According to the report, the NHL has determined that Cheveldayoff’s involvement in the May 23, 2010 meeting “was extremely limited in scope and substance. In fact, in the course of the investigation, most of the participants in the May 23 meeting did not initially recall that Cheveldayoff was even present.” So, that’s good news for the Winnipeg Jets franchise, but this ruling was a long time coming and there is still a lot that needs to be unpacked regarding this situation. While Cheveldayoff may be off the hook, the NHL sure isn’t.
Unfortunately for the NHL, and fortunately for the sake of human decency, that’s not all the bad press they’ve had to endure recently. Former minor league assistant for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Jarrod Skalde, sued the Penguins last year, claiming that the former coach of the Penguins’ AHL affiliate, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Clark Donatelli, molested Skalde’s wife, Erin, twice during a road trip in 2018. The lawsuit is back in the news now.
After hearing of the incident, Jarrod Skalde claims he reported it to Bill Guerin (currently the Minnesota Wild GM, but GM of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and assistant GM for the Penguins in 2018). Guerin is alleged in the suit to not only have asked Skalde to keep the reasoning behind Donatelli’s termination quiet, but also reprimanded Skalde for reporting the incident altogether. Skalde was let go from the Penguins organization in 2020. While the Penguins claim that Skalde’s termination was due to “pandemic-related” staff cuts, Skalde believes it was a result of his coming forward with the allegations of his wife’s sexual assault.
Of course, Guerin also has connections to the Chicago Blackhawks’ scandal, as Guerin is currently serving as the assistant GM for the U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team. The GM, Stan Bowman, resigned from his position as the Olympic team’s GM and as head of hockey operations in Chicago earlier this week amid the Aldrich cover-up scandal.
Currently, the U.S. Center for SafeSport is conducting an investigation into the claims against Guerin. According to the lawsuit filed by the Skaldes, after Jarrod Skalde confronted Donatelli in May of 2019, Donatelli appeared apologetic and promised to come forward to Guerin, but never did so. It goes on to say that it was only after Skalde went to Guerin personally that the situation drew any attention from the Penguins’ organization, even if Guerin allegedly asked Skalde to keep the incident under wraps. The Penguins made a statement to the Associated Press on Thursday claiming that the situation was handled immediately, but their statement also seemingly throws shade at Skalde for “[delaying] seven months before [making] a complaint.”
The Penguins attempted to motion for arbitration over this lawsuit, but the motion was denied on September 30. The lawsuit will go to court. At least our justice system is getting that part right.
But that’s not the only lawsuit the NHL is facing!
The father of the late Steve Montador, Paul, is filing a lawsuit against the NHL for the wrongful death of his son, claiming that the NHL promoted a culture of violence and downplayed the severity of the brain damage Steve Montador received while playing in the league.
Paul Montador claims that while playing in the NHL, his son received “thousands of sub-concussive brain traumas and multiple concussions, many of which were undiagnosed.” Despite all the brain trauma Montador suffered during his playing years, Montador was never required to sit out multiple games from the league. This created a controversy regarding how the NHL handles concussions compared to other brutal sports such as boxing, which prevents boxers who get knocked out from participating in further fights for a length of at least 60-69 days.
While the NHL has made an effort to rid the sport of fighting, Montador’s lawsuit claims that the NHL stated they would study the issue of concussions and brain damage among its players back in 1997, but once the study’s findings were released in 2011, the damage was downplayed in order for the NHL to continue marketing and profiting from players’ fighting.
I’m not sure the NHL has ever faced as many serious public relations disasters as it is currently going through. The league has had its fair share of scandals over the years, but they are being bombarded with scandal after lawsuit after lawsuit it seems, and it’s just great. The NHL has clearly been attempting to avoid any bad public relations by skirting these lawsuits and investigations as best they can. However, they’ve piled up. You can only stretch a rubber band so far before it snaps, and boy is it snapping.
https://deadspin.com/welcome-to-hell-nh ... 1847969310

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Though USA Hockey requires background checks for coaches, the organization did not contact his previous employer

Post by greybeard58 » Mon Nov 01, 2021 3:02 pm

Though USA Hockey requires background checks for coaches, the organization did not contact his previous employer

Approximately five months after leaving the Chicago Blackhawks amid sexual assault allegations in June 2010, Brad Aldrich joined USA Hockey as a video coach for the U.S. Women’s National Program, prompting questions about how thoroughly the organization vetted him before his hire.

Though USA Hockey requires background checks for coaches, the organization did not contact his previous employer to check his references or inquire about the nature of his exit.

“We have no records/knowledge of anyone from USA Hockey calling the Blackhawks for references of Brad Aldrich,” USA Hockey said in an email in response to a number of questions about his employment history with the organization.

Aldrich worked as a video coach for the Women’s National Program beginning in November 2010, according to a resume obtained via a public records request, traveling overseas to Sweden with the Women’s U-18 team in 2011.

When asked to detail the organization’s hiring practices, spokesperson Dave Fischer said: “The staff that support our national teams are comprised through input from those involved in the hockey community. They are not employees of USA Hockey, outside those that work for the organization full-time and may support our teams.”

Aldrich left the Blackhawks in June 2010 when he was confronted with the specter of an investigation stemming from allegations that he sexually assaulted a player who was with the team practicing as a Black Ace during the club’s 2010 postseason run. That player, who filed a lawsuit against the club in May as John Doe, has since come forward publicly as Kyle Beach.

In an emotional interview Wednesday night, Beach detailed how he disclosed that Aldrich had sexually assaulted him and used his position of authority to threaten him.

A report performed by Jenner & Block in the wake of Beach’s lawsuit revealed that several members of the Chicago Blackhawks senior leadership team were informed of the allegations and did not take proper action. This week, Stan Bowman and senior vice president Al MacIsaac stepped down from their roles with the organization; Florida Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville, who in 2010 was coach of the Blackhawks and also in attendance for that meeting, resigned on Thursday.

NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr is also facing intense scrutiny after the Jenner & Block investigation found he was also told of Beach's allegations.

According to new reporting by TSN on Friday, Beach’s agent in 2010, Ross Gurney, called Fehr to ask that he inform USA Hockey about what his client had reported.

“My purpose in calling the PA was to get a warning to USA Hockey,” Gurney told TSN. “That is what I was directed to do by Kyle.”

According to TSN, Beach was connected with Dr. Brian Shaw, who works with the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program as a psychologist and program administrator.

“Dr. Shaw told me [during a phone call] he would handle it and make sure that Team USA was aware that Brad Aldrich is a sexual predator,” Beach said, according to TSN. "After that one conversation, the NHLPA cut me loose. I never heard from them again.”

Dr. Shaw told TSN, “I want to be clear about memory bias and I have feelings of wanting to be fair and supportive of Kyle. I’m not going to say anything else.”

USA Hockey said it has not received any reports or complaints about Aldrich.

Aldrich had previously worked for USA Hockey, with the U.S. men’s Olympic team in 2010, and according to rosters available online, he also worked as a player development camp coach for the boys select 14 team in 2008.

USA Hockey said that general counsel Casey Jorgensen participated in the Jenner & Block investigation.

Brad Aldrich joined USA Hockey as video coach 5 months after leaving Blackhawks
Read more: https://theathletic.com/news/brad-aldri ... bzZlxK2ES/


greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

"Do you believe in miracles? No! USA Hockey is an embarrassment"

Post by greybeard58 » Sun Nov 07, 2021 8:36 am

"Do you believe in miracles? No! USA Hockey is an embarrassment"

You would think that after the year they’ve had — after the past couple of weeks they’ve had — USA Hockey would want to steer clear of anything remotely controversial. The organization could cynically circle the wagons or engage in some reflection about its place in the sport’s toxic culture, but USA Hockey needed a moment out of the spotlight after all this.

There’s the Thomas “Chico” Adrahtas case. There’s USA Hockey’s role in the Brad Aldrich scandal, including Stan Bowman being allowed to resign as GM of the 2022 Olympic team rather than being fired, plus Bill Guerin being Bowman’s most likely successor. And there’s still the fact that USA Hockey’s assistant executive director for hockey operations is John Vanbiesbrouck, the former goalie and noted racial slur user.

And, of course, it was just last month when USA Hockey announced the first three players for the men’s Olympic team: accused rapist Patrick Kane, public creepazoid Auston Matthews, and Candace Owens fan Seth Jones. Kane was never charged and denied any wrongdoing. A hat trick of yikes.

Could USA Hockey have known on Wednesday, when it announced a sponsorship deal with Pink Whitney vodka, that the libation’s namesake, Ryan Whitney, would go on Twitter on Thursday and defend Dave Portnoy amid the Barstool Sports founder being accused by multiple women of sexual assault? (And to be clear, even if the women aren’t pressing charges or phrasing it as such, the nonconsensual acts they’ve alleged would constitute sexual assault.) Portnoy has denied any wrongdoing.

Surely not, but all of Barstool’s misogynist and racist past was there already, as well as the sleazy site’s affiliation with Whitney and his gimmick booze. At best, doing a sponsorship deal with Pink Whitney would have been a signal that USA Hockey seemingly continues not to care about any of the concerns of anyone who’s not a cisgender heterosexual white man. At worst, there’s the face of the national hockey team’s new sponsor not only proclaiming what a great guy Portnoy is, but having a laugh about his height in that moment.

You might not have been able to see it playing out that way, but it was absolutely a case of playing with fire and getting burned. USA Hockey already spends enough time undercutting any kind of positive social messaging it might want to put out through its actions… or rather, inactions, like waiting for Bowman to resign and continuing to keep Vanbiesbrouck in power. What benefit was there, other than a few bucks that could have been secured with any other company’s sponsorship, in positioning USA Hockey with a Barstool podcaster?

It’s not even like there’s some kind of great record of success here that could make someone say, well, USA Hockey is repugnant socially, but they do get results. They suck off the ice and they suck on the ice. Since winning gold at Lake Placid in 1980, the United States men’s hockey team has as many eighth-place finishes, and as many five-goal capitulations in bronze medal games at the Olympics, as it does Olympic medals: two of each.

This is not the leadership that American hockey needs, in any way, shape, or form. USA Hockey has shown repeatedly that it is rotten to the core, and now it has shown it has no real interest in doing anything about it. It might be just a couple of months until the Olympics, but it’s time to burn it all down and start from scratch. You could hardly do any worse than the trash pile that currently represents this country in the sport.

Do you believe in miracles? No! USA Hockey is an embarrassment
Team is trash on and off the ice and can barely go two days without another black eye
Read more: https://deadspin.com/do-you-believe-in- ... 1848007794

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

USA Hockey to contact families whose children attended camp staffed by Aldrich

Post by greybeard58 » Tue Nov 09, 2021 1:24 pm

USA Hockey to contact families whose children attended camp staffed by Aldrich

USA Hockey is planning to contact the families of players who attended development camps and training sessions staffed by former Chicago Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich, a spokesman said, after TSN asked the governing body for U.S. amateur hockey about Aldrich’s role at a week-long hockey camp in 2008.

Aldrich was one of the U-14 coaches at a USA Hockey camp in Rochester, NY, that ran July 12-18, 2008. The camp had about 100 attendees who stayed with coaches in a dormitory, said a person familiar with the matter.

“We are in the process of collecting the contact information for all of the family members of players who attended camps where Brad Aldrich coached,” USA Hockey spokesman Dave Fischer said in a brief phone interview.

Fischer said the federation plans to advise families about how they can go about making abuse reports and what counselling services are available to them. He did not respond to a follow-up question by email about why USA Hockey did not contact families after Aldrich was convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager in 2014.

Aldrich was allowed to resign from the Blackhawks in the summer of 2010 after two seasons as a video coach with the NHL team after Kyle Beach reported to Blackhawks management that he had been sexually assaulted by Aldrich.

Aldrich moved on to work in the hockey department at Miami University in 2012, where he allegedly assaulted two men, according to a recent independent investigation commissioned by the school.

In 2013, he pleaded guilty of fourth degree criminal sexual conduct involving a minor and later was sentenced to nine months in jail and 60 months’ probation for abusing a then-16-year-old high school hockey player in Houghton, Mich.
Aldrich worked as a video coordinator for the University of Notre Dame’s hockey program from 2006-08.

He started working for USA Hockey’s national development camps in 2005 as a coach for the U-14, U-15 and U-17 programs, according to a resume Aldrich provided Miami University in 2012.

USA Hockey to contact families whose children attended camp staffed by Aldrich
Read more: https://www.tsn.ca/usa-hockey-to-contac ... -1.1716273

Eagles93
Posts: 483
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2004 5:04 pm

10 home maintenance tasks you should complete before the holidays

Post by Eagles93 » Tue Nov 09, 2021 3:59 pm

As the holidays approach, you may be gearing up for your first "normal" gathering in a good while. Just the idea of getting together with a group of people indoors may feel nerve-racking, but if you're the one hosting, then you'll also experience the stress of making your guests feel comfortable. And there's more to hospitality than cooking and decorating. You'll also want to make sure your home is functional for your guests and any holiday activities, which may mean tackling that long-ignored to-do list.

If you're not sure where to start, here are 10 projects to help you get your home ready for hosting. (Before planning and hosting any gathering, check current guidelines and information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as your local health department regarding the coronavirus. Be sure to take appropriate measures to keep everyone safe.)

Boost your dishwasher. Sharon Sherman, an interior designer in New Jersey, suggests cleaning your dishwasher to ensure it works effectively and efficiently.

Start by using an old toothbrush to remove grime from the rubber seal. Then find the filter below the bottom spray arm and follow the dishwasher manufacturer's instructions for removing it. To clean the filter, simply rinse it with hot water and use an old toothbrush to work out any gunk.

If your dishwasher looks dirty on the inside or has evidence of mineral buildup, give it a wash. Fill a dishwasher-safe bowl with two cups of vinegar, place it on the upper rack and run the otherwise empty machine through a cycle without detergent. There's no need to dilute the vinegar; the water from the dishwasher will take care of that for you.

Check the temperature in your fridge. Before you stuff your fridge with the makings of your holiday meal (or leftovers), use a refrigerator thermometer to make sure it's working properly. If you set the temperature lower but it's hovering above the maximum temp of 40 degrees, Sherman suggests cleaning your condenser coils, which pump refrigerant into your appliance to keep everything cold.

"The condenser should be vacuumed every three to six months, or sooner if you have pets," she says. "A dirty condenser can lead to warm temperatures in the refrigerator and freezer, contributing to condensation or frost inside the compartments or even premature failure of the mechanical components."

It's a relatively simple job: First, find the coils either at the bottom or in the back of the fridge. (On modern refrigerators, coils are usually at the bottom behind a panel.) After removing the grille by hand, vacuum the coils to remove visible debris. You can also use a duster between the coils. Then replace the panel.

Clean your hood vent filter. Hood vents are great at absorbing steam, smoke and cooking odors, but they can get dirty (and less effective) over time. Sherman recommends cleaning your filter once a month, but it's also worth giving it a preholiday cleaning. To remove the vent, push toward the back of the hood to compress the spring, then rotate it downward. You can use a mild detergent or a spray degreaser to clean yours, or put it in the dishwasher. (Check the manufacturer's instructions to make sure it's dishwasher-safe.) No matter how you wash it, wait until the filter is dry before putting it back, and don't operate the hood without the filter in place.

Seal your natural stone. Granite and marble can take a serious beating from wine, lemons, soaps and other acids. If you have stone counters, you'll want to seal them once a year to ensure their longevity. Kelly Taylor, an interior designer in Providence, R.I., says November is a great time to do that. You can either hire a professional stone fabricator or purchase a product and do it yourself. Taylor recommends Marble Guard Protector, an inexpensive sealant by Marble & Granite Care Products. The process isn't too laborious: Deep-clean and thoroughly dry the surface, then apply the sealant per the manufacturer's instructions. (You may need two coats.) Buff the surface with a microfiber cloth. Once done, it's best to wait about 24 hours before touching your counters.

Treat your wood. Now's also a great time to treat your wood tables, which are vulnerable to wear from guests (especially those who don't use a coaster for their cocktails). Taylor suggests using a wood-specific oil or wax to protect furniture surfaces from marks. Identify the type of wood you're working with; the item's product description should tell you, or you can search online for the color and wood-grain pattern. Then find an oil appropriate for that surface. (Taylor likes Howard wood-care products.) Clear the table of debris with a soft microfiber cloth, then rub the oil into the wood with an old T-shirt. After wiping away the excess oil, apply it again, then rub it away and allow the surface to dry.

Swap out your HVAC filter. In general, you should be changing your filter about every three months. But if you plan to use your heat or air conditioning during a gathering, an additional swap will help ensure that clean air blows out while you have guests. Lester Mclaughlin, vice president of operations at Blue National HVAC, says it's as easy as pulling out the old filter (usually a cardboard square or rectangle with a net in the middle) and replacing it with one the same size and type. You can purchase replacement filters online or from a home improvement store.

Clean your vents. After you change your filter, clean your air vents, which inevitably collect dust and other debris over time. Mark Dawson, chief operating officer at One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, suggests using the wand attachment on your vacuum on vents and air returns throughout the house.

Upgrade your lighting. Along with replacing any flickering bulbs in lamps and light fixtures, make sure all the bulbs in each room are the same warmth and style. Connecticut-based interior designer Cindy Rinfret suggests swapping cooler lights for warmer bulbs, which emit a yellowish glow vs. a sterile, uninviting cold blue. She likes bulbs with a temperature between 2700K and 3000K for the perfect warm light.

"You don't want to run around looking for lightbulbs that better suit the mood as your guests are pulling into the driveway — or, worse, realizing how harsh the overhead lighting is over dinner once it's too late," Rinfret says.

Clean your garbage disposal. Dawson recommends cleaning your garbage disposal to avoid pesky clogs and remove unpleasant smells. First, he says, toss a handful of ice cubes down the drain and turn on the disposal to remove food scraps stuck under the blades. (Ice cubes, he says, can also help sharpen the blades.) Then, with the water running, drop a few small pieces of lemon peel down the disposal to neutralize odors and add a fresh scent.

Check your toilet. It's embarrassing to encounter a toilet issue at someone else's house, so do your best to keep your guests from having one. One way to do that, Dawson says, is to check that your shutoff valve is in working shape, so people can turn off the water supply to the toilet if it starts to overflow. "While the valve should be easy to turn, there are times you might experience some resistance as you try to turn it," he says. "If this is the case, it could mean you have a faulty valve and should hire a plumbing professional to inspect it before guests arrive."

Beyond checking the valve, keep your toilet efficient and your drains clear by regularly cleaning with mild cleaners, avoiding flushing anything that's not toilet paper and keeping a plunger nearby.

https://www.startribune.com/10-home-mai ... 600113393/

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

Hockey has never cared about survivors, and it’s getting worse

Post by greybeard58 » Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:53 pm

Content warning: This story contains discussion of sexual assault.

I knew it right after I was sexually assaulted — that I would have to hide my worst trauma, the thing killing me, from my hockey family — because that community would never accept me as a victim of sexual assault. They just wouldn’t.

That was four years ago. Nothing has changed. In some ways, it’s gotten worse.

Hockey has always been like this. But somehow, it feels like hockey has gotten bolder in rubbing it in our faces. Like a slap in the face, like some smug, haha-look-at-me-I’m-getting-away-with-it smile. It’s worse when you think of how much more vocal society in general is when it comes to speaking out against sex crimes and protecting victims.

Late on July 22, as the first round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft was coming to a close, the Montreal Canadiens drafted Logan Mailloux, the same Logan Mailloux who was convicted in Sweden in 2020 of non-consensually taking photos of a consensual sex act and distributing them. The Canadiens released a statement that said Mailloux’s crime was a “mistake” and that they would help him grow as a person.

Before I go any further, please let me make this as clear as possible — what Mailloux did was not a mistake. It was a deliberate, malicious crime. Calling it a mistake is just a tactic. It’s how the Canadiens, in their press release, portray the crime as boys-will-be-boys mischief that might hurt the perpetrator’s reputation instead of what it really was: a serious offense that hurt a victim. Rhetoric like that is how people like Brock Turner can go free despite clear evidence that he raped a woman. Perhaps the Canadiens think it’s no big deal or maybe they just don’t care, but either way they are keeping rape culture alive.

I don’t believe that players who commit sex crimes should get chances to play in the NHL. Playing at a high level of hockey isn’t a right; it’s a privilege. The NHL affords players tremendous power. It gives players a shield when powerful, popular organizations signal they are okay with that person playing for them. Hockey gives that perpetrator a fanbase. Hockey prioritizes the redemption of the perpetrator before the wellness of the victim.

Sweden fined Mailloux, but that punishment doesn’t excuse professional hockey from having standards of its own. Sports are not courts. Mailloux gave a public apology and attempted to recuse himself from the draft, but that was just a PR move. The Athletic reported that Mailloux did not apologize to the victim in the manner she asked, and multiple sources told the publication that Mailloux “portrayed the woman as vindictive.”

The Canadiens obviously had thought this through. They knew this was a bad move because they had enough awareness to draft a statement explaining and defending their actions ahead of time.

Also, what proof is there that Montreal, whose general manager Marc Bergevin worked for the Blackhawks in 2010 — the same year a lawsuit alleges Brad Aldrich committed sexual abuse and the organization covered it up — is equipped at all to make someone into a better person?

(And this is the same franchise that traded PK Subban because of supposed character issues.)

Speaking of Chicago, just one pick after Montreal, the Blackhawks made a pick of their own. General manager Stan Bowman stood at the podium surrounded by a group of newly hired women, including a couple women of color. “Over the last two years,” Bowman said, “we’ve been determined to add perspective and knowledge that has made us a better staff and organization.”

Chicago making a draft pick in this fashion while in the middle of an investigation and a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse and a cover-up of that sexual abuse is unfathomable. More horrible details get revealed regularly. There are no words to convey how horrible the allegations are. But that the Blackhawks can still operate like everything is normal, with their Twitter emojis and bad questions on social media, is just jarring. I understand not being able to address the allegations directly, but acting flippantly in this moment is abhorrent.

The Blackhawks have not committed to being transparent about the investigation. We don’t know if the investigation’s findings will ever be revealed. After everything that has happened, how can anyone in the organization be okay with that? How is Bowman still employed? Then they use women to literally shield the organization.

When they smile, it’s because they know there will be no consequences.

And they’re probably right. How do I know? Because I spent an ungodly amount of time researching sexual assault and sexual abuse for our book, Game Misconduct: Hockey’s Toxic Culture and How To Fix It, and hockey is still operating now the way it did twenty years ago. (One big reason for that is the media, who are more than willing to tweet out potential draft picks and trades but have been conspicuously quiet on both Mailloux and the Blackhawks. They broadly are not fulfilling their duty to be a watchdog.)

There was public outcry after Mailloux was drafted. But the next morning, the Canadiens trotted him out for media availability, already beginning to launder his image. The mainstream media just parroted back the quotes that Mailloux, who did not offer the victim the apology she requests, said about how sorry he is.

Yes, the NHL should suspend Chicago’s operations, at the very least. Yes, the NHL should have prevented teams from drafting Mailloux. But that wouldn’t have fixed the deeper problem: hockey views all of this as okay. Organized hockey is too often a safe haven for predators. This isn’t new. Convicted sex criminals have been signed before, as recently as 2018. But now feels worse than before. Now feels like gloating in the faces of the survivors.

It’s hard to see as a human. It’s harder to see as a survivor. I can’t imagine what this must be like for Mailloux’s victim or for Aldrich’s victims.

Jashvina Shah is a freelance hockey reporter who has covered men’s and women’s professional and collegiate hockey. She co-authored Game Misconduct: Hockey’s Toxic Culture and How To Fix It, which is available for preorder and will be released in October 2021.

Hockey has never cared about survivors, and it’s getting worse
Read more: https://russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2 ... survivors/

greybeard58
Posts: 2510
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm

They trusted a coach with their girls and Ivy League ambitions.

Post by greybeard58 » Wed Dec 01, 2021 4:04 pm

They trusted a coach with their girls and Ivy League ambitions. Now he’s accused of sex abuse.
Kirk Shipley, the rowing coach at Walt Whitman High in Bethesda, Md., held onto his job through two investigations into his behavior. Then he was arrested.

Kirk Shipley, the Whitman High School rowing coach accused of sexual abuse, watches a team work out at the Bethesda, Md., school in 2018. (Laura Chase de Formigny)
By Lizzie Johnson
Today at 8:00 a.m. EST
The rowing season had already ended by the time the seven girls began drafting a letter that they hoped would get their coach fired.
They’d spent years competing for the crew team affiliated with Walt Whitman High, one of the Washington region’s highest achieving public schools. In an affluent Maryland suburb fixated on success, their team was a juggernaut, regularly winning medals at Philadelphia’s prestigious Stotesbury Cup Regatta — the world’s largest high school racing competition — and sending its rowers on to Brown, MIT, Yale and other top colleges.

Many credited the team’s accomplishments to its longtime head coach: a Whitman High social studies teacher named Kirk Shipley. At 47, he was a three-time All-Met Coach of the Year who’d led the parent-funded club program for nearly two decades. He’d cultivated a loyal following, becoming drinking buddies with rival coaches and accepting invitations from rowers’ parents to dine at their Bethesda, Md., homes. They trusted him with their daughters — and their Ivy League ambitions.

Kirk Shipley was named a Washington Post All-Met Coach of the Year in 2019, the third time he'd received that honor. (The Washington Post)
Now, three days after their graduation from Whitman, the seven rowers decided to send a missive to the parent board, a group of mothers and fathers who volunteered to oversee the program. In just a few weeks, one girl was headed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; at least three others had earned scholarships to row in college. None of them wanted other students to have the same experiences they’d had with Shipley.
The coach, the seven warned in the letter they sent June 15, "has taken advantage of his role on the team and used his position to create a toxic, competitive atmosphere that fosters negativity and tension among the athletes ... he very clearly plays favorites, and when athletes spoke up or criticized his actions, their boat placement was often affected. This could be seen all three years we were on the varsity team.”

An excerpt of a June 2021 letter sent by seven Whitman High School rowers to the parent board about the way Kirk Shipley treated them. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
They detailed the times he’d pitted girls in different boats against each other, called them names, asked probing questions about their boyfriends and delved into their personal lives in ways that felt invasive and inappropriate. After one of their teammates attempted suicide, they told the 14-member parent board, Shipley had bluntly asked her, “So, how did you try to do it?”
Read the letter from the seven Whitman rowers
This wasn’t the first time Shipley, who declined an interview request through his attorney, had been the target of a complaint about the way he operated. He’d been investigated in 2018 after being accused that spring of creating a toxic culture — a claim he denied, arguing in an email to the complaining parent that it was just “the competitive nature of the Women’s program at Whitman.”
A human resources consultant hired by the parent board said in a report that she found “quite a lot of bitterness” over Shipley’s perceived favoritism toward “his chosen rowers” and described a “potentially polarizing, unapologetic style” of coaching. But she didn’t recommend any drastic changes to the program.
And nothing happened to Shipley, even as rumors were swirling that the coach had begun a sexual relationship with a girl on the team, inviting her to coffee after finals, then to his home in Georgetown.
The girl told friends that she and Shipley had “hooked up after graduation" — which the parent who’d lodged the toxic culture complaint reported to the human resources consultant, the team’s board, both Whitman’s outgoing and incoming principals, the school system, Montgomery County child welfare authorities and USRowing. All acknowledged to her that they’d received the information, but the complaint seemed to go nowhere.

Shipley carries oars for a Whitman workout on the Potomac River in a 2019 photo taken for an unpublished project about the team's preparations for the Stotesbury Cup Regatta. (Laura Chase de Formigny)
“I did what I felt was the right thing to do,” said Terri Ravick, who teaches science at a neighboring high school and whose daughter rowed for Whitman until 2018. “After all of that, I didn’t hear anything else. Nothing from anybody."
Three years later, after receiving the letter from the seniors, the parent board launched another investigation, relying on the same human resources consultant, Fern Hernberg, that they’d used in 2018. This time Shipley was suspended with pay from the program while the investigation was being conducted, the board announced, much to the consternation of some parents, who didn’t think it was necessary or good for their kids.
In her new report, the consultant noted that some rowers felt demeaned and disparaged by Shipley and said he had “insufficient respect of boundaries.” But, she said, "it’s important to emphasize that there were never any allegations of physical or sexual misconduct.”
None of it shook the coach’s support. On Aug. 16, the parent board announced that they’d renewed Shipley’s contract, which paid him a base salary of $34,500, plus $10,000 for summer coaching, in addition to the $101,656 he earned teaching.
Only one father voted against his return, arguing the program’s success didn’t outweigh the well-being of its athletes.
In an apology letter to the team, Shipley promised “to do better.” He attributed his behavior "to the stress and anxiety of living in COVID-America. This is not an excuse but a recognition that I, too, am imperfect.”

An excerpt of the Aug. 16 apology letter written by Kirk Shipley to parents of Whitman rowers. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
But his coaching comeback would last just eight days. On Aug. 24, Shipley was arrested at his home by D.C. police.
The charges: first- and second-degree sexual abuse of two former Whitman rowers.
‘Who knew about this?’
The 14-page criminal complaint against Shipley, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, laid out a disturbing pattern of behavior.
The two former Whitman students who came forward in August — one who was 17 when she graduated in 2013, the other who was 18 when she graduated in 2018 — described to D.C. police how Shipley had ingratiated himself with them.
He’d invited each girl to hang out in his classroom before and after school, where they’d do homework and chat with him about improving their rowing techniques or their college prospects. He flattered and encouraged them, they told investigators, making them feel special and confiding details about his personal life.
As their senior years approached, he increased communication, usually by text or Gchat, in messages that grew more explicit and eventually included naked photos and salacious videos being sent back and forth. According to the criminal complaint, Shipley gave each girl a vibrator, portraying it as a graduation gift.

About 2,000 students attend Walt Whitman, long considered one of the country's top public high schools. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
There were 152 text messages in the complaint.
In one exchange from 2013, the 17-year-old asked Shipley when he’d started being attracted to her.
“I do not remember,” he replied. “but if I did I probably wouldn’t tell you. It might be earlier than you are comfortable with."
In a 2018 conversation with the 18-year-old, who was just weeks away from graduating, Shipley encouraged her to masturbate while showering because it “would help her relax” and improve “her rowing performance.” They also discussed birth control options because, Shipley pointed out in a text, they couldn’t “have any little Shipley’s running around."
Around Memorial Day weekend, he picked the student up in his car and drove them around his neighborhood, she told police. He kissed her on a side street, she alleged, and placed his hand on her inner thigh. She also visited his home twice, where, according to the criminal complaint, they had oral sex.
“I hope you give up control to me,” Shipley said to her in one text. “Or can give it up.”
“I don’t need control in every aspect,” the teen replied. “Of my life”
“Good," he said, "because I plan on making you feel Things you cannot imagine.”
Read the criminal complaint against Kirk Shipley
Both women declined an interview request through their attorney. The Post generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse.
Shipley’s arrest was accompanied by assurances from school officials and prosecutors that he’d been placed on administrative leave from teaching. He was also barred from entering Whitman and from communicating with past and present students and rowers.
“These charges are deeply troubling and are a violation of the core values of our school and school system,” principal Robert W. Dodd said in an email sent to the parents of Whitman’s 2,000 students.
Dodd arrived at Whitman in July 2018, taking over from longtime principal Alan Goodwin, who did not respond to requests for comment.

Longtime Whitman principal Alan Goodwin, before his retirement in 2018. (Cheryl Diaz Meyer for The Washington Post)
Asked to discuss how the 2018 allegation against Shipley was handled, Dodd forwarded the request to district officials.
Chris Cram, a spokesman for the school system, said Dodd had “shared the information immediately" with district administrators.
“This is a personnel matter and needs to remain confidential," Cram said in a statement, "and so there is little we can say at this time.”
But the school system did contact the police about the allegation, Cram said.
Questioned about whether an investigation was opened, a Montgomery County Police Department spokeswoman responded: “Information provided to police in 2018 did not appear to be criminal in nature, nor did it support a criminal allegation.”
The rower was not contacted by police or child protective services, according to someone involved in the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The county’s child welfare agency said “confidentiality laws prohibit us from commenting on a specific case." USRowing declined to discuss its response, but in September, permanently banned Shipley from coaching.
The parent board agreed to answer The Post’s written questions about the 2018 allegation against Shipley and why the board chose to renew his contract after two investigations.
“While it is easy to point fingers with 20/20 hindsight, it is important to remember that the individual responsible here is Kirk Shipley," the board said through its new president, Dave Charlton, whose daughter rows for the team.
A week after Shipley’s arrest, the board informed the families of all Whitman’s rowers — which included nearly 100 girls and boys — that it had “severed all ties with him" and were “incredibly sorry for the pain and anguish that all of our athletes and parents are experiencing."
“We regret offering Shipley a position for this fall season and, in retrospect with what we now know, that was clearly the wrong decision," the email read. "We, as Board members, are also parents of athletes and we would never knowingly put our children at risk.”

An excerpt from the Aug. 31 letter sent by the Whitman parent board after Shipley’s arrest. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
The board assured parents it had reported the 2018 allegation to SafeSport, a nonprofit that investigates coaches accused of abusing athletes, and confirmed that the school system was aware of the claim.
“The Board relied on the respective expertise and experience of MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools], SafeSport, and Montgomery County child protective services to investigate and report any findings of sexual abuse or misconduct by Shipley,” the board wrote. There were none.
Read the full apology letter from the parent board
In its statement to The Post, the board also said Hernberg, the human resources consultant, “asked Coach Shipley directly about this rumor, and he vehemently denied it.”
Hernberg, who did not respond to requests for comment, made no mention of the allegation in her 2018 report. She does not list the rower as one of the people she interviewed.
Ravick, the parent who’d first sounded the alarm about Shipley, said she felt both disgusted and furious as she read the criminal complaint, which was being shared across Bethesda and beyond.
She’d pushed the board to take action against him, but “no one wanted to say anything. No one wanted to challenge Shipley. It was always the same thing — he’ll retaliate against our kids. I was always the one saying, ‘But we are paying the money, so why shouldn’t we be the ones that are in charge?’ "
Another parent, Chris Sheldon, whose daughter signed the letter about Shipley after graduating in June, said he couldn’t bring himself to read the document in one sitting.
“It was disturbing on so many levels," said Sheldon, 48, who works as a creative director in advertising. "And it made me feel like that could’ve been my daughter, very easily, to get caught in that. You worry about stuff like that and think about it, but it’s never really this close to home. I feel lucky that she wasn’t his next target.”
Shipley’s overly familiar way of communicating with the girls had always made him feel uneasy, Sheldon said.
In addition to a Facebook group, called “Destination Domination,” where he would post updates about practices and competitions, Shipley also texted the girls individually, in direct violation of the school system’s code of conduct, Sheldon said.
His daughter didn’t like the way the coach encouraged her and her teammates to confide in him over text, he said. But she loved the sport so much that she kept a rowing machine, called an erg, in her bedroom, and wanted to impress Shipley.
Now she and other rowers — some of whom were moving into college dorms for their freshman year — formed a private Facebook group to share their experiences with Shipley. His reach went beyond Whitman. He also coached at D.C.'s Thompson Boat Center, where athletes from 13 high schools, along with Georgetown and George Washington universities, practice and compete on the Potomac River.

Shipley had contact with rowers from all over the Washington region at the Thompson Boat Center on the Potomac River in D.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Some recent Whitman graduates confided in the Facebook group that they’d drank with the coach during college breaks, when he’d made suggestive comments, or touched them inappropriately.
One woman, a 2005 Bethesda Chevy Chase High graduate who’d rowed at the boat center, recalled a weekend in January 2009 when she’d run into Shipley and an assistant coach at a bar. They drank shots together and chatted. She told him about her boyfriend. But later, Shipley followed her to another bar and tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to leave with him.
“Even though I was 21, and it was legal," she said in an interview, "it felt predatory.”
She and other former athletes — nearly all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the charges against the coach — described feeling a deep sense of betrayal.
A 2010 Whitman graduate said she was in “total shock." Shipley had been a mentor, someone “we all trusted.” He’d been to her house and eaten dinner with her family.
Another rower who’d been a member of the 2018 Whitman team said she now believes "he was lying in every interaction I had with him. Shipley was someone that I trusted. That entire relationship is a lie.”
After she finished reading the criminal complaint, the woman who’d rowed at the boat center was left with an unsettling question: “My first thought was, ‘Who knew about this?’ And even if they didn’t explicitly know, who could have connected the dots and chose to ignore it?”

A collection of medals won by the daughter of Jeanette Valdés during her years rowing for Whitman. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
‘Obsessed with winning’
Long ranked as one of the country’s top public high schools, Whitman has always been a place where parents and students equate success with getting into elite colleges. Its culture was the subject of a 2006 book, “The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids," by Whitman graduate Alexandra Robbins, who went to Yale.
Shipley, who began teaching at the high school in 2001, had his own Ivy League pedigree: he’d rowed for the University of Pennsylvania.
At Whitman, he established himself as a popular figure. He judged the ‘Whitman Idol’ competition, chaperoned a school ski trip to Breckenridge and was often mentioned in the student newspaper.
Most of his time, though, went to the rowing program, where he began coaching in 2002. He took the sport seriously. In one Facebook post, he told rowers that the team was “the most important priority in your lives other than family and academics (and that may be a tie).”
The program was funded by the families of roughly 100 Whitman girls and boys. Parents — many of whom work in high-powered jobs as corporate executives, attorneys and consultants — paid between $4,000 to $8,000 for their children to participate. The program operated as a tax-exempt nonprofit with a nearly half-million-dollar budget, according to its most recent Form 990s filed with the IRS.
Though Shipley oversaw both the boys’ and girls’ teams, parents and former athletes said he focused his coaching almost entirely on the varsity girls.
He joked to parents that he liked them best because they “listen to me." He posted photos of the girls on his Instagram, where his username was @shipoopietakethattothebank.
Shipley lived near the Thompson Boat Center, buying a place in Georgetown for $910,000 in 2015, property records show. He shared the white townhouse with his Rottweiler, Flex, and rented out the basement to other coaches.
One former rower, who graduated in 2015, said that “rowing was Shipley’s entire life.” After he persuaded the parent board to add summer and fall rowing, the girls trained with him nearly every month of the year — a move that one parent, Michael “Spike” McLaughlin, noted “even college programs don’t do.”
The demands of being on the team were intense. Practices were hours-long and held at the boat center, about a half-hour drive from Whitman.
“You went right after school and stayed there until nighttime, and then you went home,” said Violet Slepoy, who rowed for Whitman and graduated in 2010. “You were spending hours a week doing this."
The sport required strength and endurance, so the girls would run up and down “The Exorcist” steps — a Georgetown landmark that appeared in the horror film — go on miles-long jogs clutching a 12-foot oar and compete to see who could earn the best score on their 2,000-meter row. If you weren’t throwing up, said one recent graduate, you weren’t working hard enough.

Kirk Shipley coaching during an on-the-water team workout in 2019. (Laura Chase de Formigny)
On the Potomac, Shipley coached from a small motorboat, known as a launch, shouting instructions through a $395 megaphone that he’d labeled with his name in permanent marker.
Some weekends, the team traveled to regattas. For spring break, they often went to Oak Ridge, Tenn., the training site for several Olympic teams. They flew to the Scholastic Rowing Association of America’s national championship in May and also to Sarasota, Fla., in June for youth nationals.
“He had been at Whitman for so long that parents were okay with him taking nine girls [from] a boat on a trip by themselves and staying with those kids in a hotel or an Airbnb,” said a rival coach, who, like other coaches interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the charges against Shipley. “That’s how established he was."
Some rowers came to consider him their best friend or said that they couldn’t row for anyone else, a former board member said.
One year, the team designed matching T-shirts that read: “Wake up in the morning feeling like Kirk Shipley.” The back featured photos of Shipley and Jesus Christ flexing their biceps.

The T-shirt designed by Whitman rowers depicted Shipley and Jesus Christ flexing their biceps. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

The T-shirt paid homage to Whitman's coach. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
“He was basically their teacher, their coach, their counselor and their therapist,” said one former Whitman coach. “That’s a lot of time with one man. I think he saw himself as someone very, very important to these kids’ lives. There was no healthy distance there."
Shipley didn’t extend his tutelage to all. He wrote off the girls he didn’t think were talented, and played favorites, said Jeanette Valdés, a former board member whose daughter rowed until 2021.
But if individual parents complained, as Ravick did in 2018, he dismissed them as disgruntled. And he retained strong support from the board, which Valdés and others said was dominated by four long-serving members who’d had multiple children row for Shipley.

Jeanette Valdés, a former parent board member, said Shipley played favorites among the rowers. Her daughter signed the letter complaining about his toxic behavior. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
“The parent board seemed very interested in making sure that their kids got into good schools, good universities," said a former assistant coach at Whitman. They knew Shipley had issues, “but I don’t think the extent of what was happening was known. And I think there was maybe an aspect of wanting to protect the status of the team. There’s that aspect of, ‘Why should I say something if the team’s doing well?’ ”
In its statement to The Post, the board denied being too focused on winning: “We strongly disagree with this suggestion. As with any competitive high school sport, the team strived for success, however the well-being of the rowers is, and always was, the top priority for the board.”
Shipley saw himself as being above the board’s rules, said McLaughlin, 47, the only parent who voted against the coach’s return in August. On the rare occasion that the parents balked at giving Shipley funding for capital expenses, like single scull boats or new shoes, he would pressure them to purchase the items anyway.
“The parents were led to believe that by providing their children with the best equipment and opportunities, they would get the best opportunities to go to a premiere college,” McLaughlin said. “No expense was spared.”
Whitman’s varsity girl’s team had only become a top performer in recent years. By 2019, the team had become among the fastest in the region. That year, graduates went on to row at Cornell, Tufts, Yale and MIT, among other colleges.
“It served to fuel Shipley’s already pretty strong ego," said the former Whitman coach. “I think success wasn’t necessarily the healthiest thing for him.”
But the boats didn’t always win — or not at the level that Shipley desired. At the Stotesbury Cup Regatta in May, the top varsity boat received bronze.
The next day, Shipley told the girls that he was ending their season early. In an email, he said that “the margin to victory” was too great to bridge and that they needed to “be close to the winner at Stotesbury to warrant” trips to two other national competitions in May and June.
Their last regatta as high school rowers was over, and they hadn’t even realized it.
“Everyone was so torn up and so sad,” said one of the recent graduates. “They easily could have gone to the next two regattas, and it would’ve been really fun. Maybe they wouldn’t have won — but that’s not everything. [Shipley] was so obsessed with winning. He only took our well-being into account when it benefitted him."
When the girls confronted Shipley about his decision, Valdés said, he refused to reconsider. So they decided to write a confidential letter to the parent board about their experiences with him — a move that Jenni Main, the incoming president at the time, encouraged.
On June 15, they emailed it to the board.
“After that," said Valdés, whose daughter signed the letter, "it was like the top blew off the pressure cooker.”
‘Is that the standard?’
Though the girls believed their letter would only be read by the board, it was immediately turned over to Shipley by a few of the longest-serving members.
“We were not aware that the letter was intended to remain confidential,” the board said in its statement to The Post. “It was not labeled as confidential, nor was the request made by the drafters of the letter to keep it confidential. In tone and form, it read as though the athletes intended to go ‘on the record’ with their complaints.”
The parents later apologized to the girls.
Shipley was also given the results of the team’s annual year-end survey. His scores were so low — and the complaints about him so serious — that the nonprofit that tabulated the results warned the board that they risked losing their affiliation with USRowing unless they suspended him.
On June 18 — three days after the girls had sent their email — the board told Shipley that he was being put on leave, pending another investigation. In a letter, they ordered him “not to have any contact with any current or past Walt Whitman Crew athletes.” And they announced that the girls’ summer rowing program, which he coached at the boathouse, would be canceled.
Once again, the board turned to Hernberg, the human resources consultant whose 2018 report had omitted the allegation that Shipley had had a sexual relationship with a rower.
In 2018, she’d suggested “a stronger mission statement” for the team as well as a “rights and responsibilities” code for athletes, parents, and coaches. She also recommended that Shipley “discontinue all comments about the athletes, their boyfriends, and their social lives” and do a better job of communicating with the girls about their boat placement.

An excerpt from Fern Hernberger's 2018 investigation into Whitman crew coach Kirk Shipley. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
As Hernberg launched a second investigation, Shipley disregarded the warning not to contact former students. He asked past athletes to rally on his behalf, claiming in an email to them that the program had been hijacked by “unsatisfied rowers."
He suggested they write to Hernberg about their own experiences, warning that her report could have “pretty far-reaching consequences ... that will determine whether I return next year.”
As news of Shipley’s suspension spread, the seven girls who’d complained about him were attacked by some of their former teammates. They were blamed for threatening Shipley’s career and for the cancellation of the summer program. Other athletes called their note a “revenge letter."
During team meetings over the summer, a few parents referred to the letter writers as bitter rowers who couldn’t handle the competitive atmosphere. And when two board members met with Shipley in July to discuss his potential return to coaching, he picked apart the girls who’d signed the letter, labeling some of them “mentally ill," one parent said.
When Hernberg’s report was finished in July, its main points echoed those she’d made in 2018. Again, Hernberg specified, there was “no indication of physical or sexual misconduct.”
“That was their battle cry, if you will,” McLaughlin said. “It got to the point where I asked, ‘Is that the standard? Do you have to have sexual misconduct in order to lose your job? And it doesn’t matter what else you do?' "
On Aug. 4, as the board was debating Shipley’s fate, the woman who graduated in 2018 contacted police to report sexual abuse.
The board was unaware of the police investigation when it voted 13-1 to renew Shipley’s contract for another year, said McLaughlin, who was so frustrated by the decision that he resigned and pulled his two younger children from the program.
On Aug. 16, the board sent an email to the Whitman rowing community to explain its decision to bring Shipley back, acknowledging a pervasive “fear of disparagement and retaliation against athletes for speaking up or when their parents are critical,” “insufficient respect of boundaries between coach and athletes," and "a perceived culture of favoritism.”
The board promised it would make changes “to protect our athletes, improve our coach oversight and support, and strengthen our culture. We have discussed these matters with Coach Shipley. Our assessment is that he is both willing and able to partner successfully with the Board in leading these changes.”

Excerpt from the parent board’s Aug.16 email announcing the renewal of Kirk Shipley’s coaching contract. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Read the letter from the parent board announcing Shipley’s contract was being renewed
Shipley was told he needed to write an apology letter.
Within days, though, the board was writing its own apology letter. Their support for Shipley, who faces a prison sentence if he is convicted of the charges against him, had finally come to an end.
‘Rumors of our demise’
Above the Charles River in Boston, the sky turned cantaloupe.
It was early morning in late October. Whitman’s season had been canceled in the turmoil after Shipley’s arrest. Many of the girls were now rowing for the Thompson Boat Center, and on a chilly fall day, they were racing in one of the first major regattas of the season. This time, they were without the man who’d always been their coach.
A grand jury in the District was investigating Shipley, who’d been released while his case winds through the court system. Recently, he’d been spotted near the Swedish Embassy, not far from the boat center, which had shaken some of Whitman’s rowers so much that the board sent out a reassuring email: “It appeared he was there to drop something off at a nearby building and, as far as we know, he had no contact with anyone from the team.”
The girls he’d been accused of betraying were coaching themselves. In September, they posted a series of pictures to the crew team’s Instagram. In the photos, rowing machines are lined up in the garage of a brick home. Some girls are bent over the ergs, completing their 6-kilometer test, while others shout encouragement.

The caption read: “Rumors of our demise are... premature."
Now, on the waters separating Boston from Cambridge, they piled into their boats and gripped their oars. They were ready to compete.
Dan Morse also contributed to this story.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller, copy editing by Thomas Heleba, design by Brianna Schroer.

By Lizzie Johnson
Lizzie Johnson is an enterprise reporter at The Washington Post and the author of "Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire." Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... ch-rowing/

O-townClown
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Location: Typical homeboy from the O-Town

Walt Whitman rowing

Post by O-townClown » Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:04 pm

Good grief what a horrible story. Can't believe it lingered for as long as it did. Great read. Thanks for sharing.

Women should be coaching girls. Won't be long before that's standard practice across the board.
Be kind. Rewind.

greybeard58
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Do-Nothing U.S. Center for SafeSport Finally Does Something! Of Course, That Something Is to Legally Harass a Lawyer For

Post by greybeard58 » Sun Dec 12, 2021 6:43 pm

Do-Nothing U.S. Center for SafeSport Finally Does Something! Of Course, That Something Is to Legally Harass a Lawyer For Abuse Victims.

Readers of this site know that I consider the U.S. Center for SafeSport – the de facto nascent Internal Affairs Bureau for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and its affiliated national sport governing bodies – a dismal joke on survivors of youth sports coach abuse; on fans of the Olympic movement; and on intuitive concepts of public health and accountability.

The center has built on the “brand name” and practices of USA Swimming’s downright fraudulent SafeSport department and investigative whitewashes. And while the center has made the occasional splash over busting a bad actor, the targets are always both carefully curated and, instead of exhibiting the assertion of independent administrative values for youth-serving organizations, couched in the backup of the criminal justice system’s “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.

The center has an untenable backlog of cases and is untenably underfunded. Not that that stopped the organization from spending $96,215 in 2019 on lobbying Congress. Or $218,923 on its top in-house lawyer at the time, Michael Henry, a con man who isn’t even licensed to practice law – and who is now the con man “judicial integrity officer” for the federal courts. Or $654,446 to Denver’s Zonies Law Firm. Or $749,143 to a media consultant. Or $180,000 to the Virginia PR firm of another con man, Dan Hill, who publicly brags that he works on abuse issues “pro bono.”

(The above figures are taken from the most recent U.S. Center for SafeSport nonprofit papers at the Internal Revenue Service, which were filed on August 27, 2020. A more recent filing, to reflect the 2020 tax year, has not been posted by the IRS, which either is still indulging the center’s filing extensions or is slow in uploading the newest information.)

I wrote about Michael Henry and the center in an article earlier this year for Salon: “U.S. Olympic Committee’s controversial abuse investigator fails upward — to the federal courts,” https://www.salon.com/2021/05/11/us-oly ... al-courts/.

Central to that account were Henry’s and the center’s lies about and bad-faith execution of its investigation into the abuse, dating back to the 1980s, by now “retired” swimming coach Scott MacFarland, of Sarah Ehekircher, whose case – and related insights into organized swimming’s criminality and abuse culture – I have been championing for years. (Ehekircher’s lawsuit in California court against USA Swimming is now in mediation.)

But now, I have to admit, the U.S. Center for SafeSport has actually done something of substance. Specifically, it sent an October 13, 2021, “Notice of Allegations” to Jonathan Little, a lawyer who represents Ehekircher and dozens of other abuse claimants against multiple Olympic sports bodies.

The notice states: “It was reported to the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s Response and Resolution Office that you: were made aware of allegations of sexual misconduct and failed to timely report such allegations to appropriate authorities; discouraged the reporting of sexual misconduct; encouraged the concealment and destruction of evidence on the subject; contested the need to follow federal reporting requirements; refused to cooperate in the Center’s investigation; and retaliated against a USA Badminton employee for reporting sexual misconduct to the Center. It has been further alleged that you engaged in Abuse of Process by improperly disclosing the identity of Claimants in communications with both the USOPC and the United States Congress.”

The next step in the possible discipline of Little is … Interview with a SafeSport investigator.

In my analysis of what is characteristically Kafkaesque harassment of claimants and their advocates, Little is being charged with counseling his abuse clients not to waste their time bringing allegations against coaches to SafeSport’s kangaroo court. Instead, he advises survivors to take their information to law enforcement authorities.

For the record, I did not seek SafeSport’s comment for this article. The reason is that the center’s officials, from CEO Ju’Riese Colon on down, have never responded to my inquiries.

However, con man PR guy Dan Hill did, in 2018, fabricate the content of his single phone conversation with me, on his cell phone on a weekend, which he claimed was listened to, aghast, over “speaker phone” by his employees in his office. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=13122.

After publication of the Salon article earlier this year, Hill also tried to retail to my editors there the absurd lie that I “even mentioned [Hill’s] minor daughter, a survivor, in one of his blog posts.” See https://concussioninc.net/?p=14818.

Do-Nothing U.S. Center for SafeSport Finally Does Something! Of Course, That Something Is to Legally Harass a Lawyer For Abuse Victims.
Read more: https://concussioninc.net/?p=14901

greybeard58
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Green Dot Program Encourages Bystanders to Intervene

Post by greybeard58 » Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:13 pm

Green Dot Program Encourages Bystanders to Intervene
POSTED ONMAY 13, 2014 By Rita Kovtun '14
Green Dot movement seeks critical mass

“Bystander intervention” and “sexual assault” have been buzzwords of 2014 as the nation continues to grapple with addressing and reducing power-based personal violence, which includes sexual violence, partner violence, stalking, elder abuse, abuse of those with disabilities, child abuse and bullying. St. Thomas is joining in this effort through Green Dot, a movement that seeks to gain a critical mass of students, staff and faculty who are willing to do their small part to actively and visibly reduce power-based personal violence on and around campus.

Green Dot, founded in 2009 by Dorothy Edwards, Ph.D. – a psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky at the time – takes an inclusive approach to all victims of personal violence – men and women.

Deb Broderick of St. Thomas' Counseling and Psychological Services, head of the Green Dot faculty and staff committee, said Edwards saw that “men were sort of being shut out” in previous violence prevention programs. “By focusing on women as victims and men as perpetrators, essentially we just sort of pushed them aside and they weren’t part of any solution,” Broderick said. “Acts of violence happen to men, to women, to straight people, to gay people. It happens across the board.”

Edwards incorporated research on the bystander effect – a notion that indicates there are two or three bystanders for each act of violence that occurs – to create a movement that would encourage bystanders to intervene, or do a “green dot,” instead of allowing “red dots,” or risky behaviors leading up to violence, to go unchecked.

Broderick gave the example of seeing someone at a party or bar who is drunk and being taken advantage of. “There is a room full of people who see this and no one does anything because ‘We’re not supposed to’ and ‘It’s none of our business’ and all of those kinds of things,” Broderick said, “[but] what if all these bystanders did something – or at least one of them?”

Another example Broderick provided is a couple arguing heatedly with one person angrily grabbing the other. Broderick said a red dot would involve walking past the couple, assuming “It’s none of my business,” or “I don’t know what’s going on.” A green dot could be going up to the couple and intervening, especially if you know either person, or calling Public Safety. These actions may seem like going too far, but as Broderick said, “You’re not really in a position to know that.

“Maybe you don’t know anything about it. You walk past, you make a phone call, Public Safety comes out – nobody knows it’s you. Public Safety finds out it’s all OK, then everybody’s fine, but the message it sends to the person that was maybe getting intimidated is that, ‘Oh, somebody cares.’”

Broderick stresses involvement is necessary from everyone to create a safer campus.

“Even if I’m not a victim of some sort of violence, I likely know someone who is who may be close to me. It continues to affect me, and even if it doesn’t happen to me and it happens to my roommate, it could happen to me. So it’s in my best interest to try to reduce those numbers and to take an active part,” Broderick said.

Green Dot at St. Thomas

Green Dot came to St. Thomas after Rachel Harris of the Dean of Students Office participated in Green Dot Bystander Training at the Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis in August 2011. She collaborated with ACTC schools to bring a national Green Dot trainer for a four-day training in July 2012. Broderick said about 15 St. Thomas faculty and staff members participated in the original training and that the national trainer will be back this June for joint training with Hamline and Macalester.

The training provides information on how to talk about Green Dot, how to market it and how to start a particular initiative, but the movement itself hinges on a bottom-up organization.

“We want to create this culture change and we don’t want it to be from top down … because that’s not how culture changes. Culture among students changes by students,” Broderick said.

To inspire this change in campus culture, UST Green Dot committee members give short presentations, usually ranging from 15 minutes to an hour, to student organizations, residence halls, departments, classrooms and other campus groups to educate students about bystander intervention and get the word out about Green Dot.

“Once they hear that one in three college students experiences some form of power-based personal violence, they can’t unknow that, and once we give them a few ideas about how they can take action in very small ways, they can’t unknow that either,” Broderick said.

UST Green Dot also offers full-day, intensive bystander training workshops to students twice a year. Students who are considered socially influential on campus are invited to the training with the hope that they will attend and tell other students about Green Dot.

The training walks students through recognizing red dots, familiarizing themselves with green dots and helping to reflect on their personal connection in working to reduce power-based personal violence.

The program is directed especially at students in leadership positions such as resident advisers, apartment coordinators and orientation leaders; a two-hour training session held at the Fall Leadership Institute last year will be repeated this August.

Other universities, such as the University of New Hampshire, have begun requiring bystander training for their student athletes in response to a study by United Educators that found athletes make up between 10 and 15 percent of the student population but account for 25 percent of assaults.

At St. Thomas, men’s hockey coach Duke Boeser is on the Green Dot committee, and other athletic coaches have received a presentation on bystander interventions.

“We haven’t done anything for specific teams because we don’t like it to be mandated – we’d rather this become something that people want to hear – but if coaches want their teams to hear about it, we’re more than glad to do it,” Broderick said.

In addition to presentations and trainings, Birdie Cunningham, Wellness Center health educator, heads a UST Green Dot marketing committee, which was formed last fall, composed of undergraduate students Therese Coughlan, Anna Hangge and Jennifer Gish, and Wellness Center graduate student Maryse Abrahams.

Coughlan, an RA in Dowling Hall, went through bystander training last fall and become involved with the committee this spring.

“[Training] made me realize how big sexual assault and violence actually are on the campus. I would have never guessed how prevalent it is, so I wanted to raise awareness,” Coughlan said.

The student committee provided information on Green Dot at the Night of Noise: Celebrating LGBTQ & Ally Identities at a UST event in April – also Sexual Assault Awareness Month – to raise awareness about the movement. The committee has plans in the works for next year.

For Coughlan, a goal of Green Dot is for students to just know what it is.

“If you know what it is and you’re aware of it, you can do green dots even if it’s simple, like talking about it,” Coughlan said.

After completing green dots, St. Thomas community members can add them anonymously to an interactive map.

“When we talk to classes, we leave by saying, ‘My challenge to you is to commit to doing one green dot over the next 24 hours,’” Broderick said. “[Green Dot] is incredibly doable – it’s just not hard.”

Those seeking more information can visit the UST Green Dot website.

Editor's note: St. Thomas is participating in a nationwide survey recently circulated by Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill to learn how universities handle sexual assaults and rapes.

https://news.stthomas.edu/green-dot/

greybeard58
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U.S. Center for SafeSport reports USA Hockey to Congress

Post by greybeard58 » Fri Feb 11, 2022 6:50 pm

U.S. Center for SafeSport reports USA Hockey to Congress for potential interference in investigation

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter Friday to USA Hockey concerning the national governing body’s “cooperation” and “compliance” with the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s policies and investigations. The U.S. Center for SafeSport investigates claims of sexual misconduct within the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s purview.

In the letter, addressed to USA Hockey executive director Pat Kelleher and president Mike Trimboli, Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reminded USA Hockey of their legal obligations under the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act of 2020, which requires national governing bodies to protect athletes from sexual abuse; under the law, NGBs also have the duty to immediately report any “reasonable suspicion” of child abuse to both law enforcement and the Center.

“As the Nassar case exemplifies, inaction may lead to many more victims being harmed, which would be intolerable,” Grassley wrote, referencing the case of Larry Nassar, who sexually abused hundreds of young female gymnasts.

The law referenced by Grassley requires the U.S. Center for SafeSport to report to Congress within 72 hours “any attempt to interfere in or influence the outcome of an investigation” by a national governing body. The U.S. Center for SafeSport reported USA Hockey earlier this week, multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic.

It is not immediately clear the nature of the investigation being conducted by the U.S. Center for SafeSport. A spokesperson for the Center declined to comment on the investigation, citing the Center’s policy for ongoing probes. USA Hockey was not immediately available for comment.

Previously, the U.S. Center for Safesport reported to Congress that USA Badminton had potentially run afoul of the law based on allegations that it was discouraging reporting of sexual misconduct, encouraging concealment and destruction evidence on the subject and refusing to cooperate with the Center’s investigation, according to a letter published by Grassley’s office in October 2021.

In that case, Grassley’s office warned USA Badminton officials of its legal obligations and also advised that Grassley had alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the concerns.

USA Hockey has come under scrutiny for how it handled allegations of sexual misconduct. Former USA Hockey president Jim Smith was investigated by the U.S. Center for SafeSport because of allegations he mishandled claims of sexual abuse involving former prominent Chicago-area youth and college hockey coach Thomas “Chico” Adrahtas. The matter was closed by SafeSport, but Smith later announced he would not seek re-election, referencing these allegations and telling members of the need to be “totally united as we move forward.”

USA Hockey is a co-defendant in a May 2021 federal lawsuit brought by victims of Adrahtas. The complaint alleges that Smith and others within USA Hockey and AHAI (Illinois’ amateur hockey state governing body) were told about the coach’s sexual misconduct and did not report the allegations to law enforcement or investigate the matter. USA Hockey filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in September, asking the court to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim.

U.S. Center for SafeSport reports USA Hockey to Congress for potential interference in investigation: Sources
Read more: https://theathletic.com/news/us-center- ... AgGYUR8px/

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