‘Uncomfortable and scared’: Abuse allegations inside the USA Hockey sled program
Madison Eberhard grew up in hockey rinks, shivering on weekends in Getzville, N.Y., as she watched her older brother and her father play. It wasn’t until she was 8 years old, when she attended a charity game and saw her first sled hockey player, that it occurred to her that she, too, could participate.
Eberhard was born with Larsen Syndrome, a congenital disorder that limits the use of her legs. By 8, it became difficult for her to continue playing the sports she loved. In T-ball, she was having trouble keeping up with her peers.
So when she became aware of sled hockey – an adaptive version of the sport in which players use sleds to move up and down the ice – it was a revelation. And when she first strapped into a sled and careened down the ice, navigating with her hips and watching the puck carom swiftly among teammates, she found her passion.
Eberhard joined a local sled hockey program in Buffalo, where she was the only female, and...
‘Uncomfortable and scared’: Abuse allegations inside the USA Hockey sled program
https://theathletic.com/1880546/2020/06 ... ed-program
Maddy Eberhard: "After much thought and consideration I have decided to speak publicly about a very dark time in my life. Thank you Katie for working on this article and allowing me to share my story. Sexual harassment within sports needs to end here.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/maddyeberhar ... 6102339585
Katie Strang: "The first time I talked to Maddy I was struck by her sheer strength and resilience. Only more so now that she has stepped forward publicly. Imagine how much d&%# courage this takes."
"Would also like to point out the contributions of her teammates and her friends, who also chose to speak out publicly, despite the possibility of retribution. They did so because they love and support Maddy and wanted to rally around her. That takes guts.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/KatieJStrang ... 4445357059
Kristen Whelan: "2018-19 was the very first year the women's sled team was under the USAH umbrella, after years of massive resource disparity. And this is what federation oversight brought.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/kmtwhelan/st ... 3287624705
Dr. Courtney Szto, Assistant Professor, Queen’s University: "THIS IS SO ENRAGING!”
Excerpt from article: “That male player, who is now 20, has long been considered a promising player at the national level. He was suspended for nearly a year from USA Hockey-sanctioned activities based on a “preponderance of evidence” that he violet policies by “engaging in sexual misconduct,” according to the SafeSport summary of decision. But documents obtained by The Athletic show that SafeSport granted him a three-day exception during his suspension so that he could try out for the men’s national team in July 2019."
https://mobile.twitter.com/courtneyszto ... 5664603137
Banned or Disciplined coaches
Moderators: Mitch Hawker, east hockey, karl(east)
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greybeard58
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- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Athlete A
Athlete A Minnesotan
In the last two years, a series of scalding and essential documentaries — “Leaving Neverland,” “Surviving R. Kelly,” “Untouchable,” “On the Record,” “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” — have shined a light on the contours of sexual abuse and the supreme, if not obscene, concentration of power that too often allows it to be concealed and perpetuated. In most of these high-profile cases, the power emanates from one figure who is either a celebrity or a backstage manipulator of celebrity: Harvey Weinstein, Michael Jackson, Russell Simmons, Jeffrey Epstein, R. Kelly. The power wielded by these men has been total and destructive: the ability to threaten and terrorize, to twist and ruin careers, to suppress and squash the rule of law.
“Athlete A,” Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s disturbing and illuminating documentary about the sexual-abuse scandal that struck the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team in 2016, is centered around an individual who was, in certain ways, a similar kind of serial abuser: Dr. Larry Nassar, the osteopathic physician who served, for 29 years, as the doctor for the USA Gymnastics women’s team. In a 2016 investigation undertaken by the Indianapolis Star, it was revealed that Nassar had abused dozens of young women athletes during the course of conducting “routine” examinations and physical-therapy sessions.
Much of the abuse took place at Karolyi Ranch, the USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center in Huntsville, Tex., that was overseen by Béla and Márta Károlyi, the fabled trainers who had come out of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania and led the U.S. team with a severity-bordering-on-cruelty that was part of their mystique. The woodland camp looked idyllic, but no parent was allowed to set foot there (which should have been a red flag). And inside it, the Károlyis practiced their special brand of discipline, tormenting teenage gymnasts about their weight, calling them lazy, treating them like machines who needed to push themselves to the boundaries and beyond…or else.
The reason this is relevant to the sexual-abuse case is that, within the military-like training-camp fortress of Huntsville, Larry Nassar, according to the documentary, was the girls’ one friendly authority figure — an amiable quirky goofball who would sometimes slip them food and candy. He never gave them explicit threats, even when committing abuses like putting an ungloved finger inside a girl’s vagina as part of an “exam.” He always maintained the fiction that he was their pal. Most of them knew that something was deeply wrong, but they felt they had nowhere to turn.
Where the iron grip of power came into play was inside the organization itself. In the summer of 2015, Maggie Nichols, a brilliant gymnast who appeared to be on track to make the Olympic team, told her mother that she’d been abused by Nassar. Her mother alerted an official at USA Gymnastics, and word of the allegations soon reached Steve Penny, the organization’s CEO and president. He was, at that point, legally required to alert the authorities. Instead, he hired an outside firm to conduct a private investigation. Penny was protecting Nassar, but what he was really protecting was the USA Gymnastics brand, which brought in $12 million a year. Beyond that, the women’s gymnastics team was part of the cultish “Go USA!” boosterism that had marked the Olympic Games since 1984. Penny was also protecting that. (As a punishment and a warning, he cut Maggie Nichols out of the loop.)
All of which is to say that the cover-up of Larry Nassar’s crimes, as documented by “Athlete A,” was analogous to the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church: the systematic protection of abusers who may not have been so powerful in themselves, by an organization of extraordinary power. Once the Indianapolis Star began its investigation in August 2016, in the middle of the Summer Olympic Games in Rio, the dominoes began to fall. The paper’s reporting hinged on the testimony of two whistleblowers: Jamie Dantzscher, who’d been a member of the 2000 Olympics team, and Rachael Denhollander, who stepped forward 16 years after suffering her own bout of abuse (which took place, in a concealed way, right in front of Denhollander’s mother as she sat in Nassar’s examination room).
Nassar responded by telling the newspaper that he had never touched the private parts of anyone he was examining. But since that was a colossal lie (he had done it hundreds of times), other survivors began coming forward with their own stories. The police raided his home and trash and found hard drives that contained thousands of pornographic pictures, some of them of children. By the time Nassar stood trial, 125 women had agreed to appear in court to present their impact testimonials.
Every high-profile sexual-abuse case is a kind of spider’s web, with toxic strands of enablers and co-conspirators, all wound into what’s been, until recently, a larger cultural denial. “Athlete A” is compellingly told by Cohen and Shenk so that we experience the pain and courage of these survivors, but also glimpse the big-picture backdrop of what occurred. In this case, the movie traces the dysfunction back to Béla and Márta Kátolyi, who had first come to prominence with the triumph of their 14-year-old Romanian gymnast superstar Nadia Comăneci, who won three gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. In doing so, she changed the face of the sport.
In the ’50s and ’60s, the competitors in women’s gymnastics were women. It was the Romanians who started the idea of training female gymnasts at a very young age. “What emerged was an aesthetic that was very, very young — childlike,” says Jennifer Sey, the 1986 USA Gymnastics National Champion. It created what she calls a “dangerous environment,” one that bred eating disorders, the delaying of menstruation, and the belief that to do the more difficult feats it helped to be tiny. After the Károlyis defected, they were seized on by the U.S. to be Olympic coaches, much as Wernher von Braun, the visionary rocket scientist of Nazi Germany, had been tapped in the late ’40s to become an architect of the American space program. The Károlyis represented a mercilessness that was very Eastern Bloc, but they produced winners, and officials in the U.S. were eager to import their whatever-it-takes school of hard knocks.
“Athlete A” makes the telling point that the Károlyi method was, itself, a form of abuse. The girls who were subjected to it had to steel themselves, in an almost Stockholm Syndrome way, to the sadistic rigors of their training. So it’s only natural that they ended up numbing themselves to even more devastating forms of abuse. “Athlete A” is a testament to their perseverance, and to the courage of all those who stood up in court to face the man who had violated their humanity. But it’s also a testament to the obsession that gave cover to their abuse — to a culture that wanted winners at any cost.
‘Athlete A’ on Netflix: Film Review
A disturbing and illuminating account of the Olympic women's-gymnastics sexual-abuse scandal examines how the culture of winning at all cost encouraged a cover-up of crimes.
Read more: https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/a ... 234642452/
Athlete A | Official Trailer | Netflix
Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzeP0DK ... e=emb_logo
In the last two years, a series of scalding and essential documentaries — “Leaving Neverland,” “Surviving R. Kelly,” “Untouchable,” “On the Record,” “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” — have shined a light on the contours of sexual abuse and the supreme, if not obscene, concentration of power that too often allows it to be concealed and perpetuated. In most of these high-profile cases, the power emanates from one figure who is either a celebrity or a backstage manipulator of celebrity: Harvey Weinstein, Michael Jackson, Russell Simmons, Jeffrey Epstein, R. Kelly. The power wielded by these men has been total and destructive: the ability to threaten and terrorize, to twist and ruin careers, to suppress and squash the rule of law.
“Athlete A,” Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s disturbing and illuminating documentary about the sexual-abuse scandal that struck the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team in 2016, is centered around an individual who was, in certain ways, a similar kind of serial abuser: Dr. Larry Nassar, the osteopathic physician who served, for 29 years, as the doctor for the USA Gymnastics women’s team. In a 2016 investigation undertaken by the Indianapolis Star, it was revealed that Nassar had abused dozens of young women athletes during the course of conducting “routine” examinations and physical-therapy sessions.
Much of the abuse took place at Karolyi Ranch, the USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center in Huntsville, Tex., that was overseen by Béla and Márta Károlyi, the fabled trainers who had come out of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania and led the U.S. team with a severity-bordering-on-cruelty that was part of their mystique. The woodland camp looked idyllic, but no parent was allowed to set foot there (which should have been a red flag). And inside it, the Károlyis practiced their special brand of discipline, tormenting teenage gymnasts about their weight, calling them lazy, treating them like machines who needed to push themselves to the boundaries and beyond…or else.
The reason this is relevant to the sexual-abuse case is that, within the military-like training-camp fortress of Huntsville, Larry Nassar, according to the documentary, was the girls’ one friendly authority figure — an amiable quirky goofball who would sometimes slip them food and candy. He never gave them explicit threats, even when committing abuses like putting an ungloved finger inside a girl’s vagina as part of an “exam.” He always maintained the fiction that he was their pal. Most of them knew that something was deeply wrong, but they felt they had nowhere to turn.
Where the iron grip of power came into play was inside the organization itself. In the summer of 2015, Maggie Nichols, a brilliant gymnast who appeared to be on track to make the Olympic team, told her mother that she’d been abused by Nassar. Her mother alerted an official at USA Gymnastics, and word of the allegations soon reached Steve Penny, the organization’s CEO and president. He was, at that point, legally required to alert the authorities. Instead, he hired an outside firm to conduct a private investigation. Penny was protecting Nassar, but what he was really protecting was the USA Gymnastics brand, which brought in $12 million a year. Beyond that, the women’s gymnastics team was part of the cultish “Go USA!” boosterism that had marked the Olympic Games since 1984. Penny was also protecting that. (As a punishment and a warning, he cut Maggie Nichols out of the loop.)
All of which is to say that the cover-up of Larry Nassar’s crimes, as documented by “Athlete A,” was analogous to the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church: the systematic protection of abusers who may not have been so powerful in themselves, by an organization of extraordinary power. Once the Indianapolis Star began its investigation in August 2016, in the middle of the Summer Olympic Games in Rio, the dominoes began to fall. The paper’s reporting hinged on the testimony of two whistleblowers: Jamie Dantzscher, who’d been a member of the 2000 Olympics team, and Rachael Denhollander, who stepped forward 16 years after suffering her own bout of abuse (which took place, in a concealed way, right in front of Denhollander’s mother as she sat in Nassar’s examination room).
Nassar responded by telling the newspaper that he had never touched the private parts of anyone he was examining. But since that was a colossal lie (he had done it hundreds of times), other survivors began coming forward with their own stories. The police raided his home and trash and found hard drives that contained thousands of pornographic pictures, some of them of children. By the time Nassar stood trial, 125 women had agreed to appear in court to present their impact testimonials.
Every high-profile sexual-abuse case is a kind of spider’s web, with toxic strands of enablers and co-conspirators, all wound into what’s been, until recently, a larger cultural denial. “Athlete A” is compellingly told by Cohen and Shenk so that we experience the pain and courage of these survivors, but also glimpse the big-picture backdrop of what occurred. In this case, the movie traces the dysfunction back to Béla and Márta Kátolyi, who had first come to prominence with the triumph of their 14-year-old Romanian gymnast superstar Nadia Comăneci, who won three gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. In doing so, she changed the face of the sport.
In the ’50s and ’60s, the competitors in women’s gymnastics were women. It was the Romanians who started the idea of training female gymnasts at a very young age. “What emerged was an aesthetic that was very, very young — childlike,” says Jennifer Sey, the 1986 USA Gymnastics National Champion. It created what she calls a “dangerous environment,” one that bred eating disorders, the delaying of menstruation, and the belief that to do the more difficult feats it helped to be tiny. After the Károlyis defected, they were seized on by the U.S. to be Olympic coaches, much as Wernher von Braun, the visionary rocket scientist of Nazi Germany, had been tapped in the late ’40s to become an architect of the American space program. The Károlyis represented a mercilessness that was very Eastern Bloc, but they produced winners, and officials in the U.S. were eager to import their whatever-it-takes school of hard knocks.
“Athlete A” makes the telling point that the Károlyi method was, itself, a form of abuse. The girls who were subjected to it had to steel themselves, in an almost Stockholm Syndrome way, to the sadistic rigors of their training. So it’s only natural that they ended up numbing themselves to even more devastating forms of abuse. “Athlete A” is a testament to their perseverance, and to the courage of all those who stood up in court to face the man who had violated their humanity. But it’s also a testament to the obsession that gave cover to their abuse — to a culture that wanted winners at any cost.
‘Athlete A’ on Netflix: Film Review
A disturbing and illuminating account of the Olympic women's-gymnastics sexual-abuse scandal examines how the culture of winning at all cost encouraged a cover-up of crimes.
Read more: https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/a ... 234642452/
Athlete A | Official Trailer | Netflix
Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzeP0DK ... e=emb_logo
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Minnesota’s Maggie Nichols is speaking publicly about sexual abuse by the former USA Gymnastics team doctor.
‘I Think Their Eyes Are Going To Open’
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minnesota’s Maggie Nichols is speaking publicly about sexual abuse by the former USA Gymnastics team doctor.
Nichols announced in 2018 she was the person referred to as “Athlete A,” the first to step forward to report abuse. While she released a written statement about the case then, she’s now talking about it.
Netflix just released the trailer for a documentary titled “Athlete A.” It premieres next week, detailing Nichols journey and the hundreds of others that came forward.
WCCO captured her return home from winning gold in the World Gymnastics Championship with Team USA in late 2015. It was mere months earlier, the teen from Little Canada reported sexual abuse by team doctor Larry Nassar.
“It was probably like 2013, probably the first time, and he would always like bring us, or bring me, into like this training room and close the blinds and perform his treatment that he so-called was the right thing to do, and I knew it wasn’t right,” Nichols said.
Her local coach with Twin City Twisters overhead her conversation with another athlete about Nassar’s treatments. That coach reported the abuse to USA Gymnastics but they would have to wait for justice while Nassar stayed on.
“After someone reports something as serious as sexual abuse, it should be changed in a minute. So that was very disappointing,” Nichols said. “We kind of were failed by USA Gymnastics and things like that even though they were the ones that were supposed to protect, you know, some of the best athletes in the world.”
As charges were finally brought against Nassar, Nichols watched as former USA Gymnastics teammates Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and others revealed they were Nassar victim-survivors. After time and careful consideration, she decided to identify herself as Athlete A, the first to report sexual abuse.
“I came to the realization that, you know, if I could help one person or help one person get through the same thing … coming out publicly, it would make it all worth it,” Nichols said.
She reveals the support of family and friends has helped her grow and heal. So have strangers who send messages of encouragement or support on social media. But she admits there are still tough days.
Nichols retired from elite gymnastics and went on to compete for top-ranked Oklahoma University. She’s considered among the best NCAA gymnasts ever.
“I think my years at OU are just the best times of my life. I really fell in love with the sport of gymnastics again,” Nichols said.
She hopes people will watch the documentary, calling it a powerful story from the people who lived it.
“There’s no holding back at all. It’s straight forward, it’s straight to the point, which is incredible,” Nichols said. “And I think it’s going to be super educational and people are really, I think their eyes are going to open.”
She has one more semester of college at OU. She’ll be a volunteer coach with gymnastics next year.
“Athlete A” will be released on Netflix on Wednesday.
Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison, in addition to a federal conviction.
‘I Think Their Eyes Are Going To Open’: Minnesota Gymnast Maggie Nichols Is At Heart Of Netflix’s ‘Athlete A’
Watch the interview: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/06/ ... athlete-a/
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minnesota’s Maggie Nichols is speaking publicly about sexual abuse by the former USA Gymnastics team doctor.
Nichols announced in 2018 she was the person referred to as “Athlete A,” the first to step forward to report abuse. While she released a written statement about the case then, she’s now talking about it.
Netflix just released the trailer for a documentary titled “Athlete A.” It premieres next week, detailing Nichols journey and the hundreds of others that came forward.
WCCO captured her return home from winning gold in the World Gymnastics Championship with Team USA in late 2015. It was mere months earlier, the teen from Little Canada reported sexual abuse by team doctor Larry Nassar.
“It was probably like 2013, probably the first time, and he would always like bring us, or bring me, into like this training room and close the blinds and perform his treatment that he so-called was the right thing to do, and I knew it wasn’t right,” Nichols said.
Her local coach with Twin City Twisters overhead her conversation with another athlete about Nassar’s treatments. That coach reported the abuse to USA Gymnastics but they would have to wait for justice while Nassar stayed on.
“After someone reports something as serious as sexual abuse, it should be changed in a minute. So that was very disappointing,” Nichols said. “We kind of were failed by USA Gymnastics and things like that even though they were the ones that were supposed to protect, you know, some of the best athletes in the world.”
As charges were finally brought against Nassar, Nichols watched as former USA Gymnastics teammates Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and others revealed they were Nassar victim-survivors. After time and careful consideration, she decided to identify herself as Athlete A, the first to report sexual abuse.
“I came to the realization that, you know, if I could help one person or help one person get through the same thing … coming out publicly, it would make it all worth it,” Nichols said.
She reveals the support of family and friends has helped her grow and heal. So have strangers who send messages of encouragement or support on social media. But she admits there are still tough days.
Nichols retired from elite gymnastics and went on to compete for top-ranked Oklahoma University. She’s considered among the best NCAA gymnasts ever.
“I think my years at OU are just the best times of my life. I really fell in love with the sport of gymnastics again,” Nichols said.
She hopes people will watch the documentary, calling it a powerful story from the people who lived it.
“There’s no holding back at all. It’s straight forward, it’s straight to the point, which is incredible,” Nichols said. “And I think it’s going to be super educational and people are really, I think their eyes are going to open.”
She has one more semester of college at OU. She’ll be a volunteer coach with gymnastics next year.
“Athlete A” will be released on Netflix on Wednesday.
Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison, in addition to a federal conviction.
‘I Think Their Eyes Are Going To Open’: Minnesota Gymnast Maggie Nichols Is At Heart Of Netflix’s ‘Athlete A’
Watch the interview: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/06/ ... athlete-a/
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goaliedad31
- Posts: 182
- Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 2:17 am
Re: Does MSHSL or Mn Hockey have such a list of banned coaches
Watched it. Very well done.
Sad story about Minnesota's Maggie NIchols, as it appears she was punished and left off the Olympic team for speaking out.
Sad story about Minnesota's Maggie NIchols, as it appears she was punished and left off the Olympic team for speaking out.
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
‘He said he loved me. I said, ‘You shouldn’t be in love with me. You’re 43, I’m 17, and you’re married. This isn’t right
‘He said he loved me. I said, ‘You shouldn’t be in love with me. You’re 43, I’m 17, and you’re married. This isn’t right.'’
Estey Ticknor remembers being 17 years old and lying on a blanket in the grass at Minute Man National Historical Park with her 43-year-old hockey coach when their secret rendezvous was interrupted by flashing blue police lights.
It was a school night, early in the spring of 1981, and Ticknor, a senior hockey star at Concord Academy, had been drawn into a sexual relationship with Carlton Gray, her coach on a national championship team in the trail-blazing Assabet Valley girls’ hockey program he founded, she said this month in an interview.
Now 57, Ticknor said she and Gray rose from their vantage above the historic North Bridge, knowing visitors were not permitted after dark. Gray told her he would handle the situation, and after he spoke briefly with the patrolman, she said, they were sent on their way, their secret intact.
Gray, now 82, declined to comment on Ticknor’s allegations, other than to say in an interview at his house, “We were best of friends. I respected who she was.”
He has previously denied acting inappropriately with any girl he has coached.
Ticknor said she came forward after reading Globe stories about allegations that Gray for decades has emotionally harmed girls as young as 8 with profane verbal abuse, unwanted physical contact, and unannounced intrusions into locker rooms, among other complaints. She said she is speaking out also because Gray has not publicly taken responsibility for the damage his purported conduct has caused.
“Enough is enough,” Ticknor said. “Carl has provided all kinds of opportunities for girls that many of them would not have had otherwise. I respect that, but that doesn’t give him license to treat people in abusive ways.”
The US Center for SafeSport, acting on a statement from Ticknor, informed her June 1 that it has opened an investigation into the allegation that Gray engaged in sexual activity with her while he was coaching her in a program affiliated with USA Hockey. The center was authorized by Congress in 2017 to investigate sexual misconduct in Olympic sports.
Gray is renowned in US women’s hockey, having led a movement to make the sport accessible to girls when he founded the Assabet program in 1972. His program has won 52 national titles and helped more than 300 girls secure college scholarships, including dozens who have been selected to play for US national teams. Some have captured Olympic gold.
Gray is a member of the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame. Many former players have credited his demanding coaching style with helping them reach their potential, and parents of other former players have praised his commitment to building the sport internationally, most recently by making a large investment in 2018 to take more than 30 children and parents to a tournament in Beijing.
But some of Gray’s abrasive methods have come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. The Globe reported in February that Mass Hockey, USA Hockey’s state affiliate, suspended three coaches of Gray’s nationally ranked Under 16 team for “prolonged and sustained verbal abuse [that] caused emotional distress" to seven players. Some of their parents and others blamed Gray for creating and fostering the allegedly abusive culture.
In April, the Globe reported that more than two dozen women who played for Assabet over the last 15 years had come forward and alleged that Gray bullied or belittled them. Some said Gray, without their permission, squeezed their biceps, while mentioning their breast size and referring to Chesty Morgan, an exotic dancer and adult entertainment star in the 1970s and ’80s who had a 73-inch bust. Other former players said Gray boasted of being “a sex beast” when he was younger.
Parents felt helpless
Gray said in an interview in April that his coaching methods were designed to induce greatness in young players, not to harm them.
“You’re never going to be a nice guy to everybody, especially if you’re trying to develop Olympians," Gray said. “It’s not easy developing an Olympian."
The Assabet program announced April 10, less than a week after the story about Gray was published, that he had resigned from the organization. He also resigned from the New England Girls Hockey League, which he created. Gray continues to own Valley Sports, the Concord ice arena where the Assabet program is based.
Now, he faces Ticknor’s allegations. Earlier this month, a Concord police detective, alerted by SafeSport, contacted Ticknor, who said she has no interest in pursuing criminal or civil charges against Gray. She told the detective about her experience, including details about the police encounter at the park.
When Ticknor and Gray rose that night from the grass, she said, they saw a Concord police cruiser idling behind Gray’s sedan. She said they often visited the park after hours. She recalled watching Gray speak to the officer and being surprised that the patrolman sent them on their way without speaking to her.
When the Globe asked Concord police in February to produce any public records they had on Gray, those documents included no reference to the 1981 incident. Ticknor awaits a response to her own request for information on the incident.
“It would be interesting to see if there is evidence of an adult seeing something that clearly was not right," she said.
Ticknor said Gray was sexually involved with her from around February to April of 1981, when she tried to end the relationship and confided about it to her mother. She said Gray tearfully resisted and reacted in part by appealing to her parents.
Gray was married then, as he is now. Ticknor’s mother, Matilda, said in an interview that she recalled phoning Gray about his alleged relationship with Estey. She said he showed up at her house, sat at her kitchen table, declared his love for her daughter, and described how he envisioned his future with her.
“He started drawing circles on paper about how he saw things going, with his wife as one circle and Estey as another circle,” Matilda said. “He wanted Estey as his mistress. I said, ‘What are you talking about? This is impossible.’ ”
The Ticknors were having marital problems at the time, which they said may have made Estey vulnerable to an inappropriate relationship. Ticknor’s father, Malcolm Ticknor, said he remembered Gray saying at the kitchen table that he would divorce his wife and marry Estey.
“It was crazy, bizarre," Malcolm said. “It was very stressful for Estey."
The Ticknors said they sent Gray away and received Estey’s assurance that the relationship was over. But they otherwise felt helpless, as if reporting the activity were not an option.
“That didn’t happen back then," Matilda said. “Who do you go to? The police? Nowadays it’s an obvious answer. It wasn’t then."
‘Very confusing’ feelings
Estey Ticknor, too, said she felt overwhelmed. She first met Gray when he invited her to join the Assabet program during her junior year on the Concord Academy team, which practiced and played home games at Valley Sports. In her senior year, Gray assigned her to Assabet’s top team, whose roster included future Olympian Cindy Curley.
“I had never played at that level and wasn’t as good as the other players,” Ticknor said. “Carl screamed and yelled and berated me all the time. I was very scared of him.”
But, she said, “He made me desperate for his approval.”
Ted Sherman, Ticknor’s Concord Academy coach, said in an interview that she privately complained to him at the time about Gray’s alleged verbal abuse, sexual innuendos, and unannounced entries into locker rooms.
Sherman said he volunteered to speak to Ticknor’s parents about it, but she objected, fearing she would lose her place on the team and a chance to play collegiately. Ticknor said she told Sherman years later about Gray’s alleged sexual involvement with her.
Sherman expressed regret in the interview that he had not reacted more forcefully to address Ticknor’s concerns.
“I’m not particularly proud of that,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot more in this decade about how to put an end to that stuff.”
During Ticknor’s senior year, she rapidly improved at Assabet, and as college recruiters took notice, she said, Gray went from tormenting her to raving about her. He was tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, an electrical engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Lab.
“He could turn on the charm,” Ticknor said. “He was very charismatic, funny, smart. I definitely looked up to and admired him. Those feelings were very confusing.”
The Assabet team practiced Friday nights and played games on Sundays. They often gathered afterward in the back of the rink, Ticknor said, drinking beer purchased by older teammates. Gray typically joined them, and that winter he began driving Ticknor home because they both lived in Concord.
“He seemed flirtatious at first, but I thought I was imagining it,” she said. “Then one night he caressed my ear. It blew my mind. I had never had a boyfriend. I had no sexual experience at all, except for kissing a couple of boys.”
He began spending more time with her.
“I felt this intense exhilaration and excitement, even though I was kind of terrified. It was like a rushing train I couldn’t get off,” she said.
She recalled them connecting clandestinely, with Ticknor ducking into Gray’s car at the main gate of Concord Academy after school or hiking from her home on Annursnac Hill Road to a nearby elementary school after hours to meet him.
Ticknor’s lifelong friend, Lyza Morss, said in an interview that she was stunned one night when she walked with Ticknor from her home to Concord’s South Bridge Boat House to find Gray waiting for her. Morss was stunned, too, to see Ticknor climb into Gray’s car.
“I wish I had paid more attention at the time,” Morss said.
Ticknor remembers teammates teasing her about the attention Gray paid her and the praise he showered on her. During that period, she said, he nominated her for Assabet’s sportsmanship award, which was presented to her by Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Orr.
Breaking it off
The winter of 1981 was special for the Assabet girls. They became a national power, criss-crossing the northeast US and Canada, often by bus, with Gray summoning Ticknor to sit in front next to him.
In early April, they arrived in Lake Placid, N.Y., to compete for the US Girls Amateur Hockey Association’s national title. Ticknor’s mother said she was surprised to see Gray sitting in a hotel hot tub with his players, with his arm apparently around Estey.
“It was weird,” she said. “But I never imagined Estey would have any interest in him.”
Others were suspicious, but Ticknor pushed back.
“I had all this terror and shame," she said. “My friendship with my teammates meant so much to me, and I didn’t want to lose it. So I lied whenever anybody said anything about it.”
The Assabet girls won the national championship, at the same Lake Placid arena where the US men’s hockey team had stunned the world the year before by winning Olympic gold.
“I had never experienced that kind of excitement before,” Ticknor said. “It was huge that we won, and by then I had started to fit in socially with the team, which was a really a big deal for me.”
Her relationship with Gray, meanwhile, was intensifying, she said. Home from Lake Placid, he drove her one day to the Battleship Cove Maritime Museum in Fall River and took her to dinner at the Cove Restaurant there.
She had resisted his attempts to have sexual intercourse, she said, until they returned that night to an upper office at his arena. She described the encounter as effectively ending their relationship.
“After that, I was totally freaked out,” she said. “I remember in the next couple of days saying to him, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ He said he loved me. I said, ‘You shouldn’t be in love with me. You’re 43, I’m 17, and you’re married. This isn’t right.‘ ”
Once the season ended, she distanced herself from Gray. She had been recruited by several colleges, and she chose Dartmouth over Brown, she said, because she would be farther away from Gray.
Ticknor became a two-sport star at Dartmouth, becoming the first women’s hockey player to score 100 points in a season and setting records for saves by a soccer goalie that still stand.
But she remained troubled by Gray. After college, she shared her secret with Morss, who also played in the Assabet program and recalled enduring alleged verbal and emotional abuse from Gray. Morss said Ticknor tearfully recounted her experience with Gray.
“She was so ashamed and so embarrassed,” Morss said.
Ticknor returned to Concord after college and wanted to continue to play competitive women’s hockey. Assabet remained the best program, and she decided to play there after making clear to Gray that their relationship was over.
“He started referring to ‘our thing,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘No, it’s not our thing. You were wrong. I was a child. You were an adult. It shouldn’t have happened.' We went forward from there.”
A call for vigilance
In 1987, Ticknor was selected to play on a US national team, coached in part by Gray, that competed in Toronto for the first women’s world championship. The US team won bronze, but their participation helped lead to women’s hockey being accepted as an Olympic sport in 1992.
While some of her teammates went on to pursue their Olympic dreams, Ticknor began coaching girls’ hockey and teaching at Williston Northampton School, where she met and married a fellow teacher, Glenn Swanson. They had two children before they divorced in 2005, as she was going through the process of coming out as gay.
Ticknor now lives in Easthampton with her spouse, Dr. Tara Lagu, and their 3-year-old daughter. She is a licensed independent clinical social worker, with a private therapy practice in Northampton.
From personal experience, Ticknor said she understands the emotional toll an allegedly abusive coach can exact, especially on youths.
She cited Gray’s long history at Assabet and called on governing bodies such as USA Hockey and Mass Hockey to practice more effective oversight and enforcement.
“I would like him to take some kind of responsibility or the governing bodies to sanction him in a way to make it clear that his repeated bad behavior is not acceptable,” Ticknor said.
She called on parents, too, to be more vigilant. She said children should be able to pursue their athletic dreams without suffering verbal and emotional abuse. The damage, in some cases at Assabet, has long endured, according to Ticknor and other former players.
When Ticknor’s friends have asked why she has chosen to speak out now, she said, she has told them, “I have been part of a culture of fear and silence. The Assabet program reinforced the idea of ‘don’t say anything, be silent.' When I saw the kind of egregious behavior that has been going on there for all these years, I decided it was time to tell my story, as old as it is."
She praised the seven Assabet players who stood up last year and filed complaints about the allegedly abusive coaching in Gray’s program. Ticknor said she stands with them.
Former Assabet hockey player recounts alleged sexual relationship with coach Carl Gray
Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/20/ ... carl-gray/
Estey Ticknor remembers being 17 years old and lying on a blanket in the grass at Minute Man National Historical Park with her 43-year-old hockey coach when their secret rendezvous was interrupted by flashing blue police lights.
It was a school night, early in the spring of 1981, and Ticknor, a senior hockey star at Concord Academy, had been drawn into a sexual relationship with Carlton Gray, her coach on a national championship team in the trail-blazing Assabet Valley girls’ hockey program he founded, she said this month in an interview.
Now 57, Ticknor said she and Gray rose from their vantage above the historic North Bridge, knowing visitors were not permitted after dark. Gray told her he would handle the situation, and after he spoke briefly with the patrolman, she said, they were sent on their way, their secret intact.
Gray, now 82, declined to comment on Ticknor’s allegations, other than to say in an interview at his house, “We were best of friends. I respected who she was.”
He has previously denied acting inappropriately with any girl he has coached.
Ticknor said she came forward after reading Globe stories about allegations that Gray for decades has emotionally harmed girls as young as 8 with profane verbal abuse, unwanted physical contact, and unannounced intrusions into locker rooms, among other complaints. She said she is speaking out also because Gray has not publicly taken responsibility for the damage his purported conduct has caused.
“Enough is enough,” Ticknor said. “Carl has provided all kinds of opportunities for girls that many of them would not have had otherwise. I respect that, but that doesn’t give him license to treat people in abusive ways.”
The US Center for SafeSport, acting on a statement from Ticknor, informed her June 1 that it has opened an investigation into the allegation that Gray engaged in sexual activity with her while he was coaching her in a program affiliated with USA Hockey. The center was authorized by Congress in 2017 to investigate sexual misconduct in Olympic sports.
Gray is renowned in US women’s hockey, having led a movement to make the sport accessible to girls when he founded the Assabet program in 1972. His program has won 52 national titles and helped more than 300 girls secure college scholarships, including dozens who have been selected to play for US national teams. Some have captured Olympic gold.
Gray is a member of the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame. Many former players have credited his demanding coaching style with helping them reach their potential, and parents of other former players have praised his commitment to building the sport internationally, most recently by making a large investment in 2018 to take more than 30 children and parents to a tournament in Beijing.
But some of Gray’s abrasive methods have come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. The Globe reported in February that Mass Hockey, USA Hockey’s state affiliate, suspended three coaches of Gray’s nationally ranked Under 16 team for “prolonged and sustained verbal abuse [that] caused emotional distress" to seven players. Some of their parents and others blamed Gray for creating and fostering the allegedly abusive culture.
In April, the Globe reported that more than two dozen women who played for Assabet over the last 15 years had come forward and alleged that Gray bullied or belittled them. Some said Gray, without their permission, squeezed their biceps, while mentioning their breast size and referring to Chesty Morgan, an exotic dancer and adult entertainment star in the 1970s and ’80s who had a 73-inch bust. Other former players said Gray boasted of being “a sex beast” when he was younger.
Parents felt helpless
Gray said in an interview in April that his coaching methods were designed to induce greatness in young players, not to harm them.
“You’re never going to be a nice guy to everybody, especially if you’re trying to develop Olympians," Gray said. “It’s not easy developing an Olympian."
The Assabet program announced April 10, less than a week after the story about Gray was published, that he had resigned from the organization. He also resigned from the New England Girls Hockey League, which he created. Gray continues to own Valley Sports, the Concord ice arena where the Assabet program is based.
Now, he faces Ticknor’s allegations. Earlier this month, a Concord police detective, alerted by SafeSport, contacted Ticknor, who said she has no interest in pursuing criminal or civil charges against Gray. She told the detective about her experience, including details about the police encounter at the park.
When Ticknor and Gray rose that night from the grass, she said, they saw a Concord police cruiser idling behind Gray’s sedan. She said they often visited the park after hours. She recalled watching Gray speak to the officer and being surprised that the patrolman sent them on their way without speaking to her.
When the Globe asked Concord police in February to produce any public records they had on Gray, those documents included no reference to the 1981 incident. Ticknor awaits a response to her own request for information on the incident.
“It would be interesting to see if there is evidence of an adult seeing something that clearly was not right," she said.
Ticknor said Gray was sexually involved with her from around February to April of 1981, when she tried to end the relationship and confided about it to her mother. She said Gray tearfully resisted and reacted in part by appealing to her parents.
Gray was married then, as he is now. Ticknor’s mother, Matilda, said in an interview that she recalled phoning Gray about his alleged relationship with Estey. She said he showed up at her house, sat at her kitchen table, declared his love for her daughter, and described how he envisioned his future with her.
“He started drawing circles on paper about how he saw things going, with his wife as one circle and Estey as another circle,” Matilda said. “He wanted Estey as his mistress. I said, ‘What are you talking about? This is impossible.’ ”
The Ticknors were having marital problems at the time, which they said may have made Estey vulnerable to an inappropriate relationship. Ticknor’s father, Malcolm Ticknor, said he remembered Gray saying at the kitchen table that he would divorce his wife and marry Estey.
“It was crazy, bizarre," Malcolm said. “It was very stressful for Estey."
The Ticknors said they sent Gray away and received Estey’s assurance that the relationship was over. But they otherwise felt helpless, as if reporting the activity were not an option.
“That didn’t happen back then," Matilda said. “Who do you go to? The police? Nowadays it’s an obvious answer. It wasn’t then."
‘Very confusing’ feelings
Estey Ticknor, too, said she felt overwhelmed. She first met Gray when he invited her to join the Assabet program during her junior year on the Concord Academy team, which practiced and played home games at Valley Sports. In her senior year, Gray assigned her to Assabet’s top team, whose roster included future Olympian Cindy Curley.
“I had never played at that level and wasn’t as good as the other players,” Ticknor said. “Carl screamed and yelled and berated me all the time. I was very scared of him.”
But, she said, “He made me desperate for his approval.”
Ted Sherman, Ticknor’s Concord Academy coach, said in an interview that she privately complained to him at the time about Gray’s alleged verbal abuse, sexual innuendos, and unannounced entries into locker rooms.
Sherman said he volunteered to speak to Ticknor’s parents about it, but she objected, fearing she would lose her place on the team and a chance to play collegiately. Ticknor said she told Sherman years later about Gray’s alleged sexual involvement with her.
Sherman expressed regret in the interview that he had not reacted more forcefully to address Ticknor’s concerns.
“I’m not particularly proud of that,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot more in this decade about how to put an end to that stuff.”
During Ticknor’s senior year, she rapidly improved at Assabet, and as college recruiters took notice, she said, Gray went from tormenting her to raving about her. He was tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, an electrical engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Lab.
“He could turn on the charm,” Ticknor said. “He was very charismatic, funny, smart. I definitely looked up to and admired him. Those feelings were very confusing.”
The Assabet team practiced Friday nights and played games on Sundays. They often gathered afterward in the back of the rink, Ticknor said, drinking beer purchased by older teammates. Gray typically joined them, and that winter he began driving Ticknor home because they both lived in Concord.
“He seemed flirtatious at first, but I thought I was imagining it,” she said. “Then one night he caressed my ear. It blew my mind. I had never had a boyfriend. I had no sexual experience at all, except for kissing a couple of boys.”
He began spending more time with her.
“I felt this intense exhilaration and excitement, even though I was kind of terrified. It was like a rushing train I couldn’t get off,” she said.
She recalled them connecting clandestinely, with Ticknor ducking into Gray’s car at the main gate of Concord Academy after school or hiking from her home on Annursnac Hill Road to a nearby elementary school after hours to meet him.
Ticknor’s lifelong friend, Lyza Morss, said in an interview that she was stunned one night when she walked with Ticknor from her home to Concord’s South Bridge Boat House to find Gray waiting for her. Morss was stunned, too, to see Ticknor climb into Gray’s car.
“I wish I had paid more attention at the time,” Morss said.
Ticknor remembers teammates teasing her about the attention Gray paid her and the praise he showered on her. During that period, she said, he nominated her for Assabet’s sportsmanship award, which was presented to her by Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Orr.
Breaking it off
The winter of 1981 was special for the Assabet girls. They became a national power, criss-crossing the northeast US and Canada, often by bus, with Gray summoning Ticknor to sit in front next to him.
In early April, they arrived in Lake Placid, N.Y., to compete for the US Girls Amateur Hockey Association’s national title. Ticknor’s mother said she was surprised to see Gray sitting in a hotel hot tub with his players, with his arm apparently around Estey.
“It was weird,” she said. “But I never imagined Estey would have any interest in him.”
Others were suspicious, but Ticknor pushed back.
“I had all this terror and shame," she said. “My friendship with my teammates meant so much to me, and I didn’t want to lose it. So I lied whenever anybody said anything about it.”
The Assabet girls won the national championship, at the same Lake Placid arena where the US men’s hockey team had stunned the world the year before by winning Olympic gold.
“I had never experienced that kind of excitement before,” Ticknor said. “It was huge that we won, and by then I had started to fit in socially with the team, which was a really a big deal for me.”
Her relationship with Gray, meanwhile, was intensifying, she said. Home from Lake Placid, he drove her one day to the Battleship Cove Maritime Museum in Fall River and took her to dinner at the Cove Restaurant there.
She had resisted his attempts to have sexual intercourse, she said, until they returned that night to an upper office at his arena. She described the encounter as effectively ending their relationship.
“After that, I was totally freaked out,” she said. “I remember in the next couple of days saying to him, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ He said he loved me. I said, ‘You shouldn’t be in love with me. You’re 43, I’m 17, and you’re married. This isn’t right.‘ ”
Once the season ended, she distanced herself from Gray. She had been recruited by several colleges, and she chose Dartmouth over Brown, she said, because she would be farther away from Gray.
Ticknor became a two-sport star at Dartmouth, becoming the first women’s hockey player to score 100 points in a season and setting records for saves by a soccer goalie that still stand.
But she remained troubled by Gray. After college, she shared her secret with Morss, who also played in the Assabet program and recalled enduring alleged verbal and emotional abuse from Gray. Morss said Ticknor tearfully recounted her experience with Gray.
“She was so ashamed and so embarrassed,” Morss said.
Ticknor returned to Concord after college and wanted to continue to play competitive women’s hockey. Assabet remained the best program, and she decided to play there after making clear to Gray that their relationship was over.
“He started referring to ‘our thing,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘No, it’s not our thing. You were wrong. I was a child. You were an adult. It shouldn’t have happened.' We went forward from there.”
A call for vigilance
In 1987, Ticknor was selected to play on a US national team, coached in part by Gray, that competed in Toronto for the first women’s world championship. The US team won bronze, but their participation helped lead to women’s hockey being accepted as an Olympic sport in 1992.
While some of her teammates went on to pursue their Olympic dreams, Ticknor began coaching girls’ hockey and teaching at Williston Northampton School, where she met and married a fellow teacher, Glenn Swanson. They had two children before they divorced in 2005, as she was going through the process of coming out as gay.
Ticknor now lives in Easthampton with her spouse, Dr. Tara Lagu, and their 3-year-old daughter. She is a licensed independent clinical social worker, with a private therapy practice in Northampton.
From personal experience, Ticknor said she understands the emotional toll an allegedly abusive coach can exact, especially on youths.
She cited Gray’s long history at Assabet and called on governing bodies such as USA Hockey and Mass Hockey to practice more effective oversight and enforcement.
“I would like him to take some kind of responsibility or the governing bodies to sanction him in a way to make it clear that his repeated bad behavior is not acceptable,” Ticknor said.
She called on parents, too, to be more vigilant. She said children should be able to pursue their athletic dreams without suffering verbal and emotional abuse. The damage, in some cases at Assabet, has long endured, according to Ticknor and other former players.
When Ticknor’s friends have asked why she has chosen to speak out now, she said, she has told them, “I have been part of a culture of fear and silence. The Assabet program reinforced the idea of ‘don’t say anything, be silent.' When I saw the kind of egregious behavior that has been going on there for all these years, I decided it was time to tell my story, as old as it is."
She praised the seven Assabet players who stood up last year and filed complaints about the allegedly abusive coaching in Gray’s program. Ticknor said she stands with them.
Former Assabet hockey player recounts alleged sexual relationship with coach Carl Gray
Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/20/ ... carl-gray/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
‘Chico’ Adrahtas, former hockey coach accused of sexual abuse, gets lifetime ban
‘Chico’ Adrahtas, former hockey coach accused of sexual abuse, gets lifetime ban
The U.S. Center for SafeSport has issued a lifetime ban for Tom “Chico” Adrahtas, a former Chicago-area youth hockey coach. Adrahtas, who was the subject of a Feb. 21 article in The Athletic in which multiple former players came forward to say that he sexually abused them, is prohibited from coaching in any USA Hockey-sanctioned activity or any activity involving a national governing body under the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committee’s purview.
The disciplinary decision and investigative findings of the nearly 21-month investigation were rendered on Monday. SafeSport investigators found that Adrahtas “engaged in a pattern of exploitative and abusive sexual misconduct with multiple young athletes he coached, egregiously abusing a position of authority to manipulate and deceive young male athletes he mentored and coached, for sexual purposes,” according to the investigative report. It also states that evidence “overwhelmingly”...
‘Chico’ Adrahtas, former hockey coach accused of sexual abuse, gets lifetime ban
https://theathletic.com/1851010/2020/06 ... etime-ban/
The U.S. Center for SafeSport has issued a lifetime ban for Tom “Chico” Adrahtas, a former Chicago-area youth hockey coach. Adrahtas, who was the subject of a Feb. 21 article in The Athletic in which multiple former players came forward to say that he sexually abused them, is prohibited from coaching in any USA Hockey-sanctioned activity or any activity involving a national governing body under the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committee’s purview.
The disciplinary decision and investigative findings of the nearly 21-month investigation were rendered on Monday. SafeSport investigators found that Adrahtas “engaged in a pattern of exploitative and abusive sexual misconduct with multiple young athletes he coached, egregiously abusing a position of authority to manipulate and deceive young male athletes he mentored and coached, for sexual purposes,” according to the investigative report. It also states that evidence “overwhelmingly”...
‘Chico’ Adrahtas, former hockey coach accused of sexual abuse, gets lifetime ban
https://theathletic.com/1851010/2020/06 ... etime-ban/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
U of M admits inaction after 1985 accusations of improprieties by former hockey coach
U of M admits inaction after 1985 accusations of improprieties by former hockey coach
Several officials at the University of Minnesota knew of accusations of sexual assault by a Gophers hockey coach 35 years ago, and nothing was officially done about it. That was the conclusion of an investigation initiated by the U of M into the actions of Thomas 'Chico' Adrahtas in the 1984-85 season, when he was an assistant coach at the school.
Almost every aspect of American life has changed in the past 35 years. And the way that allegations of sexual improprieties by a former Minnesota Gophers hockey coach were handled in 1985 would not be repeated today.
That was the conclusion of an investigation launched last winter, when allegations of sexual abuse surfaced more than three decades after Thomas ‘Chico’ Adrahtas spent a single season as an assistant coach in the Gophers’ men’s hockey program.
Adrahtas, who did not respond to several interview requests from The Rink Live, was on the staff of former Gophers head coach Brad Buetow in the 1984-85 season. Buetow was not offered a contract at that season’s end. Facing accusations of sexual improprieties from several former players, Adrahtas also left the U of M in June 1985 and has not lived in Minnesota since.
Per a February report in The Athletic, Adrahtas most recently worked for a college club team in Illinois, but has since been effectively banned from the sport due to multiple allegations of improper behavior with players. In February, the U of M hired the law firm of Perkins Coie LLP to investigate the school’s handling of the matter in 1985, when the Minnesota accusations against Adrahtas first surfaced.
In a statement sent out by the U or M on Friday, Oct. 16, the school explained the reason for hiring the law firm:
“The investigation aimed, in part, to determine whether reports of the alleged abuse were made known to the University at the time of the former coach’s employment and, if so, whether any responsive actions were taken to address them,” the statement read, in part, adding that they, “...asked Perkins to provide the University with an independent assessment of its factual findings once the investigation was complete.”
The investigators sent letters to all of the 1984-85 Gophers requesting interviews, and identified roughly 50 others who were believed to have information relevant to Adrahtas’ conduct while employed by the university. Of those, 14 were deceased -- including Paul Giel, who was the U of M athletic director at the time -- and several others either did not respond or declined to be interviewed. The firm ultimately conducted interviews with 29 people and received written responses from one more. They found that several people at the U of M heard of the accusations against Adrahtas, but no official action was taken.
“Collectively, based on credible and corroborating firsthand witness accounts, Perkins found that sexual abuse allegations like those reported in The Athletic were known by individuals within the University’s athletic department at or around the time of the former assistant coach’s departure from the University,” the statement read. “Despite this knowledge, available evidence shows no action taken by the University to conduct an independent investigation or report the allegations to the authorities. That is not what the University would do today.”
Interviewed by The Rink Live in early March, Buetow said he had no knowledge of the alleged inappropriate conduct with players by Adrahtas before hiring him, or during the assistant coach’s lone season at the U of M. Adrahtas was accused by several people of coercing blindfolded and bound players into oral sex with what they were told was a woman, but in fact was likely Adrahtas himself.
“I interviewed (Adrahtas), talked to him, checked every aspect I could on him and it was all clean. And he knew his hockey. He was a very knowledgeable hockey coach,” said Buetow, who is retired and lives in Colorado. “I had no idea about any of the other stuff or I would’ve reported him to the authorities immediately. Anybody should.”
The investigators also reviewed hundreds of boxes of printed materials, and found no documented evidence of the allegations against Adrahtas. Per the U of M, their report cannot be made public under state law because it includes private information regarding former school employees.
U of M admits inaction after 1985 accusations of improprieties by former hockey coach
Read more: https://www.brainerddispatch.com/sports ... ckey-coach
Several officials at the University of Minnesota knew of accusations of sexual assault by a Gophers hockey coach 35 years ago, and nothing was officially done about it. That was the conclusion of an investigation initiated by the U of M into the actions of Thomas 'Chico' Adrahtas in the 1984-85 season, when he was an assistant coach at the school.
Almost every aspect of American life has changed in the past 35 years. And the way that allegations of sexual improprieties by a former Minnesota Gophers hockey coach were handled in 1985 would not be repeated today.
That was the conclusion of an investigation launched last winter, when allegations of sexual abuse surfaced more than three decades after Thomas ‘Chico’ Adrahtas spent a single season as an assistant coach in the Gophers’ men’s hockey program.
Adrahtas, who did not respond to several interview requests from The Rink Live, was on the staff of former Gophers head coach Brad Buetow in the 1984-85 season. Buetow was not offered a contract at that season’s end. Facing accusations of sexual improprieties from several former players, Adrahtas also left the U of M in June 1985 and has not lived in Minnesota since.
Per a February report in The Athletic, Adrahtas most recently worked for a college club team in Illinois, but has since been effectively banned from the sport due to multiple allegations of improper behavior with players. In February, the U of M hired the law firm of Perkins Coie LLP to investigate the school’s handling of the matter in 1985, when the Minnesota accusations against Adrahtas first surfaced.
In a statement sent out by the U or M on Friday, Oct. 16, the school explained the reason for hiring the law firm:
“The investigation aimed, in part, to determine whether reports of the alleged abuse were made known to the University at the time of the former coach’s employment and, if so, whether any responsive actions were taken to address them,” the statement read, in part, adding that they, “...asked Perkins to provide the University with an independent assessment of its factual findings once the investigation was complete.”
The investigators sent letters to all of the 1984-85 Gophers requesting interviews, and identified roughly 50 others who were believed to have information relevant to Adrahtas’ conduct while employed by the university. Of those, 14 were deceased -- including Paul Giel, who was the U of M athletic director at the time -- and several others either did not respond or declined to be interviewed. The firm ultimately conducted interviews with 29 people and received written responses from one more. They found that several people at the U of M heard of the accusations against Adrahtas, but no official action was taken.
“Collectively, based on credible and corroborating firsthand witness accounts, Perkins found that sexual abuse allegations like those reported in The Athletic were known by individuals within the University’s athletic department at or around the time of the former assistant coach’s departure from the University,” the statement read. “Despite this knowledge, available evidence shows no action taken by the University to conduct an independent investigation or report the allegations to the authorities. That is not what the University would do today.”
Interviewed by The Rink Live in early March, Buetow said he had no knowledge of the alleged inappropriate conduct with players by Adrahtas before hiring him, or during the assistant coach’s lone season at the U of M. Adrahtas was accused by several people of coercing blindfolded and bound players into oral sex with what they were told was a woman, but in fact was likely Adrahtas himself.
“I interviewed (Adrahtas), talked to him, checked every aspect I could on him and it was all clean. And he knew his hockey. He was a very knowledgeable hockey coach,” said Buetow, who is retired and lives in Colorado. “I had no idea about any of the other stuff or I would’ve reported him to the authorities immediately. Anybody should.”
The investigators also reviewed hundreds of boxes of printed materials, and found no documented evidence of the allegations against Adrahtas. Per the U of M, their report cannot be made public under state law because it includes private information regarding former school employees.
U of M admits inaction after 1985 accusations of improprieties by former hockey coach
Read more: https://www.brainerddispatch.com/sports ... ckey-coach
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MNHockeyFan
- Posts: 7260
- Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:28 pm
Re: Does MSHSL or Mn Hockey have such a list of banned coaches
Wrong thread, this is the girls high school forum.
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Tennis coach charged with molesting one of his Holy Family HS athletes
TIMOTHY GARIN
CEP #:
224554
Location:
MOUND, MN
Certification Levels
Level Season Received Expires
1 2005-06 Dec 31, 2008
2 2006-07 Dec 31, 2009
3 Clinic 2009-10 Dec 31, 2012
4 2010-11 No Expiration
Age Specific Modules
Module Season Received
12 & Under 2012-13
Also a hockey coach!
Tennis coach charged with molesting one of his Holy Family HS athletes
Holy Family in Victoria fired him after woman came forward in Sept.
By Paul Walsh Star Tribune
OCTOBER 8, 2020 — 6:38AM
CARVER COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE
Timothy J. "TJ" Garin, 59, of Mound, is charged in Carver County District Court with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.
A tennis coach sexually molested one of his players on the campus of Holy Family High School in Victoria several years ago, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Timothy J. “TJ” Garin, 59, of Mound, was charged in Carver County District Court with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly molesting the girl in 2016.
The Catholic school fired Garin as the boys' and girls' head coach after administrators learned of the allegations, said Sheriff Jason Kamerud.
The girl was coached by then-assistant Garin starting in 2014, when she was 15 years old, through 2018, the complaint read.
Garin was arrested Tuesday and has since been released from jail. Reached by telephone, he declined to comment. His attorney, Justin Duffy, said that “at this point, these are allegations and we don’t have any further comment.”
Holy Family Principal Michael Brennan declined to answer questions about the accusations but released a statement that read, “We are appalled and saddened by this situation, and our thoughts are with the former student who came forward. After learning of these allegations in early September, Holy Family immediately notified the Carver County Sheriff’s Office and placed Garin on administrative leave.”
Garin was an assistant girl’s tennis coach from August 2013 to October 2015 and took over the program in August 2016. The girls won the Class A (small school) state title in 2014 and qualified for the state tournament in 2015 and 2016.
He became the boys head tennis coach in April 2014.
Along with coaching tennis, Garin was an assistant for the girls hockey team from October 2012 to March 2016. Garin had no other responsibilities while with Holy Family beyond coaching.
According to the complaint:
On Sept. 4, school officials alerted law enforcement that a former student reported being sexually targeted by Garin starting in 2015.
Deputies learned that Garin sent texts complimenting her appearance and making overtly sexual overtures.
In 2016 during private lessons on campus, Garin kissed her on the neck and touched clothing over her buttocks, legs and private area.
He’s also suspected of sending her photos of his genitals and requesting nude photos of her in return. She declined.
Garin would tell the girl to delete his messages because he would go to jail if anyone found out.
Anyone with information about this case or other possible incidents involving Garin are asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 952-361-1231. Also, anonymous tips can be left at 952-361-1224.
Correction: Previous versions of this misstated one reference to the school in Victoria. It is Holy Family High School.
Paul Walsh is a general assignment reporter at the Star Tribune. He wants your news tips, especially in and near Minnesota.
pwalsh@startribune.com 612-673-4482 walshpj
https://www.startribune.com/tennis-coac ... 572667252/
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Also a hockey coach!
Tennis coach charged with molesting one of his Holy Family HS athletes
Holy Family in Victoria fired him after woman came forward in Sept.
By Paul Walsh Star Tribune
OCTOBER 8, 2020 — 6:38AM
CARVER COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE
Timothy J. "TJ" Garin, 59, of Mound, is charged in Carver County District Court with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.
A tennis coach sexually molested one of his players on the campus of Holy Family High School in Victoria several years ago, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Timothy J. “TJ” Garin, 59, of Mound, was charged in Carver County District Court with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly molesting the girl in 2016.
The Catholic school fired Garin as the boys' and girls' head coach after administrators learned of the allegations, said Sheriff Jason Kamerud.
The girl was coached by then-assistant Garin starting in 2014, when she was 15 years old, through 2018, the complaint read.
Garin was arrested Tuesday and has since been released from jail. Reached by telephone, he declined to comment. His attorney, Justin Duffy, said that “at this point, these are allegations and we don’t have any further comment.”
Holy Family Principal Michael Brennan declined to answer questions about the accusations but released a statement that read, “We are appalled and saddened by this situation, and our thoughts are with the former student who came forward. After learning of these allegations in early September, Holy Family immediately notified the Carver County Sheriff’s Office and placed Garin on administrative leave.”
Garin was an assistant girl’s tennis coach from August 2013 to October 2015 and took over the program in August 2016. The girls won the Class A (small school) state title in 2014 and qualified for the state tournament in 2015 and 2016.
He became the boys head tennis coach in April 2014.
Along with coaching tennis, Garin was an assistant for the girls hockey team from October 2012 to March 2016. Garin had no other responsibilities while with Holy Family beyond coaching.
According to the complaint:
On Sept. 4, school officials alerted law enforcement that a former student reported being sexually targeted by Garin starting in 2015.
Deputies learned that Garin sent texts complimenting her appearance and making overtly sexual overtures.
In 2016 during private lessons on campus, Garin kissed her on the neck and touched clothing over her buttocks, legs and private area.
He’s also suspected of sending her photos of his genitals and requesting nude photos of her in return. She declined.
Garin would tell the girl to delete his messages because he would go to jail if anyone found out.
Anyone with information about this case or other possible incidents involving Garin are asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 952-361-1231. Also, anonymous tips can be left at 952-361-1224.
Correction: Previous versions of this misstated one reference to the school in Victoria. It is Holy Family High School.
Paul Walsh is a general assignment reporter at the Star Tribune. He wants your news tips, especially in and near Minnesota.
pwalsh@startribune.com 612-673-4482 walshpj
https://www.startribune.com/tennis-coac ... 572667252/
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greybeard58
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"If that’s not an indictment of our youth hockey culture, and the leadership of our youth hockey culture that allow thin
"If that’s not an indictment of our youth hockey culture, and the leadership of our youth hockey culture that allow things like this to happen, I don’t know what is."
From the Hockey Think Tank:
This post will be the harshest criticism I’ll give of our youth hockey culture, including an abandonment of values on the part of a few people in leadership positions at USA Hockey.
Before I begin, I want to preface by saying that I think there are a lot of really good people at USA Hockey. A lot of good people that continue to do some really amazing things for our sport. Many of those people I consider friends and colleagues with whom I’ve collaborated and worked with a lot over the years to better our game.
But I started the Hockey Think Tank to make the hockey world a better place. And while usually that’s by highlighting the good that our sport has to offer, sometimes things just need to be called out. Even if it makes us uncomfortable.
This story I’m about to tell you is downright stomach-turning. And to give you the whole scope, I’ll first take you back a few years because it’s something I lived through as a kid.
Growing up in Chicago in the late 1990’s, my family started to realize that higher level hockey was probably where I was headed. I’m grateful to have had awesome coaching and been put in environments that led to that point.
As I got to Bantam hockey and we started to map some things out, my parents informed me that I was not allowed to play in the future for the most esteemed midget coach in our area. The man was Chico Adrahtas.
This was a coach that had a history of moving midget hockey players onto junior, college, and professional hockey – the dream that I’d had since I was little.
I still vividly remember the conversation with my parents:
“Why can’t I play for him?” I confusedly asked.
My parents looked at each other and then asked me to sit down. It was one of those requests where you knew something kind of big or important was coming.
“Toph,” they uncomfortably answered, “He’s a pedophile.”
“A pedophile?” my 13-year-old self asked back. “What’s a pedophile?”
Long, deep, anxious breaths and an uncomfortable silence followed. “Well, it means that it’s pretty widely known that he has a history of sexually abusing youth hockey players.”
Yeah.
That’s an actual conversation that my parents had to have with me when I was 13 years old. And it’s a conversation that I know a lot of other Chicago area families had with their kids as well.
But unfortunately, many other families chose to allow their kids play for Adrahtas. Even with the widely known rumors. And the reasoning scares the he*% out of me (which you’ll see below).
Here is a mind-boggling excerpt from an article written by Katie Strang of The Athletic, who brought this story to the greater hockey world earlier this year. She spoke with many Chicago area coaches, players, and families about Adrahtas, including Nick Aulich who is quoted below.
Brace yourself.
“Team Illinois officials mandated that Adrahtas wasn’t allowed in the boys’ dressing room except immediately before and after the game, on account of the rumors that followed Adrahtas for years. However, multiple Team Illinois players who played for Adrahtas around this time said he would invite players over individually to his condo under the guise of discussing their hockey future. Adrahtas would order pizza and put on pornographic movies, these players recalled.
Aulich said that despite widespread rumors about Adrahtas’ misconduct, which stemmed largely from his abrupt departure from the University of Minnesota in 1985, Adrahtas was well-insulated by his success coaching amateurs. His reputation as the most coveted coach at the AAA level, someone who had the pedigree of shepherding several players to Division I, meant that players and their families felt they had little choice but to play for him.
‘It kind of shows you what is was like in Illinois. You had to go through him,” Aulich said. ‘I knew this guy was a pervert bastard and so did my family and I had to play for the guy. It’s so effed up.’”
Take a second and please wrap your head around that passage.
The coach wasn’t allowed in the locker room because of his rumored history of child sex abuse; yet parents felt pressure to play for him so their kids had a chance of achieving the next level of hockey.
If that’s not an indictment of our youth hockey culture, and the leadership of our youth hockey culture that allow things like this to happen, I don’t know what is.
Anyone that has read my stuff knows that the one thing I believe in most is that we play hockey for the life lessons that it teaches us. It’s not about getting the scholarship or playing professional hockey. The “making it” part should be a by-product of the lessons and experiences we share.
For that reason, it pains me to see parents subscribe to doing anything – even something as messed up as allowing their child to play for a rumored (now proven) child abuser – to get their kid to the next level. Parents, please take a step back and get some perspective on why you put your kid into hockey.
But the youth hockey obsession with “making it” and the parents that buy into it aren’t the only target of this post; it’s the people in leadership positions of our sport who allowed this type of culture to materialize in the first place – especially with the Adrahtas situation in Illinois which I’ll detail next.
If you haven’t already, I would strongly encourage you to go read Katie Strang’s reporting on this story in The Athletic. For young hockey players growing up in Chicago, like me, the rumors surrounding Adrahtas were widely known. But Strang’s incredible reporting uncovered the gut-wrenching details – not only about Adrahtas’ own misconduct, but about the way people in power positions failed to handle them.
It started in the 1980’s when Adrahtas mysteriously left coaching at the University of Minnesota after one season. According to Strang, a main reason for his abrupt departure was that he abused multiple players on the team. Rumors about Adrahtas’ abuse at Minnesota cast a shadow on him for years, but nothing was ever done about it.
Swept under the rug.
After leaving Minnesota, Adrahtas moved to Chicago where he’d already built a reputation of being a successful coach. And remember that conversation I had with my parents from earlier? Well, unfortunately there was more to the story that was shared with me that day.
It turns out, one of the people that hired Adrahtas a few years after he left Minnesota was my grandfather. He was putting a team together at my uncle’s age and hired Adrahtas to coach it. My grandfather had heard the rumors about Minnesota but was persuaded by Adrahtas that they weren’t true.
A couple months into the season, my grandfather caught wind that a few of the billeted players were sleeping over at Adrahtas’ house. Alarmed, he approached the players about what was going on. And in a meeting, one of the kids just broke down. He couldn’t bring himself to admit what had happened, but according to one person in that room, everyone knew. With Adrahtas’ history the dots were easy to connect.
That person who was in the room that day and recalled what had happened…that was my dad. And to this day, he becomes an emotional wreck every time he recalls this encounter.
My grandfather immediately fired Adrahtas. My family spent years trying to sound the alarm. I have memories of my parents having heated arguments with other parents who allowed their kids to play for him. But unfortunately, to no avail.
“It’s not going to happen to my kid.”
I still remember hearing that excuse and feeling sick to my stomach hearing parents say that. Yeah, it might not happen to your kid. But it’s OK if it happens to someone else’s kid? All so your kid can make it to the next level? It still makes me sick thinking about it.
What followed was decades of rumor about Adrahtas. If you were involved in AAA hockey in Chicago (or high-level hockey anywhere) during the next few decades you almost certainly heard the rumors. It was openly talked about.
Yet he continued to coach. It’s absolutely insane.
Again, THERE WAS A RULE THAT HE WASN’T ALLOWED IN THE LOCKER ROOM BUT PEOPLE THOUGHT IT WAS OK TO EMPLOY HIM COACHING KIDS.
But then came 2010.
Decades of rumor up until this point. Parents and hockey directors turned a blind eye because he was a great coach and moved kids to the next level. Although suspicions of abuse were there, nothing was really ever proven, no allegations were put in writing.
Until 2010.
According to Katie Strang, a SafeSport investigation into Adrahtas revealed that in 2010, despite all the rumors, the Illinois affiliate of USA Hockey (AHAI) made plans to put Adrahtas into the Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame. The rumors had effectively stalled the committee’s plans to induct him up until that point, but according to the SafeSport investigation (as reported by Strang), this time they decided to push him through.
Yeah.
Upon hearing Adrahtas’ impending Hall of Fame induction, a former player, Chris Jensen, sent a letter to AHAI detailing the sexual abuse that Adrahtas inflicted on him when he was a teenager.
And here’s how things played out after Jensen sent his letter, again, according to one of Katie Strang’s articles in The Athletic.
“While SafeSport’s investigation of Adrahtas has concluded, the organization is still probing how former and current AHAI officials, including current USA Hockey president Jim Smith (a former AHAI president), handled the allegations against Adrahtas. The investigation into Adrahtas yielded several findings on the front, among them:
"For years, AHAI officials refused to nominate Adrahtas to the Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame because of “innuendo and rumor” about abuse. But in 2010, Mike Mullally, who was president of AHAI in 2010, said that a group that included Jim Smith decided to “put him through anyway.”
After AHAI received Jensen’s letter in 2010, Mullally consulted with law enforcement but was told the statute of limitations had expired. Mullally then confronted Adrahtas, who denied performing oral sec on the player but admitted that he had procured a woman to perform oral sex on Jensen. Mullally said he was struck by the fact that Adrahtas admitted to a lesser crime as a way “to reassure him.” As for going forward with the Hall of Fame nomination, AHAI officials left that up to Adrahtas, who took himself out of consideration.
USA Hockey was not officially informed of Adrahtas’ admission because Jim Smith and Tony Rossi, another Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame committee member, were both high-ranking members of USA Hockey and already aware of the situation, Mullally said.
WOW.
So according to Strang’s reporting on the SafeSport investigation…
An affiliate of our sport’s governing body, whose main job is to provide a safe environment for kids to play hockey, got a letter in writing detailing Adrahtas’ sexual abuse of a minor. Then they got the man ADMITTING to another form of sexual misconduct. And what happened?
The answer to that question appears to be NOTHING.
Because according to Strang, even though Adrahtas was indefinitely suspended by AHAI after his admission, he still managed to coach amateur hockey for eight years.
EIGHT YEARS.
He got a job coaching ACHA College Hockey at Robert Morris College in Chicago and coached for CLOSE TO A DECADE.
According to Strang’s reporting, AHAI had proof of his sexual abuse in writing by one of his victims AND by his own admission; yet, according to the SafeSport investigation, they didn’t feel it necessary to make sure he never coached again. Here’s another excerpt from Strang’s article:
“Peter Lindberg, USA Hockey’s then legal council chairman, was consulted about the situation, however Lindberg suggested in an email to Mullally, Smith and others that AHAI contact RMU, where Adrahtas was coaching, to inform them about the allegations. Lindberg also said there should be an investigation at the Triple AAA programs where Adrahtas coached. AHAI officials did neither. Mullally told investigators that because Adrahtas was no longer coaching youth hockey, he and other AHAI officials did not view it as their responsibility."
That last statement is absolutely chilling. They “did not view it as their responsibility” to warn RMU about Adrahtas’ history of abuse. And the kicker:
Robert Morris College – where Adrahtas coached for EIGHT YEARS after Chris Jensen’s 2010 letter to AHAI – plays their home games out of the same arena that AHAI has held many of their meetings.
All they needed to do was “walk down the hall” and let the college know that the man they employed was a predator. But no. According to the SafeSport investigation, they decided against it. And for CLOSE TO A DECADE this man was allowed to coach amateur hockey players.
Hundreds of more kids put in his supervision. Because AHAI officials reportedly “did not view it as their responsibility.”
And according to Strang’s reporting, it wasn’t until 2018 when ANOTHER letter from ANOTHER abuse victim was written to the ACHA upon hearing that Adrahtas was still coaching, that Adrahtas was suspended again from coaching.
And then?
Adrahtas mysteriously resigned from ANOTHER place with no repercussions. Under the radar. Swept under the rug.
From Strang:
“As for his status with Robert Morris University?
He resigned from the university in the fall of 2018,” said Ann Bresingham, RMU’s Vice President for Human Resources. “He had been talking about retiring for some time and when all this came up, he felt this was probably the right time to resign and retire."
And not until after Katie Strang’s articles were written in 2020 and the finalization of his SafeSport investigation was Adrahtas permanently banned from coaching amateurs within USA Hockey. Decades after the rumors started. Ten years after the letter to AHAI.
Finally.
If you’re reading the tea leaves and wondering if I’m pi**** off about this…I am.
The most recent article written by Strang on Adrahtas detailed yet ANOTHER sexual abuse victim. And this time, it was a friend of mine.
So yeah, I’m pissed.
A great guy got his life and innocence taken away from him by a sexual predator enabled by people who didn’t do their job protecting kids.
And because I’ve been outspoken about this story on social media, I’ve had other survivors of Adrahtas’ abuse reach out to me. And teammates of survivors. And high-level coaches who remember the rumors. I even had one long tenured college coach tell me he can’t get himself to read Strang’s articles because he heard the rumors back in the day and couldn’t bear that they’ve finally come out as true.
This sexual abuse allegedly spanned decades. From the University of Minnesota before I was even born to this happening to a friend near my age. And for this predator to be banned from the sport JUST THIS YEAR after Katie Strang’s articles brought it to the forefront?
There are a lot of people that should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. And yet still, nobody has been held accountable for turning a blind eye to what happened.
Worst of all, according to Strang’s reporting, it goes all the way to the top of the governing body of USA Hockey.
According to one of Strang’s articles, the president of USA Hockey – Jim Smith – is currently under investigation for his handling of the reports of Adrahtas’ sexual abuse. This is a recent public statement from USA Hockey Executive Director, Pat Kelleher, again from one of Katie Strang’s articles:
“The U.S. Center for SafeSport has advised us they have taken jurisdiction and are investigating allegations that people within AHAI, including Jim Smith, were aware of sexual misconduct by Thomas Adrahtas and did not take action,” USA Hockey executive director Pat Kelleher said via a spokesperson."
Smith is still currently under investigation, yet somehow he remains visible at the forefront of USA Hockey’s operations.
A few months ago, while under investigation, Smith was FRONT AND CENTER of a USA Hockey “Back to Hockey” video for all of the hockey world to see. (Watch if for yourself at https://twitter.com/usahockey/status/12 ... 0733889537)
Let’s think about this objectively:
In what world…honestly…IN WHAT WORLD would someone who is being investigated for his potential inaction surrounding a youth hockey coach sexually abusing youth hockey players be the face of a video of this importance and magnitude coming from USA Hockey?
Business as usual. Nothing to see here. What a slap in the face to the multiple survivors and victims of Adrahtas’ sexual abuse.
Investigations are going on right now. But it took almost 4 decades and a whole lot of people knowing or hearing that Chico Adrahtas was a predator before HE HIMSELF was held accountable.
It’s in Safesport’s hands now, and this is exactly what Safesport was made for. Justice needs to be brought for the abuse victims who were put in the supervision of a predator due to the negligence of so many people.
Here’s my question:
Why?
Why has nobody yet been held accountable? Why business as usual? Why does it seem like this continues to be swept under the rug? Again. After all these years.
Aside from the decades of rumor and this being openly talked about by the hockey community for years, according to Strang, the SafeSport investigation has revealed proof in writing from sexual abuse victims AND an admission from the abuser. And not only that, SafeSport evidently has emails and statements from people in leadership positions revealing that they elected to wash their hands of the whole Adrahtas problem.
Is it a reputation thing? Are USA Hockey or AHAI afraid that the reputation of a high-ranking official is going to take a huge hit?
Is it a liability thing? I’m not a lawyer but I have to imagine that their inaction puts them in a tough spot liability-wise, especially after 2010.
Is it a power thing? Are people afraid to lose their positions of power within our governing body?
With more stories of abuse coming out in youth sports at alarming rates (USA Gymnastics, Ohio State wrestling, Penn State Football, etc…), USA Hockey and the USOC have made it very publicly known that they are doing everything they can to keep youth sports safe for the young athletes.
So here it is on a silver platter for them. An opportunity to take a stand and set an example. A chance to show leadership and simply do the right thing.
Jim Smith even said it in the “Hockey is Back” video, and while he was talking about Covid, his quote represents the main job of our governing body…
“Our cumulative goal is to keep rinks and programs as safe as reasonably possible.”
If there’s any truth to former AHAI President Mike Mullaly’s reported statements to SafeSport about this situation, then many people in this situation failed.
Miserably.
This whole thing is strikingly similar to what happened with USA Gymnastics. There, multiple athletes were abused yet information was suppressed, downplayed, and even covered up with regards to what was going on with Larry Nassar. And because USA Gymnastics tried to keep it all in the shadows, it ended up blowing up on them when people decided enough was enough. And look how far they’ve fallen.
It’s time to show leadership. Our sport needs it more than ever.
For my friends and colleagues in the game that have texted or called me about this situation telling me how they all heard the rumors and talked about it back in the day (and there have been many of you)…
Please, don’t just text me. Help do something about it. Share Katie Strang’s articles. Reach out to your contacts and demand there be accountability for what happened. The silence from people in-the-know is deafening.
People in leadership positions in our sport didn’t come close to fulfilling their responsibilities of keeping our kids safe. I have no clue what the right consequence for their negligence is, but I still can’t believe that literally nobody has been held accountable.
And if I’m being completely honest, I’d have much more respect for these people (and all the people who hired Adrahtas) if they owned it.
Here’s what they could say:
“You know what, we messed up. There was always a lot of rumor, hearsay, etc. But we should have taken action or looked into it more and we deeply regret our inaction.”
But no. According to Strang, people continue to put their head in the sand and hope this goes away because it implicates some high-level people.
Maybe it’s arrogance that they’re infallible. Maybe it’s just going along business as usual so people gloss over the situation. I don’t know.
As I said at the beginning, there are a lot of really good people at USA Hockey. Too many good people that shouldn’t get wrapped in with the abandonment of values of a few. This is not an indictment of what I think of them or the incredible job they are doing for our sport. I have contributed to USA Hockey’s mission many times at coaching clinics, seminars, and other events because I believe in a lot of what they’re doing.
But I’m not living my values if I don’t continue to bring this to the forefront.
It would be an injustice to the multiple survivors of this man’s abuse who stepped forward to share their stories if I didn’t stand beside them and share their accounts with the platform I’ve built. They are the heroes of this whole situation and their courage to step forward is going to save other young kids from having to endure what they experienced. Using their voice and bringing this predatory behavior out will deter other predators from acting on other kids and will deter people in power positions from enabling these predators by being silent.
I ask everyone reading this with knowledge of this situation or other situations like this to use your voice as well. Please. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Trust me, I’m expecting a few nasty calls after I publish this post. But that’s all the more reason why it’s necessary for this post to be written. And if we’re truly trying to do what’s right and keep the game safe for our kids…
Think of the survivors of this man’s abuse. The ones that spoke up publicly. The ones who shared their stories with SafeSport. The ones that continue to suffer in silence.
And think of all the kids that would not have been abused if people chose to do the right thing.
Decades Later; Chicago Youth Hockey Scandal Brought to Light
Read more: https://thehockeythinktank.com/2020/11/ ... -to-light/
To listen to the Think Tank podcast with Katie Strang centered around this story:.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e ... 0498777255
"On this episode of the Hockey Think Tank podcast, we bring on Katie Strang, a fantastic hockey and investigative reporter for The Athletic. Katie is a prominent figure in hockey journalism, and we spend most of this podcast talking about a story she has written extensively on regarding a youth hockey coach's history with sexual abuse of youth hockey players.
Katie wrote her first article on this subject in February which brought to the public the scandal of this coach's misconducts, along with how people in hockey leadership failed to handle the situation. This is a podcast that contains language about sexual abuse, so disclaimer for any families that typically listen to our podcast with their kids.
While a tough subject to speak on, we believe that this episode will provide some positive change."
Read Katie Strang’s work in the Athletic: https://theathletic.com/author/katie-strang/
From the Hockey Think Tank:
This post will be the harshest criticism I’ll give of our youth hockey culture, including an abandonment of values on the part of a few people in leadership positions at USA Hockey.
Before I begin, I want to preface by saying that I think there are a lot of really good people at USA Hockey. A lot of good people that continue to do some really amazing things for our sport. Many of those people I consider friends and colleagues with whom I’ve collaborated and worked with a lot over the years to better our game.
But I started the Hockey Think Tank to make the hockey world a better place. And while usually that’s by highlighting the good that our sport has to offer, sometimes things just need to be called out. Even if it makes us uncomfortable.
This story I’m about to tell you is downright stomach-turning. And to give you the whole scope, I’ll first take you back a few years because it’s something I lived through as a kid.
Growing up in Chicago in the late 1990’s, my family started to realize that higher level hockey was probably where I was headed. I’m grateful to have had awesome coaching and been put in environments that led to that point.
As I got to Bantam hockey and we started to map some things out, my parents informed me that I was not allowed to play in the future for the most esteemed midget coach in our area. The man was Chico Adrahtas.
This was a coach that had a history of moving midget hockey players onto junior, college, and professional hockey – the dream that I’d had since I was little.
I still vividly remember the conversation with my parents:
“Why can’t I play for him?” I confusedly asked.
My parents looked at each other and then asked me to sit down. It was one of those requests where you knew something kind of big or important was coming.
“Toph,” they uncomfortably answered, “He’s a pedophile.”
“A pedophile?” my 13-year-old self asked back. “What’s a pedophile?”
Long, deep, anxious breaths and an uncomfortable silence followed. “Well, it means that it’s pretty widely known that he has a history of sexually abusing youth hockey players.”
Yeah.
That’s an actual conversation that my parents had to have with me when I was 13 years old. And it’s a conversation that I know a lot of other Chicago area families had with their kids as well.
But unfortunately, many other families chose to allow their kids play for Adrahtas. Even with the widely known rumors. And the reasoning scares the he*% out of me (which you’ll see below).
Here is a mind-boggling excerpt from an article written by Katie Strang of The Athletic, who brought this story to the greater hockey world earlier this year. She spoke with many Chicago area coaches, players, and families about Adrahtas, including Nick Aulich who is quoted below.
Brace yourself.
“Team Illinois officials mandated that Adrahtas wasn’t allowed in the boys’ dressing room except immediately before and after the game, on account of the rumors that followed Adrahtas for years. However, multiple Team Illinois players who played for Adrahtas around this time said he would invite players over individually to his condo under the guise of discussing their hockey future. Adrahtas would order pizza and put on pornographic movies, these players recalled.
Aulich said that despite widespread rumors about Adrahtas’ misconduct, which stemmed largely from his abrupt departure from the University of Minnesota in 1985, Adrahtas was well-insulated by his success coaching amateurs. His reputation as the most coveted coach at the AAA level, someone who had the pedigree of shepherding several players to Division I, meant that players and their families felt they had little choice but to play for him.
‘It kind of shows you what is was like in Illinois. You had to go through him,” Aulich said. ‘I knew this guy was a pervert bastard and so did my family and I had to play for the guy. It’s so effed up.’”
Take a second and please wrap your head around that passage.
The coach wasn’t allowed in the locker room because of his rumored history of child sex abuse; yet parents felt pressure to play for him so their kids had a chance of achieving the next level of hockey.
If that’s not an indictment of our youth hockey culture, and the leadership of our youth hockey culture that allow things like this to happen, I don’t know what is.
Anyone that has read my stuff knows that the one thing I believe in most is that we play hockey for the life lessons that it teaches us. It’s not about getting the scholarship or playing professional hockey. The “making it” part should be a by-product of the lessons and experiences we share.
For that reason, it pains me to see parents subscribe to doing anything – even something as messed up as allowing their child to play for a rumored (now proven) child abuser – to get their kid to the next level. Parents, please take a step back and get some perspective on why you put your kid into hockey.
But the youth hockey obsession with “making it” and the parents that buy into it aren’t the only target of this post; it’s the people in leadership positions of our sport who allowed this type of culture to materialize in the first place – especially with the Adrahtas situation in Illinois which I’ll detail next.
If you haven’t already, I would strongly encourage you to go read Katie Strang’s reporting on this story in The Athletic. For young hockey players growing up in Chicago, like me, the rumors surrounding Adrahtas were widely known. But Strang’s incredible reporting uncovered the gut-wrenching details – not only about Adrahtas’ own misconduct, but about the way people in power positions failed to handle them.
It started in the 1980’s when Adrahtas mysteriously left coaching at the University of Minnesota after one season. According to Strang, a main reason for his abrupt departure was that he abused multiple players on the team. Rumors about Adrahtas’ abuse at Minnesota cast a shadow on him for years, but nothing was ever done about it.
Swept under the rug.
After leaving Minnesota, Adrahtas moved to Chicago where he’d already built a reputation of being a successful coach. And remember that conversation I had with my parents from earlier? Well, unfortunately there was more to the story that was shared with me that day.
It turns out, one of the people that hired Adrahtas a few years after he left Minnesota was my grandfather. He was putting a team together at my uncle’s age and hired Adrahtas to coach it. My grandfather had heard the rumors about Minnesota but was persuaded by Adrahtas that they weren’t true.
A couple months into the season, my grandfather caught wind that a few of the billeted players were sleeping over at Adrahtas’ house. Alarmed, he approached the players about what was going on. And in a meeting, one of the kids just broke down. He couldn’t bring himself to admit what had happened, but according to one person in that room, everyone knew. With Adrahtas’ history the dots were easy to connect.
That person who was in the room that day and recalled what had happened…that was my dad. And to this day, he becomes an emotional wreck every time he recalls this encounter.
My grandfather immediately fired Adrahtas. My family spent years trying to sound the alarm. I have memories of my parents having heated arguments with other parents who allowed their kids to play for him. But unfortunately, to no avail.
“It’s not going to happen to my kid.”
I still remember hearing that excuse and feeling sick to my stomach hearing parents say that. Yeah, it might not happen to your kid. But it’s OK if it happens to someone else’s kid? All so your kid can make it to the next level? It still makes me sick thinking about it.
What followed was decades of rumor about Adrahtas. If you were involved in AAA hockey in Chicago (or high-level hockey anywhere) during the next few decades you almost certainly heard the rumors. It was openly talked about.
Yet he continued to coach. It’s absolutely insane.
Again, THERE WAS A RULE THAT HE WASN’T ALLOWED IN THE LOCKER ROOM BUT PEOPLE THOUGHT IT WAS OK TO EMPLOY HIM COACHING KIDS.
But then came 2010.
Decades of rumor up until this point. Parents and hockey directors turned a blind eye because he was a great coach and moved kids to the next level. Although suspicions of abuse were there, nothing was really ever proven, no allegations were put in writing.
Until 2010.
According to Katie Strang, a SafeSport investigation into Adrahtas revealed that in 2010, despite all the rumors, the Illinois affiliate of USA Hockey (AHAI) made plans to put Adrahtas into the Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame. The rumors had effectively stalled the committee’s plans to induct him up until that point, but according to the SafeSport investigation (as reported by Strang), this time they decided to push him through.
Yeah.
Upon hearing Adrahtas’ impending Hall of Fame induction, a former player, Chris Jensen, sent a letter to AHAI detailing the sexual abuse that Adrahtas inflicted on him when he was a teenager.
And here’s how things played out after Jensen sent his letter, again, according to one of Katie Strang’s articles in The Athletic.
“While SafeSport’s investigation of Adrahtas has concluded, the organization is still probing how former and current AHAI officials, including current USA Hockey president Jim Smith (a former AHAI president), handled the allegations against Adrahtas. The investigation into Adrahtas yielded several findings on the front, among them:
"For years, AHAI officials refused to nominate Adrahtas to the Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame because of “innuendo and rumor” about abuse. But in 2010, Mike Mullally, who was president of AHAI in 2010, said that a group that included Jim Smith decided to “put him through anyway.”
After AHAI received Jensen’s letter in 2010, Mullally consulted with law enforcement but was told the statute of limitations had expired. Mullally then confronted Adrahtas, who denied performing oral sec on the player but admitted that he had procured a woman to perform oral sex on Jensen. Mullally said he was struck by the fact that Adrahtas admitted to a lesser crime as a way “to reassure him.” As for going forward with the Hall of Fame nomination, AHAI officials left that up to Adrahtas, who took himself out of consideration.
USA Hockey was not officially informed of Adrahtas’ admission because Jim Smith and Tony Rossi, another Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame committee member, were both high-ranking members of USA Hockey and already aware of the situation, Mullally said.
WOW.
So according to Strang’s reporting on the SafeSport investigation…
An affiliate of our sport’s governing body, whose main job is to provide a safe environment for kids to play hockey, got a letter in writing detailing Adrahtas’ sexual abuse of a minor. Then they got the man ADMITTING to another form of sexual misconduct. And what happened?
The answer to that question appears to be NOTHING.
Because according to Strang, even though Adrahtas was indefinitely suspended by AHAI after his admission, he still managed to coach amateur hockey for eight years.
EIGHT YEARS.
He got a job coaching ACHA College Hockey at Robert Morris College in Chicago and coached for CLOSE TO A DECADE.
According to Strang’s reporting, AHAI had proof of his sexual abuse in writing by one of his victims AND by his own admission; yet, according to the SafeSport investigation, they didn’t feel it necessary to make sure he never coached again. Here’s another excerpt from Strang’s article:
“Peter Lindberg, USA Hockey’s then legal council chairman, was consulted about the situation, however Lindberg suggested in an email to Mullally, Smith and others that AHAI contact RMU, where Adrahtas was coaching, to inform them about the allegations. Lindberg also said there should be an investigation at the Triple AAA programs where Adrahtas coached. AHAI officials did neither. Mullally told investigators that because Adrahtas was no longer coaching youth hockey, he and other AHAI officials did not view it as their responsibility."
That last statement is absolutely chilling. They “did not view it as their responsibility” to warn RMU about Adrahtas’ history of abuse. And the kicker:
Robert Morris College – where Adrahtas coached for EIGHT YEARS after Chris Jensen’s 2010 letter to AHAI – plays their home games out of the same arena that AHAI has held many of their meetings.
All they needed to do was “walk down the hall” and let the college know that the man they employed was a predator. But no. According to the SafeSport investigation, they decided against it. And for CLOSE TO A DECADE this man was allowed to coach amateur hockey players.
Hundreds of more kids put in his supervision. Because AHAI officials reportedly “did not view it as their responsibility.”
And according to Strang’s reporting, it wasn’t until 2018 when ANOTHER letter from ANOTHER abuse victim was written to the ACHA upon hearing that Adrahtas was still coaching, that Adrahtas was suspended again from coaching.
And then?
Adrahtas mysteriously resigned from ANOTHER place with no repercussions. Under the radar. Swept under the rug.
From Strang:
“As for his status with Robert Morris University?
He resigned from the university in the fall of 2018,” said Ann Bresingham, RMU’s Vice President for Human Resources. “He had been talking about retiring for some time and when all this came up, he felt this was probably the right time to resign and retire."
And not until after Katie Strang’s articles were written in 2020 and the finalization of his SafeSport investigation was Adrahtas permanently banned from coaching amateurs within USA Hockey. Decades after the rumors started. Ten years after the letter to AHAI.
Finally.
If you’re reading the tea leaves and wondering if I’m pi**** off about this…I am.
The most recent article written by Strang on Adrahtas detailed yet ANOTHER sexual abuse victim. And this time, it was a friend of mine.
So yeah, I’m pissed.
A great guy got his life and innocence taken away from him by a sexual predator enabled by people who didn’t do their job protecting kids.
And because I’ve been outspoken about this story on social media, I’ve had other survivors of Adrahtas’ abuse reach out to me. And teammates of survivors. And high-level coaches who remember the rumors. I even had one long tenured college coach tell me he can’t get himself to read Strang’s articles because he heard the rumors back in the day and couldn’t bear that they’ve finally come out as true.
This sexual abuse allegedly spanned decades. From the University of Minnesota before I was even born to this happening to a friend near my age. And for this predator to be banned from the sport JUST THIS YEAR after Katie Strang’s articles brought it to the forefront?
There are a lot of people that should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. And yet still, nobody has been held accountable for turning a blind eye to what happened.
Worst of all, according to Strang’s reporting, it goes all the way to the top of the governing body of USA Hockey.
According to one of Strang’s articles, the president of USA Hockey – Jim Smith – is currently under investigation for his handling of the reports of Adrahtas’ sexual abuse. This is a recent public statement from USA Hockey Executive Director, Pat Kelleher, again from one of Katie Strang’s articles:
“The U.S. Center for SafeSport has advised us they have taken jurisdiction and are investigating allegations that people within AHAI, including Jim Smith, were aware of sexual misconduct by Thomas Adrahtas and did not take action,” USA Hockey executive director Pat Kelleher said via a spokesperson."
Smith is still currently under investigation, yet somehow he remains visible at the forefront of USA Hockey’s operations.
A few months ago, while under investigation, Smith was FRONT AND CENTER of a USA Hockey “Back to Hockey” video for all of the hockey world to see. (Watch if for yourself at https://twitter.com/usahockey/status/12 ... 0733889537)
Let’s think about this objectively:
In what world…honestly…IN WHAT WORLD would someone who is being investigated for his potential inaction surrounding a youth hockey coach sexually abusing youth hockey players be the face of a video of this importance and magnitude coming from USA Hockey?
Business as usual. Nothing to see here. What a slap in the face to the multiple survivors and victims of Adrahtas’ sexual abuse.
Investigations are going on right now. But it took almost 4 decades and a whole lot of people knowing or hearing that Chico Adrahtas was a predator before HE HIMSELF was held accountable.
It’s in Safesport’s hands now, and this is exactly what Safesport was made for. Justice needs to be brought for the abuse victims who were put in the supervision of a predator due to the negligence of so many people.
Here’s my question:
Why?
Why has nobody yet been held accountable? Why business as usual? Why does it seem like this continues to be swept under the rug? Again. After all these years.
Aside from the decades of rumor and this being openly talked about by the hockey community for years, according to Strang, the SafeSport investigation has revealed proof in writing from sexual abuse victims AND an admission from the abuser. And not only that, SafeSport evidently has emails and statements from people in leadership positions revealing that they elected to wash their hands of the whole Adrahtas problem.
Is it a reputation thing? Are USA Hockey or AHAI afraid that the reputation of a high-ranking official is going to take a huge hit?
Is it a liability thing? I’m not a lawyer but I have to imagine that their inaction puts them in a tough spot liability-wise, especially after 2010.
Is it a power thing? Are people afraid to lose their positions of power within our governing body?
With more stories of abuse coming out in youth sports at alarming rates (USA Gymnastics, Ohio State wrestling, Penn State Football, etc…), USA Hockey and the USOC have made it very publicly known that they are doing everything they can to keep youth sports safe for the young athletes.
So here it is on a silver platter for them. An opportunity to take a stand and set an example. A chance to show leadership and simply do the right thing.
Jim Smith even said it in the “Hockey is Back” video, and while he was talking about Covid, his quote represents the main job of our governing body…
“Our cumulative goal is to keep rinks and programs as safe as reasonably possible.”
If there’s any truth to former AHAI President Mike Mullaly’s reported statements to SafeSport about this situation, then many people in this situation failed.
Miserably.
This whole thing is strikingly similar to what happened with USA Gymnastics. There, multiple athletes were abused yet information was suppressed, downplayed, and even covered up with regards to what was going on with Larry Nassar. And because USA Gymnastics tried to keep it all in the shadows, it ended up blowing up on them when people decided enough was enough. And look how far they’ve fallen.
It’s time to show leadership. Our sport needs it more than ever.
For my friends and colleagues in the game that have texted or called me about this situation telling me how they all heard the rumors and talked about it back in the day (and there have been many of you)…
Please, don’t just text me. Help do something about it. Share Katie Strang’s articles. Reach out to your contacts and demand there be accountability for what happened. The silence from people in-the-know is deafening.
People in leadership positions in our sport didn’t come close to fulfilling their responsibilities of keeping our kids safe. I have no clue what the right consequence for their negligence is, but I still can’t believe that literally nobody has been held accountable.
And if I’m being completely honest, I’d have much more respect for these people (and all the people who hired Adrahtas) if they owned it.
Here’s what they could say:
“You know what, we messed up. There was always a lot of rumor, hearsay, etc. But we should have taken action or looked into it more and we deeply regret our inaction.”
But no. According to Strang, people continue to put their head in the sand and hope this goes away because it implicates some high-level people.
Maybe it’s arrogance that they’re infallible. Maybe it’s just going along business as usual so people gloss over the situation. I don’t know.
As I said at the beginning, there are a lot of really good people at USA Hockey. Too many good people that shouldn’t get wrapped in with the abandonment of values of a few. This is not an indictment of what I think of them or the incredible job they are doing for our sport. I have contributed to USA Hockey’s mission many times at coaching clinics, seminars, and other events because I believe in a lot of what they’re doing.
But I’m not living my values if I don’t continue to bring this to the forefront.
It would be an injustice to the multiple survivors of this man’s abuse who stepped forward to share their stories if I didn’t stand beside them and share their accounts with the platform I’ve built. They are the heroes of this whole situation and their courage to step forward is going to save other young kids from having to endure what they experienced. Using their voice and bringing this predatory behavior out will deter other predators from acting on other kids and will deter people in power positions from enabling these predators by being silent.
I ask everyone reading this with knowledge of this situation or other situations like this to use your voice as well. Please. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Trust me, I’m expecting a few nasty calls after I publish this post. But that’s all the more reason why it’s necessary for this post to be written. And if we’re truly trying to do what’s right and keep the game safe for our kids…
Think of the survivors of this man’s abuse. The ones that spoke up publicly. The ones who shared their stories with SafeSport. The ones that continue to suffer in silence.
And think of all the kids that would not have been abused if people chose to do the right thing.
Decades Later; Chicago Youth Hockey Scandal Brought to Light
Read more: https://thehockeythinktank.com/2020/11/ ... -to-light/
To listen to the Think Tank podcast with Katie Strang centered around this story:.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e ... 0498777255
"On this episode of the Hockey Think Tank podcast, we bring on Katie Strang, a fantastic hockey and investigative reporter for The Athletic. Katie is a prominent figure in hockey journalism, and we spend most of this podcast talking about a story she has written extensively on regarding a youth hockey coach's history with sexual abuse of youth hockey players.
Katie wrote her first article on this subject in February which brought to the public the scandal of this coach's misconducts, along with how people in hockey leadership failed to handle the situation. This is a podcast that contains language about sexual abuse, so disclaimer for any families that typically listen to our podcast with their kids.
While a tough subject to speak on, we believe that this episode will provide some positive change."
Read Katie Strang’s work in the Athletic: https://theathletic.com/author/katie-strang/
-
greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Re: Does MSHSL or Mn Hockey have such a list of banned coaches
A fyi
Legacy Global Sports LP Forced Into Bankruptcy
6 months ago Admin
One of North America’s largest ice hockey event company’s has been forced into bankruptcy by creditors.
The company operating Selects Hockey, World Selects Invitational, Motwon Classic, and Fire on Ice events and teams among other non hockey properties, has been sought after by creditors for unpaid bills.
The aggressive filing by creditors was initiated May 20, 2020. Eight creditors are claiming damages and demanding that Legacy Global Sports LP be forced into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.
https://businessbankruptcies.com/cases/ ... sports-l-p
While it is yet to be seen how this will effect Legacy Global Sports going forward, many are now asking “if” these programs will go forward. If not, what happens to all the money collected for 2020 events?
Of particular concern is the fact that monies for future events have been collected and this action will likely freeze any funds available to satisfy the customers of future events.
Stay tuned for more information on this event.
https://thejuniorhockeynews.com/legacy- ... ankruptcy/
Legacy Global Sports LP Forced Into Bankruptcy
6 months ago Admin
One of North America’s largest ice hockey event company’s has been forced into bankruptcy by creditors.
The company operating Selects Hockey, World Selects Invitational, Motwon Classic, and Fire on Ice events and teams among other non hockey properties, has been sought after by creditors for unpaid bills.
The aggressive filing by creditors was initiated May 20, 2020. Eight creditors are claiming damages and demanding that Legacy Global Sports LP be forced into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.
https://businessbankruptcies.com/cases/ ... sports-l-p
While it is yet to be seen how this will effect Legacy Global Sports going forward, many are now asking “if” these programs will go forward. If not, what happens to all the money collected for 2020 events?
Of particular concern is the fact that monies for future events have been collected and this action will likely freeze any funds available to satisfy the customers of future events.
Stay tuned for more information on this event.
https://thejuniorhockeynews.com/legacy- ... ankruptcy/
-
greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Boston-based youth sports business Legacy Global Sports fails amid criminal inquiry
Boston-based youth sports business Legacy Global Sports fails amid criminal inquiry
By Bob Hohler Globe Staff, Updated January 16, 2021, 9:59 a.m.
In a stunning collapse, one of the nation’s largest youth sports enterprises, Boston-based Legacy Global Sports, has spiraled into bankruptcy amid a federal criminal investigation, allegations of fraud and mismanagement, and the devastating impact of COVID-19.
The company’s demise has left thousands of parents, coaches, staffers, vendors, and investors from Boston to points around the world with little hope of recovering the combined $30 million they are owed.
At its height, Legacy was taking in more than $1 million a week as one of the country’s leading providers of elite youth soccer, hockey, and lacrosse programs, and by managing travel services to tournaments and other events the company operated across North America and Europe.
But with one former employee convicted of obstructing justice and others under investigation for possible visa fraud and other federal offenses, all that’s left of Legacy Global Sports and its affiliates is a trail of pain and promises not kept. Legacy’s past and present executives, in court documents or statements to the Globe, have denied any wrongdoing
“The whole thing is awful,” said Jason Murphy, a Legacy customer in New Hampshire who paid $6,300 for a trip with his 14-year-old son to Slovakia that never happened. Murphy’s son was selected to compete in a Legacy-operated elite hockey tournament in the capital of Bratislava on the Danube River.
“I guess all you can do is live and learn and chalk it up as a bad memory.”
Murphy is among a multitude of creditors Legacy has left empty-handed. In Greater Boston, they include the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association ($68,572), the New England Futbol Club ($33,795), the Junior Bruins hockey program ($28,576), and hundreds of other private entities, municipalities, and families. Much of the debt to private entities and municipalities involves athletic-facility rentals.
Legacy’s sudden insolvency left more than 400 people jobless, more than 130 in Massachusetts alone.
Yet for all the damage the company wrought, Legacy’s loss has barely nicked the $19 billion youth sports industry. Between May, when creditors forced the company into involuntary bankruptcy, and October, when Legacy liquidated much of its assets, rival organizations absorbed most of its 200,000 clients: parents who spend thousands of dollars a year on pay-to-play programs for their children to maximize their athletic potential.
‘The whole thing is awful. I guess all you can do is live and learn and chalk it up as a bad memory.’
Jason Murphy, a Legacy customer in New Hampshire who paid $6,300 for a trip that never happened
Where there is money to harvest in youth sports, there are people poised to reap it.
“I feel bad for the company’s employees and for everyone who paid for their kids to play and will never see their money again,” said David Geaslen, founder of Wilmington-based 3Step Sports, the nation’s largest youth sports club and event operator. “But every single kid who played for a Legacy program is going to be playing for somebody else.”
‘A nightmare case study’
Propelled by partnerships with Adidas and German soccer club Bayern Munich, Legacy’s founders once envisioned the company expanding at a rapid clip internationally. Now, critics say, it’s the skeleton of a business that chose profits over children.
“It’s all about the pay-to-play commercialization of youth sports,” said Chris Kessell, who operates a low-cost soccer program for inner-city children in Charleston, W.Va., and competed with a Legacy affiliate that ran a pricier operation. “Some people are making a lot of money, while the vast majority of kids are getting left behind.”
Legacy and its affiliates charged parents for children’s tryouts, registrations, uniforms, camps, clinics, showcases, tournaments, tours, and travel expenses, often to faraway locales. The faster the cash flowed, the more attractive the business became to private equity firms; one of them, New-York based Jefferson River Capital, gained a controlling stake of Legacy in 2018, not long before the sports enterprise entered its final, tumultuous phase.
Some perspective on Legacy’s financial calamity may be gleaned from a book by Stephen Griffin, the CEO who presided during most of the crash: “Front Row Seat: Greed and Corruption in a Youth Sports Company.”
Griffin, of Providence, describes the book as fiction, although he recounts experiences that appear strikingly similar to actual events, with the names of people and places changed.
In fact, a Legacy subsidiary alleges in a civil complaint that Joe Bradley, who ran the company’s soccer business, hid from senior executives and investors a pattern of dubious visa practices that are under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.
Jefferson River also alleges in a civil complaint that John St. Pierre, who preceded Griffin as Legacy’s CEO, engaged in “fraudulent misconduct” by failing to disclose how unstable the company was before Jefferson River bought in.
Bradley and St. Pierre have denied any wrongdoing.
“If you identify with the personal attributes of certain questionable individuals in this book, I would encourage you to reassess your code of ethics,” Griffin wrote in a foreword.
In turn, Bradley and St. Pierre have filed lawsuits and counterclaims, alleging Griffin, Legacy, or its subsidiaries have defamed them and are responsible for the company’s downfall.
Griffin joined Legacy in 2017 as executive vice president of strategy, mergers, and acquisitions, at St. Pierre’s invitation. Within a year, St. Pierre alleges in court documents, Griffin orchestrated his wrongful firing, assumed his position as CEO, and began contributing with Jefferson River to the company’s demise.
St. Pierre and two fellow entrepreneurs founded Legacy in 2003.
“Legacy became a nightmare case study for entrepreneurs when they bring the wrong people into their business,” St. Pierre, of North Hampton, N.H., said in a statement to the Globe.
Jefferson River’s managers declined to comment.
Federal investigation
In 2016, Legacy under St. Pierre finalized its largest — and most fateful — acquisition, agreeing to pay $14.2 million for 80 percent of Waltham-based Global Premier Soccer, one of the country’s biggest youth soccer businesses. The transaction fueled Legacy’s growth but ultimately factored in its failure when Bradley, one of Global Premier’s founders, came under law enforcement scrutiny.
Bradley, who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, went on to play soccer for Harvard and captained the Crimson’s 1993 team. Legacy retained him to run the business, and Global Premier was generating nearly half Legacy’s revenue until federal investigators came calling.
On Oct. 9, 2019, agents swarmed Global Premier’s headquarters, seizing records and additional evidence. The company’s business model called in part for recruiting foreign soccer coaches for its clubs across the United States, and a Legacy subsidiary alleges in a civil claim that Bradley personally profited from running “an illegal visa scheme” by “recruiting foreign youth soccer coaches, while pretending they would serve as professional scouts for which P-1 visas could be obtained.”
P-1 visas are intended to cover professional athletes, entertainers, and their support staff.
Bradley, of Newton, has identified himself as a target of the federal investigation. He has said in court documents that Global Premier’s visa practices were legal and approved by immigration attorneys.
In a statement to the Globe, Bradley said, “While it was sad how GPS ended, I believe everybody involved with the organization can be proud of its contribution to youth soccer. Over the last two decades it has offered high-quality soccer training to thousands of boys and girls, helping scores of players reach their college soccer goals.”
Bradley declined to comment further about the investigation.
At least one other former Global Premier executive has been informed he is a target of the inquiry, according to two sources familiar with the case.
In May, one of Bradley’s former associates, Gavin MacPhee, a Scot who had served as Global Premier’s marketing director, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston to obstructing justice by deleting the e-mail account of another company official during the investigation. MacPhee awaits sentencing and faces up to 20 years in prison, though he could receive leniency if he cooperates with prosecutors.
Griffin said Legacy itself has cooperated with federal prosecutors and conducted its own “significant and exhaustive investigation.”
Bradley was fired by Legacy, wrongfully, he says. He has since joined his brother, Peter Bradley, and Global Premier’s other initial investors in suing Legacy, Jefferson River, Griffin, and others for more than $4 million they allege they are owed.
Before the collapse, Legacy was operating in more than 30 states and numerous countries. The company controlled its own travel subsidiary, managing trips to elite youth sports events, some to Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. Legacy also owned an apparel manufacturing company in the Dominican Republic. And it partnered in managing a youth sports village associated with the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Ohio.
But the formula proved unsustainable. Jefferson River — the personal wealth office of billionaire businessman Tony James — mainly blames St. Pierre, alleging in a lawsuit that his “fraudulent misconduct” as CEO caused Jefferson River to overpay for its share of a troubled enterprise.
“The company was not what it was purported to be in the first place,” Griffin said. “We did our best to clean it up and turn it around.”
To the contrary, St. Pierre alleges, Griffin and Jefferson River overspent and mismanaged a successful enterprise into ruin.
“The unfortunate way this company was handled leading up to the COVID pandemic — including the use of money and power to suppress minority founders and shareholders; squandering millions of dollars on unnecessary overhead, high executive salaries, and outrageous attorney’s fees on frivolous litigation claims; creating a culture of harassment and intimidation; and ultimately not refunding customers for canceled events — is very disturbing,” St. Pierre said in his statement to the Globe.
Chuck Huggins, who served as Legacy’s chief financial officer under St. Pierre, was asked in a deposition if he knew why Griffin and others at Legacy had accused St. Pierre of fraudulent conduct. Huggins replied, “The firing of John was completely mishandled. It put Steve in as CEO in a situation that he probably didn’t understand and maybe didn’t have the capabilities to manage ... The performance has suffered and they’re blaming it all on John, which I disagree with.”
Opting for liquidation
Phil Silveira, Legacy’s last chief financial officer, defended Griffin and Legacy’s business practices. He joined the company after St. Pierre, Bradley, and Huggins had been fired.
“I understand the resentment some of those folks may have,” Silveira said. “It was their company. They started it, and they were terminated for a variety of reasons. But from a corporate perspective and for the size of the company we were, I didn’t see anything out of line.”
In Silveira’s view, COVID-19 ultimately killed the company. Last-ditch spending cuts failed. So did additional infusions of private equity funds.
“We had no cash coming in for months and months,” Silveira said. “We tried to hold onto any capital we had to see how long the situation might last, thinking we could come out on the other side of it.”
Legacy’s board, believing it might save the business through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, rejected offers from potential buyers rather than accept “fire sale” prices, according to Silveira. The board finally opted for a Chapter 7 liquidation.
In Griffin’s last months with Legacy, he said, he spent considerable time addressing internal problems created by St. Pierre, Bradley, and their former associates, and making personnel changes, largely because of the criminal investigation.
“Couple all of that with the COVID lockdown’s impact on our ability to manage live events and operate youth club sports, and the company ultimately ended up in a bankruptcy filing,” Griffin said.
Claims and counterclaims abound, and it will fall to the courts to resolve the disputes. But no one seems to dispute that a venture created to serve children and families ended up failing them.
Bob Hohler can be reached at robert.hohler@globe.com.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/16/ ... l-inquiry/
By Bob Hohler Globe Staff, Updated January 16, 2021, 9:59 a.m.
In a stunning collapse, one of the nation’s largest youth sports enterprises, Boston-based Legacy Global Sports, has spiraled into bankruptcy amid a federal criminal investigation, allegations of fraud and mismanagement, and the devastating impact of COVID-19.
The company’s demise has left thousands of parents, coaches, staffers, vendors, and investors from Boston to points around the world with little hope of recovering the combined $30 million they are owed.
At its height, Legacy was taking in more than $1 million a week as one of the country’s leading providers of elite youth soccer, hockey, and lacrosse programs, and by managing travel services to tournaments and other events the company operated across North America and Europe.
But with one former employee convicted of obstructing justice and others under investigation for possible visa fraud and other federal offenses, all that’s left of Legacy Global Sports and its affiliates is a trail of pain and promises not kept. Legacy’s past and present executives, in court documents or statements to the Globe, have denied any wrongdoing
“The whole thing is awful,” said Jason Murphy, a Legacy customer in New Hampshire who paid $6,300 for a trip with his 14-year-old son to Slovakia that never happened. Murphy’s son was selected to compete in a Legacy-operated elite hockey tournament in the capital of Bratislava on the Danube River.
“I guess all you can do is live and learn and chalk it up as a bad memory.”
Murphy is among a multitude of creditors Legacy has left empty-handed. In Greater Boston, they include the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association ($68,572), the New England Futbol Club ($33,795), the Junior Bruins hockey program ($28,576), and hundreds of other private entities, municipalities, and families. Much of the debt to private entities and municipalities involves athletic-facility rentals.
Legacy’s sudden insolvency left more than 400 people jobless, more than 130 in Massachusetts alone.
Yet for all the damage the company wrought, Legacy’s loss has barely nicked the $19 billion youth sports industry. Between May, when creditors forced the company into involuntary bankruptcy, and October, when Legacy liquidated much of its assets, rival organizations absorbed most of its 200,000 clients: parents who spend thousands of dollars a year on pay-to-play programs for their children to maximize their athletic potential.
‘The whole thing is awful. I guess all you can do is live and learn and chalk it up as a bad memory.’
Jason Murphy, a Legacy customer in New Hampshire who paid $6,300 for a trip that never happened
Where there is money to harvest in youth sports, there are people poised to reap it.
“I feel bad for the company’s employees and for everyone who paid for their kids to play and will never see their money again,” said David Geaslen, founder of Wilmington-based 3Step Sports, the nation’s largest youth sports club and event operator. “But every single kid who played for a Legacy program is going to be playing for somebody else.”
‘A nightmare case study’
Propelled by partnerships with Adidas and German soccer club Bayern Munich, Legacy’s founders once envisioned the company expanding at a rapid clip internationally. Now, critics say, it’s the skeleton of a business that chose profits over children.
“It’s all about the pay-to-play commercialization of youth sports,” said Chris Kessell, who operates a low-cost soccer program for inner-city children in Charleston, W.Va., and competed with a Legacy affiliate that ran a pricier operation. “Some people are making a lot of money, while the vast majority of kids are getting left behind.”
Legacy and its affiliates charged parents for children’s tryouts, registrations, uniforms, camps, clinics, showcases, tournaments, tours, and travel expenses, often to faraway locales. The faster the cash flowed, the more attractive the business became to private equity firms; one of them, New-York based Jefferson River Capital, gained a controlling stake of Legacy in 2018, not long before the sports enterprise entered its final, tumultuous phase.
Some perspective on Legacy’s financial calamity may be gleaned from a book by Stephen Griffin, the CEO who presided during most of the crash: “Front Row Seat: Greed and Corruption in a Youth Sports Company.”
Griffin, of Providence, describes the book as fiction, although he recounts experiences that appear strikingly similar to actual events, with the names of people and places changed.
In fact, a Legacy subsidiary alleges in a civil complaint that Joe Bradley, who ran the company’s soccer business, hid from senior executives and investors a pattern of dubious visa practices that are under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.
Jefferson River also alleges in a civil complaint that John St. Pierre, who preceded Griffin as Legacy’s CEO, engaged in “fraudulent misconduct” by failing to disclose how unstable the company was before Jefferson River bought in.
Bradley and St. Pierre have denied any wrongdoing.
“If you identify with the personal attributes of certain questionable individuals in this book, I would encourage you to reassess your code of ethics,” Griffin wrote in a foreword.
In turn, Bradley and St. Pierre have filed lawsuits and counterclaims, alleging Griffin, Legacy, or its subsidiaries have defamed them and are responsible for the company’s downfall.
Griffin joined Legacy in 2017 as executive vice president of strategy, mergers, and acquisitions, at St. Pierre’s invitation. Within a year, St. Pierre alleges in court documents, Griffin orchestrated his wrongful firing, assumed his position as CEO, and began contributing with Jefferson River to the company’s demise.
St. Pierre and two fellow entrepreneurs founded Legacy in 2003.
“Legacy became a nightmare case study for entrepreneurs when they bring the wrong people into their business,” St. Pierre, of North Hampton, N.H., said in a statement to the Globe.
Jefferson River’s managers declined to comment.
Federal investigation
In 2016, Legacy under St. Pierre finalized its largest — and most fateful — acquisition, agreeing to pay $14.2 million for 80 percent of Waltham-based Global Premier Soccer, one of the country’s biggest youth soccer businesses. The transaction fueled Legacy’s growth but ultimately factored in its failure when Bradley, one of Global Premier’s founders, came under law enforcement scrutiny.
Bradley, who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, went on to play soccer for Harvard and captained the Crimson’s 1993 team. Legacy retained him to run the business, and Global Premier was generating nearly half Legacy’s revenue until federal investigators came calling.
On Oct. 9, 2019, agents swarmed Global Premier’s headquarters, seizing records and additional evidence. The company’s business model called in part for recruiting foreign soccer coaches for its clubs across the United States, and a Legacy subsidiary alleges in a civil claim that Bradley personally profited from running “an illegal visa scheme” by “recruiting foreign youth soccer coaches, while pretending they would serve as professional scouts for which P-1 visas could be obtained.”
P-1 visas are intended to cover professional athletes, entertainers, and their support staff.
Bradley, of Newton, has identified himself as a target of the federal investigation. He has said in court documents that Global Premier’s visa practices were legal and approved by immigration attorneys.
In a statement to the Globe, Bradley said, “While it was sad how GPS ended, I believe everybody involved with the organization can be proud of its contribution to youth soccer. Over the last two decades it has offered high-quality soccer training to thousands of boys and girls, helping scores of players reach their college soccer goals.”
Bradley declined to comment further about the investigation.
At least one other former Global Premier executive has been informed he is a target of the inquiry, according to two sources familiar with the case.
In May, one of Bradley’s former associates, Gavin MacPhee, a Scot who had served as Global Premier’s marketing director, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston to obstructing justice by deleting the e-mail account of another company official during the investigation. MacPhee awaits sentencing and faces up to 20 years in prison, though he could receive leniency if he cooperates with prosecutors.
Griffin said Legacy itself has cooperated with federal prosecutors and conducted its own “significant and exhaustive investigation.”
Bradley was fired by Legacy, wrongfully, he says. He has since joined his brother, Peter Bradley, and Global Premier’s other initial investors in suing Legacy, Jefferson River, Griffin, and others for more than $4 million they allege they are owed.
Before the collapse, Legacy was operating in more than 30 states and numerous countries. The company controlled its own travel subsidiary, managing trips to elite youth sports events, some to Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. Legacy also owned an apparel manufacturing company in the Dominican Republic. And it partnered in managing a youth sports village associated with the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Ohio.
But the formula proved unsustainable. Jefferson River — the personal wealth office of billionaire businessman Tony James — mainly blames St. Pierre, alleging in a lawsuit that his “fraudulent misconduct” as CEO caused Jefferson River to overpay for its share of a troubled enterprise.
“The company was not what it was purported to be in the first place,” Griffin said. “We did our best to clean it up and turn it around.”
To the contrary, St. Pierre alleges, Griffin and Jefferson River overspent and mismanaged a successful enterprise into ruin.
“The unfortunate way this company was handled leading up to the COVID pandemic — including the use of money and power to suppress minority founders and shareholders; squandering millions of dollars on unnecessary overhead, high executive salaries, and outrageous attorney’s fees on frivolous litigation claims; creating a culture of harassment and intimidation; and ultimately not refunding customers for canceled events — is very disturbing,” St. Pierre said in his statement to the Globe.
Chuck Huggins, who served as Legacy’s chief financial officer under St. Pierre, was asked in a deposition if he knew why Griffin and others at Legacy had accused St. Pierre of fraudulent conduct. Huggins replied, “The firing of John was completely mishandled. It put Steve in as CEO in a situation that he probably didn’t understand and maybe didn’t have the capabilities to manage ... The performance has suffered and they’re blaming it all on John, which I disagree with.”
Opting for liquidation
Phil Silveira, Legacy’s last chief financial officer, defended Griffin and Legacy’s business practices. He joined the company after St. Pierre, Bradley, and Huggins had been fired.
“I understand the resentment some of those folks may have,” Silveira said. “It was their company. They started it, and they were terminated for a variety of reasons. But from a corporate perspective and for the size of the company we were, I didn’t see anything out of line.”
In Silveira’s view, COVID-19 ultimately killed the company. Last-ditch spending cuts failed. So did additional infusions of private equity funds.
“We had no cash coming in for months and months,” Silveira said. “We tried to hold onto any capital we had to see how long the situation might last, thinking we could come out on the other side of it.”
Legacy’s board, believing it might save the business through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, rejected offers from potential buyers rather than accept “fire sale” prices, according to Silveira. The board finally opted for a Chapter 7 liquidation.
In Griffin’s last months with Legacy, he said, he spent considerable time addressing internal problems created by St. Pierre, Bradley, and their former associates, and making personnel changes, largely because of the criminal investigation.
“Couple all of that with the COVID lockdown’s impact on our ability to manage live events and operate youth club sports, and the company ultimately ended up in a bankruptcy filing,” Griffin said.
Claims and counterclaims abound, and it will fall to the courts to resolve the disputes. But no one seems to dispute that a venture created to serve children and families ended up failing them.
Bob Hohler can be reached at robert.hohler@globe.com.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/16/ ... l-inquiry/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Minnesota Legislature considers bill to close mandatory reporting loophole
Minnesota Legislature considers bill to close mandatory reporting loophole
Testimony supports bill that would expand the definition to include adults beyond education and child care.
By Kim Hyatt Star Tribune
FEBRUARY 12, 2021 — 5:26AM
GLEN STUBBE - STAR TRIBUNE
Zander Danielson Sellie’s family church housed their alleged abuser’s youth arts program.
One of five accusers in an ongoing criminal sexual conduct case against a former Anoka-Hennepin middle school teacher and arts instructor says a loophole in Minnesota's mandated reporting law allowed their abuse to go unreported for years.
Zander Danielson Sellie, 25, recently testified in support of a bill before the state Legislature that would expand the definition of "mandatory reporters" to include adults beyond education and child care.
Sellie, who uses the pronouns they/them, was a teenage participant in the Young Artists Initiative (YAI) more than a decade ago when founder Jefferson Fietek allegedly raped them. Though Sellie shared what happened in a Facebook post and then attended a follow-up meeting with their parents and other adults, none of those people reported the allegation to law enforcement.
"How do we prevent terrible things from happening? By tweaking mandated reporter laws," Sellie said in an interview. "[Fietek] had no shortage in access to children. He had a way about building an empire around him with a number of very, very complacent people. If this is one person, where else is this happening?"
State Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn, DFL-Roseville, said she didn't know the mandated reporting loophole existed until she watched the documentary "Athlete A," which refers to Maggie Nichols, a Roseville Area High School graduate and one of hundreds of gymnasts who were abused by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
A mother of two young children who play club soccer, Becker-Finn said she realized Minnesota's mandated reporting law wouldn't apply to coaches, leaders with Boy Scouts of America — which is in the midst of a sexual abuse case with 90,000 alleged victims — or adults in Sellie's case.
Becker-Finn's bill would expand the definition of mandatory reporters "to make sure there is a burden, an obligation on the part of folks who are around our kids and have access to our kids," she said at a committee meeting earlier this month, where the bill was approved unanimously. Becker-Finn is looking for a companion bill in the Senate, which she said she hopes will be introduced next week.
"The fact that [Fietek] wasn't reported likely means that more abuse occurred to more children, and that part is just heartbreaking," she said.
Fietek faces 10 felony criminal sexual conduct charges in an ongoing Anoka County case stemming from his time with YAI and as a teacher at Anoka Middle School of the Arts, with alleged abuse spanning from 2009 to 2019. While most of the victims are former students of Fietek's, Sellie attended school in St. Paul. YAI is based out of First Lutheran Church in St. Paul, which Sellie's family attends.
YAI Artistic Director Matthew Berdahl did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement provided to the Star Tribune, the group's board of directors said, "neither any of the staff or the current board were involved at the time in question and so our ability to address some of this is limited. … Undeniably, this is a difficult situation for everyone affected."
The statement added that relevant information was turned over to authorities in cooperation with the investigation and the agency has policies and procedures in place to ensure the "safety and well-being of the young artists who participate in YAI." The board declined to provide copies of those policies.
Jack Rice, Fietek's attorney, said in an interview that he is still trying to determine if law enforcement was notified in 2009 of the alleged abuse, "because if this were reported to law enforcement back in 2009, [with] the statute of limitations, you can't bring this claim this far out."
Sellie posted on Facebook in 2009, when they were 14 years old, that Fietek had raped them. The post prompted a meeting at First Lutheran Church with Sellie's parents, a supervisor at St. Paul Public Schools, YAI board members, Pastor Chris Olson Bingea and her wife, Brenda Olson Bingea. Fietek was also present.
Most of the people who were at the meeting did not respond to requests for comment. Former YAI Board Member David Holewinski said he doesn't recall what was discussed, and is no longer involved with YAI nor affiliated with Fietek "in any context," adding that Fietek left YAI in 2010.
Sellie said they retracted the abuse claim after Fietek told them to remove the Facebook post, so the focus of the meeting was Sellie's mental health and how they should take a break from YAI and be more careful about what they post on social media. The alleged abuse was not reported to law enforcement, Sellie said, and it didn't end after the meeting.
Sellie's mother, Bev Danielson Sellie, said she never went to authorities because "we were all led to believe this was not true." The focus of the 2009 meeting was how to help her child, she said, not to address the abuse allegations.
"Jefferson was a mentor," she said. "I feel totally duped, lied to, humiliated, angry, sad. … We were told and it was stressed that this was all a fabrication."
Kim Hyatt is the Star Tribune’s North Metro reporter, covering Anoka County and the northern Hennepin County suburbs.
kim.hyatt@startribune.com 612-673-4751 kimvhyatt
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-l ... 600022060/
Testimony supports bill that would expand the definition to include adults beyond education and child care.
By Kim Hyatt Star Tribune
FEBRUARY 12, 2021 — 5:26AM
GLEN STUBBE - STAR TRIBUNE
Zander Danielson Sellie’s family church housed their alleged abuser’s youth arts program.
One of five accusers in an ongoing criminal sexual conduct case against a former Anoka-Hennepin middle school teacher and arts instructor says a loophole in Minnesota's mandated reporting law allowed their abuse to go unreported for years.
Zander Danielson Sellie, 25, recently testified in support of a bill before the state Legislature that would expand the definition of "mandatory reporters" to include adults beyond education and child care.
Sellie, who uses the pronouns they/them, was a teenage participant in the Young Artists Initiative (YAI) more than a decade ago when founder Jefferson Fietek allegedly raped them. Though Sellie shared what happened in a Facebook post and then attended a follow-up meeting with their parents and other adults, none of those people reported the allegation to law enforcement.
"How do we prevent terrible things from happening? By tweaking mandated reporter laws," Sellie said in an interview. "[Fietek] had no shortage in access to children. He had a way about building an empire around him with a number of very, very complacent people. If this is one person, where else is this happening?"
State Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn, DFL-Roseville, said she didn't know the mandated reporting loophole existed until she watched the documentary "Athlete A," which refers to Maggie Nichols, a Roseville Area High School graduate and one of hundreds of gymnasts who were abused by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
A mother of two young children who play club soccer, Becker-Finn said she realized Minnesota's mandated reporting law wouldn't apply to coaches, leaders with Boy Scouts of America — which is in the midst of a sexual abuse case with 90,000 alleged victims — or adults in Sellie's case.
Becker-Finn's bill would expand the definition of mandatory reporters "to make sure there is a burden, an obligation on the part of folks who are around our kids and have access to our kids," she said at a committee meeting earlier this month, where the bill was approved unanimously. Becker-Finn is looking for a companion bill in the Senate, which she said she hopes will be introduced next week.
"The fact that [Fietek] wasn't reported likely means that more abuse occurred to more children, and that part is just heartbreaking," she said.
Fietek faces 10 felony criminal sexual conduct charges in an ongoing Anoka County case stemming from his time with YAI and as a teacher at Anoka Middle School of the Arts, with alleged abuse spanning from 2009 to 2019. While most of the victims are former students of Fietek's, Sellie attended school in St. Paul. YAI is based out of First Lutheran Church in St. Paul, which Sellie's family attends.
YAI Artistic Director Matthew Berdahl did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement provided to the Star Tribune, the group's board of directors said, "neither any of the staff or the current board were involved at the time in question and so our ability to address some of this is limited. … Undeniably, this is a difficult situation for everyone affected."
The statement added that relevant information was turned over to authorities in cooperation with the investigation and the agency has policies and procedures in place to ensure the "safety and well-being of the young artists who participate in YAI." The board declined to provide copies of those policies.
Jack Rice, Fietek's attorney, said in an interview that he is still trying to determine if law enforcement was notified in 2009 of the alleged abuse, "because if this were reported to law enforcement back in 2009, [with] the statute of limitations, you can't bring this claim this far out."
Sellie posted on Facebook in 2009, when they were 14 years old, that Fietek had raped them. The post prompted a meeting at First Lutheran Church with Sellie's parents, a supervisor at St. Paul Public Schools, YAI board members, Pastor Chris Olson Bingea and her wife, Brenda Olson Bingea. Fietek was also present.
Most of the people who were at the meeting did not respond to requests for comment. Former YAI Board Member David Holewinski said he doesn't recall what was discussed, and is no longer involved with YAI nor affiliated with Fietek "in any context," adding that Fietek left YAI in 2010.
Sellie said they retracted the abuse claim after Fietek told them to remove the Facebook post, so the focus of the meeting was Sellie's mental health and how they should take a break from YAI and be more careful about what they post on social media. The alleged abuse was not reported to law enforcement, Sellie said, and it didn't end after the meeting.
Sellie's mother, Bev Danielson Sellie, said she never went to authorities because "we were all led to believe this was not true." The focus of the 2009 meeting was how to help her child, she said, not to address the abuse allegations.
"Jefferson was a mentor," she said. "I feel totally duped, lied to, humiliated, angry, sad. … We were told and it was stressed that this was all a fabrication."
Kim Hyatt is the Star Tribune’s North Metro reporter, covering Anoka County and the northern Hennepin County suburbs.
kim.hyatt@startribune.com 612-673-4751 kimvhyatt
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-l ... 600022060/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Hockey coach arrested and charged
Hockey coach arrested and charged
Investigators are asking for any additional information on Jesse Davis, including any other crimes he may have committed.
The hockey director of the Colorado Select Girls Hockey Association has been arrested and is facing charges of sexual assault and police are looking for information about any other crimes he may have committed.
According to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO), Jesse Miles Davis, 45, was arrested Thursday and is facing charges of sexual assault.
Davis is also facing a charge of allowing and contributing to the illegal behavior of a minor, JCSO said.
According to an arrest affidavit, Davis brought a half-full bottle of cinnamon whiskey to two teenage girls who were staying in a tent in the backyard of his home in Idledale, northwest of Morrison, in June 2020.
He drank with the girls, the affidavit says, until the victim became sick and went outside the tent to vomit.
The affidavit says Davis touched the girl inappropriately while she was vomiting and attempted to have sex with her, then went back into the tent and made out with her until her friend remarked that he was too old to be kissing her and told him to stop.
The victim said she was extremely drunk at the time and did not give Davis permission to touch her, the affidavit says.
Colorado Select posted the following statement to their website in response to Davis' arrest:
On February 4, 2021, Colorado Select learned that Hockey Director Jesse Davis had been arrested on charges of sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Colorado Select was shocked to learn of Davis' arrest. Colorado Select is in contact with Colorado Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) and the U.S. Center for SafeSport to provide support resources to its members and their families. Colorado Select has provided information to U.S. Center for SafeSport regarding the arrest. Davis has been suspended by CAHA from all hockey activities in Colorado. Colorado Select has suspended Davis as Hockey Director and has excluded Davis from all Colorado Select activities. At this time Colorado Select has received no information that the events giving rise to the charges involve any of its members.
If anyone has information about this or any other criminal incident involving Davis, please call the Jefferson County tip line at 303-271-5612.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 or visit metrodenvercrimestoppers.com. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers works by assigning a code to people who anonymously submit a tip. Information is shared with law enforcement, and Crime Stoppers are notified at the conclusion of the investigation.
From there, an awards committee reviews the information provided and, if the information leads to an arrest, the tipster will be notified. Rewards can be collected using the code numbers received when the tip was originally submitted.
Youth girls hockey league director arrested for sexual assault, delinquency of a minor
Read more: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/cri ... f24fe1a9af
On February 4, 2021, Colorado Select learned that Hockey Director Jesse Davis had been arrested on charges of sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Colorado Select was shocked to learn of Davis' arrest. Colorado Select is in contact with Colorado Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) and the U.S. Center for SafeSport to provide support resources to its members and their families. Colorado Select has provided information to U.S. Center for SafeSport regarding the arrest. Davis has been suspended by CAHA from all hockey activities in Colorado. Colorado Select has suspended Davis as Hockey Director and has excluded Davis from all Colorado Select activities. At this time Colorado Select has received no information that the events giving rise to the charges involve any of its members.
If anyone has any information related to these charges please contact one of the following:
• Colorado Select SafeSport Coordinator Danielle Anderson at safesport@csgha.com
• CAHA SafeSport Director Michelle Peterson 303-550-0441 mpsafesport@gmail.com
• US Center for Safesport at 720-531-0340
• Jefferson County Sheriff's Tipline at 303-271-5612
Colorado Select is a participant in SafeSport which is an independent nonprofit committed to building a sport community where participants can work and learn together free of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and misconduct.
https://www.coloradogirlshockey.com/new ... ow/1014321
Investigators are asking for any additional information on Jesse Davis, including any other crimes he may have committed.
The hockey director of the Colorado Select Girls Hockey Association has been arrested and is facing charges of sexual assault and police are looking for information about any other crimes he may have committed.
According to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO), Jesse Miles Davis, 45, was arrested Thursday and is facing charges of sexual assault.
Davis is also facing a charge of allowing and contributing to the illegal behavior of a minor, JCSO said.
According to an arrest affidavit, Davis brought a half-full bottle of cinnamon whiskey to two teenage girls who were staying in a tent in the backyard of his home in Idledale, northwest of Morrison, in June 2020.
He drank with the girls, the affidavit says, until the victim became sick and went outside the tent to vomit.
The affidavit says Davis touched the girl inappropriately while she was vomiting and attempted to have sex with her, then went back into the tent and made out with her until her friend remarked that he was too old to be kissing her and told him to stop.
The victim said she was extremely drunk at the time and did not give Davis permission to touch her, the affidavit says.
Colorado Select posted the following statement to their website in response to Davis' arrest:
On February 4, 2021, Colorado Select learned that Hockey Director Jesse Davis had been arrested on charges of sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Colorado Select was shocked to learn of Davis' arrest. Colorado Select is in contact with Colorado Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) and the U.S. Center for SafeSport to provide support resources to its members and their families. Colorado Select has provided information to U.S. Center for SafeSport regarding the arrest. Davis has been suspended by CAHA from all hockey activities in Colorado. Colorado Select has suspended Davis as Hockey Director and has excluded Davis from all Colorado Select activities. At this time Colorado Select has received no information that the events giving rise to the charges involve any of its members.
If anyone has information about this or any other criminal incident involving Davis, please call the Jefferson County tip line at 303-271-5612.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 or visit metrodenvercrimestoppers.com. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers works by assigning a code to people who anonymously submit a tip. Information is shared with law enforcement, and Crime Stoppers are notified at the conclusion of the investigation.
From there, an awards committee reviews the information provided and, if the information leads to an arrest, the tipster will be notified. Rewards can be collected using the code numbers received when the tip was originally submitted.
Youth girls hockey league director arrested for sexual assault, delinquency of a minor
Read more: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/cri ... f24fe1a9af
On February 4, 2021, Colorado Select learned that Hockey Director Jesse Davis had been arrested on charges of sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Colorado Select was shocked to learn of Davis' arrest. Colorado Select is in contact with Colorado Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) and the U.S. Center for SafeSport to provide support resources to its members and their families. Colorado Select has provided information to U.S. Center for SafeSport regarding the arrest. Davis has been suspended by CAHA from all hockey activities in Colorado. Colorado Select has suspended Davis as Hockey Director and has excluded Davis from all Colorado Select activities. At this time Colorado Select has received no information that the events giving rise to the charges involve any of its members.
If anyone has any information related to these charges please contact one of the following:
• Colorado Select SafeSport Coordinator Danielle Anderson at safesport@csgha.com
• CAHA SafeSport Director Michelle Peterson 303-550-0441 mpsafesport@gmail.com
• US Center for Safesport at 720-531-0340
• Jefferson County Sheriff's Tipline at 303-271-5612
Colorado Select is a participant in SafeSport which is an independent nonprofit committed to building a sport community where participants can work and learn together free of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and misconduct.
https://www.coloradogirlshockey.com/new ... ow/1014321
-
greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Coach charged
Coach charged
A high school basketball coach from northern Minnesota could face decades in prison if he's convicted of charges accusing him of sexually assaulting a player on the team.
Andrew J. Palmer, 33, of Moose Lake, is charged with three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for which he is accused of raping a teenage player on the Barnum High School basketball team, for which Palmer was the head coach.
The teenager was interviewed Jan. 19 and said Palmer began communicating with the player during the fall of 2020 via SnapChat, according to a criminal complaint that says Palmer would send the player messages, ask for pictures and talked about his dog.
Palmer allegedly invited the teen to his home on New Year's Day to see his dog and have a fire. While there, the teen told investigators that Palmer never had a fire and that he raped her while watching a movie.
The teen told police that it was "not okay" and that she, according to the complaint, "felt pressure to have sex with [Palmer] because he was her coach and she did not feel like she could say no to him.”
Palmer is accused of raping the girl again a week later, and then a third time following a high school basketball game Jan. 16, after which he asked the girl to go with him to his house again. That night, the teen said she told Palmer "no" but he got mad at her.
The child was able to accurately describe the interior of Palmer's home, and two used condoms were found inside the 33-year-old's residence.
Barnum Schools Superintendent Michael McNulty told KBJR that typical background checks were completed prior to hiring Palmer in 2019.
Charges: Coach raped teenage girl on Minnesota basketball team
The 33-year-old head coach has been charged in connection to the alleged crimes.
Read more: https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-ne ... tball-team
A high school basketball coach from northern Minnesota could face decades in prison if he's convicted of charges accusing him of sexually assaulting a player on the team.
Andrew J. Palmer, 33, of Moose Lake, is charged with three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for which he is accused of raping a teenage player on the Barnum High School basketball team, for which Palmer was the head coach.
The teenager was interviewed Jan. 19 and said Palmer began communicating with the player during the fall of 2020 via SnapChat, according to a criminal complaint that says Palmer would send the player messages, ask for pictures and talked about his dog.
Palmer allegedly invited the teen to his home on New Year's Day to see his dog and have a fire. While there, the teen told investigators that Palmer never had a fire and that he raped her while watching a movie.
The teen told police that it was "not okay" and that she, according to the complaint, "felt pressure to have sex with [Palmer] because he was her coach and she did not feel like she could say no to him.”
Palmer is accused of raping the girl again a week later, and then a third time following a high school basketball game Jan. 16, after which he asked the girl to go with him to his house again. That night, the teen said she told Palmer "no" but he got mad at her.
The child was able to accurately describe the interior of Palmer's home, and two used condoms were found inside the 33-year-old's residence.
Barnum Schools Superintendent Michael McNulty told KBJR that typical background checks were completed prior to hiring Palmer in 2019.
Charges: Coach raped teenage girl on Minnesota basketball team
The 33-year-old head coach has been charged in connection to the alleged crimes.
Read more: https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-ne ... tball-team
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Re: Does MSHSL or Mn Hockey have such a list of banned coaches
BRAD ALDRICHFOUNDER & CEO
A native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and graduate of Northern Michigan University, Brad has been involved in collegiate and professional hockey for the majority of his adult life. Having been the Director of Hockey Operations for the University of Notre Dame and Miami University, logistics and planning in the hockey industry are no secret to Brad. He served as the Video Coach for the Chicago Blackhawks, where he was a member of the 2010 Stanley Cup Champion team. In that same year, he served as a member of the USA Men’s Olympic Team’s coaching staff earning an Olympic Silver Medal in Vancouver. Brad has also won a U-18 World Championships and a World Championship as the Video Coordinator for USA Hockey’s Women’s National Program. Beyond hockey, he has worked for a private marketing agency and has been the coordinator for several volunteer and fundraising organizations and events. As the Assistant Director of Programming & Instruction for the University of Notre Dame’s Compton Family Ice Arena, Mr. Aldrich helped to open the facility and initiate many of the programs and events that have had success in the Arena and on campus. In his spare time, Brad likes to be with his family and friends as much as possible. He spends a lot of time outside water skiing, hiking, snow shoeing and playing golf. He watches as many hockey games as he is able and enjoys horse racing and college basketball as well. Brad is high-energy, works hard, and is passionate about assisting athletes so they can focus on their careers.
https://playerconcierge.wordpress.com/brad-aldrich/
A native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and graduate of Northern Michigan University, Brad has been involved in collegiate and professional hockey for the majority of his adult life. Having been the Director of Hockey Operations for the University of Notre Dame and Miami University, logistics and planning in the hockey industry are no secret to Brad. He served as the Video Coach for the Chicago Blackhawks, where he was a member of the 2010 Stanley Cup Champion team. In that same year, he served as a member of the USA Men’s Olympic Team’s coaching staff earning an Olympic Silver Medal in Vancouver. Brad has also won a U-18 World Championships and a World Championship as the Video Coordinator for USA Hockey’s Women’s National Program. Beyond hockey, he has worked for a private marketing agency and has been the coordinator for several volunteer and fundraising organizations and events. As the Assistant Director of Programming & Instruction for the University of Notre Dame’s Compton Family Ice Arena, Mr. Aldrich helped to open the facility and initiate many of the programs and events that have had success in the Arena and on campus. In his spare time, Brad likes to be with his family and friends as much as possible. He spends a lot of time outside water skiing, hiking, snow shoeing and playing golf. He watches as many hockey games as he is able and enjoys horse racing and college basketball as well. Brad is high-energy, works hard, and is passionate about assisting athletes so they can focus on their careers.
https://playerconcierge.wordpress.com/brad-aldrich/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Bradley Aldrich
Lawsuit claims ex-Blackhawks coach, a convicted sex offender, masturbated in front of player, threatened retaliation if he didn't participate in sexual activity
Sam Fels
Today 9:44AM
Illustration for article titled Lawsuit claims ex-Blackhawks coach, a convicted sex offender, masturbated in front of player, threatened retaliation if he didn't participate in sexual activity
I don’t mean to turn this into “Chicago Controversies This Morning,” but it just so happened that another pretty gross story broke out of these parts last night:
Here are the details as reported by Dave McKinney and Tony Arnold of WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR news station:
An unidentified former Chicago Blackhawks player has sued the National Hockey League franchise, alleging that he and another teammate were sexually assaulted by an assistant coach before the team’s 2010 Stanley Cup victory.
The lawsuit filed late last week in Cook County Circuit Court was brought by a player identified only as “John Doe” and accuses the team of ignoring his claims against the assistant coach, who went on to be convicted of a sex crime involving a student in Michigan and is now a registered sex offender in that state.
According to WBEZ, the player alleges the assistant coach, identified in the lawsuit as Brad Aldrich — a convicted sex offender in Michigan — “turned on porn and began to masturbate in front of” the player without consent. The suit also alleges the coach sent “inappropriate text messages” as well as threats to “physically, financially and emotionally” damage the player if he “did not engage in sexual activity” with the coach.
Aldrich is no longer with the team.
“This entire man’s life has been destroyed,” Susan Loggans, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told WBEZ. “I mean, he was not able to function within the NHL context and … this has really ruined … his professional career. These professional athletes have to function at the top of their game at all times in order to be competitive, and these things are really debilitating.”
There will be plenty of time to discuss these allegations, which the team told WBEZ “lacked merit,” and what it might mean for the Hawks and the league in general. I will say it’s curious that in a lawsuit where the plaintiff is only asking for $150K, it’s almost shocking that an organization as big as the Hawks even let it get this far. Either they’re totally convinced of their innocence, or their dismissal of this kind of charge is just that heavy and continuing.
“The Chicago Blackhawks take the allegations asserted by a former player very seriously,” the team’s VP for communications, Adam Rogowin, told WBEZ. “We are confident the team will be absolved of any wrongdoing.”
But let me tell you something about the Hawks, or at least the Hawks under former president John McDonough. They are the team that did nothing about coach Bill Peters when he was racially abusing Akim Aliu with their AHL team. They are the team that welcomed back Garret Ross to their AHL team, after he got off his revenge porn charges dropped on a technicality which made it clear he did what he was accused of he just did it in another state, even though punting him into the lake would have cost the Hawks nothing. This is the organization that announced a bobblehead night for Patrick Kane two weeks after he was accused of rape. And that’s just a sample.
So the first reaction of me, or anyone who has been around this team for any length of time, is that it was completely capable of ignoring claims like this and pretending it didn’t happen. That it could just duck responsibility. And they almost certainly still will, as I’m sure they will attempt to dump this all on former president McDonough and make it out to be his fault and they don’t run things that way anymore. But they are, and they know it, and now you do, too.
https://deadspin.com/lawsuit-claims-ex- ... 1846885159
Sam Fels
Today 9:44AM
Illustration for article titled Lawsuit claims ex-Blackhawks coach, a convicted sex offender, masturbated in front of player, threatened retaliation if he didn't participate in sexual activity
I don’t mean to turn this into “Chicago Controversies This Morning,” but it just so happened that another pretty gross story broke out of these parts last night:
Here are the details as reported by Dave McKinney and Tony Arnold of WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR news station:
An unidentified former Chicago Blackhawks player has sued the National Hockey League franchise, alleging that he and another teammate were sexually assaulted by an assistant coach before the team’s 2010 Stanley Cup victory.
The lawsuit filed late last week in Cook County Circuit Court was brought by a player identified only as “John Doe” and accuses the team of ignoring his claims against the assistant coach, who went on to be convicted of a sex crime involving a student in Michigan and is now a registered sex offender in that state.
According to WBEZ, the player alleges the assistant coach, identified in the lawsuit as Brad Aldrich — a convicted sex offender in Michigan — “turned on porn and began to masturbate in front of” the player without consent. The suit also alleges the coach sent “inappropriate text messages” as well as threats to “physically, financially and emotionally” damage the player if he “did not engage in sexual activity” with the coach.
Aldrich is no longer with the team.
“This entire man’s life has been destroyed,” Susan Loggans, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told WBEZ. “I mean, he was not able to function within the NHL context and … this has really ruined … his professional career. These professional athletes have to function at the top of their game at all times in order to be competitive, and these things are really debilitating.”
There will be plenty of time to discuss these allegations, which the team told WBEZ “lacked merit,” and what it might mean for the Hawks and the league in general. I will say it’s curious that in a lawsuit where the plaintiff is only asking for $150K, it’s almost shocking that an organization as big as the Hawks even let it get this far. Either they’re totally convinced of their innocence, or their dismissal of this kind of charge is just that heavy and continuing.
“The Chicago Blackhawks take the allegations asserted by a former player very seriously,” the team’s VP for communications, Adam Rogowin, told WBEZ. “We are confident the team will be absolved of any wrongdoing.”
But let me tell you something about the Hawks, or at least the Hawks under former president John McDonough. They are the team that did nothing about coach Bill Peters when he was racially abusing Akim Aliu with their AHL team. They are the team that welcomed back Garret Ross to their AHL team, after he got off his revenge porn charges dropped on a technicality which made it clear he did what he was accused of he just did it in another state, even though punting him into the lake would have cost the Hawks nothing. This is the organization that announced a bobblehead night for Patrick Kane two weeks after he was accused of rape. And that’s just a sample.
So the first reaction of me, or anyone who has been around this team for any length of time, is that it was completely capable of ignoring claims like this and pretending it didn’t happen. That it could just duck responsibility. And they almost certainly still will, as I’m sure they will attempt to dump this all on former president McDonough and make it out to be his fault and they don’t run things that way anymore. But they are, and they know it, and now you do, too.
https://deadspin.com/lawsuit-claims-ex- ... 1846885159
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Bo Schembechler’s son says ex-Michigan doctor abused him and the legendary coach failed to act
Bo Schembechler’s son says ex-Michigan doctor abused him and the legendary coach failed to act
Some have called for the renaming of Schembechler Hall on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Mich., after accusations that longtime football coach Bo Schembechler knew about abuse by a team doctor. Schembechler’s son said Thursday he was abused by the doctor and told his father. (Paul Sancya/AP)
By
Molly Hensley-Clancy
June 10, 2021 at 1:52 p.m. CDT
Matt Schembechler was 10 years old when he tried repeatedly to tell his father, legendary University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler, that he had been molested by the team’s doctor.
Bo Schembechler replied: “I don’t want to hear this.” Then, the coach’s son says, Schembechler punched his fourth-grade son in the chest.
“I hoped my father would protect me, but he didn’t,” Matt Schembechler, now 62, recalled Thursday at a news conference where he excoriated his father and the University of Michigan for their failures to act to stop the doctor’s abuse.
Matt Schembechler spoke alongside two former University of Michigan football players who also said they were repeatedly molested by the doctor, Robert E. Anderson, and were revealing their identities publicly for the first time. They were some of as many as 850 alleged victims of Anderson, who preyed on athletes and other young men over a period of decades, according to a recent investigation by a law firm hired by the university.
Bo Schembechler died in 2006, Anderson in 2008. More than 200 have sued Michigan over the abuse.
On Thursday, both former football players told reporters that they, too, had told Bo Schembechler about their abuse and that their coach failed to act.
Michigan failed to act on warning signs as doctor molested athletes for decades, report finds
“Bo knew. I knew. I was on my own, and Bo was never going to protect us from Dr. Anderson,” said one former player, Daniel Kwiatkowski.
The other former player, Gilvanni Johnson, who said he was abused by Anderson more than a dozen times, said coaches at Michigan had used threats of a visit to Anderson’s office for a physical as a way to motivate players. “Only now do I realize how crazy it was to threaten rape as a way to make players work harder,” Johnson said.
Matt Schembechler and the former players were critical of the university, which they said had not done enough to apologize for its role in enabling Anderson’s abuse. The school released a statement Thursday night addressing the claims.
“Our sympathy for all of Anderson’s victims is deep and unwavering, and we thank them for their bravery in coming forward,” the statement read. “We condemn and apologize for the tragic misconduct of the late Dr. Anderson. … We are committed to resolving their claims and to continuing the court-guided confidential mediation process.”
“It’s clear the culture of abuse at the university has not changed and will not change until they acknowledge what happened,” Schembechler said. “Anderson was able to continue this abuse for so long because he was supported by a culture that placed the reputation of the university above the health and safety of its students.”
“That is the culture that made my father a legend and placed his statue in front of Schembechler Hall,” he said.
The larger-than-life bronze statue of Bo Schembechler at the University of Michigan depicts the coach in a game-day outfit, his headset in his hand. Last month, some called for the statue to be removed and Schembechler Hall to be renamed. The university has not yet said whether it will act.
Earlier this year, a report by the law firm WilmerHale found that top school officials had ignored repeated complaints and warning signs about Anderson’s abuse. But the WilmerHale report was ultimately inconclusive about Bo Schembechler. Former university personnel and football players said the older Schembechler had known about the abuse, but the firm could not find documentary evidence to corroborate any complaints made to the coach.
Jim Harbaugh, the current Michigan coach, defended Bo Schembechler publicly earlier this month, saying the former coach, his mentor, “never sat on anything. He never procrastinated on anything.”
But Matt Schembechler said he believed his father had fought to have Anderson reinstated at Michigan, even after his mother pressed the school’s athletic director to fire him in the wake of her 10-year-old son’s abuse allegations.
“Bo had him reinstated because he needed his team doctor and wanted to ensure Anderson remained part of the Michigan team,” Matt Schembechler said.
Matt Schembechler was just starting to play tackle football for the Junior Wolverines when he was first sent to see Anderson, who he said groped his genitals and penetrated him with a finger. Anderson later went on to abuse Schembechler again, he said, when he was in 10th grade and was sent to the doctor for another football physical.
Matt Schembechler has had a difficult relationship with his father, who adopted him along with two of his brothers after his mother’s marriage to the coach. He sued his father over a business venture in 1999. In his statement at the news conference Thursday, he described the moment his father struck him after he first disclosed the abuse allegations.
“This was the beginning of the end of my relationship with him,” Schembechler said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... tor-abuse/
Some have called for the renaming of Schembechler Hall on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Mich., after accusations that longtime football coach Bo Schembechler knew about abuse by a team doctor. Schembechler’s son said Thursday he was abused by the doctor and told his father. (Paul Sancya/AP)
By
Molly Hensley-Clancy
June 10, 2021 at 1:52 p.m. CDT
Matt Schembechler was 10 years old when he tried repeatedly to tell his father, legendary University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler, that he had been molested by the team’s doctor.
Bo Schembechler replied: “I don’t want to hear this.” Then, the coach’s son says, Schembechler punched his fourth-grade son in the chest.
“I hoped my father would protect me, but he didn’t,” Matt Schembechler, now 62, recalled Thursday at a news conference where he excoriated his father and the University of Michigan for their failures to act to stop the doctor’s abuse.
Matt Schembechler spoke alongside two former University of Michigan football players who also said they were repeatedly molested by the doctor, Robert E. Anderson, and were revealing their identities publicly for the first time. They were some of as many as 850 alleged victims of Anderson, who preyed on athletes and other young men over a period of decades, according to a recent investigation by a law firm hired by the university.
Bo Schembechler died in 2006, Anderson in 2008. More than 200 have sued Michigan over the abuse.
On Thursday, both former football players told reporters that they, too, had told Bo Schembechler about their abuse and that their coach failed to act.
Michigan failed to act on warning signs as doctor molested athletes for decades, report finds
“Bo knew. I knew. I was on my own, and Bo was never going to protect us from Dr. Anderson,” said one former player, Daniel Kwiatkowski.
The other former player, Gilvanni Johnson, who said he was abused by Anderson more than a dozen times, said coaches at Michigan had used threats of a visit to Anderson’s office for a physical as a way to motivate players. “Only now do I realize how crazy it was to threaten rape as a way to make players work harder,” Johnson said.
Matt Schembechler and the former players were critical of the university, which they said had not done enough to apologize for its role in enabling Anderson’s abuse. The school released a statement Thursday night addressing the claims.
“Our sympathy for all of Anderson’s victims is deep and unwavering, and we thank them for their bravery in coming forward,” the statement read. “We condemn and apologize for the tragic misconduct of the late Dr. Anderson. … We are committed to resolving their claims and to continuing the court-guided confidential mediation process.”
“It’s clear the culture of abuse at the university has not changed and will not change until they acknowledge what happened,” Schembechler said. “Anderson was able to continue this abuse for so long because he was supported by a culture that placed the reputation of the university above the health and safety of its students.”
“That is the culture that made my father a legend and placed his statue in front of Schembechler Hall,” he said.
The larger-than-life bronze statue of Bo Schembechler at the University of Michigan depicts the coach in a game-day outfit, his headset in his hand. Last month, some called for the statue to be removed and Schembechler Hall to be renamed. The university has not yet said whether it will act.
Earlier this year, a report by the law firm WilmerHale found that top school officials had ignored repeated complaints and warning signs about Anderson’s abuse. But the WilmerHale report was ultimately inconclusive about Bo Schembechler. Former university personnel and football players said the older Schembechler had known about the abuse, but the firm could not find documentary evidence to corroborate any complaints made to the coach.
Jim Harbaugh, the current Michigan coach, defended Bo Schembechler publicly earlier this month, saying the former coach, his mentor, “never sat on anything. He never procrastinated on anything.”
But Matt Schembechler said he believed his father had fought to have Anderson reinstated at Michigan, even after his mother pressed the school’s athletic director to fire him in the wake of her 10-year-old son’s abuse allegations.
“Bo had him reinstated because he needed his team doctor and wanted to ensure Anderson remained part of the Michigan team,” Matt Schembechler said.
Matt Schembechler was just starting to play tackle football for the Junior Wolverines when he was first sent to see Anderson, who he said groped his genitals and penetrated him with a finger. Anderson later went on to abuse Schembechler again, he said, when he was in 10th grade and was sent to the doctor for another football physical.
Matt Schembechler has had a difficult relationship with his father, who adopted him along with two of his brothers after his mother’s marriage to the coach. He sued his father over a business venture in 1999. In his statement at the news conference Thursday, he described the moment his father struck him after he first disclosed the abuse allegations.
“This was the beginning of the end of my relationship with him,” Schembechler said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... tor-abuse/
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Why Aren't More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?
Why Aren't More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?
A Buckeyes sports doctor sexually assaulted more than 350 athletes—while also doling out steroids, SI has learned. Why have survivors' settlement figures paled in comparison to other similar cases? And what does that say about us?
JON WERTHEIMOCT 5, 2020
The most sweeping sex abuse scandal in the history of American higher education—to say nothing of the history of college sports—played out over nearly 20 years on one of the largest campuses in the country. Most of the survivors were athletes. Most of them didn’t entirely grasp until later in their lives that they had been assaulted and raped. Most of them were like Mark Coleman, whose interactions with Dr. Richard Strauss would create a smog, lingering over his life for decades.
A native of Fremont, Ohio, Coleman was an All-America wrestler at Miami of Ohio before transferring to Ohio State in the fall of 1986 for his senior season. Having played competitive sports his entire life, Coleman had experienced enough preseason athletic physicals to know the minor discomfort they entailed. But he was completely unprepared for what came next as he stood alone in a room with Strauss, then the official doctor for five OSU sports programs and consulting physician for at least 10 others. Strauss asked Coleman to undress and, under the guise of a medical examination, inappropriately touched Coleman. “He examined me pretty good. It was an eye-opener,” Coleman says, pausing. “I don’t want to go further than that.”
At practice, Coleman inquired about Strauss. His questions were greeted with levity and laughter. The slightly-built doctor with the heavily gelled hair who could be alternatively charming and prickly, and spoke in an effeminate voice edged in awkward nervousness? Who would not only lurk during practices, sitting naked on locker room benches, but then shower alongside the athletes? Who fondled athletes’ genitals during examinations, regardless of their injury? For years, Strauss and his “handiness” as more than one former Buckeye athlete put it to Sports Illustrated, made for both an open secret and a running joke within the OSU athletic department.
So much so that each sport seemed to have coined a different shorthand for Strauss. For athletes in one sport he was “Dr. Feel Good.” For another, he was “Dr. Jelly Fingers.” There was also “Dr. Balls,” “Dr. Nuts” and “Dr. Drop-Your-Drawers.” Some OSU coaches used the mock threat of “having to see Dr. Strauss” as motivation to make their athletes run faster or practice harder.
Coleman was new on campus, new to the wrestling program. And the team doctor was, well, the team doctor. As a varsity athlete on scholarship, Coleman wasn’t inclined to, as he puts it, “stir PLEASE BAN ME up.” And, like most OSU athletes, he didn’t fully process that he had been sexually assaulted. For one, it was the late 80s, still a benighted era for sexual assault awareness, much less same-gender assault, when comprehension and vocabulary didn’t exist. “We never thought a man could sexually abuse a man,” says Coleman. “We just played it off. We joked about it. But I don’t think we were really joking.”
Coleman was also confused, ashamed and embarrassed, and a novice adult trying to balance sports and studies, inclined to believe and trust a team doctor. “This guy controlled my future,” Coleman recalls. “We all put up with it. For me, it was like, just clear me so I can go win an NCAA title and make the Olympic team, you know?”
Coleman would do both. He’d go on to win the NCAA wrestling title in 1988, and would compete in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, finishing seventh. He would then marry his ground skills with boxing, kicking, knees, elbows and head-butts and reinvent himself as a fearsome mixed martial arts fighter. Nicknamed “the Hammer,” Coleman would become the UFC’s first heavyweight champ. For all his successes, he was haunted by Strauss.
Now 55, Coleman recalls his spasms of rage, inexplicable at the time: “I didn’t know how bad it was affecting me, but now I look back and I was very angry. I went into practice very angry a lot of times, storming into the wrestling room and screaming. I was confused. I spun it as, well, it’s good to be angry, I’m gonna have a hell of a practice and kick someone’s ass. But now I realize, it wasn’t good and I realize why.”
All the locker room banter and nicknames masked the reality. Dr. Richard Strauss was a serial sexual predator, an unchecked terror, stalking the Ohio State campus for nearly two decades. And his power over young athletes, Sports Illustrated has learned, was even greater than previously known. Four independent sources confirmed that Strauss was a major source on campus for performance-enhancing drugs and frequently counseled athletes on how to use them. There is no known connection between Strauss's decision to abuse an athlete and whether he furnished him with PEDs—Coleman, for instance, confirmed first-hand knowledge that Strauss discussed the topic with athletes but adamantly denied that the doctor provided him with steroids. But sources tell SI that Strauss’s distribution of banned and illegal drugs gave him significant leverage over many athletes and potentially some coaches, likely helping to conceal his abuses.
Strauss’s victims would span two decades, from 1978 to 1998, and include athletes who would go on to play in the NFL and fight in the cages of UFC. They would include athletes in nonrevenue sports from tennis to wrestling to cheerleading. They would also include—critically, it would turn out—male undergraduates from the general student population, unencumbered by the OSU athletic department, the athlete culture, or fealty to “Buckeye Nation,” making them more likely to speak out. Strauss had access to them all. According to a report commissioned by Ohio State, before he was done, he would commit at least 1,429 instances of fondling and 47 instances of rape.
The scale of Richard Strauss’s abuses was comparable to those of another Big Ten doctor who assaulted athletes, Larry Nassar, the central figure of scandals encompassing Michigan State and USA Gymnastics. Why, then, has the OSU scandal drawn a fraction of the same attention and national outrage? Why is Ohio State taking a strikingly hard-line stance with so many of the 350-plus survivors, including Coleman, who have sued the school? And why are former OSU athletes negotiating settlements for dimes on the dollar, measured against the amounts received recently by the victims of Nassar and other campus predators?
One likely answer: because of the same collision of factors and social norms that enabled Strauss’s predatory behavior to persist for so long in the first place.
Richard Strauss was crowding age 40 when he came to Columbus in 1978 as an assistant professor in the college of medicine. His reputation was as impeccable as his pedigree. After receiving his medical degree in 1964 from the prestigious University of Chicago, Strauss served as a medical officer on a nuclear submarine. He spent the next 14 years practicing medicine at various colleges and universities, including Penn and Harvard.
“He was a very bright guy—as you would expect from a full professor at a major medical school,” says Dr. Charles Yesalis, a longtime Penn State faculty member who knew Strauss through conferences and once co-authored an academic article with him. “He was well-rounded, not [academically] a one-trick pony.”
While Strauss was no athlete and weighed barely 140 pounds, not long after he was hired at OSU, he began volunteering to work with OSU teams at Larkins Hall, then the school’s main physical education building. Witnesses—and some of the few remaining records—reveal that it was also not long before he began his reign of sexual abuse. Many sexual predators groom their targets over a period of years, building relationships and trust before committing their violative acts. Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State assistant football coach, is a classic example. In Strauss’s case, he was more brazen and less patient.
Joe Bechtel was a freshman in the fall of 1979, a hockey player on partial scholarship. Playing sports at OSU was not only a dream realized, but a continuation of a family tradition. His father had played football for OSU under Woody Hayes. After contracting mononucleosis as a sophomore, Bechtel visited Strauss to be examined. “I needed him to clear me so I could get back to playing,” Bechtel recalled to SI. “The coach was going to take the doctor’s advice.”
In the course of the examination, which Strauss performed alone in his office, the doctor fondled Bechtel’s testicles. He also volunteered that his medical research was in sperm production. Bechtel recalls feeling deeply uncomfortable by Strauss’s examination. But not completely surprised.
At an OSU hockey game that season, Strauss served as the doctor on call for both teams. Bechtel recalls being in the training room for postgame treatment when a member of the opposing team entered, complaining of a toe infection. Strauss instructed the player to drop his pants, in front of all present, and began groping his penis and testicles. When Bechtel informed the team’s trainer about the doctor’s inappropriate behavior, it triggered a joke about the creepy new doctor.
Around the same time, Dave Mulvin, captain of the OSU wrestling team, was fondled by Strauss during a physical. He abruptly ended the exam, saying to the doctor that his behavior was “weird.” Mulvin says he went to the student health center to finish the exam with a different doctor and explained what had happened with Strauss. His account, he says, was shrugged off.
As was another Strauss interaction with an OSU athlete from the same sports season, recounted in a lawsuit. A two-sport athlete on OSU’s wrestling and football teams––who has requested anonymity––saw Strauss in early 1979, after the athlete became dehydrated from a prolonged training drill. His urine was discolored, and he was in serious pain on account of a kidney infection. Trainers in Larkins Hall noticed that the athlete looked “extremely ill” and summoned Strauss. When the other trainers had left the room, Strauss gave the athlete what he said was pain medication.
Soon, the athlete says he began to feel groggy, like he was going to pass out. But Strauss told him to pull his pants down. Positioned behind the athlete, Strauss began raping him. As the athlete came to, Strauss asked him, “Are you okay?”
The following day, the athlete says he reported the sexual violation to OSU’s wrestling coach, Chris Ford. According to the lawsuit, the athlete and coach had an explosive argument, with Ford telling the athlete he would take care of it. But there was no follow-up, and instead of helping the athlete, Ford “shunned and blacklisted” him, kicking him off the team.
Ford died in 2016. In response to a detailed set of questions from SI, Ohio State replied with a general statement, similar to others the university has made on Strauss. “We express our deep regret and apologies to all who experienced Strauss’s abuse,” the statement read, in part. “Ohio State is a fundamentally different university today and over the past 20 years has committed substantial resources to prevent and address sexual misconduct.”
For two decades, though, Strauss’s abuse continued unchecked, the roster of affected athletes growing each year. Freshman arriving for routine physicals would end up having their penis and testicles pawed. Athlete after athlete came to see Strauss for sore throats and headaches and foot injuries; and left having been fondled or otherwise assaulted. Nick Nutter, an All-America OSU wrestler in the 1990s, recounts that he made a simple calculation before deciding whether to see Strauss: “I turned a blind eye to injuries because I didn’t want the co-pay to be a stroking session,” he says. “I would ask myself: Is this injury bad enough that I’m willing to get molested for it?”
As Strauss surely recognized, it would have been hard to scheme a set of circumstances more conducive to serial sexual abuse. His position as a doctor allowed him to cloak his assault as legitimate treatment, mirroring the tactic employed by Nassar as he preyed on gymnasts.
“If Richard Strauss had done what he had done in a bar or in a back alley, I think many of the survivors would have responded differently,” says Kristy McCray, an Otterbein (Ohio) University associate professor of health and sports sciences, specializing in college sport and sexual violence prevention. “How do you punch a doctor in the face when he’s [claiming to be] ‘treating’ you?”
Strauss’s mere title of doctor conferred a level of status and authority. He was not only certified by OSU, but he became a member of the medical commission of the International Olympic Committee. He was smart and manipulative,” recalls Nutter. “When I did question him—‘You really need me to undress me to treat my elbow, Doc?’—he’d say, ‘Nick, I’m a doctor. Who are you to question me?’ ”
And in the dynamics of college sports, he held the ultimate gatekeeping power over his victims: Athletes required his clearance before they could play their sport, often the reason they were at OSU. For instance, Michael Murphy, a Buckeyes pole vaulter violated by Strauss in the late ‘80s, worried that without his scholarship, he wouldn’t have been able to afford to continue as an OSU student. “Strauss,” Murphy says, “held all the cards.”
For some athletes, Strauss may have held more than cards. Apart from his avowed specialization in sperm research, Strauss was also an expert—a pioneer, even—in the field of steroids. While mainstream sports medicine experts were still waking up to the powers of anabolics, Strauss was publishing a series of academic articles on PEDs in respected journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA. According to multiple former OSU athletes, Strauss was a source for PEDs and a fount of knowledge on their use.
Rocky Ratliff, a former OSU wrestler, is now an Ohio-based lawyer representing 46 former Buckeye athletes. (Ratliff, too, was assaulted by Strauss and has a claim against the school, but he is not representing himself.) Ratliff asserted to SI that multiple clients of his “received and/or witnessed Dr. Strauss administering steroids and/or performance enhancing drugs to athletes at OSU in order for the athletes to get an edge.” Ratliff says that his clients include former OSU hockey players and that Strauss was “straight up” with them. According to Ratliff: “Strauss would say, ‘Hey you’re having a hard time on the ice? I got some s--- for you. I can give you steroids and help you out.’”
One of the John Doe plaintiffs—who has yet to settle with OSU—was a student athletic trainer for Ohio State in the late ‘80s. He recalls transporting steroids that Strauss had prescribed from the Student Health facility to the training rooms. “It was clear that [athletes] were rats and he was running a lab,” the trainer says. “There were corticosteroids steroids and anabolic steroids. Corticosteroids were used for anti-inflammation. But we used anabolics to make you bigger. It was viewed as a competitive advantage. How much was Strauss [prescribing]? I know he had them and I know he was using them on some athletes.”
The trainer stresses that this was the early days for steroids in sports and, as at most schools, the OSU drug-testing protocols were lax at best. Asked about the notion that Strauss held sway over athletes because he was prescribing them PEDs, the trainer says: “Yeah. I’ll make you bigger. I’ll make you a better performing athlete. But you have to do what I say. And coaches weren’t going to rock the boat too much on that, either.”
Another former wrestler, who wishes to remain anonymous, echoed the trainer’s account, saying that Strauss personally dispensed steroids to athletes.
An Ohio State spokesperson declined to comment specifically on these claims, referring to a line in a report the school commissioned from the law firm Perkins Coie on Strauss stating that the firm’s investigators received one second-hand report that Strauss provided steroids, but they could not corroborate it. (The spokesperson added that the university encourages individuals with information to reach out to its Office of Compliance and Integrity.)
It was significant, too, that Strauss’s survivors were male athletes, another factor that brought the shroud of secrecy. The notion that the alphas of campus—all-American wrestlers and NFL-bound football players—could be sexually abused by a man? It was almost impossible for many to reconcile, not least some of the survivors themselves. Joe Bechtel, the hockey player, would later recall that he didn’t look into reporting Strauss for fear of “being called a PLEASE BAN ME” or suspected of being gay.
A former tennis player who was abused by Strauss puts it this way: “In the 1980s, in a college sports environment, getting sexually abused by a man was just beyond something people could even comprehend. Even now, it’s like I don’t get it. Why didn’t you kick his ass? It’s hard for people to wrap their brain around [same-gender assault], especially when the victim is an athlete in their physical prime.”
Coleman hears this same question and he, too, winces. “People say, Why would they let a little man do this? Well, it’s complicated. You felt powerless. I wasn’t going to stir up s---, punch Dr. Strauss in the face and risk everything.”
This doesn’t surprise Keeli Sorensen, vice president of victim services for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), a nonprofit anti-sexual assault organization. “It’s a big fallacy that someone should automatically be fighting,” she says. “It doesn’t work that way. You are not thinking. You are surviving. It is normal to freeze...But because we have such an ugly trope about what men should do, there comes shame and guilt for not having done it. Which makes it that much worse.”
McCray, who received her PhD. from Ohio State and now lives in Columbus, says that asking Why didn’t you fight? goes to basic myths about rape, and same-sex rape specifically. “It’s very clear that middle-aged Jerry Sandusky should not be showering with a 10-year-old boy. That is clearly wrong. Nobody supports that. Nobody supports Larry Nassar abusing young girls. It is abhorrent,” she says. “But when it comes to adults—both men and women—when we think about adult victimization, societally, we are more likely to engage in victim blaming. Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you stop him? And then the extension of that with male victims is it makes us uncomfortable to think that this can happen to someone like me, someone like my dad, someone like my brother….Now add that these were not weak, soft men. These were highly competitive, physically strong athletes.”
It also worked to Strauss’s advantage that he operated in a college environment. For all the seminars and orientation programs, campuses remain hotbeds for assaults. According the Department of Justice data, male college-aged students (18-24) are 78% more likely than non-students of the same age to be a survivor of rape or sexual assault. “There is still a lack of open conversation about men being sexually assaulted and what risk looks like,” says Sorensen. “it’s not necessarily physical violence or attack by a stranger.”
Maybe the ultimate factor enabling Strauss: the lack of oversight at Ohio State, and the repeated failure of administrators to investigate. The first documented complaint against Strauss was lodged in 1979. Formally and informally, concerns about Strauss would continue for years. More than 20 OSU coaches would later assert that they were aware of rumors and grievances. Coach after coach used the term “open secret” to describe Strauss. Nothing was done.
In 1995, Steve Snyder-Hill reported Strauss's abuse—but Ohio State administrators dismissed his concerns.
In 1995, Steve Snyder-Hill reported Strauss's abuse—but Ohio State administrators dismissed his concerns.
In 1994, the “open secret” was finally aired when Ohio State’s fencing coach, Charlotte Remenyik, approached Strauss’s boss, Dr. John Lombardo, medical director of Ohio State sports. She expressed concern that Strauss was giving unnecessary genital exams to male athletes.
In a document obtained by SI, Lombardo—who, since 1990, has moonlighted as the NFL’s drug advisor for anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs—then wrote to Paul Krebs, OSU’s senior associate athletic director, making him aware of the fencing team’s complaint. But in the same letter, Lombardo dismissed the claims as lacking merit, writing that they were “based on rumors generated over 10 years with no foundation.” Strauss volunteered to discontinue working with the fencing team, and the matter was not reported outside the athletic department. (Krebs would go on to become athletic director at the University of New Mexico where he would be charged with seven felony counts including fraud, money laundering and other felonies. His trial is scheduled for October 2020.)
Around the same time, in the spring of 1994, Strauss proposed to OSU that he initiate a men’s clinic for student health services. Though Strauss was facing multiple complaints from OSU students, including the fencers, Ohio State granted this request. “Predators are very good at getting access to their prey,” says Ilann Maazel, a New York-based attorney at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff who represents 93 of the survivors. “His method was to use the state university to get access.”
At the clinic, complaints against Strauss mounted. On Jan. 3, 1995, a student reported Strauss to student health services director, Dr. Ted Grace, saying that the treatment he received from Strauss was “inappropriate for the problem he had come in for.”
On Jan. 6, 1995, just three days later, another OSU student, Steve Snyder-Hill, complained to Grace that Strauss “had come to him and tried to pick him up during an examination.” What’s more, seeking treatment for a breast lump, Snyder-Hill was subjected to testicular and anal examination. Snyder-Hill also says Strauss had an erection during the exam and pushed against him.
In a letter dated January 26, 1995, Grace wrote to Snyder-Hill, responding to the students’ concerns. Though mere weeks earlier another student had raised strikingly similar issues about Strauss, Grace asserted, “I want to assure you that we had never received a complaint about Dr. Strauss before, although we have had several positive comments.”
On July 1, 1995—months after multiple complaints were filed—Strauss received a performance evaluation from his bosses and supervisors, including Grace. His overall evaluation was “excellent.” The report characterized Strauss as “a guiding force in the program development [who] always keeps the patients’ needs first,” adding that “I look forward to many more new and creative steps in the men’s clinic.” There were no references to any complaints.
Asked the following year by OSU attorneys why Strauss would receive such a glowing review without even making reference to multiple complaints, Grace wrote, “for legal reasons, we would never mention a serious allegation against a physician on their evaluation form, which is a permanent part of their personnel record. There were no lies in the evaluation. Dr. Strauss is a highly competent, dependable, knowledgeable and thorough clinician.”
Snyder-Hill’s complaint and letter to Grace would never be mentioned in Strauss’s personnel file. And years later, testifying under oath in a deposition, Grace would say that he had taken his files concerning Strauss to his home. Where he later shredded them. (Contacted by SI for this story, Grace, now the director of Student Health Services at Southern Illinois University, responded, “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have any comment at this time.”)
In 1996, yet another OSU student filed a complaint against Strauss after a prolonged examination at the clinic led the student to ejaculate. The student stormed out of the examination, yelling to other students in the waiting room that Strauss was a “pervert” and warning them to “get out of there right away.”
This time, the university placed Strauss on administrative leave and scheduled hearings to determine whether he should be fired. Strauss responded by threatening legal action against the student and the university. In a letter to David Williams II, OSU’s vice president for student affairs, Strauss denied inappropriate behavior, writing: “It is unfortunate that the patient ejaculated in my office, but that’s his problem, not mine.”
In July of 1996, quietly—but without public disgrace—Strauss was dropped from his Student Health Services position and stripped of duties in the athletic department. OSU cited “three complaints by students in a period of 13 months.” Strauss protested this removal from the athletic and Student Health departments, even appealing to then-President E. Gordon Gee. (There are no public records as to whether Gee responded.)
In an apparent act of desperation, Strauss also filed a report against Grace, his boss, to the state of Ohio Medical Board. Only while investigating Strauss’s complaint against Grace, did the Medical Board learn about Strauss’s predations. Grace told the board, “There are many male athletes that have been abused by Dr. Strauss.” Asked, later, what he meant by “many,” Grace, said, under oath, “Three, four, five, six. Whatever.”
Despite being dropped from the athletics department, Strauss was told that he would remain on campus as a tenured professor. No formal reports were prepared. No state of Ohio licensing personnel were notified. Still on the OSU faculty and payroll, Strauss opened a private men’s clinic in Columbus. He advertised his new clinic in the OSU campus newspaper, The Lantern, offering a student discount.
A nursing major and OSU senior, Brian Garrett worked at the clinic, lured, he says, by Strauss’s promises that he could help him with graduate school admissions. “He was very persuasive,” Garrett says of Strauss. Garrett noticed immediately that Strauss kept little paperwork or charts and ministered to Ohio State athletes. “He brought them in one door and out the other,” Garrett recalls. “He would tell me, ‘It’s not on the schedule. Just a private exam.’”
Garrett says that on his third or fourth day on the job in the summer of 1996, Strauss assaulted him as well, attempting to feel his groin when Garrett complained of heartburn. Looking back, he is struck by the power imbalance. “He got off on control,” says Garrett. “Here’s this little frail guy and he has control over this big athlete. They can’t do anything to me and I can do what I want to them.”
Garrett believes it’s not coincidence that while Strauss went unchecked for more than 15 years in the athletic department, the complaints mounted once he assaulted male students within the general student population. “Sports is more of a tough-guy, manlier environment. Suck it up if you get assaulted or abused,” Garrett says. “At the student health clinic, they aren’t necessarily on scholarship so they’re not as afraid to speak up.”
With still more complaints pending, Strauss retired voluntarily from OSU in 1998. Upon his retirement, Strauss was conferred the honorific emeritus status by OSU. After years in Columbus, he left central Ohio and moved to Southern California. His last listed residence, an apartment in Venice Beach, Calif., was a block from the Pacific Ocean. He reportedly volunteered at a medical clinic near Hermosa Beach that treats an underserved population. In mid-August of 2005, beset by depression and abdominal pain, at age 67, Strauss took his own life.
It took an unlikely set of circumstances for Richard Strauss’s predations to surface publicly and go from a sort of family secret held within OSU athletics, to a full-blown scandal. Mike DiSabato was victimized by Strauss as a high schooler in Columbus when—under the guise of conducting research on the body fat of high school wrestlers—Strauss administered an unnecessary genital exam. DiSabato went on to become an All-American wrestler at OSU, where Strauss continued to abuse him. After graduating, DiSabato started a licensing apparel business that produced Buckeyes merchandise. When OSU severed ties with him in 2006, however, DiSabato made a full-time job of needling the school, even suing over the licensing dispute (the case eventually settled).
In early 2018, with the #MeToo wave cresting, DiSabato sent an email to OSU making references to Strauss’s serial abuse. By early April, the university realized that the allegations were explosive and a major sex abuse scandal was brewing. It retained a local law firm which then retained the prominent Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie to conduct an independent investigation.
In the meantime, DiSabato had grown impatient, also approaching the Columbus Dispatch. On the same day that the university announced its investigation, he was quoted in the paper: “The young gymnasts at Michigan State who showed amazing courage have awakened many who have had enough of a system which fosters and supports deviant sexual predators,” he said. A firehose of candor with connections within Columbus and the OSU alumni network, DiSabato courted the media, reaching out personally to reporters, and was happy to add accelerant to the fire.
To avoid retraumatizing those affected, the Perkins Coie investigators did not actively pursue leads, asking simply that anyone affected or interested in speaking should establish contact. Even with those limiting parameters—and therefore, likely, interviewing only a small fraction of Strauss’s survivors—the report was, in the words of Ohio State’s president at the time, Michael V. Drake, “shocking and painful to comprehend.”
Released in May of 2019 and conducted at a cost of $6.2 million, the report detailed acts of sexual abuse Strauss had committed against 177 former students. Most of them were athletes and most were listed anonymously as John Doe. “We know that a tremendous number of people do not want to come forward for so many reasons: fear, shame, humiliation,” says Maazel. “I think it's highly likely that the number of survivors is many multiples of the people who have come forward.”
The report also concluded that “university personnel had knowledge of complaints and concerns about Strauss’s conduct as early as 1979 but failed to investigate or act meaningfully.” Perhaps most damningly, the report cites more than 40 Ohio State coaches and administrators and athletic directors who did not respond adequately, going all the way to Andy Geiger, the OSU athletic director from 1994-2005, who has told the Columbus media he doesn't recall any complaints of Strauss’s sexual misconduct during his tenure.
Predictably, the Strauss scandal has triggered lawsuits. There have been at least 18 of them to date, encompassing more than 350 former OSU students. They are suing their alma mater, mostly on Title IX grounds, alleging the school knew about the abuse and failed to act. Brian Garrett, the nursing student assaulted by Strauss in 1996, is the named plaintiff in one suit. Stephen Snyder-Hill, the student assaulted by Strauss in 1994, attached his name to another. DiSabato joined with 36 other former athletes, the majority of them football players, and was the named plaintiff on one suit. (He was the only former OSU athlete in his class who chose to use his name.)
After the release of the Strauss report, Ohio State responded with a series of public statements and emails, projecting remorse and accountability and referring to “the university of today,” differentiating it from the university that allowed one doctor to traumatize so many students. As then-OSU President Drake wrote to OSU alumni and former Buckeye athletes on May 17, 2019, “Strauss's actions and the university’s inaction at the time were unacceptable.” The school also offered to cover the cost of counseling for those impacted by Strauss.
But OSU adopted a different tone in litigation. The school’s first line of defense was that there could be no valid lawsuits because Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations on a Title IX claim had long since lapsed. It fell to the survivors to make the argument that the statute of limitations couldn’t run until the injured party knew a crime had been committed. If OSU covered up Strauss’s abuse for decades, shielding the survivors from knowing the school could be at fault, how could the clock on filing a lawsuit already be ticking?
In May, OSU announced that it reached a settlement with almost half the former students and athletes, including DiSabato. The 162 plaintiffs agreeing to the settlement, many of them former football players, received a combined $41 million, roughly $250,000 per victim. (The same month the settlement was announced, Michael Wright, an Ohio attorney who negotiated for the former Buckeyes athletes had taken another case: a University of Michigan team physician stood accused of sexually abusing athletes.)
It was among the largest settlements OSU ever paid. Yet if Michigan State had, crassly, “set the market” the previous year for institutional neglect in a sex scandal involving a predatory doctor and abused athletes, this was a perplexingly low settlement. The 332 victims of Larry Nassar drew from a settlement pool of $425 million, an average of almost $1.3 million per claim.
“All the guys talk about it,” says Garrett, who was not among those settling his claim. “If we were women it would be a different story and it would have been over a long time ago. And the Ohio state legislators [who approved the settlements] would have taken up our cause much harder than they did. Most of them are men and it makes them uncomfortable hearing about sexual assault among men.”
Survivors acknowledge there are material distinctions between their case and what happened at Michigan State, not least that their tormenter is dead and they’re deprived of being able to dramatically confront him in court. But they also can’t help but wonder why their drive for justice has moved so slowly, why Ohio State has been so intransigent in their eyes, and they reach one irreducible conclusion.
“There’s no way society as a whole is going to look at wrestlers and football players the way they do five-feet-tall gymnasts,” says Ratliff, the lawyer and former OSU wrestler. “I don’t think society is ready for that.”
When the Strauss scandal has received heavy media attention, it has often been because of Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan's involvement.
When the Strauss scandal has received heavy media attention, it has often been because of Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan's involvement.
The assaults may have been laughed off. The persistent complaints against Strauss may have been taken so casually that records, if they existed at all, often had been destroyed or lost. But the damage was profound. The Buckeyes football player and wrestler who was raped by Strauss in 1979? Shortly after the incident, by his own admission, he began getting into fights, abusing alcohol and missing classes. Witnessing this decline, Earle Bruce, the football coach, required him to get a mental health evaluation. By his junior year, the athlete quit the football team and dropped out of OSU.
While training for the Olympics and the UFC, Mark Coleman often stayed in Columbus and worked as an OSU assistant wrestling coach. An astonishing number of wrestlers quit the team, but Coleman figured they simply couldn’t handle the rigor of wrestling. Now he has a different perspective. “These were guys on full scholarship who could have been All-Americans. Why did they quit? We thought they [wimped] out. Well, now it makes total sense. I was shocked to find out how bad [Strauss] messed guys up.”
Michael Murphy, the former OSU pole vaulter, can relate as well. When, as a freshman, he injured his hamstring he, reluctantly, saw Strauss. The doctor instructed Murphy to lay face-down on the table, then applied lubricant and penetrated Murphy’s rectum with his finger. Strauss instructed Murphy to relax and explained that he was performing “a treatment” and probing for “tissue damage.”
While Murphy’s hamstring healed, the fallout from this act of molestation worsened. Murphy became depressed, his grades tanked, and he eventually dropped out of OSU. He transferred to the Naval Academy, mostly because it was free, but he left before completing a degree. Murphy told no one about the assault. He says his father told him not to come home, unable to understand why his son was floundering.
Nick Nutter, the former All-American wrestler, says that there is emotional pain, but the physical pain he experiences today is also a legacy of his time at OSU. “I had lower back injuries [in college] that I didn’t want to tell the doc about because I didn’t want to see him. Today, the doctors tell me that at age 46, I have a 75-year-old man’s knee. Father time is catching up to me. All the times I said, ‘Will this go away or do I really need to go see doc?’ It’s catching up to me.”
The Perkins Coie report doubles as a compendium of personal tragedy, of potential drained and lives damaged. Dozens of athletes told the investigators their stories, and while each came with a slightly different fact pattern, the same theme rang out. A young athlete came to OSU, flush with ambition and optimism. He was assaulted by Strauss. He spiraled downward.
The scandal has imbued the former athletes with ambiguous feelings toward the school. This terror had happened at the Ohio State, a school many had supported since they were kids, a school that conferred on them a scholarship. DiSabato, for instance, has worn his scarlet-and-gray letterman’s jacket to hearings, a symbolic gesture that he still considered himself part of the tribe. Multiple other former Buckeye athletes commented for this story that it’s been a decades-long challenge, cordoning off happy memories and school loyalty, from the trauma they experienced there and the sense of betrayal that followed.
The scandal and its aftermath has also caused a rupture within OSU athletic programs, particularly the wrestling team that counts more than 50 alumni among Strauss’s victims. Echoing DiSabtato’s allegations, Coleman accused Jim Jordan, an OSU assistant wrestling coach from 1986 to ’94, of ignoring Strauss’s abuse, “unless he got dementia.”
Jordan, now a powerful Ohio congressman, issued a fierce denial. Coleman then walked back his comments. “It tore the whole community apart,” says Coleman. “Wrestlers are very tight. OSU wrestling is like a family. But people had to pick a side. DiSabato’s side or Jim Jordan’s side.”
The OSU wrestlers remain split on who knew what and when they knew it. Meanwhile it’s telling—a testament to the discrepancy in media treatment from the Michigan State and Penn State scandals—that the tangential involvement of Jordan marked virtually the only time the Strauss scandal became a national news story.
For many of the athletes, the scandal has been cathartic––memories and emotions, suppressed for decades, finally confronted. “It’s almost like this hole has broke,” says Murphy, now 51. It now makes sense to him why he didn’t want his two kids to attend OSU. Or why he always put off getting his annual physical. Or why he was always nervous when his kids went to a pediatrician. Painful as it was, it was also a relief to tell his wife, and even his two kids, about being assaulted.
And the scandal has been brutal––memories and emotions, suppressed for decades, that have come screaming back. Multiple survivors, athletic men deep into middle age, dissolving into tears as they rehash incidents from their late teenage years that have anguished them ever since. Some say they can’t sleep. Others have begun taking anxiety medication. More than one concedes his sexual performance has been compromised.
Among the smear of emotions, guilt figures prominently. “I’m a team player who always looked out for my teammates and my family,” says Bechtel, the former hockey player. “I would take a bullet for people. That so many people had to be subjected [to Strauss], and I didn’t stop it? It makes me pissed.”
Says Ratliff: “I have clients who can’t even look at me. They’ll sit there and cry and say, ‘I was 20 years before you. There’s no way you should have been molested.’”
Shame persists, too. Decades after assaults, the vast majority of the survivors requested anonymity when speaking to the Perkins Coie investigators. Fear is also part of the equation. Garrett, for instance, still doesn’t like going to the doctor. He says that when the story of Strauss first broke, immediately he vomited. He has slept only fitfully since.
The wrestler and football player who was raped by Strauss in 1979 is identified in his lawsuit as John Doe 32. Now in his early 60s, he says he continues to experience extreme and regular anxiety and finds himself “continuously haunted by Dr. Strauss’s abuse.”
And as much as the victims talk about “closure” for themselves and accountability from Ohio State, both remain elusive. Nearly 250 athletes have claims pending, as court-ordered mediation has failed. Strauss may be long dead, his crimes decades old, and yet somehow he remains a fresh and undiminished figure. “I see him every day,” Bechtel says. “Unfortunately, I see him every day.”
https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/05/o ... aily-cover
A Buckeyes sports doctor sexually assaulted more than 350 athletes—while also doling out steroids, SI has learned. Why have survivors' settlement figures paled in comparison to other similar cases? And what does that say about us?
JON WERTHEIMOCT 5, 2020
The most sweeping sex abuse scandal in the history of American higher education—to say nothing of the history of college sports—played out over nearly 20 years on one of the largest campuses in the country. Most of the survivors were athletes. Most of them didn’t entirely grasp until later in their lives that they had been assaulted and raped. Most of them were like Mark Coleman, whose interactions with Dr. Richard Strauss would create a smog, lingering over his life for decades.
A native of Fremont, Ohio, Coleman was an All-America wrestler at Miami of Ohio before transferring to Ohio State in the fall of 1986 for his senior season. Having played competitive sports his entire life, Coleman had experienced enough preseason athletic physicals to know the minor discomfort they entailed. But he was completely unprepared for what came next as he stood alone in a room with Strauss, then the official doctor for five OSU sports programs and consulting physician for at least 10 others. Strauss asked Coleman to undress and, under the guise of a medical examination, inappropriately touched Coleman. “He examined me pretty good. It was an eye-opener,” Coleman says, pausing. “I don’t want to go further than that.”
At practice, Coleman inquired about Strauss. His questions were greeted with levity and laughter. The slightly-built doctor with the heavily gelled hair who could be alternatively charming and prickly, and spoke in an effeminate voice edged in awkward nervousness? Who would not only lurk during practices, sitting naked on locker room benches, but then shower alongside the athletes? Who fondled athletes’ genitals during examinations, regardless of their injury? For years, Strauss and his “handiness” as more than one former Buckeye athlete put it to Sports Illustrated, made for both an open secret and a running joke within the OSU athletic department.
So much so that each sport seemed to have coined a different shorthand for Strauss. For athletes in one sport he was “Dr. Feel Good.” For another, he was “Dr. Jelly Fingers.” There was also “Dr. Balls,” “Dr. Nuts” and “Dr. Drop-Your-Drawers.” Some OSU coaches used the mock threat of “having to see Dr. Strauss” as motivation to make their athletes run faster or practice harder.
Coleman was new on campus, new to the wrestling program. And the team doctor was, well, the team doctor. As a varsity athlete on scholarship, Coleman wasn’t inclined to, as he puts it, “stir PLEASE BAN ME up.” And, like most OSU athletes, he didn’t fully process that he had been sexually assaulted. For one, it was the late 80s, still a benighted era for sexual assault awareness, much less same-gender assault, when comprehension and vocabulary didn’t exist. “We never thought a man could sexually abuse a man,” says Coleman. “We just played it off. We joked about it. But I don’t think we were really joking.”
Coleman was also confused, ashamed and embarrassed, and a novice adult trying to balance sports and studies, inclined to believe and trust a team doctor. “This guy controlled my future,” Coleman recalls. “We all put up with it. For me, it was like, just clear me so I can go win an NCAA title and make the Olympic team, you know?”
Coleman would do both. He’d go on to win the NCAA wrestling title in 1988, and would compete in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, finishing seventh. He would then marry his ground skills with boxing, kicking, knees, elbows and head-butts and reinvent himself as a fearsome mixed martial arts fighter. Nicknamed “the Hammer,” Coleman would become the UFC’s first heavyweight champ. For all his successes, he was haunted by Strauss.
Now 55, Coleman recalls his spasms of rage, inexplicable at the time: “I didn’t know how bad it was affecting me, but now I look back and I was very angry. I went into practice very angry a lot of times, storming into the wrestling room and screaming. I was confused. I spun it as, well, it’s good to be angry, I’m gonna have a hell of a practice and kick someone’s ass. But now I realize, it wasn’t good and I realize why.”
All the locker room banter and nicknames masked the reality. Dr. Richard Strauss was a serial sexual predator, an unchecked terror, stalking the Ohio State campus for nearly two decades. And his power over young athletes, Sports Illustrated has learned, was even greater than previously known. Four independent sources confirmed that Strauss was a major source on campus for performance-enhancing drugs and frequently counseled athletes on how to use them. There is no known connection between Strauss's decision to abuse an athlete and whether he furnished him with PEDs—Coleman, for instance, confirmed first-hand knowledge that Strauss discussed the topic with athletes but adamantly denied that the doctor provided him with steroids. But sources tell SI that Strauss’s distribution of banned and illegal drugs gave him significant leverage over many athletes and potentially some coaches, likely helping to conceal his abuses.
Strauss’s victims would span two decades, from 1978 to 1998, and include athletes who would go on to play in the NFL and fight in the cages of UFC. They would include athletes in nonrevenue sports from tennis to wrestling to cheerleading. They would also include—critically, it would turn out—male undergraduates from the general student population, unencumbered by the OSU athletic department, the athlete culture, or fealty to “Buckeye Nation,” making them more likely to speak out. Strauss had access to them all. According to a report commissioned by Ohio State, before he was done, he would commit at least 1,429 instances of fondling and 47 instances of rape.
The scale of Richard Strauss’s abuses was comparable to those of another Big Ten doctor who assaulted athletes, Larry Nassar, the central figure of scandals encompassing Michigan State and USA Gymnastics. Why, then, has the OSU scandal drawn a fraction of the same attention and national outrage? Why is Ohio State taking a strikingly hard-line stance with so many of the 350-plus survivors, including Coleman, who have sued the school? And why are former OSU athletes negotiating settlements for dimes on the dollar, measured against the amounts received recently by the victims of Nassar and other campus predators?
One likely answer: because of the same collision of factors and social norms that enabled Strauss’s predatory behavior to persist for so long in the first place.
Richard Strauss was crowding age 40 when he came to Columbus in 1978 as an assistant professor in the college of medicine. His reputation was as impeccable as his pedigree. After receiving his medical degree in 1964 from the prestigious University of Chicago, Strauss served as a medical officer on a nuclear submarine. He spent the next 14 years practicing medicine at various colleges and universities, including Penn and Harvard.
“He was a very bright guy—as you would expect from a full professor at a major medical school,” says Dr. Charles Yesalis, a longtime Penn State faculty member who knew Strauss through conferences and once co-authored an academic article with him. “He was well-rounded, not [academically] a one-trick pony.”
While Strauss was no athlete and weighed barely 140 pounds, not long after he was hired at OSU, he began volunteering to work with OSU teams at Larkins Hall, then the school’s main physical education building. Witnesses—and some of the few remaining records—reveal that it was also not long before he began his reign of sexual abuse. Many sexual predators groom their targets over a period of years, building relationships and trust before committing their violative acts. Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State assistant football coach, is a classic example. In Strauss’s case, he was more brazen and less patient.
Joe Bechtel was a freshman in the fall of 1979, a hockey player on partial scholarship. Playing sports at OSU was not only a dream realized, but a continuation of a family tradition. His father had played football for OSU under Woody Hayes. After contracting mononucleosis as a sophomore, Bechtel visited Strauss to be examined. “I needed him to clear me so I could get back to playing,” Bechtel recalled to SI. “The coach was going to take the doctor’s advice.”
In the course of the examination, which Strauss performed alone in his office, the doctor fondled Bechtel’s testicles. He also volunteered that his medical research was in sperm production. Bechtel recalls feeling deeply uncomfortable by Strauss’s examination. But not completely surprised.
At an OSU hockey game that season, Strauss served as the doctor on call for both teams. Bechtel recalls being in the training room for postgame treatment when a member of the opposing team entered, complaining of a toe infection. Strauss instructed the player to drop his pants, in front of all present, and began groping his penis and testicles. When Bechtel informed the team’s trainer about the doctor’s inappropriate behavior, it triggered a joke about the creepy new doctor.
Around the same time, Dave Mulvin, captain of the OSU wrestling team, was fondled by Strauss during a physical. He abruptly ended the exam, saying to the doctor that his behavior was “weird.” Mulvin says he went to the student health center to finish the exam with a different doctor and explained what had happened with Strauss. His account, he says, was shrugged off.
As was another Strauss interaction with an OSU athlete from the same sports season, recounted in a lawsuit. A two-sport athlete on OSU’s wrestling and football teams––who has requested anonymity––saw Strauss in early 1979, after the athlete became dehydrated from a prolonged training drill. His urine was discolored, and he was in serious pain on account of a kidney infection. Trainers in Larkins Hall noticed that the athlete looked “extremely ill” and summoned Strauss. When the other trainers had left the room, Strauss gave the athlete what he said was pain medication.
Soon, the athlete says he began to feel groggy, like he was going to pass out. But Strauss told him to pull his pants down. Positioned behind the athlete, Strauss began raping him. As the athlete came to, Strauss asked him, “Are you okay?”
The following day, the athlete says he reported the sexual violation to OSU’s wrestling coach, Chris Ford. According to the lawsuit, the athlete and coach had an explosive argument, with Ford telling the athlete he would take care of it. But there was no follow-up, and instead of helping the athlete, Ford “shunned and blacklisted” him, kicking him off the team.
Ford died in 2016. In response to a detailed set of questions from SI, Ohio State replied with a general statement, similar to others the university has made on Strauss. “We express our deep regret and apologies to all who experienced Strauss’s abuse,” the statement read, in part. “Ohio State is a fundamentally different university today and over the past 20 years has committed substantial resources to prevent and address sexual misconduct.”
For two decades, though, Strauss’s abuse continued unchecked, the roster of affected athletes growing each year. Freshman arriving for routine physicals would end up having their penis and testicles pawed. Athlete after athlete came to see Strauss for sore throats and headaches and foot injuries; and left having been fondled or otherwise assaulted. Nick Nutter, an All-America OSU wrestler in the 1990s, recounts that he made a simple calculation before deciding whether to see Strauss: “I turned a blind eye to injuries because I didn’t want the co-pay to be a stroking session,” he says. “I would ask myself: Is this injury bad enough that I’m willing to get molested for it?”
As Strauss surely recognized, it would have been hard to scheme a set of circumstances more conducive to serial sexual abuse. His position as a doctor allowed him to cloak his assault as legitimate treatment, mirroring the tactic employed by Nassar as he preyed on gymnasts.
“If Richard Strauss had done what he had done in a bar or in a back alley, I think many of the survivors would have responded differently,” says Kristy McCray, an Otterbein (Ohio) University associate professor of health and sports sciences, specializing in college sport and sexual violence prevention. “How do you punch a doctor in the face when he’s [claiming to be] ‘treating’ you?”
Strauss’s mere title of doctor conferred a level of status and authority. He was not only certified by OSU, but he became a member of the medical commission of the International Olympic Committee. He was smart and manipulative,” recalls Nutter. “When I did question him—‘You really need me to undress me to treat my elbow, Doc?’—he’d say, ‘Nick, I’m a doctor. Who are you to question me?’ ”
And in the dynamics of college sports, he held the ultimate gatekeeping power over his victims: Athletes required his clearance before they could play their sport, often the reason they were at OSU. For instance, Michael Murphy, a Buckeyes pole vaulter violated by Strauss in the late ‘80s, worried that without his scholarship, he wouldn’t have been able to afford to continue as an OSU student. “Strauss,” Murphy says, “held all the cards.”
For some athletes, Strauss may have held more than cards. Apart from his avowed specialization in sperm research, Strauss was also an expert—a pioneer, even—in the field of steroids. While mainstream sports medicine experts were still waking up to the powers of anabolics, Strauss was publishing a series of academic articles on PEDs in respected journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA. According to multiple former OSU athletes, Strauss was a source for PEDs and a fount of knowledge on their use.
Rocky Ratliff, a former OSU wrestler, is now an Ohio-based lawyer representing 46 former Buckeye athletes. (Ratliff, too, was assaulted by Strauss and has a claim against the school, but he is not representing himself.) Ratliff asserted to SI that multiple clients of his “received and/or witnessed Dr. Strauss administering steroids and/or performance enhancing drugs to athletes at OSU in order for the athletes to get an edge.” Ratliff says that his clients include former OSU hockey players and that Strauss was “straight up” with them. According to Ratliff: “Strauss would say, ‘Hey you’re having a hard time on the ice? I got some s--- for you. I can give you steroids and help you out.’”
One of the John Doe plaintiffs—who has yet to settle with OSU—was a student athletic trainer for Ohio State in the late ‘80s. He recalls transporting steroids that Strauss had prescribed from the Student Health facility to the training rooms. “It was clear that [athletes] were rats and he was running a lab,” the trainer says. “There were corticosteroids steroids and anabolic steroids. Corticosteroids were used for anti-inflammation. But we used anabolics to make you bigger. It was viewed as a competitive advantage. How much was Strauss [prescribing]? I know he had them and I know he was using them on some athletes.”
The trainer stresses that this was the early days for steroids in sports and, as at most schools, the OSU drug-testing protocols were lax at best. Asked about the notion that Strauss held sway over athletes because he was prescribing them PEDs, the trainer says: “Yeah. I’ll make you bigger. I’ll make you a better performing athlete. But you have to do what I say. And coaches weren’t going to rock the boat too much on that, either.”
Another former wrestler, who wishes to remain anonymous, echoed the trainer’s account, saying that Strauss personally dispensed steroids to athletes.
An Ohio State spokesperson declined to comment specifically on these claims, referring to a line in a report the school commissioned from the law firm Perkins Coie on Strauss stating that the firm’s investigators received one second-hand report that Strauss provided steroids, but they could not corroborate it. (The spokesperson added that the university encourages individuals with information to reach out to its Office of Compliance and Integrity.)
It was significant, too, that Strauss’s survivors were male athletes, another factor that brought the shroud of secrecy. The notion that the alphas of campus—all-American wrestlers and NFL-bound football players—could be sexually abused by a man? It was almost impossible for many to reconcile, not least some of the survivors themselves. Joe Bechtel, the hockey player, would later recall that he didn’t look into reporting Strauss for fear of “being called a PLEASE BAN ME” or suspected of being gay.
A former tennis player who was abused by Strauss puts it this way: “In the 1980s, in a college sports environment, getting sexually abused by a man was just beyond something people could even comprehend. Even now, it’s like I don’t get it. Why didn’t you kick his ass? It’s hard for people to wrap their brain around [same-gender assault], especially when the victim is an athlete in their physical prime.”
Coleman hears this same question and he, too, winces. “People say, Why would they let a little man do this? Well, it’s complicated. You felt powerless. I wasn’t going to stir up s---, punch Dr. Strauss in the face and risk everything.”
This doesn’t surprise Keeli Sorensen, vice president of victim services for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), a nonprofit anti-sexual assault organization. “It’s a big fallacy that someone should automatically be fighting,” she says. “It doesn’t work that way. You are not thinking. You are surviving. It is normal to freeze...But because we have such an ugly trope about what men should do, there comes shame and guilt for not having done it. Which makes it that much worse.”
McCray, who received her PhD. from Ohio State and now lives in Columbus, says that asking Why didn’t you fight? goes to basic myths about rape, and same-sex rape specifically. “It’s very clear that middle-aged Jerry Sandusky should not be showering with a 10-year-old boy. That is clearly wrong. Nobody supports that. Nobody supports Larry Nassar abusing young girls. It is abhorrent,” she says. “But when it comes to adults—both men and women—when we think about adult victimization, societally, we are more likely to engage in victim blaming. Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you stop him? And then the extension of that with male victims is it makes us uncomfortable to think that this can happen to someone like me, someone like my dad, someone like my brother….Now add that these were not weak, soft men. These were highly competitive, physically strong athletes.”
It also worked to Strauss’s advantage that he operated in a college environment. For all the seminars and orientation programs, campuses remain hotbeds for assaults. According the Department of Justice data, male college-aged students (18-24) are 78% more likely than non-students of the same age to be a survivor of rape or sexual assault. “There is still a lack of open conversation about men being sexually assaulted and what risk looks like,” says Sorensen. “it’s not necessarily physical violence or attack by a stranger.”
Maybe the ultimate factor enabling Strauss: the lack of oversight at Ohio State, and the repeated failure of administrators to investigate. The first documented complaint against Strauss was lodged in 1979. Formally and informally, concerns about Strauss would continue for years. More than 20 OSU coaches would later assert that they were aware of rumors and grievances. Coach after coach used the term “open secret” to describe Strauss. Nothing was done.
In 1995, Steve Snyder-Hill reported Strauss's abuse—but Ohio State administrators dismissed his concerns.
In 1995, Steve Snyder-Hill reported Strauss's abuse—but Ohio State administrators dismissed his concerns.
In 1994, the “open secret” was finally aired when Ohio State’s fencing coach, Charlotte Remenyik, approached Strauss’s boss, Dr. John Lombardo, medical director of Ohio State sports. She expressed concern that Strauss was giving unnecessary genital exams to male athletes.
In a document obtained by SI, Lombardo—who, since 1990, has moonlighted as the NFL’s drug advisor for anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs—then wrote to Paul Krebs, OSU’s senior associate athletic director, making him aware of the fencing team’s complaint. But in the same letter, Lombardo dismissed the claims as lacking merit, writing that they were “based on rumors generated over 10 years with no foundation.” Strauss volunteered to discontinue working with the fencing team, and the matter was not reported outside the athletic department. (Krebs would go on to become athletic director at the University of New Mexico where he would be charged with seven felony counts including fraud, money laundering and other felonies. His trial is scheduled for October 2020.)
Around the same time, in the spring of 1994, Strauss proposed to OSU that he initiate a men’s clinic for student health services. Though Strauss was facing multiple complaints from OSU students, including the fencers, Ohio State granted this request. “Predators are very good at getting access to their prey,” says Ilann Maazel, a New York-based attorney at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff who represents 93 of the survivors. “His method was to use the state university to get access.”
At the clinic, complaints against Strauss mounted. On Jan. 3, 1995, a student reported Strauss to student health services director, Dr. Ted Grace, saying that the treatment he received from Strauss was “inappropriate for the problem he had come in for.”
On Jan. 6, 1995, just three days later, another OSU student, Steve Snyder-Hill, complained to Grace that Strauss “had come to him and tried to pick him up during an examination.” What’s more, seeking treatment for a breast lump, Snyder-Hill was subjected to testicular and anal examination. Snyder-Hill also says Strauss had an erection during the exam and pushed against him.
In a letter dated January 26, 1995, Grace wrote to Snyder-Hill, responding to the students’ concerns. Though mere weeks earlier another student had raised strikingly similar issues about Strauss, Grace asserted, “I want to assure you that we had never received a complaint about Dr. Strauss before, although we have had several positive comments.”
On July 1, 1995—months after multiple complaints were filed—Strauss received a performance evaluation from his bosses and supervisors, including Grace. His overall evaluation was “excellent.” The report characterized Strauss as “a guiding force in the program development [who] always keeps the patients’ needs first,” adding that “I look forward to many more new and creative steps in the men’s clinic.” There were no references to any complaints.
Asked the following year by OSU attorneys why Strauss would receive such a glowing review without even making reference to multiple complaints, Grace wrote, “for legal reasons, we would never mention a serious allegation against a physician on their evaluation form, which is a permanent part of their personnel record. There were no lies in the evaluation. Dr. Strauss is a highly competent, dependable, knowledgeable and thorough clinician.”
Snyder-Hill’s complaint and letter to Grace would never be mentioned in Strauss’s personnel file. And years later, testifying under oath in a deposition, Grace would say that he had taken his files concerning Strauss to his home. Where he later shredded them. (Contacted by SI for this story, Grace, now the director of Student Health Services at Southern Illinois University, responded, “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have any comment at this time.”)
In 1996, yet another OSU student filed a complaint against Strauss after a prolonged examination at the clinic led the student to ejaculate. The student stormed out of the examination, yelling to other students in the waiting room that Strauss was a “pervert” and warning them to “get out of there right away.”
This time, the university placed Strauss on administrative leave and scheduled hearings to determine whether he should be fired. Strauss responded by threatening legal action against the student and the university. In a letter to David Williams II, OSU’s vice president for student affairs, Strauss denied inappropriate behavior, writing: “It is unfortunate that the patient ejaculated in my office, but that’s his problem, not mine.”
In July of 1996, quietly—but without public disgrace—Strauss was dropped from his Student Health Services position and stripped of duties in the athletic department. OSU cited “three complaints by students in a period of 13 months.” Strauss protested this removal from the athletic and Student Health departments, even appealing to then-President E. Gordon Gee. (There are no public records as to whether Gee responded.)
In an apparent act of desperation, Strauss also filed a report against Grace, his boss, to the state of Ohio Medical Board. Only while investigating Strauss’s complaint against Grace, did the Medical Board learn about Strauss’s predations. Grace told the board, “There are many male athletes that have been abused by Dr. Strauss.” Asked, later, what he meant by “many,” Grace, said, under oath, “Three, four, five, six. Whatever.”
Despite being dropped from the athletics department, Strauss was told that he would remain on campus as a tenured professor. No formal reports were prepared. No state of Ohio licensing personnel were notified. Still on the OSU faculty and payroll, Strauss opened a private men’s clinic in Columbus. He advertised his new clinic in the OSU campus newspaper, The Lantern, offering a student discount.
A nursing major and OSU senior, Brian Garrett worked at the clinic, lured, he says, by Strauss’s promises that he could help him with graduate school admissions. “He was very persuasive,” Garrett says of Strauss. Garrett noticed immediately that Strauss kept little paperwork or charts and ministered to Ohio State athletes. “He brought them in one door and out the other,” Garrett recalls. “He would tell me, ‘It’s not on the schedule. Just a private exam.’”
Garrett says that on his third or fourth day on the job in the summer of 1996, Strauss assaulted him as well, attempting to feel his groin when Garrett complained of heartburn. Looking back, he is struck by the power imbalance. “He got off on control,” says Garrett. “Here’s this little frail guy and he has control over this big athlete. They can’t do anything to me and I can do what I want to them.”
Garrett believes it’s not coincidence that while Strauss went unchecked for more than 15 years in the athletic department, the complaints mounted once he assaulted male students within the general student population. “Sports is more of a tough-guy, manlier environment. Suck it up if you get assaulted or abused,” Garrett says. “At the student health clinic, they aren’t necessarily on scholarship so they’re not as afraid to speak up.”
With still more complaints pending, Strauss retired voluntarily from OSU in 1998. Upon his retirement, Strauss was conferred the honorific emeritus status by OSU. After years in Columbus, he left central Ohio and moved to Southern California. His last listed residence, an apartment in Venice Beach, Calif., was a block from the Pacific Ocean. He reportedly volunteered at a medical clinic near Hermosa Beach that treats an underserved population. In mid-August of 2005, beset by depression and abdominal pain, at age 67, Strauss took his own life.
It took an unlikely set of circumstances for Richard Strauss’s predations to surface publicly and go from a sort of family secret held within OSU athletics, to a full-blown scandal. Mike DiSabato was victimized by Strauss as a high schooler in Columbus when—under the guise of conducting research on the body fat of high school wrestlers—Strauss administered an unnecessary genital exam. DiSabato went on to become an All-American wrestler at OSU, where Strauss continued to abuse him. After graduating, DiSabato started a licensing apparel business that produced Buckeyes merchandise. When OSU severed ties with him in 2006, however, DiSabato made a full-time job of needling the school, even suing over the licensing dispute (the case eventually settled).
In early 2018, with the #MeToo wave cresting, DiSabato sent an email to OSU making references to Strauss’s serial abuse. By early April, the university realized that the allegations were explosive and a major sex abuse scandal was brewing. It retained a local law firm which then retained the prominent Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie to conduct an independent investigation.
In the meantime, DiSabato had grown impatient, also approaching the Columbus Dispatch. On the same day that the university announced its investigation, he was quoted in the paper: “The young gymnasts at Michigan State who showed amazing courage have awakened many who have had enough of a system which fosters and supports deviant sexual predators,” he said. A firehose of candor with connections within Columbus and the OSU alumni network, DiSabato courted the media, reaching out personally to reporters, and was happy to add accelerant to the fire.
To avoid retraumatizing those affected, the Perkins Coie investigators did not actively pursue leads, asking simply that anyone affected or interested in speaking should establish contact. Even with those limiting parameters—and therefore, likely, interviewing only a small fraction of Strauss’s survivors—the report was, in the words of Ohio State’s president at the time, Michael V. Drake, “shocking and painful to comprehend.”
Released in May of 2019 and conducted at a cost of $6.2 million, the report detailed acts of sexual abuse Strauss had committed against 177 former students. Most of them were athletes and most were listed anonymously as John Doe. “We know that a tremendous number of people do not want to come forward for so many reasons: fear, shame, humiliation,” says Maazel. “I think it's highly likely that the number of survivors is many multiples of the people who have come forward.”
The report also concluded that “university personnel had knowledge of complaints and concerns about Strauss’s conduct as early as 1979 but failed to investigate or act meaningfully.” Perhaps most damningly, the report cites more than 40 Ohio State coaches and administrators and athletic directors who did not respond adequately, going all the way to Andy Geiger, the OSU athletic director from 1994-2005, who has told the Columbus media he doesn't recall any complaints of Strauss’s sexual misconduct during his tenure.
Predictably, the Strauss scandal has triggered lawsuits. There have been at least 18 of them to date, encompassing more than 350 former OSU students. They are suing their alma mater, mostly on Title IX grounds, alleging the school knew about the abuse and failed to act. Brian Garrett, the nursing student assaulted by Strauss in 1996, is the named plaintiff in one suit. Stephen Snyder-Hill, the student assaulted by Strauss in 1994, attached his name to another. DiSabato joined with 36 other former athletes, the majority of them football players, and was the named plaintiff on one suit. (He was the only former OSU athlete in his class who chose to use his name.)
After the release of the Strauss report, Ohio State responded with a series of public statements and emails, projecting remorse and accountability and referring to “the university of today,” differentiating it from the university that allowed one doctor to traumatize so many students. As then-OSU President Drake wrote to OSU alumni and former Buckeye athletes on May 17, 2019, “Strauss's actions and the university’s inaction at the time were unacceptable.” The school also offered to cover the cost of counseling for those impacted by Strauss.
But OSU adopted a different tone in litigation. The school’s first line of defense was that there could be no valid lawsuits because Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations on a Title IX claim had long since lapsed. It fell to the survivors to make the argument that the statute of limitations couldn’t run until the injured party knew a crime had been committed. If OSU covered up Strauss’s abuse for decades, shielding the survivors from knowing the school could be at fault, how could the clock on filing a lawsuit already be ticking?
In May, OSU announced that it reached a settlement with almost half the former students and athletes, including DiSabato. The 162 plaintiffs agreeing to the settlement, many of them former football players, received a combined $41 million, roughly $250,000 per victim. (The same month the settlement was announced, Michael Wright, an Ohio attorney who negotiated for the former Buckeyes athletes had taken another case: a University of Michigan team physician stood accused of sexually abusing athletes.)
It was among the largest settlements OSU ever paid. Yet if Michigan State had, crassly, “set the market” the previous year for institutional neglect in a sex scandal involving a predatory doctor and abused athletes, this was a perplexingly low settlement. The 332 victims of Larry Nassar drew from a settlement pool of $425 million, an average of almost $1.3 million per claim.
“All the guys talk about it,” says Garrett, who was not among those settling his claim. “If we were women it would be a different story and it would have been over a long time ago. And the Ohio state legislators [who approved the settlements] would have taken up our cause much harder than they did. Most of them are men and it makes them uncomfortable hearing about sexual assault among men.”
Survivors acknowledge there are material distinctions between their case and what happened at Michigan State, not least that their tormenter is dead and they’re deprived of being able to dramatically confront him in court. But they also can’t help but wonder why their drive for justice has moved so slowly, why Ohio State has been so intransigent in their eyes, and they reach one irreducible conclusion.
“There’s no way society as a whole is going to look at wrestlers and football players the way they do five-feet-tall gymnasts,” says Ratliff, the lawyer and former OSU wrestler. “I don’t think society is ready for that.”
When the Strauss scandal has received heavy media attention, it has often been because of Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan's involvement.
When the Strauss scandal has received heavy media attention, it has often been because of Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan's involvement.
The assaults may have been laughed off. The persistent complaints against Strauss may have been taken so casually that records, if they existed at all, often had been destroyed or lost. But the damage was profound. The Buckeyes football player and wrestler who was raped by Strauss in 1979? Shortly after the incident, by his own admission, he began getting into fights, abusing alcohol and missing classes. Witnessing this decline, Earle Bruce, the football coach, required him to get a mental health evaluation. By his junior year, the athlete quit the football team and dropped out of OSU.
While training for the Olympics and the UFC, Mark Coleman often stayed in Columbus and worked as an OSU assistant wrestling coach. An astonishing number of wrestlers quit the team, but Coleman figured they simply couldn’t handle the rigor of wrestling. Now he has a different perspective. “These were guys on full scholarship who could have been All-Americans. Why did they quit? We thought they [wimped] out. Well, now it makes total sense. I was shocked to find out how bad [Strauss] messed guys up.”
Michael Murphy, the former OSU pole vaulter, can relate as well. When, as a freshman, he injured his hamstring he, reluctantly, saw Strauss. The doctor instructed Murphy to lay face-down on the table, then applied lubricant and penetrated Murphy’s rectum with his finger. Strauss instructed Murphy to relax and explained that he was performing “a treatment” and probing for “tissue damage.”
While Murphy’s hamstring healed, the fallout from this act of molestation worsened. Murphy became depressed, his grades tanked, and he eventually dropped out of OSU. He transferred to the Naval Academy, mostly because it was free, but he left before completing a degree. Murphy told no one about the assault. He says his father told him not to come home, unable to understand why his son was floundering.
Nick Nutter, the former All-American wrestler, says that there is emotional pain, but the physical pain he experiences today is also a legacy of his time at OSU. “I had lower back injuries [in college] that I didn’t want to tell the doc about because I didn’t want to see him. Today, the doctors tell me that at age 46, I have a 75-year-old man’s knee. Father time is catching up to me. All the times I said, ‘Will this go away or do I really need to go see doc?’ It’s catching up to me.”
The Perkins Coie report doubles as a compendium of personal tragedy, of potential drained and lives damaged. Dozens of athletes told the investigators their stories, and while each came with a slightly different fact pattern, the same theme rang out. A young athlete came to OSU, flush with ambition and optimism. He was assaulted by Strauss. He spiraled downward.
The scandal has imbued the former athletes with ambiguous feelings toward the school. This terror had happened at the Ohio State, a school many had supported since they were kids, a school that conferred on them a scholarship. DiSabato, for instance, has worn his scarlet-and-gray letterman’s jacket to hearings, a symbolic gesture that he still considered himself part of the tribe. Multiple other former Buckeye athletes commented for this story that it’s been a decades-long challenge, cordoning off happy memories and school loyalty, from the trauma they experienced there and the sense of betrayal that followed.
The scandal and its aftermath has also caused a rupture within OSU athletic programs, particularly the wrestling team that counts more than 50 alumni among Strauss’s victims. Echoing DiSabtato’s allegations, Coleman accused Jim Jordan, an OSU assistant wrestling coach from 1986 to ’94, of ignoring Strauss’s abuse, “unless he got dementia.”
Jordan, now a powerful Ohio congressman, issued a fierce denial. Coleman then walked back his comments. “It tore the whole community apart,” says Coleman. “Wrestlers are very tight. OSU wrestling is like a family. But people had to pick a side. DiSabato’s side or Jim Jordan’s side.”
The OSU wrestlers remain split on who knew what and when they knew it. Meanwhile it’s telling—a testament to the discrepancy in media treatment from the Michigan State and Penn State scandals—that the tangential involvement of Jordan marked virtually the only time the Strauss scandal became a national news story.
For many of the athletes, the scandal has been cathartic––memories and emotions, suppressed for decades, finally confronted. “It’s almost like this hole has broke,” says Murphy, now 51. It now makes sense to him why he didn’t want his two kids to attend OSU. Or why he always put off getting his annual physical. Or why he was always nervous when his kids went to a pediatrician. Painful as it was, it was also a relief to tell his wife, and even his two kids, about being assaulted.
And the scandal has been brutal––memories and emotions, suppressed for decades, that have come screaming back. Multiple survivors, athletic men deep into middle age, dissolving into tears as they rehash incidents from their late teenage years that have anguished them ever since. Some say they can’t sleep. Others have begun taking anxiety medication. More than one concedes his sexual performance has been compromised.
Among the smear of emotions, guilt figures prominently. “I’m a team player who always looked out for my teammates and my family,” says Bechtel, the former hockey player. “I would take a bullet for people. That so many people had to be subjected [to Strauss], and I didn’t stop it? It makes me pissed.”
Says Ratliff: “I have clients who can’t even look at me. They’ll sit there and cry and say, ‘I was 20 years before you. There’s no way you should have been molested.’”
Shame persists, too. Decades after assaults, the vast majority of the survivors requested anonymity when speaking to the Perkins Coie investigators. Fear is also part of the equation. Garrett, for instance, still doesn’t like going to the doctor. He says that when the story of Strauss first broke, immediately he vomited. He has slept only fitfully since.
The wrestler and football player who was raped by Strauss in 1979 is identified in his lawsuit as John Doe 32. Now in his early 60s, he says he continues to experience extreme and regular anxiety and finds himself “continuously haunted by Dr. Strauss’s abuse.”
And as much as the victims talk about “closure” for themselves and accountability from Ohio State, both remain elusive. Nearly 250 athletes have claims pending, as court-ordered mediation has failed. Strauss may be long dead, his crimes decades old, and yet somehow he remains a fresh and undiminished figure. “I see him every day,” Bechtel says. “Unfortunately, I see him every day.”
https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/05/o ... aily-cover
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FBI failed to pursue Nassar sex-abuse allegations, inspector general finds
FBI failed to pursue Nassar sex-abuse allegations, inspector general finds
By
Devlin Barrett
July 14, 2021|Updated today at 7:11 p.m. EDT
The FBI failed to properly investigate serious sex-abuse allegations against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, who also determined that FBI officials gave misleading or false answers when confronted about those failures.
The scathing report released Wednesday paints a disturbing portrait of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency being told details of what would become one of the most shocking cases of serial sex abuse in recent American history, yet failing to follow up with key witnesses or even notify other law enforcement agencies of potential crimes happening in their jurisdictions.
The report noted that according to civil court filings, about 70 women and girls were victimized by Nassar between the time when the FBI was first told of the allegations, and when Michigan officials arrested him on the basis of separate information.
Despite “the extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar’s conduct could be continuing, senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required, made numerous and fundamental errors when they did respond to them, and violated multiple FBI policies,” concludes the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
When confronted with their shortcomings, Horowitz found, FBI officials in Indianapolis sought to blame others.
Read the full report from the Justice Department inspector general
FBI officials said they accepted the report’s findings and were making changes to bureau policies to improve their handling of reports of abuse involving children. “The actions and inactions of the FBI employees described in the Report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization and the values we hold dear,” Assistant Director Douglas Leff said in a written response to the report.
2018: USA Gymnastics CEO breaks silence on Larry Nassar, says she was 'appalled and sickened'
After six months of silence on Larry Nassar, USA Gymnastics CEO Kerry Perry told lawmakers in 2018 that she was "appalled and sickened." (House Energy and Commerce Committee)
“At the FBI, we consider our mission to protect and serve the American people to be the highest responsibility. The conduct and facts in the Report are appalling, and we appreciate your continued efforts to examine it and recommend further improvements and safeguards.”
Separately, the bureau issued a statement saying that “this should not have happened. The FBI will never lose sight of the harm that Nassar’s abuse caused.” The agency promised to “take all necessary steps to ensure that the failures of the employees outlined in the Report do not happen again.”
The inspector general found that while the FBI was dealing with the Nassar allegations in late 2015, the head of the FBI’s Indianapolis office, Jay Abbott, talked to Stephen Penny, then-president of USA Gymnastics, about getting Abbott a job with the Olympic Committee.
The inspector general said Abbott applied for the job but did not get it, and when confronted about it later, falsely claimed to have not applied for the job. Penny resigned under pressure from his job with USA Gymnastics in 2017, and was charged in 2018 with evidence-tampering in the sex-abuse case.
Simon Biles says she was abused by USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar
Nassar has been accused by more than 330 girls and women — including Olympians Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Simone Biles — of sexual abuse, often committed under the guise of medical treatment.
The internal review of the FBI’s handling of the initial allegations against Nassar was launched in 2018, after Nassar — who also was a doctor at Michigan State University — was sentenced to decades in prison on state charges.
He is serving what is effectively a life sentence that includes a 60-year term for federal child pornography crimes and a sentence of 40 to 175 years for assaulting nine girls and women in Michigan.
After receiving the first set of allegations about Nassar from USA Gymnastics, FBI officials in Indianapolis decided to refer them to a satellite office in Lansing, Mich. But the internal investigation found no document showing that that referral actually occurred.
FBI officials did not contact local law enforcement officials in Michigan to alert them to possible violations of state law being committed by Nassar, the report concluded.
A year later, in 2016, USA Gymnastics officials brought the same allegations against Nassar to the FBI office in Los Angeles, and again the case went nowhere. The inspector general found that although FBI agents in Los Angeles pursued the issue more aggressively, they were unsure whether Nassar had broken any federal laws.
“Like the Indianapolis Field Office, the Los Angeles Field Office did not reach out to any state or local authorities, even though it was aware of allegations that Nassar may have violated state laws,” the report found.
At Larry Nassar sentencing, a parade of horror and catharsis
The report was harshest in its assessment of Abbott, the former special agent in charge in Indianapolis, finding that he “made false statements to the OIG about the job discussion, his application for the position, and his handling of the Nassar allegations.”
Abbott, who retired in 2018, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The supervisory special agent working under Abbott who handled the original allegations also was sharply criticized: “n an effort to minimize or excuse his errors, [he] made false statements” during interviews with the inspector general, the report said.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute either Abbott or the supervisory special agent, who is still at the FBI but has been demoted. He was not named in the report.
John Manly, a lawyer whose firm represents roughly 250 survivors of Nassar’s abuse, called the report “a devastating indictment of the FBI” that “demonstrates unequivocally that there was an effort to squash this investigation before it ever got started. . . . It shows an unbelievable callousness and indifference to these children that they knew he was still seeing.”
Manly said the report also shows FBI agents lied repeatedly.
“If an ordinary American lies to the FBI, they haul them out of their house at gunpoint, and yet these agents get a pass, they even get their pension,” he said. “The message today is that it doesn’t matter if you’re an Olympic gold medalist or a little girl on the street being trafficked, you don’t matter. And if an FBI agent wants to fabricate evidence and lie about it, they’re not going to do a damn thing about it.”
Lawmakers also roundly condemned the FBI’s handling of the case. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) issued a joint statement saying they were “appalled by the FBI’s gross mishandling of the specific warnings its agents received about Larry Nassar’s horrific abuse years before he was finally arrested.”
The lawmakers pointedly asked: How many athletes “would have been spared unimaginable pain if the FBI had done its job?”
Simone’s showcase: Biles is bidding for history at Tokyo Olympics
“It’s clear that there were catastrophic failures at multiple levels of law enforcement, including federal agents who should’ve taken action and willfully neglected to do so,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “This dereliction of duty is reprehensible, and those responsible must be held accountable. . . . My hope is that they can now continue the healing process and those who failed them face a reckoning for letting a violent, abusive monster harm so many young women.”
Rachel Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of abuse, said the FBI’s failures allowed Nassar to victimize more girls.
“Had the FBI done their job I never would have been put in the position of having to relinquish every shred of privacy to stop the abuse and coverup,” Denhollander tweeted. “The dozens of little girls abused after the FBI knew who Larry was and exactly what he was doing, could have and should have been saved. They deserve answers.”
Nassar’s victims have long complained that a host of institutions, including the FBI and U.S. gymnastics organizations, failed to pursue allegations against Nassar when they first surfaced.
In 2015, USA Gymnastics conducted an internal inquiry into allegations that Nassar had abused athletes. The doctor retired from the organization and continued to see patients at Michigan State.
He was arrested on state charges in 2016, prompting a host of athletes to come forward and identify themselves as victims of his abuse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html
By
Devlin Barrett
July 14, 2021|Updated today at 7:11 p.m. EDT
The FBI failed to properly investigate serious sex-abuse allegations against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, who also determined that FBI officials gave misleading or false answers when confronted about those failures.
The scathing report released Wednesday paints a disturbing portrait of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency being told details of what would become one of the most shocking cases of serial sex abuse in recent American history, yet failing to follow up with key witnesses or even notify other law enforcement agencies of potential crimes happening in their jurisdictions.
The report noted that according to civil court filings, about 70 women and girls were victimized by Nassar between the time when the FBI was first told of the allegations, and when Michigan officials arrested him on the basis of separate information.
Despite “the extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar’s conduct could be continuing, senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required, made numerous and fundamental errors when they did respond to them, and violated multiple FBI policies,” concludes the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
When confronted with their shortcomings, Horowitz found, FBI officials in Indianapolis sought to blame others.
Read the full report from the Justice Department inspector general
FBI officials said they accepted the report’s findings and were making changes to bureau policies to improve their handling of reports of abuse involving children. “The actions and inactions of the FBI employees described in the Report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization and the values we hold dear,” Assistant Director Douglas Leff said in a written response to the report.
2018: USA Gymnastics CEO breaks silence on Larry Nassar, says she was 'appalled and sickened'
After six months of silence on Larry Nassar, USA Gymnastics CEO Kerry Perry told lawmakers in 2018 that she was "appalled and sickened." (House Energy and Commerce Committee)
“At the FBI, we consider our mission to protect and serve the American people to be the highest responsibility. The conduct and facts in the Report are appalling, and we appreciate your continued efforts to examine it and recommend further improvements and safeguards.”
Separately, the bureau issued a statement saying that “this should not have happened. The FBI will never lose sight of the harm that Nassar’s abuse caused.” The agency promised to “take all necessary steps to ensure that the failures of the employees outlined in the Report do not happen again.”
The inspector general found that while the FBI was dealing with the Nassar allegations in late 2015, the head of the FBI’s Indianapolis office, Jay Abbott, talked to Stephen Penny, then-president of USA Gymnastics, about getting Abbott a job with the Olympic Committee.
The inspector general said Abbott applied for the job but did not get it, and when confronted about it later, falsely claimed to have not applied for the job. Penny resigned under pressure from his job with USA Gymnastics in 2017, and was charged in 2018 with evidence-tampering in the sex-abuse case.
Simon Biles says she was abused by USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar
Nassar has been accused by more than 330 girls and women — including Olympians Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Simone Biles — of sexual abuse, often committed under the guise of medical treatment.
The internal review of the FBI’s handling of the initial allegations against Nassar was launched in 2018, after Nassar — who also was a doctor at Michigan State University — was sentenced to decades in prison on state charges.
He is serving what is effectively a life sentence that includes a 60-year term for federal child pornography crimes and a sentence of 40 to 175 years for assaulting nine girls and women in Michigan.
After receiving the first set of allegations about Nassar from USA Gymnastics, FBI officials in Indianapolis decided to refer them to a satellite office in Lansing, Mich. But the internal investigation found no document showing that that referral actually occurred.
FBI officials did not contact local law enforcement officials in Michigan to alert them to possible violations of state law being committed by Nassar, the report concluded.
A year later, in 2016, USA Gymnastics officials brought the same allegations against Nassar to the FBI office in Los Angeles, and again the case went nowhere. The inspector general found that although FBI agents in Los Angeles pursued the issue more aggressively, they were unsure whether Nassar had broken any federal laws.
“Like the Indianapolis Field Office, the Los Angeles Field Office did not reach out to any state or local authorities, even though it was aware of allegations that Nassar may have violated state laws,” the report found.
At Larry Nassar sentencing, a parade of horror and catharsis
The report was harshest in its assessment of Abbott, the former special agent in charge in Indianapolis, finding that he “made false statements to the OIG about the job discussion, his application for the position, and his handling of the Nassar allegations.”
Abbott, who retired in 2018, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The supervisory special agent working under Abbott who handled the original allegations also was sharply criticized: “n an effort to minimize or excuse his errors, [he] made false statements” during interviews with the inspector general, the report said.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute either Abbott or the supervisory special agent, who is still at the FBI but has been demoted. He was not named in the report.
John Manly, a lawyer whose firm represents roughly 250 survivors of Nassar’s abuse, called the report “a devastating indictment of the FBI” that “demonstrates unequivocally that there was an effort to squash this investigation before it ever got started. . . . It shows an unbelievable callousness and indifference to these children that they knew he was still seeing.”
Manly said the report also shows FBI agents lied repeatedly.
“If an ordinary American lies to the FBI, they haul them out of their house at gunpoint, and yet these agents get a pass, they even get their pension,” he said. “The message today is that it doesn’t matter if you’re an Olympic gold medalist or a little girl on the street being trafficked, you don’t matter. And if an FBI agent wants to fabricate evidence and lie about it, they’re not going to do a damn thing about it.”
Lawmakers also roundly condemned the FBI’s handling of the case. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) issued a joint statement saying they were “appalled by the FBI’s gross mishandling of the specific warnings its agents received about Larry Nassar’s horrific abuse years before he was finally arrested.”
The lawmakers pointedly asked: How many athletes “would have been spared unimaginable pain if the FBI had done its job?”
Simone’s showcase: Biles is bidding for history at Tokyo Olympics
“It’s clear that there were catastrophic failures at multiple levels of law enforcement, including federal agents who should’ve taken action and willfully neglected to do so,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “This dereliction of duty is reprehensible, and those responsible must be held accountable. . . . My hope is that they can now continue the healing process and those who failed them face a reckoning for letting a violent, abusive monster harm so many young women.”
Rachel Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of abuse, said the FBI’s failures allowed Nassar to victimize more girls.
“Had the FBI done their job I never would have been put in the position of having to relinquish every shred of privacy to stop the abuse and coverup,” Denhollander tweeted. “The dozens of little girls abused after the FBI knew who Larry was and exactly what he was doing, could have and should have been saved. They deserve answers.”
Nassar’s victims have long complained that a host of institutions, including the FBI and U.S. gymnastics organizations, failed to pursue allegations against Nassar when they first surfaced.
In 2015, USA Gymnastics conducted an internal inquiry into allegations that Nassar had abused athletes. The doctor retired from the organization and continued to see patients at Michigan State.
He was arrested on state charges in 2016, prompting a host of athletes to come forward and identify themselves as victims of his abuse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html
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greybeard58
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“Protected Again And Again”: How A Fencer Made It To The Tokyo Olympics Despite Sexual Assault Allegations
Does Safesport protect the athlete or the National Governing Bodies?????
“Protected Again And Again”: How A Fencer Made It To The Tokyo Olympics Despite Sexual Assault Allegations
The US Center for SafeSport was tasked with investigating sexual abuse claims at Olympic programs. But in the first Summer Games since the agency’s creation, Team USA fencers say the system failed them.
Melissa Segura
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 23, 2021, at 1:39 p.m. ET
Ten days after fencer Alen Hadzic secured a spot as an alternate on the US Olympic team, a group of women took their concerns about him straight to the top.
The six women fencers, including two Olympic athletes, wrote to the Olympic committee that Hadzic should not be allowed to represent the US because he was under investigation for at least three accusations of sexual misconduct reported to the US Center for SafeSport, the nonprofit agency responsible for protecting athletes from abuse. His presence at the Games, they said, was a “direct affront” to fellow athletes and put them at risk.
“We are gravely concerned about the impact Mr. Hadzic’s potential presence will have on other Team USA athletes,” they wrote on May 20.
Two months later, Hadzic is one of 24 Olympic fencers in Tokyo, an alternate on the men’s épée team, attaining a rarefied spot at the pinnacle of his sport, to the dismay of his teammates. Though last month SafeSport had suspended Hadzic from the international competition, the 29-year-old from Montclair, New Jersey, fought to get that prohibition lifted through an arbitration process that ultimately permitted him to participate in the Summer Games. Acknowledging the severity of the allegations facing Hadzic, USA Fencing, the athletic federation in charge of selecting the country’s Olympic competitors, created a “safety plan” to keep him away from women and out of the Olympic Village: He flew in on a separate plane from his teammates, is staying at a hotel 30 minutes away from the other athletes, and won't be allowed to practice alongside women teammates. After he appealed those conditions, the entire roster of Team USA fencers signed a letter demanding the restriction stay in place.
But to many of his teammates, he shouldn’t be representing the country at all.
“We are p*****d off that this is even a thing we had to deal with,” an Olympic fencer who filed a complaint against Hadzic alleging predatory behavior told BuzzFeed News from Tokyo. “He’s been protected again and again.”
Complaints about Hadzic’s alleged behavior were no secret in the close-knit fencing community. Interviews with 30 current and former USA fencers and officials, including three women who have formally accused Hadzic of sexual misconduct, as well as a cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, show a pattern of alleged sexual misconduct and violent behavior going back to 2010 when he was a first-year student at Columbia University.
The question over whether Hadzic would be allowed to compete in Tokyo fell to SafeSport, the nonprofit agency Congress put in charge of investigating misconduct in Olympic sports in 2018 following revelations that former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted scores of athletes. But though three women formally filed reports this year to SafeSport, and at least 10 others submitted statements to support their allegations, Hadzic’s ability to temporarily circumvent his suspension and make his way to the sport’s most prominent platform has left many athletes skeptical of the organization’s capacity to act decisively on allegations of sexual misconduct — and prompted a reckoning on the sexual abuse, harassment, and male entitlement that some fencers say run deep within their sport’s culture. This comes at a time when other Olympic athletes, such as Sha'Carri Richardson, have been barred from competing in the Games for testing positive for cannabis.
“Now we have to deal with the consequences of having a predator on the team while simultaneously competing in the biggest event of our lives.”
“If this had been dealt with in the way that it should have been, he should have not even had the opportunity to try to make the Olympic team,” the fencer told BuzzFeed News before leaving for Tokyo. “And now we have to deal with the consequences of having a predator on the team while simultaneously competing in the biggest event of our lives. And I think that's a very unfair position to put us in.”
Hadzic has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, telling USA Today that “they’re untruths.” His attorney, Michael Palma, told the New York Times that his client had never committed any acts of sexual assault. By barring him from staying in the Olympic Village, Palma said USA Fencing was preventing Hadzic “from participating in the Olympic experience that he has rightfully earned.” Hadzic's lawyers didn't respond to BuzzFeed News' requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the US Center for SafeSport said they could not speak on the case, citing the center’s commitment to confidentiality. In statements, both USA Fencing and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee told BuzzFeed News that they didn’t have the power to determine Hadzic’s eligibility. USA Fencing explained that SafeSport has the “exclusive authority” in cases involving sexual misconduct, and said it does not consider unproven allegations of sexual abuse when determining who qualifies for the Olympic team.
Hadzic, it said, had earned enough points in competition to earn one of the coveted spots.
Hadzic (left) fences Max Heinzer of Switzerland during the individual finals at the Peter Bakonyi Men’s Épée World Cup on Feb. 8, 2020, at the Richmond Olympic Oval in Richmond, Canada.
Hadzic fell into fencing a little later than other elite athletes. In his first year at Montclair High School in New Jersey, he started a band, and his drummer convinced him to sign up for the fencing team. “He said it was cool, that it was part of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ So I gave it a shot,” Hadzic told the Montclair Local back in 2018. In the 12th grade, he made the US Junior and Cadet World Championship team as a member of the men’s épée squad (épée is a type of sword), and his success garnered him a reputation. The world of fencing is small and close-knit. Fencers, even across the country, grew up together at tournaments and camps, and athletes who went to college with Hadzic remembered watching him compete and hearing about his wins as they made their way through high school.
But when Hadzic started at Columbia University in 2010, his reputation evolved. He was still gregarious and outgoing, but would often exhibit streaks of aggression, according to 25 of his peers and teammates. He could “turn off and on like a light switch,” a former captain said, and at times was “very scary to be around,” especially when he was drinking. In one report to SafeSport, a former teammate said that when they were walking home from a bar, she witnessed Hadzic kick an unhoused person while he was sleeping on the ground and “then laugh about it.”
Katya English, a former fencer who dated Hadzic on and off for about a year before and during their first year at college, said their last physical interaction in 2010 left her upset and shaken. During a sexual encounter in his dorm room, when she told him she wanted to stop, he berated and pressured her to continue, she recalled. Looking back at what happened to her when she was 18, she said she has “come to understand what happened to me was a form of sexual coercion.”
“If I were a woman in Tokyo, I would absolutely demand security if he was going to be on the premises,” said English, who now works at the East Los Angeles Women’s Center supporting survivors of rape and domestic abuse. She has also submitted a report to SafeSport.
During his first year at Columbia, after several fencing parties and outings at bars, a whisper network developed among women on the team and in the community spreading a warning about Hadzic: He could be a little too pushy, so don't get too close or be alone with him, especially at parties, according to 12 women who knew him at the time. Their allegations include him following them into bedrooms at parties, ignoring multiple rebuffs while trying to kiss them, and touching them without consent.
It became apparent, 10 sources who fenced with Hadzic told BuzzFeed News, that he had a simple M.O.: Find the drunkest woman at the party, preferably a first-year student, and she’ll “do whatever you want,” as one former classmate described. One Columbia fencer, who is currently in Tokyo with Hadzic, said she experienced that herself in 2013. At a fencing party her first year of college, when Hadzic was in his third year, she said she was feeling nauseated from drinking and wanted to lie down when he followed her into a bedroom and “tried to take advantage” of her, she said. She brushed him off multiple times, she recalled, until someone else came into the room, allowing her to leave. The athlete reported that incident to SafeSport this May, writing in her complaint, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, that her teammate “attempted to sexually coerce me when I was in no condition to consent to anything.”
As one woman athlete explained, it was common for guys in college to be flirtatious or suddenly grab them; the women were usually able to laugh and push them off. But it was different with Hadzic, she said: “He would just keep going. Like, ‘I am going to keep pursuing this.’”
Later in 2013, another fencer formally accused Hadzic of sexually abusing her in a dorm room during a party. After a Title IX investigation, Columbia suspended him from campus for a year. However, according to 10 Columbia fencers interviewed for this story, Hadzic ignored the rules of his suspension and would often linger around campus and pop up at parties and hangouts.
A spokesperson from Columbia University declined to answer specific questions about Hadzic, citing “federal student privacy laws,” but in a statement said the “University condemns sexual misconduct in any form.” Leading up to the Olympic Games, Columbia’s social media accounts and website have highlighted students and alumni competing for Team USA, including every fencer, but never mentioned Hadzic.
While he was suspended from Columbia, Hadzic would go to other schools to party, including Penn State. Three former Penn State fencers told BuzzFeed News that they saw him at their social events several times, but had no idea he had been suspended and kicked off his university’s team.
That spring, after some collegiate athletes finished competing in NCAA championships, Penn State fencers hosted a party at what was known as the “UN House,” a bustling apartment near campus. According to two fencers present at a party one night, Hadzic had bragged, while laughing, that he had sex with a younger woman there who was seen crying later that night. Someone eventually filed a report to SafeSport about the incident, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News, and an investigator reached out to a former student and resident of the UN House last month to discuss the complaint. The former student was surprised to learn, though, that SafeSport had not reached out to any of his friends or teammates about the incident.
In an interview with the New York Times, Palma, Hadzic’s lawyer, contended that the athlete had never been officially charged with rape or any civil or criminal complaint involving sexual misconduct. The Title IX investigation, he said, was about sexual consent, and the proceedings were a “Kangaroo court.”
Although Columbia had suspended Hadzic for a year and expelled him from fencing, he was still able to return and complete his degree. But his name started appearing scrawled on bathroom walls, as part of a list of men whom the university had allegedly found guilty of sexual assault but still allowed on campus, according to English, his former fencing teammate, and Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who led a movement that year calling attention to the experiences of sexual assault survivors by carrying around her dorm mattress to protest going to school with her alleged rapist.
“He made my life a living hell at Columbia.”
While he pursued his degree, he was also able to continue fencing at a national level, earning silver at a North American cup in December 2013 and competing in four other high-level tournaments the following year, according to USA Fencing. He was known for being a “freak athlete” with a long reach and small repertoire of masterful moves, which enable him to close fast and attack opponents “before they blink,” a former Olympic fencing coach said.
The lack of lasting repercussions for Hadzic, 10 women fencers said, was emblematic of how their institutions and coaches handled complaints about their male peers. Three women fencing captains told BuzzFeed News that they had complained to their coaches multiple times about Hadzic’s attitude and behavior toward them during practices.
“He made my life a living hell at Columbia because he was extremely emotionally and psychologically abusive,” one woman said, recalling several instances in which she brought up her concerns to her fencing coaches, including head coach Michael Aufrichtig, who did not respond to a list of questions sent to him by BuzzFeed News. “At the time, nothing could be done. We were all so helpless in the situation because he just continues to get what he wants because he is a really fantastic fencer.”
Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia
Hadzic at the Challenge SNCF Réseau 2016, a men's épée World Cup event, in the Stade Pierre de Coubertin, Paris.
When Hadzic began his post collegiate athletic career, the USA Fencing board of directors served as something like a “Supreme Court” for cases of misconduct and would institute bans ranging anywhere from two years to life for serious violations, such as sexual assault. Among the members of that board was Michael Aufrichtig, Hadzic’s coach at Columbia.
Though Hadzic was banned from representing his university, he wasn’t banned from fencing at large. Three members who served on the board with Aufrichtig said that Hadzic’s disciplinary record was never brought to their attention.
"If his case would have been brought, he probably would have been banned," one board member said.
"It should have been promptly investigated and appropriate action taken," said another. "This is very disturbing."
Aufrichtig did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
After college, Hadzic took a break from fencing after falling short of making the 2016 Olympic team. He worked and studied in Belgium before deciding in 2018 to dedicate himself full-time to making the 2020 Olympic roster.
By that time, the revelations of sexual assault committed by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had changed the way Olympic sports handle reports of abuse, taking investigations out of the hands of athletic federations incentivized to protect their stars. In 2018, Congress enacted a law giving an independent nonprofit agency, the US Center for SafeSport, sole authority to investigate claims of sexual misconduct within teams or programs affiliated with the Olympics.
In May 2021, Hadzic reached a No. 4 ranking among US fencers, good enough to qualify as an alternate for the Olympics, bringing his former teammates to the realization that there was a chance he’d end up securing a spot coveted by hundreds of fencers. “Just about any aspiring fencer would sell their souls to have it,” the former Olympic coach told BuzzFeed News.
When USA Fencing announced Hadzic’s selection to the team on Instagram with an image of him giving a thumbs-up in celebration, some of his former teammates, including former Columbia captain Katie Angen, shared and commented on the post with outrage, calling out USA Fencing for supporting a “predator.” “Disgusting,” Angen wrote, “that US fencing let’s someone who actively preys on drunk and sober women represent our country.”
The governing body quickly disabled comments on its Instagram post.
Angen and two other women then filed complaints against Hadzic with SafeSport. But as weeks went by and the 2021 Summer Games approached, the fencers feared the investigation was moving too slowly. On May 20, Angen and a group of Team USA fencers, including two Olympians, emailed the US Olympic Committee expressing their “deep concern” about Hadzic’s potential presence in Tokyo.
A few days later, in an email reviewed by BuzzFeed News, the Olympic Committee replied that they had shared the matter with SafeSport and provided a list of available mental health services, including a subscription to the meditation app Headspace and another “app that provides athletes with a suite of online tools and courses that help athletes identify, understand, and address their mental health.”
“That was their only response,” Angen said. “It was unbelievable.”
On June 2, SafeSport suspended Hadzic due to the ongoing investigation, preventing him from participating in the Olympics. But after Hadzic pushed for an arbitration hearing on June 28, the arbitrator sided with him, lifting his suspension until the final investigative report was complete and allowing the fencer to go to the Tokyo Games, but not on the same flight as his teammates and under the condition that he be sequestered from other athletes throughout the Games.
“I just don’t want this to be for nothing,” Angen said. “While I’m saddened that it takes his qualification for the Olympics to make this a newsworthy story, I’m hopeful that those in positions of authority will finally begin to address this as the serious and systemic issue that it is.”
“SafeSport is a joke,” said a male fencer. “I have no faith in SafeSport.”
To many in the fencing community, Hadzic’s case is only the most high-profile example of a broader problem stemming from a sense of entitlement among many athletes and officials, and of SafeSport’s inability to police the sport.
“It’s a systemic culture of rich white males,” said Essene Waters, who has spent more than a decade as a fencer and referee.
In interviews, 30 fencers, coaches, and referees described a climate in which some athletes say they’ve been told to sit on a coach’s lap, have been groped in hotel elevators at tournaments, or threatened with violence if they didn’t engage in sexual acts. A woman University of North Carolina fencing coach filed a civil suit last year alleging that a male assistant coach at Penn State groped her in view of other athletes on a flight from a fencing tournament. A survey of women fencers conducted in 2018 found that of 218 respondents, 129 said they’d been sexually harassed by another member of the fencing community. Forty-one of those respondents said they’d been sexually assaulted by someone within the sport. Yet, the survey found, only three sexual assaults had been reported to SafeSport.
Much of the hesitancy to report to SafeSport is due to what dozens of athletes described as the center’s spotty reputation in the fencing community.
“The quality of the investigations do vary widely, depending on the investigator that you get,” said Lindsay Brandon, a sports attorney who has represented both those lodging and defending misconduct claims.
At least five fencers who have filed complaints to SafeSport told BuzzFeed News that the agency got basic facts of their case wrong, didn’t interview key witnesses before clearing an alleged abuser of wrongdoing, or took too long to investigate abuses.
“It really just feels like the organization is being protected from liability,” said one woman, a longtime fencer who complained that it took three to four years for a man suspected as an abuser through fencing’s whisper network to be banned for life. “A lot of us are very frustrated because it doesn't feel like the cogs work very quickly.”
“SafeSport is a joke,” said a male fencer. “I have no faith in SafeSport.”
Another woman fencer said she filed a complaint after a male referee had repeatedly stalked her. One night after a tournament, he cornered her in a bar and threatened to kill her dog if she didn’t have sex with him, she said. She said that months later, the man pressured her hotel roommate into giving him a copy of their room key “to assault me.” Another person intervened before the man could harm her, she said.
She reported these incidents to SafeSport in 2019, and the case wasn’t closed until earlier this year, she said. She said she was shuffled among three different investigators, yet none of her witnesses said they were contacted. She agreed to drop her claim in exchange for the man agreeing to counseling.
She summarized her experience with SafeSport: “horrible.”
Waters, the woman referee and épée fencer, said she filed a SafeSport complaint in January 2018 after the coach at her club asked her to sit on his lap, then started moving his hand from her hip to her breast. The investigation concluded that he didn't violate SafeSport code, but when Waters received the investigative report, she found that basic facts in it were wrong, she said. The investigator wrote that Waters left the club, in part, because she wanted to follow her boyfriend. Waters said she didn’t have a boyfriend at the time.
“I couldn’t even finish reading it,” Waters said of the report.
SafeSport declined to comment on specific cases, citing confidentiality policies, and didn’t respond to questions for this story.
Some of SafeSport’s perceived shortcomings stem from inadequate funding, said Brandon, the attorney. In 2018, SafeSport operated on an $11 million budget, with fees collected from the governing boards of various sports, as well as grants and donations. That same year, the center received over 1,800 reports of misconduct, all to be handled by a staff of fewer than 40 employees, according to SafeSport's annual report. In 2020, a new law required the US Olympic committee to increase its contributions to $20 million — a financial boost that has helped the agency hire new investigators and staff to help manage the caseload.
Meanwhile, Olympic fencing competitions begin Saturday, and on top of trying to quell their nerves and prepare for the biggest moment of their lives, four fencers told BuzzFeed News the extra stress stemming from Hadzic’s presence has been infuriating and exhausting. If a member of the men’s épée team gets injured or sick, Hadzic will take his place on the international strip, for all the world to watch.
“It’s very, very disappointing for me to be on the same team as him and to be representing the United States of America,” the Olympic fencer who filed a SafeSport complaint against Hadzic told BuzzFeed News. “I’ve worked my entire life to get here. And to see this awful human be able to share this moment and be able to represent Team USA is just deplorable.” ●
UPDATE
July 23, 2021, at 5:55 p.m.
This story has been updated with additional information from sources who reached out after publication.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/br ... port-abuse
“Protected Again And Again”: How A Fencer Made It To The Tokyo Olympics Despite Sexual Assault Allegations
The US Center for SafeSport was tasked with investigating sexual abuse claims at Olympic programs. But in the first Summer Games since the agency’s creation, Team USA fencers say the system failed them.
Melissa Segura
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 23, 2021, at 1:39 p.m. ET
Ten days after fencer Alen Hadzic secured a spot as an alternate on the US Olympic team, a group of women took their concerns about him straight to the top.
The six women fencers, including two Olympic athletes, wrote to the Olympic committee that Hadzic should not be allowed to represent the US because he was under investigation for at least three accusations of sexual misconduct reported to the US Center for SafeSport, the nonprofit agency responsible for protecting athletes from abuse. His presence at the Games, they said, was a “direct affront” to fellow athletes and put them at risk.
“We are gravely concerned about the impact Mr. Hadzic’s potential presence will have on other Team USA athletes,” they wrote on May 20.
Two months later, Hadzic is one of 24 Olympic fencers in Tokyo, an alternate on the men’s épée team, attaining a rarefied spot at the pinnacle of his sport, to the dismay of his teammates. Though last month SafeSport had suspended Hadzic from the international competition, the 29-year-old from Montclair, New Jersey, fought to get that prohibition lifted through an arbitration process that ultimately permitted him to participate in the Summer Games. Acknowledging the severity of the allegations facing Hadzic, USA Fencing, the athletic federation in charge of selecting the country’s Olympic competitors, created a “safety plan” to keep him away from women and out of the Olympic Village: He flew in on a separate plane from his teammates, is staying at a hotel 30 minutes away from the other athletes, and won't be allowed to practice alongside women teammates. After he appealed those conditions, the entire roster of Team USA fencers signed a letter demanding the restriction stay in place.
But to many of his teammates, he shouldn’t be representing the country at all.
“We are p*****d off that this is even a thing we had to deal with,” an Olympic fencer who filed a complaint against Hadzic alleging predatory behavior told BuzzFeed News from Tokyo. “He’s been protected again and again.”
Complaints about Hadzic’s alleged behavior were no secret in the close-knit fencing community. Interviews with 30 current and former USA fencers and officials, including three women who have formally accused Hadzic of sexual misconduct, as well as a cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, show a pattern of alleged sexual misconduct and violent behavior going back to 2010 when he was a first-year student at Columbia University.
The question over whether Hadzic would be allowed to compete in Tokyo fell to SafeSport, the nonprofit agency Congress put in charge of investigating misconduct in Olympic sports in 2018 following revelations that former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted scores of athletes. But though three women formally filed reports this year to SafeSport, and at least 10 others submitted statements to support their allegations, Hadzic’s ability to temporarily circumvent his suspension and make his way to the sport’s most prominent platform has left many athletes skeptical of the organization’s capacity to act decisively on allegations of sexual misconduct — and prompted a reckoning on the sexual abuse, harassment, and male entitlement that some fencers say run deep within their sport’s culture. This comes at a time when other Olympic athletes, such as Sha'Carri Richardson, have been barred from competing in the Games for testing positive for cannabis.
“Now we have to deal with the consequences of having a predator on the team while simultaneously competing in the biggest event of our lives.”
“If this had been dealt with in the way that it should have been, he should have not even had the opportunity to try to make the Olympic team,” the fencer told BuzzFeed News before leaving for Tokyo. “And now we have to deal with the consequences of having a predator on the team while simultaneously competing in the biggest event of our lives. And I think that's a very unfair position to put us in.”
Hadzic has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, telling USA Today that “they’re untruths.” His attorney, Michael Palma, told the New York Times that his client had never committed any acts of sexual assault. By barring him from staying in the Olympic Village, Palma said USA Fencing was preventing Hadzic “from participating in the Olympic experience that he has rightfully earned.” Hadzic's lawyers didn't respond to BuzzFeed News' requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the US Center for SafeSport said they could not speak on the case, citing the center’s commitment to confidentiality. In statements, both USA Fencing and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee told BuzzFeed News that they didn’t have the power to determine Hadzic’s eligibility. USA Fencing explained that SafeSport has the “exclusive authority” in cases involving sexual misconduct, and said it does not consider unproven allegations of sexual abuse when determining who qualifies for the Olympic team.
Hadzic, it said, had earned enough points in competition to earn one of the coveted spots.
Hadzic (left) fences Max Heinzer of Switzerland during the individual finals at the Peter Bakonyi Men’s Épée World Cup on Feb. 8, 2020, at the Richmond Olympic Oval in Richmond, Canada.
Hadzic fell into fencing a little later than other elite athletes. In his first year at Montclair High School in New Jersey, he started a band, and his drummer convinced him to sign up for the fencing team. “He said it was cool, that it was part of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ So I gave it a shot,” Hadzic told the Montclair Local back in 2018. In the 12th grade, he made the US Junior and Cadet World Championship team as a member of the men’s épée squad (épée is a type of sword), and his success garnered him a reputation. The world of fencing is small and close-knit. Fencers, even across the country, grew up together at tournaments and camps, and athletes who went to college with Hadzic remembered watching him compete and hearing about his wins as they made their way through high school.
But when Hadzic started at Columbia University in 2010, his reputation evolved. He was still gregarious and outgoing, but would often exhibit streaks of aggression, according to 25 of his peers and teammates. He could “turn off and on like a light switch,” a former captain said, and at times was “very scary to be around,” especially when he was drinking. In one report to SafeSport, a former teammate said that when they were walking home from a bar, she witnessed Hadzic kick an unhoused person while he was sleeping on the ground and “then laugh about it.”
Katya English, a former fencer who dated Hadzic on and off for about a year before and during their first year at college, said their last physical interaction in 2010 left her upset and shaken. During a sexual encounter in his dorm room, when she told him she wanted to stop, he berated and pressured her to continue, she recalled. Looking back at what happened to her when she was 18, she said she has “come to understand what happened to me was a form of sexual coercion.”
“If I were a woman in Tokyo, I would absolutely demand security if he was going to be on the premises,” said English, who now works at the East Los Angeles Women’s Center supporting survivors of rape and domestic abuse. She has also submitted a report to SafeSport.
During his first year at Columbia, after several fencing parties and outings at bars, a whisper network developed among women on the team and in the community spreading a warning about Hadzic: He could be a little too pushy, so don't get too close or be alone with him, especially at parties, according to 12 women who knew him at the time. Their allegations include him following them into bedrooms at parties, ignoring multiple rebuffs while trying to kiss them, and touching them without consent.
It became apparent, 10 sources who fenced with Hadzic told BuzzFeed News, that he had a simple M.O.: Find the drunkest woman at the party, preferably a first-year student, and she’ll “do whatever you want,” as one former classmate described. One Columbia fencer, who is currently in Tokyo with Hadzic, said she experienced that herself in 2013. At a fencing party her first year of college, when Hadzic was in his third year, she said she was feeling nauseated from drinking and wanted to lie down when he followed her into a bedroom and “tried to take advantage” of her, she said. She brushed him off multiple times, she recalled, until someone else came into the room, allowing her to leave. The athlete reported that incident to SafeSport this May, writing in her complaint, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, that her teammate “attempted to sexually coerce me when I was in no condition to consent to anything.”
As one woman athlete explained, it was common for guys in college to be flirtatious or suddenly grab them; the women were usually able to laugh and push them off. But it was different with Hadzic, she said: “He would just keep going. Like, ‘I am going to keep pursuing this.’”
Later in 2013, another fencer formally accused Hadzic of sexually abusing her in a dorm room during a party. After a Title IX investigation, Columbia suspended him from campus for a year. However, according to 10 Columbia fencers interviewed for this story, Hadzic ignored the rules of his suspension and would often linger around campus and pop up at parties and hangouts.
A spokesperson from Columbia University declined to answer specific questions about Hadzic, citing “federal student privacy laws,” but in a statement said the “University condemns sexual misconduct in any form.” Leading up to the Olympic Games, Columbia’s social media accounts and website have highlighted students and alumni competing for Team USA, including every fencer, but never mentioned Hadzic.
While he was suspended from Columbia, Hadzic would go to other schools to party, including Penn State. Three former Penn State fencers told BuzzFeed News that they saw him at their social events several times, but had no idea he had been suspended and kicked off his university’s team.
That spring, after some collegiate athletes finished competing in NCAA championships, Penn State fencers hosted a party at what was known as the “UN House,” a bustling apartment near campus. According to two fencers present at a party one night, Hadzic had bragged, while laughing, that he had sex with a younger woman there who was seen crying later that night. Someone eventually filed a report to SafeSport about the incident, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News, and an investigator reached out to a former student and resident of the UN House last month to discuss the complaint. The former student was surprised to learn, though, that SafeSport had not reached out to any of his friends or teammates about the incident.
In an interview with the New York Times, Palma, Hadzic’s lawyer, contended that the athlete had never been officially charged with rape or any civil or criminal complaint involving sexual misconduct. The Title IX investigation, he said, was about sexual consent, and the proceedings were a “Kangaroo court.”
Although Columbia had suspended Hadzic for a year and expelled him from fencing, he was still able to return and complete his degree. But his name started appearing scrawled on bathroom walls, as part of a list of men whom the university had allegedly found guilty of sexual assault but still allowed on campus, according to English, his former fencing teammate, and Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who led a movement that year calling attention to the experiences of sexual assault survivors by carrying around her dorm mattress to protest going to school with her alleged rapist.
“He made my life a living hell at Columbia.”
While he pursued his degree, he was also able to continue fencing at a national level, earning silver at a North American cup in December 2013 and competing in four other high-level tournaments the following year, according to USA Fencing. He was known for being a “freak athlete” with a long reach and small repertoire of masterful moves, which enable him to close fast and attack opponents “before they blink,” a former Olympic fencing coach said.
The lack of lasting repercussions for Hadzic, 10 women fencers said, was emblematic of how their institutions and coaches handled complaints about their male peers. Three women fencing captains told BuzzFeed News that they had complained to their coaches multiple times about Hadzic’s attitude and behavior toward them during practices.
“He made my life a living hell at Columbia because he was extremely emotionally and psychologically abusive,” one woman said, recalling several instances in which she brought up her concerns to her fencing coaches, including head coach Michael Aufrichtig, who did not respond to a list of questions sent to him by BuzzFeed News. “At the time, nothing could be done. We were all so helpless in the situation because he just continues to get what he wants because he is a really fantastic fencer.”
Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia
Hadzic at the Challenge SNCF Réseau 2016, a men's épée World Cup event, in the Stade Pierre de Coubertin, Paris.
When Hadzic began his post collegiate athletic career, the USA Fencing board of directors served as something like a “Supreme Court” for cases of misconduct and would institute bans ranging anywhere from two years to life for serious violations, such as sexual assault. Among the members of that board was Michael Aufrichtig, Hadzic’s coach at Columbia.
Though Hadzic was banned from representing his university, he wasn’t banned from fencing at large. Three members who served on the board with Aufrichtig said that Hadzic’s disciplinary record was never brought to their attention.
"If his case would have been brought, he probably would have been banned," one board member said.
"It should have been promptly investigated and appropriate action taken," said another. "This is very disturbing."
Aufrichtig did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
After college, Hadzic took a break from fencing after falling short of making the 2016 Olympic team. He worked and studied in Belgium before deciding in 2018 to dedicate himself full-time to making the 2020 Olympic roster.
By that time, the revelations of sexual assault committed by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had changed the way Olympic sports handle reports of abuse, taking investigations out of the hands of athletic federations incentivized to protect their stars. In 2018, Congress enacted a law giving an independent nonprofit agency, the US Center for SafeSport, sole authority to investigate claims of sexual misconduct within teams or programs affiliated with the Olympics.
In May 2021, Hadzic reached a No. 4 ranking among US fencers, good enough to qualify as an alternate for the Olympics, bringing his former teammates to the realization that there was a chance he’d end up securing a spot coveted by hundreds of fencers. “Just about any aspiring fencer would sell their souls to have it,” the former Olympic coach told BuzzFeed News.
When USA Fencing announced Hadzic’s selection to the team on Instagram with an image of him giving a thumbs-up in celebration, some of his former teammates, including former Columbia captain Katie Angen, shared and commented on the post with outrage, calling out USA Fencing for supporting a “predator.” “Disgusting,” Angen wrote, “that US fencing let’s someone who actively preys on drunk and sober women represent our country.”
The governing body quickly disabled comments on its Instagram post.
Angen and two other women then filed complaints against Hadzic with SafeSport. But as weeks went by and the 2021 Summer Games approached, the fencers feared the investigation was moving too slowly. On May 20, Angen and a group of Team USA fencers, including two Olympians, emailed the US Olympic Committee expressing their “deep concern” about Hadzic’s potential presence in Tokyo.
A few days later, in an email reviewed by BuzzFeed News, the Olympic Committee replied that they had shared the matter with SafeSport and provided a list of available mental health services, including a subscription to the meditation app Headspace and another “app that provides athletes with a suite of online tools and courses that help athletes identify, understand, and address their mental health.”
“That was their only response,” Angen said. “It was unbelievable.”
On June 2, SafeSport suspended Hadzic due to the ongoing investigation, preventing him from participating in the Olympics. But after Hadzic pushed for an arbitration hearing on June 28, the arbitrator sided with him, lifting his suspension until the final investigative report was complete and allowing the fencer to go to the Tokyo Games, but not on the same flight as his teammates and under the condition that he be sequestered from other athletes throughout the Games.
“I just don’t want this to be for nothing,” Angen said. “While I’m saddened that it takes his qualification for the Olympics to make this a newsworthy story, I’m hopeful that those in positions of authority will finally begin to address this as the serious and systemic issue that it is.”
“SafeSport is a joke,” said a male fencer. “I have no faith in SafeSport.”
To many in the fencing community, Hadzic’s case is only the most high-profile example of a broader problem stemming from a sense of entitlement among many athletes and officials, and of SafeSport’s inability to police the sport.
“It’s a systemic culture of rich white males,” said Essene Waters, who has spent more than a decade as a fencer and referee.
In interviews, 30 fencers, coaches, and referees described a climate in which some athletes say they’ve been told to sit on a coach’s lap, have been groped in hotel elevators at tournaments, or threatened with violence if they didn’t engage in sexual acts. A woman University of North Carolina fencing coach filed a civil suit last year alleging that a male assistant coach at Penn State groped her in view of other athletes on a flight from a fencing tournament. A survey of women fencers conducted in 2018 found that of 218 respondents, 129 said they’d been sexually harassed by another member of the fencing community. Forty-one of those respondents said they’d been sexually assaulted by someone within the sport. Yet, the survey found, only three sexual assaults had been reported to SafeSport.
Much of the hesitancy to report to SafeSport is due to what dozens of athletes described as the center’s spotty reputation in the fencing community.
“The quality of the investigations do vary widely, depending on the investigator that you get,” said Lindsay Brandon, a sports attorney who has represented both those lodging and defending misconduct claims.
At least five fencers who have filed complaints to SafeSport told BuzzFeed News that the agency got basic facts of their case wrong, didn’t interview key witnesses before clearing an alleged abuser of wrongdoing, or took too long to investigate abuses.
“It really just feels like the organization is being protected from liability,” said one woman, a longtime fencer who complained that it took three to four years for a man suspected as an abuser through fencing’s whisper network to be banned for life. “A lot of us are very frustrated because it doesn't feel like the cogs work very quickly.”
“SafeSport is a joke,” said a male fencer. “I have no faith in SafeSport.”
Another woman fencer said she filed a complaint after a male referee had repeatedly stalked her. One night after a tournament, he cornered her in a bar and threatened to kill her dog if she didn’t have sex with him, she said. She said that months later, the man pressured her hotel roommate into giving him a copy of their room key “to assault me.” Another person intervened before the man could harm her, she said.
She reported these incidents to SafeSport in 2019, and the case wasn’t closed until earlier this year, she said. She said she was shuffled among three different investigators, yet none of her witnesses said they were contacted. She agreed to drop her claim in exchange for the man agreeing to counseling.
She summarized her experience with SafeSport: “horrible.”
Waters, the woman referee and épée fencer, said she filed a SafeSport complaint in January 2018 after the coach at her club asked her to sit on his lap, then started moving his hand from her hip to her breast. The investigation concluded that he didn't violate SafeSport code, but when Waters received the investigative report, she found that basic facts in it were wrong, she said. The investigator wrote that Waters left the club, in part, because she wanted to follow her boyfriend. Waters said she didn’t have a boyfriend at the time.
“I couldn’t even finish reading it,” Waters said of the report.
SafeSport declined to comment on specific cases, citing confidentiality policies, and didn’t respond to questions for this story.
Some of SafeSport’s perceived shortcomings stem from inadequate funding, said Brandon, the attorney. In 2018, SafeSport operated on an $11 million budget, with fees collected from the governing boards of various sports, as well as grants and donations. That same year, the center received over 1,800 reports of misconduct, all to be handled by a staff of fewer than 40 employees, according to SafeSport's annual report. In 2020, a new law required the US Olympic committee to increase its contributions to $20 million — a financial boost that has helped the agency hire new investigators and staff to help manage the caseload.
Meanwhile, Olympic fencing competitions begin Saturday, and on top of trying to quell their nerves and prepare for the biggest moment of their lives, four fencers told BuzzFeed News the extra stress stemming from Hadzic’s presence has been infuriating and exhausting. If a member of the men’s épée team gets injured or sick, Hadzic will take his place on the international strip, for all the world to watch.
“It’s very, very disappointing for me to be on the same team as him and to be representing the United States of America,” the Olympic fencer who filed a SafeSport complaint against Hadzic told BuzzFeed News. “I’ve worked my entire life to get here. And to see this awful human be able to share this moment and be able to represent Team USA is just deplorable.” ●
UPDATE
July 23, 2021, at 5:55 p.m.
This story has been updated with additional information from sources who reached out after publication.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/br ... port-abuse
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Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped
Its no hockey but an example how NGB's are corrupted
Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped
Listen to article
6 min
By
Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Today at 4:30 a.m. EDT
The trouble with the phrase “mental health” is that it’s an abstraction that allows you to sail right straight over what happened to Simone Biles and, in a way, what is still happening to her. To this day, American Olympic officials continue to betray her. They deny that they had a legal duty to protect her and others from rapist-child pornographer Larry Nassar, and they continue to evade accountability in judicial maneuvering. Abuse is a current event for her.
Get the latest news and results from the Tokyo Olympics
It’s a perilous endeavor to project what Biles, the most uniquely superior gymnast in the world, is feeling or thinking at this juncture. But she has been frank about these things: her profound lingering distrust of USA Gymnastics and the USOPC and her conviction they will not do right by her and other athletes of their own accord. Remember, if it wasn’t for Biles bringing her clout to the issue, these users would still be making women train in the buggy squalor of the Karolyi Ranch, the USOPC-sanctioned hellhole where they were molested.
As Biles told NBC’s Hoda Kotb in a recent interview, one of the main reasons she came back for another Olympics at age 24 was to try to ensure some accountability. “If there weren’t a remaining survivor in the sport, they would’ve just brushed it to the side,” she said.
It was only two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on the Nassar case, in which Biles learned in new infuriating detail how corrupt officials hushed up evidence that the gymnastics doctor was a serial sex assaulter and how then-USAG chief Steve Penny traded favors with local FBI agent Jay Abbott to bottom-drawer it.
Documents produced in a long-stalled civil suit against USOPC and USAG have brought other aggravating recent revelations. One in particular is worth looking at, in light of what happened to Biles on the vaulting floor in Tokyo on July 27, 2021. That’s the day Biles became so disoriented on her vault that she couldn’t risk competing in the team finals.
As chance would have it, that’s the same date that, six years earlier, Steve Penny threw her to the wolf.
FBI failed to pursue Nassar sex-abuse allegations, inspector general finds
On July 27, 2015, Biles was an 18-year-old world champion who arrived at USAG headquarters in Indianapolis for a series of appearances to promote one of their events. For two days, Biles signed autographs and did other favors to please USAG officials. Penny personally drove Biles and her mother to some of the functions and had extended conversations with her, according to John Manly, an attorney for Biles and other victims. Biles even appeared at a birthday party for Penny’s daughter.
You know what Penny failed to mention over those two days? In fact, failed to breathe so much as a word of, much less warn her of? The fact that he had credible evidence Nassar was a molester.
On July 25, shortly before Biles arrived in Indianapolis, Penny had learned of an “unambiguous claim of sexual abuse” by Nassar against a gymnast from a private investigator, who told him he was obliged to go straight to law enforcement. Instead Penny went straight to the USOPC, calling CEO Scott Blackmun for advice. On July 27, even as Biles was in Indianapolis smiling for the cameras and signing autographs, Penny scheduled a meeting with the local FBI. And on July 28, he met with the FBI’s Abbott, who subsequently smothered the investigation for months while Penny explored getting him a job at the USOPC.
And he never said a word to Biles.
If you think conduct like this is past tense for these organizations, think again. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the USOPC and USAG have perpetuated their coverup with civil court motions. They have hidden from accountability with bankruptcy proceedings. They have demanded that in exchange for any civil settlement, Biles and others who suffered Nassar’s assaults issue blanket liability releases that would protect a rogue’s gallery of well-known abusers, as well as Penny. And they have fought to keep the depositions of Penny, Blackmun and former chairman Larry Probst under seal.
Under seal.
Does that sound like these organizations have turned over a new leaf and become more “athlete-centered?” They had the nerve to feign support for Biles this week. They are not her supporters. They are her tormentors.
The price for winning all those gold medals is that Biles now gets to be analyzed by every armchair psychologist in the world. Here’s a bulletin. She’s not doing so well. And exactly how well should she be doing under these circumstances? “It’s like fighting all those demons coming in here,” she said after the team competition.
It is unfair and potentially even deceptive to try to peer into her head and delineate the exact shape of those demons as she tries to decide whether to compete again in Tokyo. But it was always equally unfair to expect her to vault lightly past the Nassar case and back on to the medal podium.
One of the things the women who were preyed upon by Nassar need is real accountability. There has been very little. The FBI’s report describes outright lies to the internal investigator by Abbott, yet the Department of Justice declined to charge him, and he is enjoying retirement with impunity. Why? Blackmun appears to have lied outright to Congress, and he and Penny ignored mandatory child abuse reporting laws, also with impunity. Why? Even Nassar, in prison, has evaded full accountability, ducking financial penalties of his verdict. Why? And by the way, why hasn’t there been a full-fledged law enforcement investigation into crimes against children at the Karolyi Ranch? Why? Because, girls.
Prison officials allowed convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar to pay little to victims while spending thousands on himself
Here’s another bulletin: The Olympics is no happy anniversary for Nassar’s victims. “It is a huge trigger,” says Rachael Denhollander, whose police report against Nassar in August 2016 finally triggered the Michigan law enforcement investigation — led by women — that took him down.
“This time of year is awful because it brings back what it was like,” she says. “It brings back how hard it was to speak up, to verbalize it all for the first time. This is when it all came out. And the body does keep score. It remembers those times of year and those anniversaries. I can’t even imagine trying to function.”
The body keeps score.
To perform the aerials that Biles does requires a wholesale commitment of mind and body. When you are suspended 10 feet in the air, upside down and twisting at the rate of a motorized rotor, “You have to be there 100 percent or 120 percent because, if you’re not the slightest bit, you can get hurt,” she said the other day. “I didn’t want to go out there and do something dumb and get hurt and be negligent. . . . Not worth it. At the end of the day, it’s like, we want to walk out of here. Not be dragged out of here on a stretcher or anything.”
To perform at that height and that hazard required trust. Right now, Simone Biles has none. And why should she?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... assar-fbi/
Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped
Listen to article
6 min
By
Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Today at 4:30 a.m. EDT
The trouble with the phrase “mental health” is that it’s an abstraction that allows you to sail right straight over what happened to Simone Biles and, in a way, what is still happening to her. To this day, American Olympic officials continue to betray her. They deny that they had a legal duty to protect her and others from rapist-child pornographer Larry Nassar, and they continue to evade accountability in judicial maneuvering. Abuse is a current event for her.
Get the latest news and results from the Tokyo Olympics
It’s a perilous endeavor to project what Biles, the most uniquely superior gymnast in the world, is feeling or thinking at this juncture. But she has been frank about these things: her profound lingering distrust of USA Gymnastics and the USOPC and her conviction they will not do right by her and other athletes of their own accord. Remember, if it wasn’t for Biles bringing her clout to the issue, these users would still be making women train in the buggy squalor of the Karolyi Ranch, the USOPC-sanctioned hellhole where they were molested.
As Biles told NBC’s Hoda Kotb in a recent interview, one of the main reasons she came back for another Olympics at age 24 was to try to ensure some accountability. “If there weren’t a remaining survivor in the sport, they would’ve just brushed it to the side,” she said.
It was only two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on the Nassar case, in which Biles learned in new infuriating detail how corrupt officials hushed up evidence that the gymnastics doctor was a serial sex assaulter and how then-USAG chief Steve Penny traded favors with local FBI agent Jay Abbott to bottom-drawer it.
Documents produced in a long-stalled civil suit against USOPC and USAG have brought other aggravating recent revelations. One in particular is worth looking at, in light of what happened to Biles on the vaulting floor in Tokyo on July 27, 2021. That’s the day Biles became so disoriented on her vault that she couldn’t risk competing in the team finals.
As chance would have it, that’s the same date that, six years earlier, Steve Penny threw her to the wolf.
FBI failed to pursue Nassar sex-abuse allegations, inspector general finds
On July 27, 2015, Biles was an 18-year-old world champion who arrived at USAG headquarters in Indianapolis for a series of appearances to promote one of their events. For two days, Biles signed autographs and did other favors to please USAG officials. Penny personally drove Biles and her mother to some of the functions and had extended conversations with her, according to John Manly, an attorney for Biles and other victims. Biles even appeared at a birthday party for Penny’s daughter.
You know what Penny failed to mention over those two days? In fact, failed to breathe so much as a word of, much less warn her of? The fact that he had credible evidence Nassar was a molester.
On July 25, shortly before Biles arrived in Indianapolis, Penny had learned of an “unambiguous claim of sexual abuse” by Nassar against a gymnast from a private investigator, who told him he was obliged to go straight to law enforcement. Instead Penny went straight to the USOPC, calling CEO Scott Blackmun for advice. On July 27, even as Biles was in Indianapolis smiling for the cameras and signing autographs, Penny scheduled a meeting with the local FBI. And on July 28, he met with the FBI’s Abbott, who subsequently smothered the investigation for months while Penny explored getting him a job at the USOPC.
And he never said a word to Biles.
If you think conduct like this is past tense for these organizations, think again. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the USOPC and USAG have perpetuated their coverup with civil court motions. They have hidden from accountability with bankruptcy proceedings. They have demanded that in exchange for any civil settlement, Biles and others who suffered Nassar’s assaults issue blanket liability releases that would protect a rogue’s gallery of well-known abusers, as well as Penny. And they have fought to keep the depositions of Penny, Blackmun and former chairman Larry Probst under seal.
Under seal.
Does that sound like these organizations have turned over a new leaf and become more “athlete-centered?” They had the nerve to feign support for Biles this week. They are not her supporters. They are her tormentors.
The price for winning all those gold medals is that Biles now gets to be analyzed by every armchair psychologist in the world. Here’s a bulletin. She’s not doing so well. And exactly how well should she be doing under these circumstances? “It’s like fighting all those demons coming in here,” she said after the team competition.
It is unfair and potentially even deceptive to try to peer into her head and delineate the exact shape of those demons as she tries to decide whether to compete again in Tokyo. But it was always equally unfair to expect her to vault lightly past the Nassar case and back on to the medal podium.
One of the things the women who were preyed upon by Nassar need is real accountability. There has been very little. The FBI’s report describes outright lies to the internal investigator by Abbott, yet the Department of Justice declined to charge him, and he is enjoying retirement with impunity. Why? Blackmun appears to have lied outright to Congress, and he and Penny ignored mandatory child abuse reporting laws, also with impunity. Why? Even Nassar, in prison, has evaded full accountability, ducking financial penalties of his verdict. Why? And by the way, why hasn’t there been a full-fledged law enforcement investigation into crimes against children at the Karolyi Ranch? Why? Because, girls.
Prison officials allowed convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar to pay little to victims while spending thousands on himself
Here’s another bulletin: The Olympics is no happy anniversary for Nassar’s victims. “It is a huge trigger,” says Rachael Denhollander, whose police report against Nassar in August 2016 finally triggered the Michigan law enforcement investigation — led by women — that took him down.
“This time of year is awful because it brings back what it was like,” she says. “It brings back how hard it was to speak up, to verbalize it all for the first time. This is when it all came out. And the body does keep score. It remembers those times of year and those anniversaries. I can’t even imagine trying to function.”
The body keeps score.
To perform the aerials that Biles does requires a wholesale commitment of mind and body. When you are suspended 10 feet in the air, upside down and twisting at the rate of a motorized rotor, “You have to be there 100 percent or 120 percent because, if you’re not the slightest bit, you can get hurt,” she said the other day. “I didn’t want to go out there and do something dumb and get hurt and be negligent. . . . Not worth it. At the end of the day, it’s like, we want to walk out of here. Not be dragged out of here on a stretcher or anything.”
To perform at that height and that hazard required trust. Right now, Simone Biles has none. And why should she?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... assar-fbi/
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greybeard58
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Three Men Say Trusted Hockey Coach Tom ‘Chico’ Adrahtas
Three Men Say Trusted Hockey Coach Tom ‘Chico’ Adrahtas Groomed Them For Sexual Abuse As Teens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPjkEq2yhAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPjkEq2yhAE
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Three former players join lawsuit over alleged abuse by hockey coach Adrahtas
Three former players join lawsuit over alleged abuse by hockey coach Adrahtas
By Katie Strang
Content warning: This story contains details about alleged sexual abuse and sexual trauma. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.
Three former hockey players have joined a federal lawsuit against USA Hockey, Illinois amateur hockey's state governing body (AHAI) and the University of Minnesota over sexual abuse they say they suffered while playing for prominent Chicago-area youth hockey coach Thomas "Chico" Adrahtas, according to an amended complaint filed in Minnesota district court on Friday.
Adrahtas is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which claims that individuals in positions of authority and multiple governing bodies failed to protect players from sexual abuse, molestation and unwanted touching, despite concerns, warnings and complaints about Adrahtas' conduct.
The three additional players are Jeffrey Walker, a former Boston College hockey player who said he was sexually assaulted by Adrahtas first as a 15-year-old while attending his Chicago goaltending camps in 1982; another designated John Doe, who was a member of the 1984-85 University of Minnesota men’s hockey team and said he was assaulted during his time there; and Frank Pietrangelo, who said he was also abused by Adrahtas during his time playing for the University of Minnesota.
According to the complaint, Walker was abused on multiple occasions by Adrahtas during summer camps from 1982 to '84; Adrahtas initially propositioned Walker by offering to procure a woman named “Sheila” to perform oral sex on Walker, with the caveat that he would be blindfolded and restrained. During one instance of the alleged abuse Walker described, which took place in Adrahtas’ hotel room in Newton, Mass., in 1985, Walker removed his blindfold to see only Adrahtas in the room. Walker said he was “emotionally and psychologically scarred” and “traumatized” by what he said happened to him.
John Doe A described a similar situation as Walker, in which he was propositioned with a no-strings-attached sexual encounter with a woman named “Sheila” while blindfolded during the 1984-85 season at the University of Minnesota. He said that he felt “uncomfortable and violated” “but was afraid to say anything because he was worried about … Adrahtas’ influence on his playing time and ability to play hockey at the next level.”
Pietrangelo, a former goaltender who helped the Pittsburgh Penguins win the 1991 Stanley Cup, came forward last month to detail the abuse, telling a CBS affiliate that Adrahtas would touch him everywhere — including the buttocks and the groin. According to the amended complaint, Adrahtas would do this while helping Pietrangelo with “visualization” practice.
Pietrangelo played for the University of Minnesota from 1982 to 1986. Adrahtas coached at the university from 1984 to 1985.
Pietrangelo said he spoke out after other victims of Adrahtas came forward, including Mike Sacks, a former junior hockey player.
Sacks wrote a letter to the American College Hockey Association detailing 20 months of sexual assault, saying that Adrahtas promised to further his career to gain his trust and then eventually sexually abused him.
The Athletic previously reported that over the four decades Adrahtas spent coaching various youth and college hockey teams, he was accused of manipulating his players and sexually abusing them before relocating once allegations surfaced.
Adrahtas was most recently the head coach at Robert Morris University in Illinois before he resigned in 2018 in the wake of a SafeSport investigation that was prompted by Sacks’ letter sent to the ACHA.
Defendants in the case will have 60 days to submit an answer to the amended complaint or file a motion to dismiss.
Editor’s Note: Comments on this post are disabled. Please visit the Code of Conduct page for additional information. If you wish to contact the editor, send a note to editor@theathletic.com.
The Athletic Community Team
https://theathletic.com/news/three-form ... WrRuhGeEmC
By Katie Strang
Content warning: This story contains details about alleged sexual abuse and sexual trauma. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.
Three former hockey players have joined a federal lawsuit against USA Hockey, Illinois amateur hockey's state governing body (AHAI) and the University of Minnesota over sexual abuse they say they suffered while playing for prominent Chicago-area youth hockey coach Thomas "Chico" Adrahtas, according to an amended complaint filed in Minnesota district court on Friday.
Adrahtas is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which claims that individuals in positions of authority and multiple governing bodies failed to protect players from sexual abuse, molestation and unwanted touching, despite concerns, warnings and complaints about Adrahtas' conduct.
The three additional players are Jeffrey Walker, a former Boston College hockey player who said he was sexually assaulted by Adrahtas first as a 15-year-old while attending his Chicago goaltending camps in 1982; another designated John Doe, who was a member of the 1984-85 University of Minnesota men’s hockey team and said he was assaulted during his time there; and Frank Pietrangelo, who said he was also abused by Adrahtas during his time playing for the University of Minnesota.
According to the complaint, Walker was abused on multiple occasions by Adrahtas during summer camps from 1982 to '84; Adrahtas initially propositioned Walker by offering to procure a woman named “Sheila” to perform oral sex on Walker, with the caveat that he would be blindfolded and restrained. During one instance of the alleged abuse Walker described, which took place in Adrahtas’ hotel room in Newton, Mass., in 1985, Walker removed his blindfold to see only Adrahtas in the room. Walker said he was “emotionally and psychologically scarred” and “traumatized” by what he said happened to him.
John Doe A described a similar situation as Walker, in which he was propositioned with a no-strings-attached sexual encounter with a woman named “Sheila” while blindfolded during the 1984-85 season at the University of Minnesota. He said that he felt “uncomfortable and violated” “but was afraid to say anything because he was worried about … Adrahtas’ influence on his playing time and ability to play hockey at the next level.”
Pietrangelo, a former goaltender who helped the Pittsburgh Penguins win the 1991 Stanley Cup, came forward last month to detail the abuse, telling a CBS affiliate that Adrahtas would touch him everywhere — including the buttocks and the groin. According to the amended complaint, Adrahtas would do this while helping Pietrangelo with “visualization” practice.
Pietrangelo played for the University of Minnesota from 1982 to 1986. Adrahtas coached at the university from 1984 to 1985.
Pietrangelo said he spoke out after other victims of Adrahtas came forward, including Mike Sacks, a former junior hockey player.
Sacks wrote a letter to the American College Hockey Association detailing 20 months of sexual assault, saying that Adrahtas promised to further his career to gain his trust and then eventually sexually abused him.
The Athletic previously reported that over the four decades Adrahtas spent coaching various youth and college hockey teams, he was accused of manipulating his players and sexually abusing them before relocating once allegations surfaced.
Adrahtas was most recently the head coach at Robert Morris University in Illinois before he resigned in 2018 in the wake of a SafeSport investigation that was prompted by Sacks’ letter sent to the ACHA.
Defendants in the case will have 60 days to submit an answer to the amended complaint or file a motion to dismiss.
Editor’s Note: Comments on this post are disabled. Please visit the Code of Conduct page for additional information. If you wish to contact the editor, send a note to editor@theathletic.com.
The Athletic Community Team
https://theathletic.com/news/three-form ... WrRuhGeEmC