Banned or Disciplined coaches

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Babbitt man sentenced for Internet crime
By mstodghill@duluthnews.com on Jan 23, 2007 at 12:00 a.m.
A former Iron Range girls hockey coach accused of traveling to Ohio for sex with a 14-year-old girl he believed he contacted on the Internet was sentenced Monday to 17 months in prison, but he probably won't have to serve that long.

Donald Richard Lindstrom, 48, of Babbitt can be released after spending 45 days in an Ohio institution provided he has good behavior. Lindstrom also must register as a sex offender for 10 years and must not use the Internet outside the scope of his employment.

Lindstrom received the sentence from Judge Richard Reinbold in Stark County Court of Common Pleas in Canton, Ohio.

"He apologized for his actions," said Bailiff Jeffrey J. Foltz, who was in the courtroom Monday. "His wife was here and he apologized for embarrassing his family. He also apologized to his employees."

Renee Watson, assistant Stark County prosecutor, said additional conditions of Lindstrom's release will be considered if he qualifies for early release at a judicial hearing after 45 days of imprisonment.

Lindstrom was an unpaid volunteer coach for the Babbitt-Embarrass/Tower-Soudan/Ely girls high school hockey team last year. He and his wife, Becky, operate Black Iron Rubber Co. in Babbitt. He resigned as hockey coach last August after the charges against him became public.

The Babbitt-Embarrass/Tower-Soudan/Ely hockey program is sponsored by the St. Louis County school district through the Minnesota State High School League but is funded by the East Range Athletic Association, a private nonprofit organization.

Lindstrom pleaded guilty in December to attempting unlawful sex with a minor and importuning -- soliciting another for sexual activity by means of a telecommunications device.

According to Massillon, Ohio, Municipal Court records, Lindstrom was arrested at a food court Aug. 10 by members of the FBI's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Jackson Township (Ohio) Police Department. He was accused of connecting with an undercover police officer -- who Lindstrom believed to be a 14-year-old girl he was soliciting for sex -- in a chat room whose topic was "underage girls."

Massillon police Detective Bobby Grizzard played the role of the 14-year-old girl who had been communicating online with Lindstrom from July 18 until his arrest. Grizzard said Lindstrom went by the user name "Siberswede" online and said he was a hockey coach.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/2 ... rnet-crime

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The safety of our daughters, sons, granddaughters and grandsons is of primary importance.

If a link to an older article is posted, it may be because the the terms of the offender’s sentence required registration as a sex offender or probation for a limited time. Sporadic media coverage combined with the lack of a searchable national database of banned hockey staff creates a very real and unnecessary risk to our kids. These articles are about the few that come to light. Some are never caught, never charged or agree to private plea deals.

If you search the CEP list on the USA Hockey site, you’ll find many of these names listed with active CEP cards. Some can take an updated class or add a module, and appear ready to coach again.

I am going to add a couple of articles that deal with gymnastics and the ongoing problem caused by one pedophile masquerading as a doctor. Predators are in all sports and can be both male or female. Are we, as a hockey community, doing all we can to protect our youth?

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In the last few years, we've seen little girls, young boys, and college-aged women preyed upon, as sexual assault has manifested itself in the sports world at Penn State, Baylor, Michigan State, and USA Gymnastics.

Adults at all four of those institutions dropped the ball repeatedly, endangering lives and ruining families forever because money was always an underlying factor.

The saying goes, "Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern."

So, if our society wants to eradicate sexual assault, it must first admit how big of a problem it has.

And secondly, realize how far some people are willing to go to cover up a scandal because it would be bad for business.

Larry Nassar’s enablers show greed, sex abuse rooted in society
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more- ... -1.3761866


"It's been tough to be honest with you Bob. It's highly emotional for everybody. Including the people who are covering this. We've had to sit there and listen to mothers who have talked about their daughters committing suicide. The first woman to speak today, spoke about how she was abused as a 6-year-old girl in Larry Nassar's basement. Molested in his basement. And when she later told her parents, her father didn't believe her. And when he finally did believe her, he died by suicide.

“The trail of human wreckage left by Larry Nassar may never be completely calculated." — ESPN investigate reporter John Barr to Bob Ley on Tuesday's edition of "Outside the Lines."

Nassar surrounded by adults who enabled his predatory behavior
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id ... letes-espn

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Nearly 100 women and girls are expected to make victim-impact statements during four days of Larry Nassar's sentencing hearing. Here is some of what they said.

This will continue to be updated this week. Read more at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 037631001/

Day 1

“Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women who return to destroy your world.”
— Kyle Stephens

“You took advantage of my innocence and trust. … What you did to me was so twisted … how dare you.”
— Jessica Thomashow

“'He’s a famous doctor, there’s no way he’d do anything inappropriate in front of my mom.’ Well, I was wrong.”

“I am in charge now. It has been hard accepting what Larry Nassar has done to me – I’m angry and I’m sad. But I will not be silenced anymore.”
— Nicole Soos

“I believe in forgiveness, but you will get none from me at this time. … We did not get to choose this trauma, but you did.”
— Amanda Cormier

“My first reaction was to question myself. To blame myself. I wanted to believe the best in people, but no matter how much I rationalized - he’s a doctor, he’s treating you, he didn’t mean for that to happen – I couldn’t shake the voice in my head that something wasn’t right.”

“I am a warrior. I know the end of my story: I will win.”
— Jennifer Rood-Bedford

“I have a question for you: Why? Why did you feel that you could do this to us and not only get away with it, but also that you were allowed to. You were the adult. You were the doctor.”

“You are truly sick. I am coming forward so that you can no longer hurt any one else and take things away that you took away from me.”

“I want the nightmares of you coming into my room to go away. … I want to be the same Ashley to my family that they once knew.”
— Ashley Erickson

“The monster who took advantage of you is going to wither.”
— Judge Rosemarie Aquilina to Ashley Erickson

“I remember being in so much pain, tears streaming down my face. … I didn’t know what to do.”
— Melissa Imrie

“I am no longer broken by you.”
— Jade Capua

“I cannot sleep because of what you have done. … Over the last year, I’ve cried more nights than not.”
— Olivia Cowan

“Your legacy is that you’re quite possibly the greatest perpetrator of all time.”
— Woman addressing Nassar, who chose to be anonymous, said she was first abused in 1992

“Our daughter is scarred forever, our son is scarred forever, and we as parents, are scarred forever. … We trust no one. We have many sleepless nights over the guilt we feel for missing this. … This is our true reality. The guilt we feel will never go away.”
— Lindsey Lemke’s mother, Christy Lemke

“As I stand here, I still flashback to the feelings of fear, laying frozen in his office, my sweating shaking body, adrenaline pumping, painfully clutching the sides of the table, waiting for the sick treatment to be over.”

“Larry Nassar made me believe this was my only hope, that he was my only hope. … The world feels unsafe. Men feel unsafe.”
— Megan Halicek


Day 2

“I want everyone to know that he did not do this to athlete A, he did it to Maggie Nichols.”
— Gina Nichols, mother of Maggie reading her statement

"You disgraced yourself by calling yourself a doctor to the medical community. ... You are not a real doctor at all. You’re a serial child molester, a pedophile."
— Gina Nichols, mother of Maggie Nichols

“The army you choose in the late ’90s to silence me to dismiss me and my attempt at speaking the truth will not prevail over the army you created when violating us. We seek justice, we deserve justice, and we will have it.”
— Tiffany Thomas-Lopez

“You made me believe that you were my friend. You deceived me, you manipulated me, and you abused me. I truly believe that you are a spawn of Satan.”

“As you sit behind bars, I pray that you are tormented by the very words said to you by all these brave women.”
— Jeanette Antolin

“Larry, the thing that you didn’t realize while you were sexually assaulting me and all of these young girls … is that you were also building an army of survivors. … You might have broken us, but from this rubble we will rise.”

— Amanda Thomashow

“I still can’t think about it without crying. We were just kids. We were just kids.”
— Gwen Anderson

“For the record, go to hell.”
— Thomas Brennan, former coach for Gwen Anderson

“He knew exactly how to take advantage of us and did it every time. I was lied to and made to believe he was on my side.”
— Jaime Doski

"There are circles of hell reserved for people like you."
— Ryan Doski, husband of Jaime Doski

“You don’t deserve my thoughts."
— Jenelle Moul

“Larry, you know what you did to me. What you don’t know is how it affected me. …You took away my power, my self worth, my emotional development, my happiness and my innocence.”

“Larry Nassar is not apologetic for assaulting me, he is only sorry he was caught for it.”
— Madeleine Jones

‘How dare you’: 100 women confront Larry Nassar at sentence hearing
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 037631001/

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Charges: Minn. hockey coach started having sex with player when she was in 9th grade
By Paul Walsh Star Tribune DECEMBER 8, 2014 — 9:04PM


A onetime coach and health teacher at Willmar High School has been charged with sexual misconduct involving one of his students, who also was on his hockey team, that started when she was a ninth-grader and continued until well after she became an adult.

Many of the encounters between Chad J. Akerson, 34, now of Ashby, Minn., and the student occurred while classes were in session. They continued after Akerson left the district in 2012 and joined the high school teaching and coaching staff in Ashby, according to charges filed last week in Kandiyohi County District Court.

Akerson, who had coached junior varsity baseball, girls' soccer and girls' hockey teams at his alma mater of Willmar, remains jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail ahead of a Dec. 15 court appearance on charges of first-, second- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

As well as being one of Akerson's students, the girl knew him "as a family friend and looked to him as a sort of father figure while her parents were going through a divorce," the criminal complaint read.

Until last week, when the charges were filed, Akerson was teaching at Ashby High School and coached baseball, said Al Jensen, that district's superintendent. Jensen said Akerson is now on unpaid leave.

The relationship came to light because of a "rumor around town," said Assistant County Attorney Aaron Welch. "Then someone was at a wedding and heard it."

That "someone" was a legally mandated reporter who went to police, said Welch, who added that he knows of no other allegations in Ashby or anywhere else against Akerson.

According to the complaint, compiled after a lengthy police investigation:

The girl told police that Akerson first became her teacher in September 2009, and then her head hockey coach a month later.

Akerson's first move on the 15-year-old came when the girl was at his house watching a movie and he touched her breast over her clothing.

Also, while playing hockey together down the street from his home at Lincoln Park, Akerson would touch her "on the buttocks in a sexual manner," the complaint read.

Soon after a Christmas tournament in Austin in 2009, Akerson asked her for sexually provocative photos. She texted him two pictures, one of them with her breasts exposed.

Sexual intercourse between the two started the next month and occurred three to four times a week until she reached adulthood. Over those years, Akerson was the girl's teacher in three classes and "would have sex before, during and after school in various locations" in his home and car, the girl's home, Akerson's classroom and other rooms at the high school, the complaint continued.

Akerson resigned from the district in October 2012, and the relationship between the two continued until October 2014, when she was 20. Police questioned the woman three weeks later.

After graduating from Willmar High School, Akerson attended Concordia College in Moorhead and played baseball there. He joined the Willmar School District in 2003.

http://www.startribune.com/charges-minn ... 285122391/

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This while not about hockey there is relevance as to what has happened and could also happen in many sports. Michigan State female athletes covered more than gymnastics.

Twenty years of failure: Many groups missed chances to stop Larry Nassar.
By Will Hobson January 26

Larissa Boyce, a former gymnast sexually abused by Larry Nassar, attends a November hearing. “We’ve felt like we’ve been fighting this battle for the last 14 or 15 months, just to try to get somebody to listen to us,” Boyce said.
As Larissa Boyce watched the past week unfold — the growing number of news trucks parked outside the courthouse, the surging public interest in disgraced gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and his sex abuse victims, and the calls from lawmakers for resignations and investigations — one word repeated in her mind, encapsulating both relief and frustration.

"Finally," Boyce said Thursday. "Finally, somebody is listening to our cries for help."

Boyce, a 37-year-old mother of four, is one of the 156 women and girls whose testimony over the course of seven days , coupled with a review of documents produced in litigation, offered the most complete picture to date of how a man a prosecutor called "possibly the most prolific serial child sex abuser in history" avoided the inside of a jail cell for so long.

Between 1995 and 2015, according to testimony and court filings, 13 girls and women said they raised complaints about Nassar, who continued to treat — and assault — his patients until the 14th went to law enforcement — and the Indianapolis Star — in August 2016.

It's a timeline of people and organizations accused of failure to respond aggressively to suspicions of abuse that includes institutions under fire this week: Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee but also the FBI, a local police force, a local gymnastics center and the parents of several victims, along with others they say they consulted before deciding not to contact law enforcement.

"I think it was the perfect storm of sorts: of ineptitude, inaction and willful neglect," said John Manly, a California attorney representing more than 100 victims.

For victims such as Boyce, however, the timeline extends past the fall of 2016 — when Nassar was arrested — and runs right up until the past week, when the first few days of tearful testimony triggered the national outpouring — and furor from Congress — that she and others expected a year earlier.

"We've felt like we've been fighting this battle for the last 14 or 15 months just to try to get somebody to listen to us," she said. "Why did it have to take that long for people to understand what happened here?"

A review of the timeline of accusations doesn't answer that question but does show the many people and organizations who may have had a chance to stop Nassar earlier — and didn't.

1995: Donna Markham said her 10-year-old daughter, Chelsea, told her, after visiting Nassar for treatment for back pain, that "he put his fingers in me, and they weren't gloved." Markham was ready "to drive across the median" to turn around and confront Nassar, she said in court last week, but her daughter begged her not to tell anyone out of fear it would negatively impact her gymnastics career. She said she mentioned the incident to a gymnastics coach who expressed doubt it had happened.

Chelsea Markham committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 23 .

1997: Boyce, then a 16-year-old in a Michigan State youth gymnastics program, said she told Kathie Klages, the university's longtime gymnastics coach, that Nassar digitally penetrated her during medical treatment. Klages expressed doubt and called in other young gymnasts, Boyce said, asking whether anyone else had experienced similar conduct by Nassar. The coach also brought in collegiate gymnasts, Boyce said, who suggested she was misinterpreting a procedure Nassar performed on nerve endings in the pelvic area.

One other girl, who was 14 at the time and wishes to remain anonymous, also came forward that night with concerns about Nassar's treatment, according to Boyce and her attorney, who also represents the other accuser.

At one point, Boyce said, Klages waved a piece of paper in the air — she believes it was some type of complaint form — and discouraged them from filing a report.

"Instead of being protected, I was humiliated," Boyce said. "I was brainwashed into believing that I was the problem."

The other girl that day testified in court last week as Victim 55. Nassar nodded in recognition when she addressed him.

"I never questioned why he always asked the nurses and residents to leave the room, even though he was a teaching doctor," she said. "We grew up watching MSU promote and glorify a pedophile."

In court filings, Michigan State's attorney has said the school has been unable either to prove or disprove these claims.

1998: The anonymous mother of a young gymnast at Twistars, a Lansing, Mich.-area gym run by 2012 Olympic gymnastics coach John Geddert, said she was told by her daughter that Nassar had touched her in the vaginal area. The mother informed Geddert, she said, that she would no longer permit Nassar to treat her child.

The same year, a 12-year-old girl identified in a lawsuit against Twistars as Jane A71 Doe said she complained vaguely to an unnamed coach that Nassar was doing "inappropriate things."

In court filings, Twistars has denied these claims and Geddert has denied any knowledge of Nassar's abuse. This week, USA Gymnastics announced it had suspended Geddert's membership, pending a disciplinary investigation. A day later, Geddert announced through a letter to gym members he was retiring while denouncing USA Gymnastics' decision.

1999: Lindsey Schuett said she was 16 when she sought treatment from Nassar and she "knew immediately that it was abuse." She told her mother, she said, and a school counselor, but Nassar convinced them she misunderstood a legitimate treatment. Her mother sent her back to Nassar for more treatment.

"I felt like I was trapped in some hellish situation that only a movie could dream up," said Schuett, now 34, in her videotaped impact statement, which she sent from South Korea, where she now lives.

"I told myself to forget," Schuett said. "I told myself that I had to be the only one."

The same year, former Michigan State cross-country runner Christie Achenbach said she complained about Nassar's treatment to her track coach and her parents. They concluded she must have misinterpreted valid treatment, Achenbach said in a phone interview Thursday. Achenbach's former coach sent her a Facebook message recently, she said, apologizing but stating she did not recall this conversation.

Over the years, Achenbach, now a 40-year-old dietitian in North Carolina, has periodically typed Nassar's name into Internet search engines, along with terms such as "accusations of harassment," to see whether anything came up. Until late 2016, nothing did.

2000: Tiffany Thomas-Lopez, a Michigan State softball player, said she complained about Nassar digitally penetrating her to two trainers, one of whom discouraged her from filing a formal report.

"I imagined hitting you if I ever got the chance to see you again," Thomas-Lopez told Nassar in court last week.

In court filings, Michigan State's attorney has said the trainers have denied these allegations and that the school can neither prove nor disprove Thomas-Lopez's claims.

Sometime between 2000 and 2002: Michigan State volleyball player Jennifer Rood-Bedford said she made a vague complaint to a trainer about Nassar and ultimately decided not to file an official complaint. Nassar's unusual treatments were apparently well-known to her teammates, however, as Rood-Bedford said they jokingly referred to him as "the crotch doc."

"I remember laying there wondering, 'Is this okay? This doesn't seem right,' " she said in court of her treatment by Nassar. "Everyone trusted him. I told myself I needed to trust him, too."

Of the discussion with the trainer, Rood-Bedford said, "She treated the situation with both seriousness and sober-mindedness." Rood-Bedford decided not to file a complaint, she said, a choice she has long regretted.

"I constantly ask myself, 'Did I have the power to stop him?' " she said.

2004: Kyle Stephens, a 12-year-old whose parents were family friends of Nassar, told her mother and father about abuse he had been subjecting her to since she was 6. Nassar denied the girl's allegations, and Stephens's parents believed him. Stephens's father committed suicide in 2016, an act she believes was partly because of the realization she had been telling the truth.

"Parents need to learn the warning signs," Stephens said in an interview outside the courtroom last week. "And they need to believe their kids."

Stephens's parents consulted a retired Michigan State professor and psychologist, Gary Stollak, about their daughter's allegation before they decided to believe Nassar, Stephens has said. In a court hearing last year, Stollak testified he had a stroke in 2010 and doesn't recall any of this.

The same year, 17-year-old Brianne Randall told her mother and police in Meridian Township, near Lansing, that Nassar sexually assaulted her.

"The police questioned you, and you had the audacity to tell them I misunderstood the treatment because I was not comfortable with my body," Randall said, addressing Nassar during her impact statement. That Meridian police missed an opportunity to stop Nassar has been reported publicly since September 2016, but Randall didn't publicly identify herself until the sentencing hearing.

When she saw the first Star article about Nassar in September 2016, Randall said, she immediately called her mother and said: "He's abused other people. I knew this was going to happen."

Meridian Township paid for Randall's flight from Seattle, where she now lives, to Michigan to confront Nassar. Frank Walsh, the township manager, said they have a news conference planned for next week to discuss the case.

2014: Recent Michigan State graduate Amanda Thomashow filed complaints with both university police and the school's Title IX office after, she said, Nassar cupped her buttocks, massaged her breast and vaginal area during treatment and was visibly aroused. Michigan State's Title IX office concluded she had misinterpreted medical treatment. The police investigation did not result in a criminal charge.

After the Title IX investigation concluded, Nassar and his boss — William Strampel, then the dean of Michigan State's College of Osteopathic Medicine — agreed to conditions to prevent another "misinterpretation." Nassar was never to perform this type of treatment again without a chaperon in the room and would modify it, he agreed, to minimize skin to skin contact.

After Nassar's arrest, Michigan State police and the FBI jointly interviewed several of Nassar's supervisors and colleagues. According to the police report, released late last year, Strampel conceded he never intended to ensure Nassar was following these conditions because the Title IX inquiry cleared him and these were "common sense" measures.

Michigan State sports physician Douglas Dietzel told police that, in 2016, after Nassar was fired, Strampel told several doctors that " 'Larry didn't follow the guidelines' that were put in place after the 2014 investigation," the report said.

Dietzel said when he heard that he thought, "How do we enforce those things when we didn't even know about them?"

2015: In June, former Team USA gymnast Maggie Nichols contacted USA Gymnastics leadership about Nassar, who assaulted Nichols, she said, at the Karolyi Ranch. USA Gymnastics conducted its own investigation for five weeks and decided to report Nassar to the Indianapolis office of the FBI in July. An agent told the organization's CEO, Steve Penny, not to do anything that would interfere with the investigation, USA Gymnastics has said, which Penny interpreted as a directive not to inform anyone else. While USA Gymnastics parted ways with Nassar and informed the USOC of the allegations, no one contacted Michigan State.

2016: In April, Penny and then-USA Gymnastics board chair Paul Parilla, concerned about an apparent lack of progress by the FBI investigation out of Indianapolis, met with an agent in the bureau's Los Angeles office.

In July, Nichols received her first call from an FBI agent, based in Los Angeles. A spokeswoman for the FBI's Indianapolis office deferred questions to the FBI's national press office, which declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles office confirmed that office opened an investigation in the spring of 2016.

"The L.A. investigation was opened when allegations came directly to the L.A. office," spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. "These other questions really need to be directed elsewhere."

In August, Rachael Denhollander, a Louisville woman assaulted by Nassar in 2000 as a 15-year-old gymnast from Kalamazoo, Mich., contacted the Indianapolis Star and filed a report with Michigan State police. Days before, Nassar treated Emma Ann Miller, now 15, who believes she is his last known victim.

In September, the Indianapolis Star published its first story on the allegations against Nassar, and Michigan State fired him. On Sept. 20, Michigan State police executed a search warrant at Nassar's home and discovered an external hard drive containing 37,000 images of child pornography in the trash can at the curb.

One enduring question to Manly, the victim's attorney, is why no one from any of the FBI field offices investigating Nassar bothered to execute a search warrant earlier.

"The first thing you do in a child molestation investigation is you try to get access to his computers because there's usually child pornography there," he said.

In December, Nassar was indicted on child pornography charges. Thomas-Lopez went public in a lawsuit with allegations her complaints were ignored in 2000. The Lansing State Journal reported that a university Title IX investigation of Nassar in 2014 cleared him.

2017: In February, Michigan State announced the hiring of attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a former federal prosecutor, to conduct an internal review related to Nassar. Victims soon began calling for a public release of Fitzgerald's report.

In March, Penny resigned from USA Gymnastics. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on sex abuse in Olympic sports, called by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). USOC executive Rick Adams, under questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), said someone at USA Gymnastics probably knew or should have known about Nassar's abuse, given the number of accusers. In Michigan, Boyce publicly said she tried to complain about Nassar in 1997.

In May, the Senate Commerce Committee held its own hearing, called by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), discussing sex abuse in Olympic sports.

In June, USA Gymnastics released a report by a former federal prosecutor that recommended policy improvements but avoided addressing potential failures to stop Nassar earlier. Manly called the report "a public relations facade" and began calling for independent investigations of USA Gymnastics and the USOC.

In July, Nassar pleaded guilty to federal child porn crimes.

In November, Nassar pleaded guilty to 10 sexual assault counts in two counties in Michigan.

In December, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette acceded to victim's demands and asked Michigan State to make its internal report public. The attorney Fitzgerald stated there was no report; he had been conducting fact-finding in preparation for defending the school in lawsuits and found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Victims renewed calls for an independent investigation of Michigan State's role in Nassar's crimes. A federal judge sentenced Nassar to serve 60 years for his child porn crimes.

2018: On Jan. 16, Nassar's sentencing hearing began. On. Jan 19, in the middle of the fourth day of victim's statements, Michigan State's board acquiesced to demands for an independent investigation and asked the state attorney general's office to conduct it.

On Wednesday, minutes after a judge sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun announced plans for an independent investigation of USA Gymnastics and the USOC's role in Nassar's crimes. Hours later, Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon resigned.

Late Wednesday and Thursday, multiple members of Congress, for the first time, issued calls for independent investigations of Michigan State, USA Gymnastics and the USOC. On Friday, USA Gymnastics announced its entire board of directors will resign, and Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis stepped down.

Sen. Feinstein released statements that said a meeting she had with eight Nassar victims last February was "one of the most disturbing, emotional meetings I've held in 25 years in the Senate," and she demanded an investigation of Michigan State.

Sen. Blumenthal tweeted that he, too, was calling for independent investigations of the USOC, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State.

"The women who bravely exposed Larry Nassar's criminal conduct deserve nothing less," he wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/t ... _story.htm

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Ohio State's women's hockey coach, Nate Handrahan, resigned last week after an investigation found he had a history of inappropriate conduct, including sexualized comments, retaliation for anyone raising concerns to the administration, and telling players to "get horny for the puck." Today, Ohio State released a copy of the full case report, with a few redactions due to privacy laws.

Read The Full Report On OSU Hockey's "Get Horny For The Puck" Ex-Coach
https://deadspin.com/read-the-full-repo ... 1691976548

His USA Hockey CEP card still active

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William Jacobs
To his titles of former Minneapolis park police chief to teacher to hockey coach to camp counselor to lawyer to trusted family friend, William Jacobs can add child molester.

http://www.twincities.com/2012/03/07/ex ... hild-porn/

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https://www.theplayerstribune.com/elite ... nkirk-nhl/. Thought this was worth mentioning in regards to the Ohio State coach. The term" Horny for the puck" has been used in articles by NHL players as Kevin Shattenkirk uses to describe younger NHL players in the article above in reference to MN Wild D man Ryan Suter. Coaches need to be smart and realize they need to be age and gender appropriate when addressing young athletes.

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Every six weeks for more than 36 years: When will sex abuse in Olympic sports end?
By Will Hobson and Steven Rich November 17, 2017 Email the author

As the number of women accusing former Olympic gymnastics team physician Larry Nassar of sexual assault has continued to rise this year — surpassing 130, including at least five former Team USA members — victims, lawyers and members of Congress have directed outrage at USA Gymnastics, whose chief executive resigned in March.

While the Nassar case has captured public attention because of the renown of a few of his accusers, it is far from an isolated instance. The problem of sexual abuse in Olympic sports organizations extends well beyond the confines of one sport, or one executive.

More than 290 coaches and officials associated with the United States’ Olympic sports organizations have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct since 1982, according to a Washington Post review of sport governing body banned lists, news clips and court records in several states. The figure spans parts of 15 sports and amounts to an average of eight adults connected to an Olympic organization accused of sexual misconduct every year — or about one every six weeks — for more than 36 years.
The figure includes more than 175 officials convicted of sex crimes as well as those who never faced criminal charges and have denied claims, such as Andy Gabel, an Olympian and former U.S. Speedskating president banned from the sport in 2013 after two women alleged he forced himself on them; and Don Peters, the 1984 Olympic gymnastics coach banned after two women alleged he had sex with them when they were teenagers.

The Nassar case — in which USA Gymnastics officials waited five weeks after first hearing a complaint to report Nassar to law enforcement in 2015, and then didn’t inform Michigan State, where he continued to work with young athletes until August 2016 — is the latest in a series of well-publicized incidents in which Olympic sports organizations committed errors that left children at risk.

Why does this keep happening? Interviews with dozens of officials in Olympic sports and a review of thousands of pages of records produced in lawsuits filed by abuse victims highlight a culture in which limiting legal risk and preserving gold medal chances have been given priority over safeguarding children.

Until this year, the U.S. Olympic Committee resisted calls for changes to a federal law that has, at times, inspired flawed responses by Olympic officials to suspicions of abuse. Top officials at other Olympic sports organizations delayed reforms by balking at common child protection measures as costly and intrusive. And Olympic sports lawyers — victims’ advocates blame one influential firm, in particular — have instilled an unusually strong fear of lawsuits that routinely arises when new child-protection measures are proposed.

“We’re hearing all about gymnastics, but the problems in gymnastics are equally as prevalent in every other sport,” said Katherine Starr, a former Olympic swimmer and abuse victim who founded Safe4Athletes, a nonprofit that works to combat abuse. “People are starting to understand the complexity of this and how this stays in the system. . . . It stays in the system because of governance, because of the people in charge.”
[Doctor at center of USA Gymnastics scandal left warning signs at Michigan State]

In the past three years, the USOC has improved safety policies significantly across Olympic sports organizations. Criminal background checks and abuse education programs — common in other youth-serving organizations since the 1990s — have been mandatory since 2014. This year, a new nonprofit agency, the U.S. Center for SafeSport, took over dealing with suspected abuse in Olympic sports.

USOC board Chairman Larry Probst and Chief Executive Scott Blackmun declined interview requests for this story. In an interview, USOC board member Susanne Lyons praised Blackmun for changes he has pushed since taking over in 2010.
“I think we all feel, in hindsight, how could we have let this take so long? . . . All up and down that food chain, there were failures in the system that I think everyone regrets,” Lyons said. “The best we can do now is just go forward aggressively.”
In a year marked by long-quiet allegations of harassment and assault against powerful men erupting into public view, the Nassar case has brought unprecedented attention to abuse in Olympic sports. In the past few weeks, gymnasts McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman have gone public with their allegations of abuse by Nassar.
“I had a dream to go to the Olympics, and the things that I had to endure to get there were unnecessary and disgusting,” Maroney said.
[Maroney says USA Gymnastics team doctor began molesting her at the age of 13]

In speaking out, these women have highlighted ingrained, cultural aspects of Olympic sports organizations — attitudes and customs they’ve observed in leadership as well as in local coaches and clubs — that present challenges to the current reform effort.
“Most Olympic sports are set up in a way that is not great for protecting children. You have people at the higher levels who really, really want to win,” said AnnMaria De Mars, a technology executive and mother of Olympic judo fighter and mixed martial arts star Ronda Rousey. “And then you have lots of young women spending lots of time with older men.”

The reach of a law
The bureaucracy that oversees Olympic sports in the United States is, essentially, a pyramid.
At the top sits the USOC, headquartered in Colorado Springs with average annual revenue of about $230 million.
Underneath the USOC are 47 Olympic and Pan American national governing bodies — one for each sport, Olympic insiders call them “NGBs” — many also headquartered in Colorado Springs.

Many of these sport NGBs, as a fundraising mechanism, offer memberships that allow local coaches and clubs across the country the opportunity to use the prestige of an association with the Olympics to attract students. These coaches and clubs form the bottom of the Olympic sports pyramid, and they work with at least 11 million children.
Before last year, USA Gymnastics and its chief executive, Steve Penny, were considered by other Olympic executives to be leaders in the effort to combat abuse.

In August 2016, when an Indianapolis Star investigation revealed USA Gymnastics executives had dismissed allegations of abusive behavior against four coaches who went on to sexually assault children, the USOC defended USA Gymnastics as “one of our most active, supportive and concerned partners” in abuse prevention.

Then a series of events raised concerns in Congress.
The next month, dozens of women started coming forward accusing Nassar of assault. In March, court documents released in a lawsuit in Georgia showed Penny had never undergone formal training on abuse prevention, even though he personally handled all abuse complaints for USA Gymnastics.
The documents included a letter, sent from a previous CEO of USA Gymnastics to top USOC leaders — including Blackmun — alerting them that some Olympic organizations were ignoring abuse prevention entirely in 1999, nearly 15 years before the USOC first required basic abuse safety measures.
Days later, the USOC board urged Penny to resign.

Lyons said she and her fellow board members did not think Penny had been aware of allegations against Nassar before the first known report in 2015, but that, “at the end of the day . . . it happened on his watch. And that’s why we had the very difficult conversation [with board members] to say we don’t see how he or the organization can recover from the magnitude of the Nassar situation; we think there needs to be dramatic change.”

The documents released in March included depositions from two former USA Gymnastics officials who testified that aspects of the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act — the federal law that governs Olympic sports organizations — inspired USA Gymnastics’ policy that required a written allegation of abuse from a victim or victim’s parent before the organization could respond.

“I personally would like to have been more aggressive, but it wasn’t an option,” said Kathy Kelly, a former vice president at the organization. “The Amateur Sports Act . . . clearly states that we, the NGB, or any other NGB, cannot restrict anybody’s ability to pursue participation in Olympics. . . . Our bylaws are set up to reflect, as we are instructed to by, the [U.S.] Olympic Committee.”

[Documents: USOC alerted to sex abuse problems long before taking action]
The Ted Stevens Act has played a recurring role in mishandled Olympic abuse cases — including prior incidents at USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming and USA Taekwondo — because portions of the law intended to protect athletes’ rights to compete have impeded attempts by victims and advocates to quickly bar coaches suspected of abuse from working with children.
In March, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed legislation that would amend the Ted Stevens Act to make everyone who works under Olympic organizations mandatory reporters of suspected abuse and require stronger abuse-prevention measures throughout these organizations. The bill passed this week, after incorporating changes recommended by the Senate Commerce Committee.

Starr, the former Olympic swimmer and victims’ advocate, said she and others have been suggesting changes to the Ted Stevens Act since 2011, after a similar abuse crisis at USA Swimming. Top USOC leaders, including Blackmun, have been reluctant to support legislation, she said.
“I’ve been pounding on the doors for the last six years on this,” Starr said. “I’m glad that Dianne Feinstein is actually doing something and stepping up. I wish it had been done earlier.”

In March, in an interview for another story, Blackmun said he did not oppose Feinstein’s legislation, which had just been announced, but that there was nothing wrong with the Ted Stevens Act. Three weeks later, the USOC announced its support for the bill.
In a statement, the USOC said it had convened several working groups focused on abuse prevention since 2010, and none had suggested changes to the Ted Stevens Act.
“It was not a part of our strategy,” USOC spokesman Mark Jones wrote.

‘Athletes’ or ‘children’?
The USOC’s ability to influence has its limits. Among the sport NGBs, some have leaders less inclined to take direction from Colorado Springs.
In 2012, as word started to circulate that the USOC was considering making background checks and education programs mandatory, officials in two sports pushed back.

In a December 2012 letter to Blackmun, U.S. Tennis Association official F. Skip Gilbert vehemently objected to the USOC’s attempt to mandate abuse prevention policies, calling it “misguided at best” and saying it “equates to the same bullying and harassment charges that the USOC wants to mandate that we keep out of our sport.”
Gilbert, who no longer works for the USTA, declined to comment. In a statement, the USTA said the organization had its own abuse-prevention program in 2012.

“We felt that we would be able to best implement a program specific to tennis,” spokesman Chris Widmaier said. “Over time, our position evolved.”
In a 2012 email to Blackmun, USA Softball official Ron Radigonda expressed concerns about the expense of criminal background checks, which cost about $20 each. Mandatory background checks for all adults who work with children at local organizations could affect “competitive market share,” wrote Radigonda, who lamented that USA Softball had recently lost business in one state because a local official there decided to require background checks for umpires.

“Is there really a need for a top-down one-size-fits-all USOC approach to these issues?” Radigonda wrote.
Radigonda did not return messages requesting comment. USA Softball declined to answer questions about its background check policies.
Within the sports more closely associated with the Olympics, any lack of vigilance is particularly dangerous, experts believe. In June, when former federal prosecutor Deborah Daniels released her review of USA Gymnastics’ abuse prevention practices, she devoted an entire section to cultural factors that leave children at heightened risk of abuse in elite gymnastics.
Young athletes are often desperate for the attention and approval of coaches who — particularly in individual sports — have an unusual amount of control and power over athlete success. So-called “helicopter parenting” is discouraged; famed Olympic coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi prohibited parents from visiting the camp where the USA Gymnastics women’s team trained.

Parents, many of whom are unfamiliar with the intricacies of an esoteric sport, often defer to coaches. And the hypercompetitive atmosphere — which affects rival athletes, as well as their parents — means the rare victims willing to come forward risk vilification.
“Everything about this environment, while understandable in the context of a highly competitive Olympic sport, tends to suppress reporting of inappropriate activity,” Daniels wrote.
In 2013, USA Swimming commissioned its own report after a series of abuse cases across the country, including the conviction that year of Rick Curl, a D.C.-area swim coach, for his sexual relationship with an underage swimmer in the 1980s.

As Victor Vieth, a former sex crimes prosecutor, researched USA Swimming’s abuse prevention policies, he noted with surprise that romantic relationships between athletes and coaches were condoned until 2013.
“There was a great reluctance for people to finally recognize that that was an abuse of power, just like a relationship between a teacher and a student,” Vieth said.

Something else struck Vieth as he interviewed adults throughout elite swimming, from USA Swimming officials in Colorado Springs to local coaches and parents across the country: a reluctance to use the word “children.”
“Constantly, it didn’t matter who we were talking to. . . . They always called them ‘athletes,’ ” Vieth said. “We really wanted them to focus on, you’ve got 320,000 children in your organization, and you need to see them first as children before you see them as athletes. There really was the mentality of the possibility that this could be the next gold medal winner at the Olympics, and that mentality was not just among the coaches and the people running the groups; it was among the parents themselves.”
As Vieth reviewed USA Swimming’s files and interviewed victims, he came across several situations in which a victim came forward and the other swimmers and parents rallied around the coach.
“They put blinders on . . . because he could cut their kid’s time by two seconds,” Vieth said.

In 2010, as USA Swimming proposed a mandatory abuse education program for all coaches, John Leonard, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association — essentially, a coaches union — argued against the measure, which ultimately was approved.
“Educate about what? Does anyone need education to know what a pedophile act is? The only education that needs to take place is parents having the courage to go to the police,” Leonard wrote in an email to USA Swimming CEO Chuck Wielgus produced as evidence in a lawsuit.
In 2013, Leonard published an op-ed in the coaches association’s newsletter expressing outrage that USA Swimming leaders were considering making abuse prevention a core part of the organization’s mission, a common measure for youth-serving agencies.

“The statement was made to me that ‘Protecting athletes from sex abuse is a core function of USA Swimming,’ ” Leonard wrote. “That’s UTTER NONSENSE. The core business of USA Swimming is BUILD, PROMOTE and ACHIEVE. . . . The core business of the FAMILY is to keep our children SAFE.”
Leonard, still executive director of the coaches association, did not respond to multiple interview requests.

Limiting exposure
While the 47 sport NGBs are diverse in many ways — USA Swimming annually brings in nearly $35 million and has 94 employees; USA Team Handball brings in about $500,000 and has four employees — many of them have one thing in common: their lawyers.

The Olympic sports legal market is dominated by a small number of attorneys and firms in Colorado Springs and Indianapolis, where most of the governing bodies are clustered. Victims’ advocates blame these lawyers and their emphasis on avoiding potential litigation, which repeatedly arises during discussions of abuse prevention in Olympic sports.
In 2011, the USOC started discussing a sex abuse prevention handbook. Circulating education material is a basic safety measure experts have recommended since the 1990s; the Boy Scouts of America started doing it in 1986.

As Olympic officials discussed their handbook in 2011, however, several mentioned a common concern: that the handbook could get them sued by victims, who would use it as evidence that Olympic officials knew abuse was a problem but weren’t doing enough to stop it.
“While several NGBs expressed that the handbook sets the proper focus . . . there is also a perception that publishing the handbook will increase their risk of legal liability,” Malia Arrington, a USOC executive in charge of abuse prevention, wrote Blackmun in a December 2011 memo made public by the USOC this year in communication with the Senate.
Child protection experts expressed bewilderment that, in 2011, organizations working with children would debate the legal risks associated with abuse prevention material.

“Litigation happens all the time. Anybody can sue anyone for anything. That’s a fact of life,” said Stephen Forrester, an attorney and director at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Lawyers also have stepped in when Olympic officials have tried to act swiftly to prevent coaches suspected of abuse from working with children. In 2014, a USA Taekwondo disciplinary panel recommended an immediate lifetime ban of Las Vegas coach Marc Gitelman after three women came forward accusing Gitelman of abuse.

USA Taekwondo leaders ignored the recommendation after the organization’s lawyer, Stephen Hess of Colorado Springs, raised the concern Gitelman might sue, in part, because the hearing panel didn’t allow him to cross-examine his accusers, violating his due-process rights under the Ted Stevens Act.
[An athlete accused her coach of sex abuse. Olympic officials stayed on the sideline.]
Hess declined to comment. USA Taekwondo banned Gitelman in 2015 after he was convicted of three sex crimes in California, in connection with the same allegations.

“I think that NGBs in general are plagued by weak governance by the boards, and that is a field day for lawyers,” said Don Parker, a financial services executive in Oklahoma City who was part of the USA Taekwondo panel that tried to ban the coach. “The lawyers have too much sway . . . and the legal risk opinion is too heavily weighted.”

Nancy Hogshead-Makar — a three-time gold medal Olympic swimmer, civil rights attorney and advocate for stronger abuse prevention in Olympic sports — blames one firm in particular for this fear of legal risk: Bryan Cave, an international firm whose Colorado Springs office has made its attorneys the most influential legal minds in American Olympic sports.
At one time or another, Bryan Cave has represented 27 of the 47 Olympic NGBs, and it also serves as outside counsel to the USOC. Blackmun, the USOC CEO, is a former partner at the firm. Bryan Cave partner Rich Young helped write the World Anti-Doping Code, the rules that police drug cheating in Olympic sports globally.
In an interview in the firm’s Colorado Springs office last December, Young declined to answer questions about specific cases and said he and his colleagues have led the way in the effort to make Olympic sports organizations safer for children.

“Over the years, the lion’s share of our time representing NGBs in this area has been prosecuting abusers . . . and in drafting rules to help protect athletes,” Young said.
Hogshead-Makar and other victims’ advocates remain critical of the firm, arguing Young and Bryan Cave defended USA Swimming policies and decisions that left children at risk — such as a confidential settlement with a former national team coach who admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old, and a confidential list of coaches banned for sexual misconduct — that didn’t change until after critical news coverage in 2010.
Similar to USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming also had a long-running policy of requiring written complaints from victims or witnesses of abuse before it investigated. Because most victims never come forward, experts say, policies that dismiss suspicions as “hearsay” inherently allow predators to get away.
“The problem with the USOC and USA Swimming and a lot of these other NGBs is they get their legal advice from Bryan Cave,” Hogshead-Makar said. “Their eye is all on legal liability, as opposed to what would make it safest for kids.”

Praesidium, a Texas company that creates sex abuse prevention policies for youth-serving organizations, consulted with USA Gymnastics this year as it reformed its policies, and it previously performed the same services for USA Swimming. In a phone interview, Praesidium founder Richard Dangel declined to discuss his work with the lawyers for either Olympic organization but said he believes a fear of lawsuits by youth-serving organizations, in general, is overblown.

“What we tell an organization is, if you always keep the needs of the kid first, you’re going to be much better off in a lawsuit saying, ‘We felt the kid was at risk,’ ” Dangel said. “My way is the right way, but it might not be the most comfortable way for some lawyers.”

What will change?
In March, after more than a year of delays, the U.S. Center for SafeSport opened in Denver. The nonprofit is supposed to operate as a rough equivalent of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which polices drug cheating in Olympic sports. The Center for SafeSport is tasked with disciplinary investigations of abuse and will also regularly evaluate safety policies at Olympic organizations.

The delays, the USOC has said, were caused by difficulties raising money, and it’s unclear whether the amount raised so far — about $25 million for the next five years — will be enough for the potential workload.
The Center for SafeSport has responsibilities similar to a college Title IX office, which investigates gender discrimination crimes on campus. As a comparison, the University of Maryland’s Title IX office has a full-time staff of seven to cover a population of about 50,000 students and faculty who live mostly on campus or nearby. The Center for SafeSport has a full-time staff of nine and four contract investigators to cover a population of at least 13 million athletes, coaches and officials spread across the country.
The Center for SafeSport can act only when it gets a report. The front lines of abuse prevention, USOC officials acknowledge, will remain the hundreds of thousands of local clubs and coaches affiliated with Olympic organizations, and the officials who oversee those sports communities.

In late March, Timothy Nguyen, a 25-year-old coach at Quicksilver, a USA Swimming-affiliated club in San Jose, quit after an underage swimmer told the club’s head coach that Nguyen had sent her suggestive messages through social media. The head coach informed USA Swimming officials, but no one told law enforcement.

Two months later, on May 30, Elizabeth Hoendervoogt, a USA Swimming official and abuse prevention specialist, called San Jose police to report Nguyen and send over messages the coach had exchanged with three swimmers, all aged 14 to 16.

In one exchange, police allege, Nguyen asked a girl if she’d been sexually active yet, discussed the specifics of several sex acts and then suggested they could be “friends with benefits.” In another, police say, Nguyen asked a girl for nude photos. One girl told police she had improved as a swimmer under Nguyen, and she had been concerned he would stop coaching her if she didn’t respond.

In late June, police arrested Nguyen. Then they learned Quicksilver’s head coach and USA Swimming officials had known about some of Nguyen’s behavior in March. In California, coaches are mandatory reporters and must inform authorities within 36 hours of learning of suspected sex crimes involving children.

In a phone interview, prosecutors said they considered charging Nguyen’s former boss at the club with failing to report.
“We’re glad [Hoendervoogt] reported. We wished that she had reported earlier,” said Pinaki Chakravorty, a deputy district attorney in San Jose.
USA Swimming spokesman Matthew Farrell said it took two months for the Olympic sports organization to report Nguyen to police because it took time to collect the text messages. When asked whether USA Swimming or the club should have handled the report differently, Farrell replied: “I’m not aware of any substantive changes that USA Swimming or the club would make.”


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[Mnnstar]

http://www.mghca.com/page/show/3887141- ... manager.

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If you think people will be looking out to keep your children safe read the story.

USOC can’t just look ahead to better sex abuse prevention. It must face its failures.



By Sally Jenkins May 11 Email the author
Presumably, the leaders of the U.S. Olympic Committee don’t wake up in the morning saying, “I want to enable child molesters.” They don’t go to work every day intending to help peddle young women to sexual abusers. Yet somehow, the USOC became a victimizer of athletes instead of their protector.

It’s hard to say what’s more sickening to read, the graphic descriptions of coaches rubbing up against their young charges or the chronology of years-long inaction by USOC administrators that left athletes vulnerable. Both are described in a lawsuit filed this week alleging the USOC acted as a “travel agent and commercial funder in the domestic and international sexual exploitation of young female athletes,” by failing to act against former U.S. Olympic taekwondo coach Jean Lopez and his gold medalist brother, Steve.

The lawsuit should be read carefully by members of Congress, who are prepping to interview Olympic officials May 23 about how an epidemic of sex abuse has flourished across multiple sports. It contains a vital timeline and vivid blueprint of the USOC’s appallingly evasive standard operating procedures, and purposeful liability-dodging, and lip-service sanctimony. You know when the USOC received the first complaint about the Lopez brothers messing with a young girl? In 2006. Only last month did the USOC’s newly established Center for SafeSport ban Jean Lopez for life for sexual misconduct with a minor, a decision he is appealing. Only this week did USA Taekwondo declare Steve Lopez temporarily suspended while it investigates him for similar alleged misconduct.

Twelve years ago. That’s when Mandy Meloon, one of four plaintiffs, first handed a written complaint against the Lopez brothers to officials at the USOC and USA Taekwondo. Yet last month USOC board Chairman Larry Probst unctuously urged SafeSport to “move faster” in addressing sex abuse complaints. He has his nerve.

[Every six weeks for more than 36 years: When will sex abuse in Olympic sports end?]

Among those who became aware of the Lopez case over the ensuing years, the lawsuit alleges, were USOC in-house counsels Gary Johansen and Rick Adams, head of sports performance Meredith Miller, board member Susanne Lyons, board member Devin Johnson and director of ethics Malia Arrington. That’s two lawyers, two board members, the head of performance and the organization’s ethicist. What happened?

Nothing. For more than a decade. “I’ve literally been working on this case for 10 years,” plaintiff’s attorney Jon Little said.

Asked about the USOC’s paralysis in the Lopez case, spokesman Patrick Sandusky replied with a statement: “We do not normally comment on active litigation. In this case though, counsel’s fantastical claims seem calculated to provoke and offend rather than to genuinely seek relief from the judicial system. Although we have only just received this complaint, it appears to be a cynical attempt by counsel to subvert important protective laws with the goal of sensationalizing this case. The USOC will vigorously defend itself against these outrageous claims. We want to be clear, however, that our criticism does not extend to the athletes whose names appear in this case. The USOC remains focused on supporting, protecting and empowering the athletes we serve.”

The USOC’s strategy is to point forward and refuse to look back. Congress shouldn’t fall for it. When you have a catastrophic systemic failure, you don’t just turn your back to the problem; you examine the source of the nuclear meltdown so you can stop the toxic poison leak. And the source of this systemic failure lies at the very top, in the offices of directors and general counsels.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee Oversight and Investigations subcommittee has called five officials including interim CEO Lyons to testify May 23, but they are aiming too low. They should summon Probst, the board chairman, and ask, “Why should we not demand your resignation on the spot?” Probst must explain and account for the USOC’s failures over his tenure, which began in 2008. He is the head of this racket. How is it that when young athletes found the incredible courage to report abuse, they were met with inertia if not obstruction at the highest levels?

[An athlete accused her coach of sex abuse. Olympic officials stayed on the sideline.]

Example: In 2013, three other female taekwondo athletes notified the USOC they had been sexually abused by a coach, Marc Gitelman. They even included a police report in their pleas for help. On this occasion, the complaint reached Lyons, who to her everlasting credit tried to intervene — the only instance in hundreds of pages of court documents I’ve read in which a USOC official was proactive. Lyons wrote a heated email to three other USOC execs, including then-CEO Scott Blackmun.

“This sounds like the same old BS . . . ,” she wrote. “Allowing a potential sexual predator to continue to coach without having an appropriate investigation and conclusion is unacceptable.”

In another email she wrote, “Hopefully USOC staff can assist in some way . . . .”

What happened? Nothing. Gitelman continued to coach until he was criminally convicted in 2015 for lewd conduct with a child, while his victims had to go to competitions with him. They sued. Asked in a deposition how such a thing could have happened, Arrington, the ethics officer, replied, “The USOC does not have the authority to do anything.”

Asked which portion of the USOC’s congressional charter forbids the USOC from acting against a child molester, she responded, “I don’t know.”

This is how USOC officials hid behind their massive, overpaid bureaucracy: by making disingenuous excuses about their powers, obfuscating and playing dumb. If it was one case in one sport, you could understand it. But listen to Lyons: “The same old BS.” It’s an incredibly telling statement. They had heard it all before, innumerable times.

They heard it in swimming, which in 2010 was rocked by revelations that 36 coaches had been secretly punished for sexual abuse. The late Chuck Wielgus, who then headed USA Swimming, admitted under oath he knew of a secret child abuse settlement made by Hall of Fame coach Rick Curl in 1989. Yet Curl was still credentialed as a VIP on the pool deck at the 2012 Olympic trials.

They heard it in speedskating. In March 2013, speedskater Bridie Farrell personally told Blackmun of her abuse as a girl by former skater Andy Gabel and urged him to punish Gabel. According to Farrell, Blackmun said there was nothing he could do.

And they heard it in gymnastics. In 1999, former USA Gymnastics chief executive Bob Colarossi warned Blackmun, then the USOC’s general counsel, that the Olympic movement was asking for a massive sex abuse scandal. It arrived in July 2015 when three gymnasts reported they were serially molested by Olympic doctor Larry Nassar. Yet before it became public, Nassar was allowed to quietly “retire” as gymnastics chief medical officer and a USOC medical adviser.

[Lawsuit accuses USOC, USA Taekwondo of sex trafficking by not acting on complaints]

“Something we have to do in this mess is, we can’t just look at individual sports. We have to look at all of them together,” Little says.

Nothing bespeaks the USOC’s passivity better than the sluggish creation of SafeSport. In the summer of 2010 under pressure from the swimming scandal, the USOC appointed a committee to “study” its sex abuse problem and pledged reform within six months. Not until 2013 did the USOC begin to create an entity to investigate sex abuse, and you know when SafeSport finally opened its doors? In March 2017. Guess who the chief operating officer of SafeSport is? Malia Arrington, the woman who doesn’t believe she has any power to keep child molesters away from young Olympians.

“Go faster,” Probst told SafeSport three weeks ago. The nerve.

Without summoning Probst and the USOC’s longtime lawyers who dictated its legal policies, the House Investigations subcommittee probably won’t get substantive answers or arrive at real reforms. You can’t help noticing the list of people scheduled to testify all assumed their jobs within the last year or so, in the wake of the scandal. USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey was named in June 2017, USA Taekwondo director Steve McNally in September and USA Gymnastics CEO Kerry Perry in November. These are not the people we need to hear from.

If the USOC is not held to account, the toxic culture of sexual abuse will persist, and the enablers will be emboldened. To date, Olympic officialdom has furnished nothing but bland pledges. As Judge Rosemarie Aquilina put it, in sentencing Nassar to 40 to 125 years after hearing from 150 of his victims, “Silence is indifference.” So is inaction.


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The U.S. Olympic Committee’s Moment Of Truth
By Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Dani Bostick, Guest Writers

Olympic and Paralympic aspirations are a powerful force, not just for the few who are truly elite, but for all of the 8 million child athletes involved in Olympic sports. The same aspirations that inspire an athlete to willingly train dozens of hours a week, limit social engagements, strictly regulate their food intake, and endure excruciating injuries also make children vulnerable to sexual abuse.

With thousands of tragic stories to put an exclamation point on that well-known research, now is the time for sweeping changes to the Olympic movement.

The issue recently rose to the attention of Congress because of the sex abuse scandal surrounding former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, but sexual abuse is something that has affected multiple national sports organizations under the Olympic umbrella.

On May 23, a panel in the U.S. House grilled the leaders of the Olympic movement on their efforts to protect athletes from sexual abuse. In the U.S., the Olympic movement encompasses the corporate entity known as the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), the national governing bodies (NGBs) of 47 sports, as well as clubs, athletes, coaches, administrators and other members. At the hearing, lawmakers kept asking whether the Olympic movement had the necessary congressional authority to protect athletes from sexual abuse, or whether the corporation needed additional statutory power.

This question kept coming up because the USOC had repeatedly defended its actions by asserting that it could not intervene in governance of the individual sports, that these sports were separate businesses. But for the first time, the committee sheepishly acknowledged that Congress had already given it sufficient power to respond to Nassar-like situations. With the number of NGBs embroiled in sex abuse scandals growing to include organizations like USA Swimming and USA Taekwondo, this was a public admission: The problem was not that the USOC and national bodies were unable to protect athletes; it was that they were unwilling to.

Until the USOC commits to broad cultural changes and moves toward a nonprofit model centered on athletes, those athletes will still be at risk.

Athletes are often defenseless even when trying to assert rights Congress guaranteed to them.

First, the Olympic movement must look inward and hold its own accountable for ignoring sexual abuse. So far it has resisted efforts to do that. Too many top officials were allowed to resign with grace, like USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun and USA Swimming leaders Pat Hogan and Susan Woessner. Too many current employees knew about the sexual abuse and stayed silent; they enabled the abuse and have suffered no consequences. Victims cannot trust any new system or embrace a sense of justice when the same people continue in the same positions of power over athletes.

Next, lists of banned and suspended individuals must be publicly available for all sports. Just 12 sports publish lists of banned and suspended coaches. The Olympic Committee has the power to require all sports to publish their lists of banned coaches, yet most of the NGBs leave their members and the public in the dark.

The secrecy may protect the “brand” of the five rings and assuage the fear of lawsuits from banned coaches, but the practice endangers athletes. Congress should require the USOC to make sure each sport publishes a list of people who have been suspended or banned and makes it easy to find. The Olympic movement should not be a party to the secrecy that emboldens and enables sexual predators.

The USOC must also enforce its own bans and suspensions. Bans are meaningless if predatory coaches continue to have contact with sports teams and their athletes. When a club nonetheless hires a banned coach or permits access to athletes, what consequences await? Currently, none. There also need to be strong policies to keep banned members away from events sanctioned by the USOC or lower-level bodies. These are private events that banned individuals do not have a right to attend.

Next, the Olympic movement must standardize training on sexual abuse. While the 47 NGBs created their own “SafeSport” programs between 2010 and 2014, it became clear they were inept at rooting out abusers and kept hiring unqualified people to handle the complaints and create educational materials.

After years of foot-dragging, the U.S. Center for SafeSport opened its doors in 2017. Its mission is not just to take complaints, conduct investigations and hold hearings to determine whether a member should receive a sanction ― although those are all crucial SafeSport functions. It’s also meant to lend expertise to NGBs as they develop training materials on sexual abuse. But after almost 15 months on the job, the center doesn’t appear to be doing that.

For example, USA Swimming’s dangerous SafeSport materials encourage athletes to blindly trust their coach, an attitude that is a common precursor to abuse. Even though largest risk of sexual abuse comes from coaches, the materials encourage athletes to confide in their coaches about their personal problems and to trust their coaches to set appropriate conversational boundaries. What they don’t do is give bright-line rules on coaching behavior, and the information that is helpful is drowned out by materials designed to sell the sport to more families.

SafeSport training materials should be well-publicized and contain clear expectations for appropriate relationships and ethical behavior. Athletes of all ages should know that their coach will never text them individually, will not befriend them on social media, will not be alone with them and will not give them gifts. It is not sufficient to prohibit “sexual misconduct” when that phrasing makes it appear that some sexual conduct might be appropriate. Athletes should know that coaches will not pursue a romantic or sexual relationship regardless of age or consent; that these overtures are an abuse of power and are harmful.

Additionally, the Center for SafeSport can only be better than the USOC and NGBs if it has the independence and expertise to match the task at hand. To be independent, the center must hire experts from outside sports, people whose impulse isn’t to protect an institution over athletes.

The center’s chief operating officer, Malia Arrington, exemplifies the center’s problems. Arrington was hired by the USOC in 2010 and moved directly to the center in 2017. She has admitted she was hired without sexual abuse expertise; she worked for a year at the USOC without knowing about the grooming techniques molesters use, essential knowledge for sexual abuse prevention.

Even more alarmingly, she was a key player in the USOC’s quest to deny responsibility for sexual abuse. In a 2016 deposition, Arrington acknowledged that she knew about rapists on certain U.S. national teams, but asserted, “The USOC does not have the authority to do anything.” When Arrington was asked what part of the Sports Act ― the federal law that governs the USOC ― or the corporation’s bylaws supported that assertion, this lawyer, who had been on the job for six years at that point, couldn’t name a single one.

Finally, the USOC needs to redistribute power and resources between the corporation and the athletes fairly. Beyond athlete protection, we need to ask how to give them power. Since 1978, when the Sports Act was passed, Congress has repeatedly tried to give athletes more power over their own destiny, and the USOC has just as often taken that power away, requiring athletes to be submissive, obedient and compliant, or risk not making the Olympic team.

The Olympic movement must look inward and hold its own accountable for ignoring sexual abuse.

Athletes are often defenseless even when trying to assert rights Congress guaranteed to them. Take the example of gender equality. In 2016, the athletes of the women’s national hockey team had to strike and hire a lawyer to demand what USA Hockey should have provided: the same support it gave the men’s team. The NGB knew it had been discriminating against the women’s team for decades, but didn’t change its ways until forced. Even now, USA Hockey still spends far more of its resources on male sports development than on the women’s game. The money must be distributed fairly as a matter of leadership; this is America’s team.

To be sure, meaningful change will require fessing up. The Olympic and Paralympic movement has operated as an institutional predator, prioritizing self-promotion through the athletes’ achievements and self-enrichment at the expense of the people it purports to serve, all while feigning trustworthiness.

At last week’s congressional hearing, Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado said, “I need to be convinced that [the U.S. Center for SafeSport] has a robust system to investigate and stop bad actors.” But among those bad actors is the Olympic movement itself. Without that acknowledgement, and without a willingness to hold those responsible to account and to engage in cultural change that shifts power to athletes, the same patterns are destined to repeat themselves for decades to come. The moment for serious reform is now; for the athletes and for America’s team.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar is an Olympic champion, a civil rights lawyer and CEO of Champion Women, a nonprofit providing legal advocacy for girls and women in sports. Dani Bostick devotes most of her energy to disrupting the culture of shame and silence surrounding sexual abuse and assault.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/op ... 0ebd098935

[greybeard58]

Safe sport in action follow all links

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/o ... 022861002/

Athletes outraged as banned taekwondo coach reinstated
Nancy Armour, Rachel Axon | USA TODAY 3:27 p.m. CDT Aug. 17, 2018

Athletes critical of USOC, governing bodies' failure to protect from sexual abuse

SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Rachel Axon discusses Senate subcommittee hearing where former athletes criticized the national governing bodies for their sport as well as the USOC and others for failing to prevent and stop sexual abuse.

The U.S. Center for SafeSport temporarily removed taekwondo coach Jean Lopez from its database of sanctioned individuals this week after telling women who reported him for sexual misconduct that it wouldn’t defend his ban without their in-person testimony at his appeal, according to the women’s attorney.

That stance goes counter to SafeSport’s code, which does not require a reporting party to testify during an appeal hearing, nor must it be done in person.

The center declared Lopez permanently ineligible in April after finding him in violation of the SafeSport code for sexual misconduct and sexual misconduct involving a minor. SafeSport found that Jean Lopez had assaulted Mandy Meloon, Heidi Gilbert and a third woman with whom he had also engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with starting when she was 17.

More: Lopez brothers, Olympic taekwondo royalty, hit with sex abuse allegations

More: Olympian brothers sued for sexual assault, negligence by fellow taekwondo athletes

“(SafeSport is) a paper tiger. They’re hollow. They’re not fulfilling their obligation to the athletes,” attorney Stephen Estey told USA TODAY Sports on Friday.

Estey represents Meloon, Gilbert and three other women in a federal lawsuit against the Lopez brothers – Jean and Steven – the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Taekwondo that was filed in May in U.S. District Court in Colorado.

“When (SafeSport is) charged with keeping athletes safe and they don’t do their job we’ve got a problem," Estey said.

It’s not clear when SafeSport removed Lopez’s name from the database of disciplinary records on its website, but he was not on it Thursday night or for most of the day Friday. He reappeared late Friday afternoon, after SafeSport had been asked about the appeal by USA TODAY Sports, but it lists him with an interim restriction and does not give a reason for the sanction or decision date. It is not clear what those restrictions are.

In a statement, the center told USA TODAY Sports it wouldn’t speak about specific cases.

“When a sanction is changed the Center will typically discuss it with all of the involved parties and/or their advisors,” the statement said. “As each matter comes with its own unique set of circumstances, the Center's decisions are dependent on factors such as the availability of information, the status of the matter or arbitration, the parties' willingness or ability to participate, etc.”

Howard Jacobs, an attorney for Jean Lopez, declined to discuss the specifics of the SafeSport process.

“The main thing is that he had been barred from coaching and he’s no longer barred from coaching,” Jacobs said.

Asked about the interim restriction added on Friday afternoon, Jacobs said Lopez is prevented from having contact with the women.

Jacobs said it is “unclear” if this is the final step in the case.

“We hope that this is the end of it,” he said.

Jean Lopez, 44, has coached Steven throughout his career as well as siblings Mark and Diana, who also medaled in the 2008 Olympics.

Steven Lopez is taekwondo’s biggest star and the most decorated athlete in that sport. He is a five-time Olympian with gold medals in 2000 and 2004 and a bronze in 2008, as well as five world titles.

Jean Lopez has denied all of the allegations, both in interviews with SafeSport and last spring with USA TODAY Sports.

“I’ve never been inappropriate with anyone,” Jean Lopez told USA TODAY Sports.

Meloon and Gilbert were among three women who spoke with USA TODAY Sports and described sexual misconduct by Jean Lopez dating back to 1997.

Meloon first filed a complaint with USA Taekwondo in 2006 that Jean Lopez had sexually assaulted her at a tournament in 1997. She was 16 at the time.

While USA Taekwondo dismissed her claim then, SafeSport’s investigation found it to have merit.

“This matter concerns a decades long pattern of sexual misconduct by an older athlete/coach abusing his power to groom, manipulate and, ultimately, sexually abuse younger female athletes,” SafeSport said in its decision obtained by USA TODAY Sports.

“Given the number of incidents reported over a span of several years and by multiple reporting parties, most of whom have no reasonable motive to fabricate an allegation – much less multiple, distinct incidents – of misconduct, the totality of the circumstances clearly shows a recurrent pattern of behavior on the part of Jean."

Lopez, who coached his brother to two Olympic gold medals, exercised his right to appeal the SafeSport decision. The appeal is to be heard by an arbitrator, and the rules state the arbitrator “may receive and consider the evidence of witnesses by declaration or affidavit and shall give it such weight as the arbitrator deems appropriate after considering any objection made to its admission.”

The rules also state that both the reporting party and the responding party “shall be subject to questioning by only the arbitrator unless the Responding Party or Reporting Party agrees to direct examination and cross-examination by the opposing party.”

Gilbert, Meloon and the other woman in the SafeSport decision offered to provide written declarations “under penalty of perjury” for Lopez’s appeal, Estey said. If that wasn’t acceptable, he suggested waiting until the women gave their depositions in the civil case, which would be taken under oath, and using those.

But Estey said Joe Zonies, an attorney for SafeSport, told him the women had to testify in person. Estey said he rejected that because the women are already going to be subject to questioning for the civil lawsuit, and he didn’t want them to have to be cross-examined multiple times.

“When you have a defense attorney cross-examine (sexual abuse victims), it opens up wounds,” Estey said. “I don’t want to do that multiple times. I don’t want to put them through unnecessary trauma.”

Zonies then said SafeSport would not defend its decision in the appeal, Estey said, and would instead lift the ban on Lopez.

“They just chose, 'Because you won’t appear in person, we’re going to lift the ban … without even going forward with the arbitration,' " Estey said. “They didn’t even try. Why not take the declaration and put them in front of the arbitrator?”

“It’s not the arbitrator,” Estey added. “It’s SafeSport that ultimately decided to drop it.”

SafeSport’s decision will have far-reaching implications beyond the Lopez case, Estey said. It gives people who have been banned a blueprint for how to get them lifted, he said. It also could have a chilling effect on those who’ve been abused, he said, because it sends the message that SafeSport will only go so far to protect them.

“Why should any sexual abuse survivor come forward if they know SafeSport is not going to do anything about it?” Estey asked.

For Meloon, the decision was frustrating because an arbitrator had not made a decision on the merits of SafeSport’s decision.

“For me, I really wanted to believe in SafeSport. I was completely cooperating with them and I believed in the process,” she said. “And now I’m just, I don’t know. It’s not helpful because now people who have been assaulted and will be assaulted by these guys are not going to have anywhere to report it.”

SafeSport’s sanction came three years after USA Taekwondo began its investigation into complaints against the Lopezes. The national governing body handed over the investigation to SafeSport when it opened in March 2017.

Though the center had been closing cases in an average of 63 days, it took more than a year to reach a decision in Jean Lopez’s case.

USA TODAY Sports reported in June 2017 that Jean and Steven Lopez were allowed to participate in the 2016 Rio Olympics even though both had been accused of sexual assault and USA Taekwondo had been investigating them for more than a year. USA Taekwondo never held hearings that would have brought a resolution to the cases, but the attorney who conducted the investigation was concerned enough that he alerted the FBI.

In an interview with USA TODAY Sports last spring, Steven Lopez denied the allegations.

SafeSport issued an interim suspension for Steven Lopez in May. It had previously put him under interim restrictions starting in June 2017.

“How can you drop the ban because you’re trying to force victims to testify in this way?” Meloon said. “I’m really seeing that the whole process is not for the athlete, but it’s so disappointing because at least the ban was something.”

3:27 p.m. CDT Aug. 17, 2018

[greybeard58]

Benilde-St. Margaret's tennis coach fired, charged with felony sex crimes
Kevin Rust, 59, of Minnetonka, was arrested earlier this summer during an undercover internet child enticement investigation.
By Liz Sawyer Star Tribune SEPTEMBER 13, 2018 — 1:04AM


Benilde-St. Margaret’s fired its elite boys tennis coach Wednesday after school administrators learned that he was charged with multiple felony child sex crimes in Wisconsin.

Kevin Rust, 59, of Minnetonka, was arrested earlier this summer during an undercover internet child enticement investigation. Rust is charged in Barron County, Wis. with use of a computer to facilitate a child sex crime, child enticement and attempted second-degree sexual assault of a child — all felonies, court records show.

A criminal complaint was filed July 2.

Benilde-St. Margaret’s President Adam Ehrmantraut alerted parents that Rust was fired via e-mail Wednesday afternoon, saying that school leaders are “shocked and saddened by this news.”

Ehrmantraut said Rust was in compliance with their background check policy and passed reference additional checks.

“The safety and security of our students remains our top priority and we are giving the situation our utmost attention,” Ehrmantraut wrote. “We ask that you talk with your student about any interactions they might have had with this individual.”

Administrators plan to meet with current girls and boys tennis teams and are in the process of contacting any previous players who worked with him.

Rust has coached at Benilde-St. Margaret’s for the last three years, joining the private Catholic school after retiring from coaching at Lourdes High School in Rochester.

The State High School Tennis Coaches Association inducted Rust to its Hall of Fame in 2012, in honor of leading the Lourdes girls team to 11 Class 1A team championships in 12 years.

Benilde-St. Margaret's tennis coach fired, charged with felony sex crimes. http://strib.mn/2N6YD3Y

[greybeard58]

When will USA/MN Hockey make their lists public??

Great article

Sports Officials Are Making Lists of People Barred for Sexual Misconduct. Big Lists. - The New York Times


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/spor ... sport.html

[goldy313]

Anyone convicted of a crime is of public record in Minnesota, from murder down to a speeding ticket mncourts.gov Anyone who is a registered sex offender is also available to the public.

To be a coach or an official in the state of Minnesota you have to pass a background check.

I suppose you could be banned for repeated MSHSL violations in areas such as recruitment.

[elliott70]

Anyone convicted of a crime is of public record in Minnesota, from murder down to a speeding ticket mncourts.gov Anyone who is a registered sex offender is also available to the public.

To be a coach or an official in the state of Minnesota you have to pass a background check.

I suppose you could be banned for repeated MSHSL violations in areas such as recruitment.

MH has a list of all who have failed to pass the screening. I do not think it Is available to the public. Those that fail the process are not allowed a position within all of MH.
Those that fail certain aspects of the screening can have a hearing and request to be reinstated.

[greybeard58]

The article was not so much about convictions which are public or screening. As far as the screening list goes that deal with past histories.
What is needed is transparency such as when as an example a teacher is accused of any matter and with and at a hearing surrenders the teaching and coaching license for a period of time but nothing is made public or reported to the authorities as names were discovered in an earlier post on this thread. If Mn Hockey bans a person from all Mn USA/Mn Hockey that name will be kept private and allow that person to move on to a different sport. As an example a figure skating coach who also gives lessons to hockey players or a conditioning coach who could span multiple sports is banned, could switch to a different one then the one that has banned them and put kids at risk in a different sport.

There is a link in the article which is a safe sport link which shows which governing bodies have public lists of coaches,trainers,doctors and administrators the organizations have banned, did some also lead to criminal charges probably. By the way one major nation governing body USA Hockey was not listed as having such a list.

[goldy313]

Meh, it takes ZERO evidence to accuse anyone, social media has made it worse.

As a MSHSL official I have been accused of racism on social media.....the coach who had parents post that nonsense on Facebook also had been previously fired by two high schools due to lack of knowledge and control, he did not know you have to seven players on the line of scrimmage and by us calling illegal formation was then racist. The School stood by me and my crew.

I had coached and officiated for a number of years in MN Hockey, it took one parents complaint to the district 8 director for me to lose my job coaching a bantam C team. I sat her kid for a period and took away his stick for not changing lines. The team then had no coach and could not play or practice for a month.

I have little faith in MN Hockey and their pay to coach philosophy.

[Mnnstar]

This Should not be a debate. Background Checks should be comprehensive and detailed. Because of data privacy work history is hard to document. Though reference checks and due diligence must be done, also some preventative training by school districts. After an extensive vetting process all coaches should have a mandatory meeting with the AD and policy should be spelled out. Especially in male/female relationships. Young coaches need to know that even though they are close to the age of their players that there is a line that should not even be approached with players and managers of all sexes. This is also true with old school coaches and officials. Behaviors that were acceptable in the past are not acceptable today. A great example is the hazings of 70's are jail-able offenses today. Male behavior that was ignored in the past(Judge Kavannaugh) is now a crime and rightly so.
The protection of all young people should be our #1 priority.

[greybeard58]

Former coach to plead guilty in child pornography, firearms cases in Swift County
By Anne Polta on Oct 26, 2018 at 8:10 p.m.


BENSON — A former Benson hockey coach has entered a petition to plead guilty to four charges of soliciting and possessing child pornography.

Bradley Christopher Alsaker, 34, also petitioned to plead guilty to one firearms count in a separate case.

Alsaker appeared Friday in Swift County District Court.

He was charged more than a year ago with one count of soliciting sex with a minor through electronic communication, one count of engaging in sexual conduct with a minor through electronic communication, and 11 counts of possessing child pornography.

Alsaker was arrested following an undercover operation involving a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension special agent posing as an underage girl. A search warrant subsequently executed at his Benson home uncovered a stash of videos depicting child pornography. Several firearms were also found.

In the petition submitted Friday, he agreed to plead guilty to one count of soliciting sex online with a minor, one count of engaging in sexual conduct online with a minor and two counts of possessing child pornography. The remaining eight counts will be dismissed.

According to documents filed with the court, the petition is based on an expectation that sentencing guidelines will result in a stay of execution, meaning Alsaker will not go to prison. If he is sentenced to prison time, the plea agreement will become void.

Additional provisions of the agreement call for 120 days of jail time as a condition of probation and a psychosexual evaluation by an independent forensic psychologist.

In the separate firearms case, Alsaker agreed to plead guilty to one count of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a crime. He has previous convictions for domestic assault and criminal sexual conduct.

Two additional counts in the case, negligent storage of a firearm and child endangerment, will be dismissed under the terms of the agreement, which also calls for a stay of adjudication and 120 days in jail, to be served concurrently with the child pornography case.

Under a stay of adjudication, no conviction for the firearm possession will appear on his record provided he complies with all conditions of the sentence.

Sentencing has been scheduled for Jan. 7.

Alsaker is a former rink manager and hockey coach in Benson and was on the board of the Benson Hockey Association at the time of his arrest a year ago. The Swift County Monitor News reported last summer that the Benson Hockey Association, Morris Hockey Association, and Morris-Benson Hockey Association had terminated his employment.

http://www.wctrib.com/news/crime-and-co ... ases-swift

[greybeard58]

While this article deals with a sport other than hockey, this article shows the extent that leaders in the USOC and USA Gymnastics plus the FBI, lawyers on USA Gymnastics staff did to keep the abuse of Nasser quiet. Their actions show how one NGB(are there others?) failed to protect athletes putting medals and money ahead of safety and abuse. Use the link to the article to get the report.

Olympic leaders failed gymnasts at every level, and then worried about themselves

A report released Monday shows former USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun failed to act after first hearing of the allegations against Larry Nassar. (Francis Vachon/AP)

By Sally Jenkins
Columnist
December 11 at 12:34 PM
Deleted emails. Disappearing documents. Outright lies. Attempts to use cozy relationships with cops to “kill the story” that serial child molester Larry Nassar had preyed on Olympic athletes for years. This is how the leaders of the U.S. Olympic movement acted, according to a new investigative report. They acted to protect their bloated salaries, rather than to protect young women. They acted like leeches and barnacles. They turned the USOC into a shell.

The USOC’s now-fired chief of sport performance, Alan Ashley, made nearly $500,000, and CEO Scott Blackmun $1 million in 2016, yet they spent that year sitting on the knowledge that American gymnasts Aly Raisman, Maggie Nichols and McKayla Maroney alleged that they had been sexually assaulted by Nassar, the team doctor.

For 14 months, these men held that knowledge in perfect silence. They didn’t tell child services. They didn’t tell parents. They didn’t even tell the USOC board of directors. Somewhere along the way, both men even cleansed their email of references to Nassar. How many more girls were exposed to Nassar’s creeping, ungloved hands during that time?

At last, the USOC is beginning to self-confess. I’ll admit, I had no confidence that the independent report it commissioned to law firm Ropes & Gray would be substantive.

But investigators Joan McPhee and James Dowden deserve credit for a thorough and unstinting 233-page document, and so does the USOC’s new board chairwoman, Susanne Lyons, without whose imprimatur the report presumably would not have been so frank, or action so swift, with Ashley’s prompt firing as soon as it was released Monday.

[USOC, USA Gymnastics did not protect athletes after Larry Nassar complaints, report shows]

On page after page, the report refuses to soften sentences or dull the shocking specificity of the failures. Its documentation of what can only be called a coverup by the USOC and foot-dragging by the FBI will be of intense interest to congressional overseers. In the summer of 2015, USA Gymnastics chief Steve Penny “squarely presented” allegations of Nassar’s sex abuses to the leaders of the USOC, yet they did not take a single preventive measure that would have saved other victims. Instead they pursued a strategy of “secrecy,” the report declares. This “inaction and concealment had consequences: Dozens of girls and young women were abused during the year-long period between the summer of 2015 and September 2016,” the report declares.

Dozens.

That’s how many.

The report makes clear just how culpable and cowardly these men really were. Penny’s first act on hearing that his underage gymnasts complained of being penetrated by Nassar was not to call police, but to hire a private investigator to question their veracity and persuade them to keep it confidential. Only after five weeks did he contact the FBI, and then he devoted an inordinate amount of time to cultivating an inappropriate friendship with investigating agent Jay Abbott, buying him beer and dangling the possibility of getting him a job as the USOC’s new head of security. Strangely, the FBI declined to interview two of the three gymnasts. It spoke to a third only in a phone call. Months went by with no investigative action at all.

When the accusations against Nassar finally broke in the Indianapolis Star in 2016, Penny emailed Abbott, asking, “Am I in trouble?”

These actions fit a larger longtime pattern: On multiple occasions, USA Gymnastics “ignored credible reports of abuse and essentially operated to block or delay any action on those reports,” the report notes. It “stifled” responses, repeatedly failed to follow up on complaints and demanded victims go through unreasonable procedures, and its “files contain inexplicable gaps in investigations.” Worst of all, USAG provided legal counsel to victims, only for its lawyers to turn around and become adversaries to them in legal proceedings, using the information it had acquired about the strength of their cases.

This pattern looks suspiciously like a calculated strategy to undermine and discourage victims. The investigators wanted to talk to Jack Swarbrick, a former counsel for USA Gymnastics, but he refused to be interviewed. He remains in hiding behind his athletic director’s desk at Notre Dame.

At the USOC, Blackmun failed to question, much less prevent, Nassar’s continuing access to athletes at USOC-owned and USOC-operated facilities, while knowing the doctor it sanctioned as a leading expert was under federal investigation for child sex abuse. Blackmun did not advise a single youth organization that there was an “ongoing risk of harm” from the Olympic doctor with the big reputation. But that was par for the course for Blackmun, whose most aggressive act was lunging for bonuses.

[Read the full report on factors underlying Larry Nassar’s abuse]

Blackmun later tried to insist to the Ropes & Gray investigators that he did take some actions to check Nassar. The problem is he lied. None of his colleagues would corroborate his account. “The USOC did not, in fact, take any steps after receiving notice of the allegation,” the report states. Blackmun even actively misled Lyons in a direct exchange about Nassar in 2018, never telling her he had known about the scandal for three years.

There was such a basic insensibility and lack of care for athlete safety that nobody at the USOC or USAG bothered to check on the conditions at the Karolyi Ranch in Texas, though it was sanctioned as a national training center by the USOC. The Karolyis could drive their gymnasts like Eastern Bloc, state-owned chattel entirely free from oversight, and Nassar could abuse them in secret and at will with no one around to insist on proper medical protocols. There was usually only one USAG supervisor on site — charged with caring for equipment, fixing the plumbing and “removing snakes and insects.”

The power of the report is its comprehensive grasp and vivid description of the whole rotten, febrile “ecosystem that facilitated criminal acts.” Many people are tangentially responsible for this ecosystem that harbored Nassar and other abusers for so long. Including yours truly. Just like the Blackmuns, Pennys and Ashleys, I was not nearly interested enough in how, or at what cost, the Karolyis collected their haul of 97 Olympic and world championship medals. I was too busy admiring the gold and making a living off the beauty of the performances that those young women turned in, despite unimaginable circumstances.

What I should have recognized is what the report makes painfully clear: The Olympics in this country became a deeply controlling culture “that eroded normal impediments to abuse” and made it almost impossible for young women to complain. They lost ownership of their bodies in multiple ways and had no advocate. The young women who have come forward and continue to campaign from courtrooms to Congress to reform that dark culture deserved this illuminating, truthful report, and an apology.

Olympic leaders failed gymnasts at every level, and then worried about themselves
How do you become an ‘ecosystem that facilitated criminal acts’? By having shirkers at the top.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... story.html

[greybeard58]

Use the link to get more detailed information. USA Hockey has a list of banned coaches but it is private.
Banned from the Olympic movement for sexual misconduct, these men are still coaching kids
Nancy Armour, Rachel Axon and Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAYPublished 7:05 a.m. ET Dec. 13, 2018 | Updated 7:33 a.m. ET Dec. 13, 2018

Coaches who have been banned for sexual misconduct are still coaching kids, taking advantage of gaping holes in a system the USOC has vowed to fix.

Gerald Murphy served time in prison after being convicted of lewd and lascivious assault of a child. The state of Florida permanently revoked his teaching certificate for the crime.
Murphy was also a youth coach, a member of USA Taekwondo. The elite sports organization’s leadership eventually found out about his past. So did high-ranking officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Yet even after USA Taekwondo banned Murphy in 2014, the governing body and the U.S. Olympic Committee essentially forgot about him. Nobody raised an alarm when his wife filed paperwork with the state to take over the gym he’d once owned. Nobody thought to check if Murphy was still coaching.
He was.
For four years it was as if Murphy’s ban never happened. A USA TODAY investigation found he continued to coach young athletes at the same gym, and that gym remains a member of USA Taekwondo.
“Do I coach at the school? Yeah, I am the teacher and owner,” Murphy told a USA TODAY reporter in August as he opened the gym for class in a strip mall just north of downtown Tallahassee.
He’s one of a half-dozen coaches banned for sexual misconduct who USA TODAY reporters found were still active in their sport. Three of them were working at events or facilities affiliated with the national sports governing bodies that are supposed to be enforcing the bans.

Scandals sparked by coaches who sexually abuse young athletes have rocked Olympic sports for more than a decade, most recently with the case of Larry Nassar. More than 350 women and girls accused the USA Gymnastics national team doctor of molesting them under the guise of medical treatment. He’s now serving an effective life sentence after pleading guilty last year to possession of child pornography and criminal sexual conduct.
In a damning review of what the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics knewabout Nassar and when, investigators from the law firm Ropes & Gray said this week that the problem goes beyond individual predators. Structural flaws in the governance of both the Olympic committee and sports governing bodies have resulted in a hands-off, corporate-like approach that puts the priority on winning medals, not protecting athletes.

Former U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun drew particularly harsh criticism in the Ropes & Gray report, issued Monday. Under his watch, the Olympic Committee vowed repeatedly to fix its child-protection system and, over the past eight years, made intermittent attempts to reform it.
Yet USA TODAY's investigation found that gaping holes remain.
DIG DEEPER
Banned coaches project
Banned from Olympic movement for sexual misconduct, these men are still coaching kids

These changes must be made by Olympic sport leaders to protect young athletes
Three keys to keeping banned coaches banned and children safe
Here's how to find out if your coach has been banned by an Olympic organization

USA TODAY winnowed hundreds of banned individuals to a smaller list of nearly five dozen based on the ability to determine the misconduct that led to their bans and any suggestion they might still be coaching. To identify those still involved in youth sports, reporters reviewed court records and social media posts, interviewed advocates and parents and visited gyms and other athletic facilities around the nation.

These programs range from those that train young athletes for the Olympics to those at the grassroots level.
If you find someone you think is still coaching, please email us banned@usatoday.
Reporters also examined how the USOC and its 49 sports governing bodies track coaches who have been banned from participation in the Olympic movement. (USA Skateboarding, which was recognized by the USOC in June as its 50th governing body, was not included in the survey.) There they found a historically hands-off approach by the USOC, which left the job of protecting children largely to the governing bodies, many of which lack funding, staff and expertise.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was not surprised to learn banned coaches remained active.

“One is too many,” said Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee that is investigating sexual abuse in the Olympic movement. “The six that you found probably are only the tip of the iceberg, judging by the laxity of enforcement and apprehension.”
At least 931 people have been sanctioned by a national governing body or by the national U.S. Center for SafeSport, a USA TODAY analysis of their publicly available lists and database found. Those sanctions often follow criminal cases or an investigation by the governing body or the center. The people on those lists are spread across every state and 36 sports. More than two-thirds are permanently forbidden to participate in the U.S. Olympic movement.
“It seems to me there’s still an issue of too much concern about the adult and not nearly enough concern about the safety of the children.” Marci Hamilton, CEO of CHILD USA
Yet no cohesive system warns parents when coaches have been banned. The USOC and its governing bodies rarely follow up to ensure that they are being kept away from young athletes.
As a result, coaches who violate their bans – and the facilities and organizations that hire them – face few repercussions.

Just 17 of 40 governing bodies that responded to a USA TODAY survey said they even have the power to take action against gyms and clubs that ignored the bans. (Nine of the governing bodies, including three of the largest – USA Volleyball, US Speedskating and U.S. Ski & Snowboard – did not respond to the survey.)

“What we’ve seen in more vigorous or effectual enforcement is close to zero,” Blumenthal said. “And it’s a major failure on the part of the USOC (that) ... puts athletes at risk every day.”
Lists of people barred from their sport form the backbone of the child protection system. But those lists have their own limitations.
A searchable database maintained by SafeSport, which now handles all sexual misconduct cases for the USOC and its governing bodies, includes only those banned or suspended since SafeSport opened in March 2017.
Finding coaches banned before that requires scouring the individual lists of the sports governing bodies. Only about half of the 40 governing bodies that responded to the USA TODAY survey maintain any sort of public list, however, and some of those simply duplicate what’s on SafeSport’s website.

Three governing bodies – USA Climbing, USA Hockey and U.S. Soccer – have lists that they do not publish.

What’s included varies widely as well. Of the 931 cases, nearly 200 provide no detail about why the person was sanctioned.
Figure skating’s list includes Tonya Harding, who was banned in 1994 for her role in the physical assault of fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. Weightlifting includes those banned for doping. SafeSport’s database leaves out location details nearly a third of the time.
“They should also be erring on the side of caution so if there is a reason to think that someone has come forward and there was abuse of any variety, that person should be suspended and not permitted in the sport,” said Marci Hamilton, chief executive officer of CHILD USA, a nonprofit think tank that works to prevent child abuse.

“It seems to me there’s still an issue of too much concern about the adult and not nearly enough concern about the safety of the children.”
Eric Steele, who became executive director of USA Roller Sports in January after two decades with the Boy Scouts, said the Olympic movement is far behind other organizations, hampered by a lack of coordination.
For sports, Steele said, “there’s probably at least 35 different membership databases with different software, and they all have different capabilities.”
Under pressure from Congress, which has held five hearings over the past eight months, the USOC in late May required for the first time that governing bodies share information on people they had banned. SafeSport is now working to add those banned for sexual misconduct before March 2017 to the center’s database. CEO Shellie Pfohl said the goal is to complete that in early 2019.
At one of the hearings, the then-acting CEO of the Olympic movement, Susanne Lyons, acknowledged that the USOC needed centralized information on banned individuals across the movement.
“It has not happened to date, and I regret that we did not exercise more of our authority to enforce that standard ... prior to this,” she said in May.
In a phone call after the release of the Ropes & Gray report, USA TODAY presented its findings to Lyons, who will become chairwoman of the USOC board Jan. 1.

Asked whether those findings undercut the USOC's assertions that it has taken meaningful action over the past eight years, Lyons said: "I think it’s going to take some time. ... We need to help the NGBs develop the right policies and procedures to enforce that all the way down to the grassroots level, because that is obviously a weakness in the system."

A felon and a coach
Murphy’s case underscores how easy it can be for banned coaches to get around sanctions.
At 35, Murphy was convicted in 1989 of lewd and lascivious assault of a child after being found in bed with Mistie Diaz, who was 14 at the time and baby-sat Murphy’s children. She had met Murphy while she was a student at a school where he was a teacher.

Gerald Murphy is shown in a photo from the Florida Department of Corrections in October 1990. (Photo: Florida Department of Corrections)
Murphy spent 18 months in prison after failing to meet the conditions of his sentencing.

Yet in 2014, Murphy was coaching at the statewide competition in Florida, which sends athletes to the national championship. Another coach alerted Ronda Sweet, a former USA Taekwondo board chairwoman, to Murphy’s felony conviction. She in turn informed USA Taekwondo’s attorney, board chairman and CEO.
Sweet also contacted John Ruger, then the USOC’s athlete ombudsman. Lyons was a USOC board member at the time and, while following up with her on another coach’s case, Sweet mentioned Murphy’s past to her, too.
“I know it was 25 years ago. SafeSport does not have a statute of limitations,” Sweet wrote to Lyons in an email obtained by USA TODAY. “This guy can't teach in a Florida school. (B)ut he can teach and coach at (USA Taekwondo) events.”
Lyons emailed Sweet back on April 4, 2014: “Very disappointing. I have asked that USOC look into this.” USA Taekwondo announced Murphy’s ban the same day.
The ban was supposed to get Murphy out of the USA Taekwondo system by stripping him of his membership. But USA TODAY found he has been coaching at the same gym in Tallahassee since he was banned.

“I don’t think he should be teaching at all. He did it to me. Who else has he done it to?” Mistie Diaz on Gerald Murphy
“I don’t think he should be teaching at all,” said Diaz, now 44, who agreed to be identified for this story. “He did it to me. Who else has he done it to?”
Four days after Murphy was banned, his wife incorporated the Dragon System Institute of Martial Arts. Her name appears on its state incorporation paperwork, and Murphy’s son is listed as general manager.
In August, Murphy showed a USA TODAY reporter three certificates his wife received for completing SafeSport training in March. His wife and son are USA Taekwondo members, Murphy said, and coach the school’s athletes at events sanctioned by national governing bodies.
The club was still listed as a member on USA Taekwondo’s website as of Nov. 21. It’s not clear in whose name the club was registered with the governing body. After USA TODAY sent the organization detailed questions about Murphy, the club was removed from the governing body's club locator app.
Most of the governing bodies surveyed told USA TODAY their membership systems would prevent a banned individual from obtaining a membership or participating in sanctioned events. But none checks with its member clubs to see if that’s happening or monitors members to make sure they’re not employing anyone who is banned.
While Murphy’s wife owning a school should have raised a red flag, that would require someone on USA Taekwondo’s small staff – listed as 11 people on its website – to notice similarities in names and addresses to people on the banned list.

Asked during a Senate hearing in October whether banned coaches are able to work at clubs, USA Weightlifting CEO Phil Andrews responded: “That problem does exist. … I think the biggest issue is the fact that the club level, physically we are not in all of these cities ourselves. Physically, we’re not there to investigate and to enforce these bans.”
Instead, governing bodies rely on the public – individual members and parents, primarily – to do their investigative work.

Luquanda Colston’s three children go to Dragon System Martial Arts, and she has taken classes there herself. Stopped in a nearby parking lot, she said she did not know USA Taekwondo had such a list or that Murphy was on it.
Colston said that if she had known Murphy was banned, it probably would have affected her decision to sign her children up at his school.
“That would be concerning, yeah, because that is important for parents to know,” she said.
USA Taekwondo has the power to enforce Murphy’s ban. It was one of 17 governing bodies that responded to USA TODAY’s survey by saying it could revoke a club’s membership or impose other sanctions for not abiding by the list. But only USA Gymnastics has ever taken that step.

The USOC did not respond to questions about the role its officials played in Murphy’s case. USA Taekwondo executive director Steve McNally declined to answer detailed questions about Murphy’s case and its policies, saying the governing body was "involved in a legal process that prevents me from commenting."

But in an earlier response, to USA TODAY's survey, McNally said that if his organization “receives a report” about a banned member participating in a member club, it would write to the club “reminding them of their obligations as members, and informing them that if they don’t take corrective action by a specific date the club’s membership will also be removed.”
“If we are successful in determining what individuals are abusing athletes but they continue to find employment elsewhere or they continue to work in their current jobs, then we’ve accomplished really nothing,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, chair of the Senate subcommittee that is investigating sexual abuse in the Olympic movement.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2 ... 196969002/

[elliott70]

Minnesota Hockey spends a lot of money on background checks with an outside agency that is extensive.

Of course, if a person has never ben caught or is doing something for the first time; that is impossible to catch up front.

I don't know what USAH the Olympic committee or other states do in the is regard with their hockey program, but MH throws a vast net over coaches, refs, and others t protect the kids in their programs.