Perpetually Tilting at Windmills
Tricia Myers (youth) and Jeff Porter (AAC) have been removed from the USATF website as members of the Board of Directors.
I have heard that they both have resigned from both their position on the board and as being chair of their respective committees (for unrelated reasons).
USATF has finally posted their 2018 tax return, and I have approximately $3 million questions…
https://www.usatf.org/about/financials/tax-information
If you think there is any chance you will need a USATF membership this year, now is the time to renew!
From the national office:
“1. USATF Individual Membership fees will increase on April 28th to:Youth – $25.00 per calendar year + transaction feeAdult – $40.00 per calendar year + transaction fee
2. In late April, we will launch the new member portal – USATF Connect. This new online member system has been designed to provide an easy-to-navigate, 360-degree view of members and their relationships with USATF. USATF Connect will be able to serve our organization in all areas, from fans who want to be more in touch with the organization to athletes, coaches, and officials to association leadership and national office staff.”
This sucks, but USA Track & Field made the right call.
I’m so sorry to all of the athletes who are out money, and the competitive opportunity.
Please also keep in mind that not only are the masters athletes a vulnerable population, a large percentage of the officials are also over the age of 60, and many of them are in poorer health than the athletes.
The next USATF Board of Directors meeting is going to be next Sunday, Feb 9th, at 8am, I believe at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.
It is being held in conjunction with Millrose Games instead of USAs.
The attached lawsuit could be triggering
By now most of my Facebook friends have done the SafeSport training, or something similar, and have some concept of what grooming children for sexual abuse looks like.
I know all of my friends would say that the sexual abuse of children is bad. But grooming, by its very nature, is tricky. It doesn’t always look a particular way.
I have attached a civil lawsuit that was filed a few months ago. This particular case has nothing to do with the sport of track and field, but what happens here could happen in any sport or youth activity, and it does, it happens all the time.
I’m sharing this because I want people to take a minute to read a case that isn’t as salacious as what usually makes it into the press. No one was raped. Law enforcement has not filed criminal charges against this coach.
There are still, unfortunately, a lot of people who believe that if no laws are broken, someone should be free to coach.
This coach didn’t break any laws, or at least not to a level that prosecutors felt could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The adults around this coach were not concerned by his behavior.
Nevertheless, his behavior had a life-altering impact on his victims. Two bright young women who were planning to attend college, instead ended up on a completely different path, through no fault of their own.
Both victims reached out for help. They told the adults around them what was happening. And the adults around them said things like:
“He’s harmless”
“He’s just awkward”
“He has a wife and kids [therefore there is no chance he has intentions to hurt you]”
And most importantly, none of the adults did anything to protect these young women. They did not notify their superiors or law enforcement. They took no action to ensure the victims felt safe or were safe.
Instead, the victims were left to believe that everyone around them found this behavior acceptable, and that the problem was with them, not the coach.
How do we avoid becoming the other adults in this story?
The odds that a kid will come up to you and tell you “so and so raped me” are low. But the odds that a kid will make a vague comment about another coach or teacher’s behavior are much higher.
They might make a comment about a close friend of yours. A friend that you know very well, that would NEVER do anything inappropriate, that you would leave your kids with in a heartbeat.
Human nature is to blow that comment off.
And that’s what we have to fight against.
We have to recognize that the people we know best are capable of doing things we cannot fathom.
We have to pay attention to how the adults around us are interacting with kids.
We have to exercise good boundaries with our athletes, and work to help create an environment where the other adults are as well.
We have to listen when kids tell us stuff. Ask follow up questions. Report up the chain of command. Go around the chain of command and go to law enforcement when appropriate.
Abuse doesn’t usually start with the big things, it usually starts with the little things.
Do you know of any coaches who have been accused of sexual abuse but can still pass their background check and are in good standing with USATF?
This lawsuit is about a tennis coach was credibly accused of sexual abuse, charged, tried in 2010, and ultimately there was a hung jury, he was not convicted. The state of California permanently revoked his teaching credentials in 2011.
No longer eligible to coach at the high school level, he moved to the club level, forming a club (or whatever the tennis equivalent is) with his local association, who most likely knew, or should have known, about the allegations against him, given that they were public and had been covered in the local media. Not surprisingly, he continued to abuse athletes.
He was reported to law enforcement in 2014, and the allegations were found to be credible, but the prosecutor declined to charge it. It is unclear to me how US Tennis responded to this, the lawsuit did not focus on this.
Eventually more victims came forward, he was tried and convicted and was recently sentenced to 255 years in prison.
This lawsuit alleges that either the background check was not performed, or that they were negligent in how it was done. I strongly suspect that he was checked, and he passed, because he was not convicted in the first case.
So this comes down to whether or not the local Association and/or US Tennis were negligent in allowing him to be a member in good standing in 2011, despite it being public knowledge that there had been credible allegations against him.
USATF did have a similar case in 2005 with Vernon Smith. Twice a jury was hung and he was never criminally convicted, however, the USATF Board of Directors at that time banned him for life.
If you know of any similar cases in our sport, and there has not been any public action from USATF against that person, please report it to safesport@usatf.org.
They may already know, but it is better to have something over reported to them than for them to not know.
There is tremendous institutional knowledge at the Association level in our sport. It is very important that volunteers share these historical cases with the national office, because they may not know, especially if the case was not widely reported in the local media.
You don’t think they are coaching anymore? What if they moved out of your area? Memories fade and stories fall off the internet.
Err on the side of reporting.
“The suspect was alone with the victim at a facility in Ashburn and conducting training exercises when he groped the teenager multiple times.”
Is your club following USATF’s SafeSport Handbook?
This club wasn’t.
Interactions between minors and adults must be observable and interruptible.
The CAS arbitrator has ordered that Vin Lananna is reinstated as USATF President and Board Chair effective immediately.
Just a reminder that protecting athletes from sexual misconduct is not important to AAU Sports or AAU Track and Field.
AAU has a handbook similar to USATF’s SafeSport Handbook… but if they ever take any action against coaches who violate it, we’ll never know because they never take public action.
AAU does not recognize SafeSport. A coach banned by SafeSport for sexual misconduct is free to coach in AAU if they can pass the background check. We have several coaches on our banned list that can pass a background check.
We know AAU hates banning coaches because we can see how hard it was for victims of Rick Butler (volleyball) to get him banned from AAU.
If AAU ever did ban a coach for noncriminal sexual misconduct, USATF would never know, because AAU doesn’t share that information, there would be nothing to stop that coach from joining USATF.
If you love AAU and care about whether or not they are enabling predators to have access to children, demand that they do better. Bans should be public and AAU should respect SafeSport bans.