I hadn't seen the ages, so yeah, that does change my view of the coach himself. A married 44 year old getting with an 18 year old is creepy, no disagreement here.
But doesn't change my view/questions on SafeSport; why are they involved and putting him on probation? No laws or rules were broken. Pretty sure SafeSport didn't even exist when this affair occurred. Just because something is taboo or creepy, doesn't mean they get to make up their own laws (years after the fact) to punish people. And talking about a "power imbalance" implies they'd have a problem with the relationship even if the ages were closer together.
1. How old was the athlete on the day the relationship started?
2. How old was the athlete the day he started coaching her? Because even if (a) is 18, if he was coaching her before 18 that would be deemed grooming for sex IMHO. The whole point of grooming is that it lays the groundwork for sex even if the sex hasn't happened. It's like he is saying to her, as a CHILD, 'hey lets get to be good friends now so we can have sex a bit later'.
This is getting quite the response. Interestingly enough, many of the same people commenting on this situation, likely say nothing about the epidemic of teachers being caught having sex with actual minors. They likely don’t say anything about their politicians and media figures being implicated in underage sex scandals like the Epstein issue. Most of those teachers vote Democrat too. Just stating a fact.
But my goodness, get a guy for engaging in a private situation with a legal adult. I understand ‘power imbalance’, but what I don’t understand is the hypocrisy with so many people.
Why are you projecting this on all of the commenters here? What comments have possibly shown this as Democrat hypocrisy?
Is it so unfathomable that people from any political background find a married 44 year old coach getting with an 18 year he coaches a bit off?
Really don't think there was a chance of grooming going on here prior to the sexual relationship in addition to the power imbalance? The hill some people choose to die on, good grief...
This is getting quite the response. Interestingly enough, many of the same people commenting on this situation, likely say nothing about the epidemic of teachers being caught having sex with actual minors. They likely don’t say anything about their politicians and media figures being implicated in underage sex scandals like the Epstein issue. Most of those teachers vote Democrat too. Just stating a fact.
But my goodness, get a guy for engaging in a private situation with a legal adult. I understand ‘power imbalance’, but what I don’t understand is the hypocrisy with so many people.
This is a running website. We are commenting on a running coach. I would guarantee most people that have a problem with this are also against teachers having sex with minors.
The HYPOCRISY is that these decisions are not made consistently. They seem to be random, conflicting with others, and have been shown to be generally unfair to the accused, who really has no reasonable way defend themselves. I fully AGREE with ROJO when he said "I've generally thought that sports governing bodies don't need to be the police- that's the police's job."
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