WAG USAG fails athletes - Azarian

[JediMurphy]

For those that have heard or been following the USAG handling of the abuse allegations on Azarian gymnastics, this is a document shared with me i was given permission to publicly share. After 30-40 victims came forward, USAG ruled over the holiday weekend that the suspended coaches were going to be "pardoned" after completing 50 hours of educational training. While admitting in the letter to wrongdoing by the coaches, and even following a brief hearing a few weeks ago that upheld the interim suspension for one of the coaches (the others backed out after seeing the result of the first one), USAG did not leave it up to a panel to make the final call as they originally promised. They had told victims to prepare for the final hearing for all three coaches, when out of nowhere this letter was sent to some of the families this past Monday. My friend's kid and her friends / families are devastated. What happened between the Azarians and USAG that things could change like that?
Here's the letter below that some received on Monday and it has been reported the coaches are already back at work as of yesterday. How do you complete all the requirements in a day or two?
A lot of us really thought USAG would have learned something from the past and they would have the decency to not ignore the athletes this time.
But instead this response from USAG shows we underestimated what an awful. mismanaged organization they are. all very disturbing and sad.

 

[mommyof1]

Am I reading this right? USAG is making it the “duty” of unpaid parent volunteers to monitor practices and ensure a safe environment?

Are there even actual lawyers working on this?

 

[RTT2]

It would be fantastic if more parents could come together to push back against this organization that continues to prove it will never, ever put the needs of the young athletes first.

 

[Puff]

30-40 victims. And what was the magic number that it would have taken to side with the kids and the parents?

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Huge thanks to JBS for making the right call and restoring this thread.

The OC Register had a recent story about this situation: https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/...ucation-over-suspensions-for-azarian-coaches/

 

[bookworm]

Am I reading this right? USAG is making it the “duty” of unpaid parent volunteers to monitor practices and ensure a safe environment?

Are there even actual lawyers working on this?

And you can bet the only ones Azarian will allow to assume this "duty" will be those that already side with the terrible trio...

 

[bookworm]

To be fair to JBS, going to court can be a costly process, even if the case gets thrown out. I don't blame him for worrying if there was a legal threat.

And the kicker is, the suspended coach always behaved like a bully on this site and evidently , that is how he operates. As others have pointed out, the articles and and sanctions ( or lack thereof) that have been discussed on this site were out in public view.

 

[bogwoppit]

Ex admin note - I removed a small number of posts, only @suds was affected by this, I am sure they understand why.

We are taking a short time out. I will reopen this thread in the morning.

Please can we all take a very deep breath and move back to discussing the original topic, we are all doing the best we can to keep things going here. I know this is hard on so many levels, but we need some patience and a bit of slack whilst we manage things.

Thank you.

 

[bogwoppit]

Thread is now unlocked, please keep on topic. If anyone has any further issues with the CB or JBS, please deal with that by PM or a separate thread.

8:44am - Edited to add - I have removed a few more off topic posts that were pulling this thread away from the main topic. I did my best not to lose anything pertinent, so if it is a little disjointed, that is why.

Again, please keep on topic.

 

[cmg]

I just read the letter from USAG posted from above. As a parent who has been heavily involved in our booster organization, and put in many hours beyond what I should have to, just to make sure our support organization was strong and viable, the last thing I would also want to be involved with is monitoring abusive coaching behavior. What a terribly awkward situation if I thought a coach was not following protocol with my own daughter? What parent in their right mind would want this job? It is bad enough the time a few parents put in to help run the booster clubs and make sure parents pay their team dues, but now to monitor coaches?? First of all, that is the gyms job, and if the gym can not do that then they should not be in business. Second, USAG is just shifting responsibility from the gym and themselves to parents without any compensation. Seems to me that USAG should now be paying the parents to do the monitoring, yet we continue to pay our dues every year, and for what? So we can do their job? I don't know how long my daughter will be in gymnastics, I of course hope she reaches her goals, but I am glad we are not starting out at Level 3 right now and have 10 or more years of dealing with a failed organization. I had hopes with the new leadership, each time they got a new leader, but I continue to be disappointed. It really is not that hard to do the right thing, yet the USAG continues to make poor decisions surrounding abusive culture in the sport as a whole.

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

I can't even. For the few people who always comment not understanding why some of us want to burn it all down, this is why. USAG will never do the right thing. They do not care about the welfare of their child athletes in any meaningful way. I was actually willing to maybe wait and see with the new CEO, but nope, it's second verse, same as the first.

 

[JediMurphy]

I can't even. For the few people who always comment not understanding why some of us want to burn it all down, this is why. USAG will never do the right thing. They do not care about the welfare of their child athletes in any meaningful way. I was actually willing to maybe wait and see with the new CEO, but nope, it's second verse, same as the first.

agreed. i really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt thinking whatever their reasons (whether it be media / social pressure or just finally realizing past wrongs!), they would use this situation to take steps in the right direction. the answers seem so obvious don't they?!
is it even legal for a for-profit company to have unpaid volunteers? just a random thought that occurred.

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

I can't imagine being a parent in that situation either. I am a parent who is in the gym a lot. Way more than any of our other parents (I work the front desk sometimes). And I consider it my job to pay as little attention to what is happening with the gymnasts as possible - because I think it's really creepy when parents know (more than in passing) all about what/how my kid is doing at practice. If a child is getting fussed at by a coach for goofing off or cheating at something, I don't watch, I don't listen, sometimes I "go get something from my car," especially when I am the only parent in the gym, because I know my child would NOT want other adults listening in when she is in that position...

And trying to reconcile how strongly I feel about that with having to not only pay attention to everything that is happening in practice, but also to evaluate each coach/gymnast relationship and decide if it is healthy or not? And by whose standard? Because I consider myself to have some pretty hard lines about coach behavior and have actually left two gyms because of them, but yet I've been in fights online where parents were claiming something I believe is totally normal and OK was abuse, so...

Like did anyone think this through?