so much i could say. no matter what i say i look like the bad guy. as i stated from day one...MSU could have told someone they had a problem with the abuser. they knew as far back as 2000 that there was a problem. they KNEW he was working with underage gymnasts at USAG. never crossed their minds (?) that the very accusation made by college girls might be occurring over on the USAG side when they KNEW there was this relationship between MSU and USAG?
and how do i respond when someone posts "Multiple girls were raped at the central USAG training facility over many years". just how do you respond when that is false...and if i do i'm accused of defending the indefensible. one would be too many in my book. but "several"? absolutely false.
again, NOBODY KNEW what the POS was doing. did our culture contribute by providing him access? probably. but as ALL have said that are involved in this entire mess, including the victims, who would have known you couldn't trust a Doctor who's been around ALL of us for "several" years. and then abuse them under the guise of a medical procedure.
it's a mess.
I can see why you feel that no matter what you say, you're the bad guy. The reason is that, in this case, USAG has screwed up royally. They are indefensible, and you are still defending them. The goal now
should not be protecting USAG's reputation. The response I think most people are looking for is "yes, we have done badly, we will be making many changes in the future to prevent this happening again". Could MSU have done more? Absolutely, and if they had a representative on this board, I'm sure everyone would be all over them. But the fact that USAG was relying on others to be told about potential abusers, rather than maintaining their own proactive policies, is worrying.
I very much appreciate that you acknowledged the USAG culture contributed to the abuse. Complacency problems aren't unique to USAG; it's a common theme across almost all abuse situations. The problem is that since children and the general public might not recognise abuse, there needed to be stronger safeguards from those in charge to prevent those environments being created, and having those who
would recognise abuse readily available to evaluate and monitor the situation. Hindsight it 20/20, of course, but that should have been done beforehand, and there are no excuses there, which is another reason USAG can't be defended.
Hundreds of underage girls were sexually assaulted in USAG spaces over the course of twenty years. Whether or not you want to get into the semantics of "raped" vs. "molested", the truth is that the scale and extent of the abuse is shocking (to which you have naturally agreed), and to argue that they weren't raped doesn't acknowledge the true heart of the matter. It makes it sound like you're defending the abuser, even if you don't mean to.
I don't disbelieve you when you said nobody knew. The issue is that they
should have known. That's what people are really criticising USAG for.
I would add that people are concerned because, as the only representative of USAG on the board, your attitude represents the attitude of the entire federation. The defence of USAG before the acknowledgement of serious, systemic errors indicates that the organisation will be resistant to desperately needed change.
