Terri Schehr Posted October 11, 2023 Share Posted October 11, 2023 (edited) 8 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said: Well that was puke inducing. And see Tricia’s name on the byline. 👍 Ignoring issues is Personal for me as worked with and friends with a lady caught in the middle of a complaint. Had an older techie who was anti-woman. His history was known but his old co-workers were now managers and thought he couldn’t be replaced. He was checking a project the lady was in charge of and she did most the work. She got told “why are you here I’m sure someone else (male) did the real work”. Our boss had the craps of him so pushed back hard. I had to write a witness report on the training he gave years before. The line in question was “I don’t know why women are in this class anyway”. I was a witness, it got reported and swept under the rug. He ended up finally retiring (and got fired from his next job for being a jerk to customers) That’s terrible. I had this boss who would sneak up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders like he was giving me a massage. Made me very uncomfortable. But stupid me, I said nothing. I guess we (women) were conditioned to tolerate an inordinate amount of #### to keep a job back then. Edited October 11, 2023 by Terri Schehr 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IllianaLancerContra Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 3 hours ago, HockeyDad said: It demonstrates that they are unserious, or stupid. Or both. As unserious and stupid are not mutually exclusive, I am tending toward both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cixelsyd Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 2 hours ago, Terri Schehr said: That’s terrible. I had this boss who would sneak up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders like he was giving me a massage. Made me very uncomfortable. But stupid me, I said nothing. I guess we (women) were conditioned to tolerate an inordinate amount of #### to keep a job back then. Ugh - do not remind me. I have one of those at my place of work. None of us say anything because he is retiring. But he has been retiring for six years, on and off. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Holland Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 1 hour ago, IllianaLancerContra said: As unserious and stupid are not mutually exclusive, I am tending toward both. The appearance of concern. safeSport? Right. the appearance of “doing the right thing”. Welcome to dci. Where decades of suspect behavior is tolerated as long as they can bring ticket sales without being the downfall catalyst. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
totaleefree Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 I think in this case it has already succeeded in 160 marchers lose a summer. SOA and DCI did react I just think that suing a non profit that gave up a whole season over the incident is not going to go far. What is success in this case 3000 marchers losing a season ? If a crime was committed they should be charged in crimminal court and the perpetrator punished, Not all the young people who are marching in DCI. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scheherazadesghost Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 Again... On 10/9/2023 at 8:43 PM, scheherazadesghost said: And, so everyone knows, survivors may be reading this. Can we not hint that their calls for accountability could lead to destroying the activity? That's not okay. Future members possibly not being able to march in this corps are not nearly the same level of victim as the actual victim here. Not even remotely close. Blaming victims for that possibility is still unacceptable and the very reason why 1. they rarely step forward and 2. things don't get better. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjohn76 Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 4 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said: SS is the training program only for DCI because they don't have the same status with SS as say, USA Gymnastics does: the "national governing body" moniker and status. I don't know how orgs acquire this status. Again, hoping the new CEO will push in this direction. There's an entire process to becoming a recognized as a NGB, but one of the criteria is membership in one the international sports federations that governs a sport included on the program of the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Pan-American Games, or the Parapan American Games. Until we see the marching arts includes in the Olympic or Pan-American Games, the door is pretty much closed on WGI, DCI or some other entity becoming a NGB. That leaves SafeSport as solely an advisory/training resource for DCI and many other youth organizations that are not affiliated with a NGB. Even for NGB's, there continues to be quite a bit of concern about SafeSport's ability to process reports effectively and in a timely manner. Here's an excerpt from a recent article that covers some of those concerns: https://www.thesportsexaminer.com/tsx-report-accountability-money-safesport-worries-highlight-usopc-review-hearing-ioc-postpones-la28-added-sports-announcement/ Quote Grace French, founder of The Army of Survivors, was clear: “SafeSport has not been a support or a place of trust for athletes to this point. The survivors we talk to are all frustrated with the process, and felt there was no transparency, nor was there good communication about their cases and investigations. This extends to SafeSport’s reputation in the sports world.” Scott Gray, the safe-sport coordinator for Minnesota Hockey added: “Substantive changes in its practices and procedures must occur, to improve our ability to respond and resolve misconduct in a fair and timely fashion with all aspects of due process taken into consideration.” He then highlighted several areas of change, including “the response and resolution process is far too slow,” sometimes taking more than a year. In his view, the Center should narrow its jurisdiction to abuse cases which also require mandatory reporting to law enforcement, “and most NGBs are capable of handling the less serious cases in a prompt fashion, and in many cases, can and should be handled by the coach or the local program leadership.” Gray noted that “the vast majority of cases the Center takes jurisdiction over result in a determination of ‘administrative closure,’ meaning the Center has determined that no action should be taken. NGBs are made aware of this result, but are not allowed to learn the underlying facts of the initial complaint, or if we were already aware, the Center’s exclusive jurisdiction prohibits the NGBs from taking any action on their own.” He asked that if the Center ‘administratively closes’ a case, it should cede jurisdiction to the relevant NGB for its own review and response: “The high rate of administrative closure erodes confidence among our constituents to the extent that concerned participants and parents don’t want to make a report to the Center because they feel nothing ever happens.” Given the above concerns, I can understand why SafeSport isn't in a position to take on additional investigations for non-affiliated organizations/activities. Of course, they will sell you training materials so you can help prevent or end abuse within your organization... but their support of that mission/goal really ends once the purchase has been made. So what are the realistic alternatives? There are resources out there to help organizations craft policies intended to prevent/respond to misconduct. That's a great starting point, and we've seen many organizations (including DCI) take that step in recent years. There are many law firms out there that cater to non-profits and handle sensitive investigations and other crisis situations that involve misconduct. From an integrity standpoint, you would expect these firms to investigate reports objectively, but it always concerns me that their findings could lean in favor of whoever is paying their fees. Once the findings are in, who is responsible for assessing/enforcing penalties? Do they have teeth, or are they simply a paper tiger? I look at the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) as a somewhat comparable non-profit organization where it's members are completely independent clubs/corporations that compete locally and travel to other locations. The AAU is not affiliated with Team USA, so they don't have full access to SafeSport... similar to DCI organizations. They did develop their own policy which is linked below: https://image.aausports.org/pdf/AthleteProtectionandAbusePreventionPolicy.pdf Similar to what we're seeing now, AAU and individual clubs have faced lawsuits for misconduct. Here's one example: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2022/07/29/iowa-youth-basketball-players-settlement-coach-greg-stephen-abuse-case/10188132002/ Despite a sizable judgement in the linked case above, neither AAU or the club ceased operations. In fact, looking at the club's website... I don't see a single mention of Youth Protection Policies despite the fact that they "agreed to strictly adhere to protocols intended to protect the welfare of youth athletes". https://barnstormersbasketball.com/ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 (edited) 8 hours ago, totaleefree said: I think in this case it has already succeeded in 160 marchers lose a summer. SOA and DCI did react I just think that suing a non profit that gave up a whole season over the incident is not going to go far. What is success in this case 3000 marchers losing a season ? If a crime was committed they should be charged in crimminal court and the perpetrator punished, Not all the young people who are marching in DCI. As the details haven’t been released yet we don’t know the reasons for the suit. If it was because SoA/DCI knew of problems and did nothing I don’t know of any criminal law that apply. A new SoA BoD gave up a season to try to straighten out their mess. I didn’t see that DCI had been involved in any way. And not a fan of “innocent people have already been hurt so why hurt them more by going after the guilty”. If victim(s) want to go thru the hell of testifying, etc to make sure justice is done then more power to them Edited October 12, 2023 by JimF-LowBari 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terri Schehr Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 9 hours ago, C.Holland said: The appearance of concern. safeSport? Right. the appearance of “doing the right thing”. Welcome to dci. Where decades of suspect behavior is tolerated as long as they can bring ticket sales without being the downfall catalyst. Drum Corps: Making the abnormal “normal” for fifty years (at the very least). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HockeyDad Posted October 12, 2023 Share Posted October 12, 2023 8 hours ago, totaleefree said: I think in this case it has already succeeded in 160 marchers lose a summer. SOA and DCI did react I just think that suing a non profit that gave up a whole season over the incident is not going to go far. What is success in this case 3000 marchers losing a season ? If a crime was committed they should be charged in crimminal court and the perpetrator punished, Not all the young people who are marching in DCI. What is success? Success is no one gets sexually abused in a drum corps again. If SOA taking a one year timeout doesn’t do it, and spoiler alert, it won’t, then more needs to be done. I’m sorry if that means we miss our 10 minute pageantry shows until DCI takes this seriously instead of the empty words we’re getting from them now. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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