President’s Message
I am very pleased to announce a new sponsorship relationship with General Motors. In 1997 General Motors signed the largest ever sponsorship with the United States Olympic Committee. The USOC was instrumental in extending the relationship to USA Gymnastics and adding General Motors as one of our treasured official sponsors.
The USOC recently has announced two additional grants to USA Gymnastics. An International Relations grant of $50,000 was awarded to assist with our Pan American Gymnastics Union and African Union exchange programs, and a total of $270,000 was awarded in Peak Grants to assist with preparing our Men's and Women's Teams to excel in international competition. Peak grants are only available to programs that are among the best in the world in their sport. Such recognition and funding for our Teams from the USOC is vitally important and we appreciate their support.
Last year I discussed our member misconduct process. We now have 26 people on our list of terminated members, plus three others who have been terminated by the British Columbia Gymnastics Association. We publish a list of these individuals to alert members who may encounter them as potential employees, contractors or colleagues. Our number one priority is to protect our athlete members. Almost every time the list is reprinted I get a call from a member wanting to discuss someone on the list.
Most of us think of sexual abuse as something that occurs between male coaches and girls. Increasingly the cases we see are male coaches accused and/or found guilty in the courts of sexual abuse with boys. We all need to be on our guard to provide the best possible protection for our athlete members. To do this, we must expand our awareness of the many different faces sexual abuse has.
If you are a club owner or in a supervisory capacity, you should be aware that the courts are increasingly holding those who know, or who should have known, responsible for abuse. USA Gymnastics attorney, Jack Swarbrick, reviewed a number of recent Court cases and concluded: "I believe the case summaries offer compelling testimony for the importance of creating and administering the type of member misconduct procedures you now employ. Even more so, they demonstrate why your clubs should be supportive of those efforts. While the analysis and outcomes in these cases differ, each demonstrates that 1) minors who are victims of sexual abuse will increasingly seek to recover from those individuals and institutions that could have or should have taken steps to protect them from the abusers and 2) courts are willing to extend liability to those classes of defendants." What can you do to protect your club and the athletes in your program against sex-ual abuse? A 1997 article in Womensport magazine offered the following key suggestions:
- Recognize that this is a crime of opportunity.
- Realize how abusive coaches exploit their power. Closed practices, unsupervised trips and team sleepovers provide opportunities for abuse to take place.
- Be aware that abusive coaches recruit parents. Todd Crosset, Assistant Pro-fessor of Sports Management at the University of Massachusetts, said, "A lot of these abusers are charming, and they make it unthinkable, just un-thinkable, that they would do this."
(I must note that this is very often the reaction of people who know gymnastics coaches who have engaged in sexual abuse.)- Encourage children to report their feelings and help them understand what constitutes abuse.
- Let coaches know they are being watched. This may include places for parents to watch practice and a frequent presence of club owners and head coaches during workouts.
The Reese's Gymnastics Cup in St. Petersburg, Florida was a great success, with a sold out, appreciative audience. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater Sports Foundation did a great job supporting this event, as did the gymnastics clubs in the area. The performances by the athletes were spectacular. I continue to be impressed with the quality of performance by our 1996 Olympians who are still doing a very high level of gymnastics. I hope many of you saw the broadcast of this event on Feb. 14 on NBC.
This article appears in the March 1998 issue of Technique, Vol. 18, No. 3.
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