Male coaches can't roll with female students

[wab25]

So your organization immediately booted him out before determining what actually happened.
He lost his job, fiancée, house and car, and after witnesses supported his account and he was cleared, the organization welcomed him back...

You have to remember the time these things take.

The girl went to the police and made the accusation. The police show up to his place of work to arrest him. They know he is an accomplished martial artist, so they show up in large numbers. They handcuff him, in his place of work as the arrest him for sexual assault of a minor. They take him to jail. His job does not want that type of person working for them.... and he is now unable to come to work. His fiancee now finds out he was arrested and is in jail for sexual assault of a minor.... she is out. Since he is now in jail, he cannot make house payments or car payments... those go back to the bank. Because this was a somewhat small town.... the arrest of a prominent martial arts figure in the community for sexually assaulting a minor is a big story. At this point, the organization only knows that one of their instructors just got into a lot of trouble. They either would not give him bail or he could not afford the bail... he ended up in jail for months before the trial. Fortunately, he had a decent lawyer and was able to prove his innocence at the trial and was found not guilty.

It seems the organization itself was part of what happened to him.

A high profile instructor in your organization just got arrested for sexually molesting a minor.... one of his students in your organization. This story made all the news headlines and he is now in jail awaiting trial. The only side of the story going out is the victim's side. At this point, nobody really knows what happened. There have been many times when the instructor has been guilty as charged... a few times when they are innocent. Was the organization supposed to stand behind this guy, not yet knowing the truth? What would your organization do in this situation?

Welcoming him back after his life had already been turned upside down doesn't undo that.

You are correct. But, what else can the organization do? Note that even he agrees with the actions that the organization took. Our organization has zero tolerance for this type of stuff. Do the wrong thing and you are out, period.... no matter who you are.

 

[windwalker099128 159]

Do the wrong thing and you are out, period.... no matter who you are.

By your own account, he didn't. You also say the students, parents, and teaching assistant who were there all said he did nothing wrong.
Did your organization talk to any of them before immediately booting him out? Or did nobody ask until the trial?
The story as you've told it doesn't really add up.

You say, “At this point, nobody really knows what happened.” If nobody knew, why act as though the accusation had already been established without first looking into it?

 

[wab25]

By your own account, he didn't. You also say the students, parents, and teaching assistant who were there all said he did nothing wrong.
Did your organization talk to any of them before immediately booting him out? Or did nobody ask until the trial?
The story as you've told it doesn't really add up.

You say, “At this point, nobody really knows what happened.” If nobody knew, why act as though the accusation had already been established without first looking into it?

So, an accusation was made to law enforcement that had enough credibility for them to arrest the guy and keep him in jail for months. Is the organization supposed to ignore that? Second guess that?

Once the DA finally dismisses all charges once the DA determined that there was no truth to the charges... Should the organization still keep the guy booted out?

 

[skribs127 148]

So, an accusation was made to law enforcement that had enough credibility for them to arrest the guy and keep him in jail for months. Is the organization supposed to ignore that? Second guess that?

Once the DA finally dismisses all charges once the DA determined that there was no truth to the charges... Should the organization still keep the guy booted out?

The organization could take a non-stance. "We are aware of the allegations and are letting the courts handle due process in this case. Currently he is suspended from the organization, pending his trial. Once the trial concludes, we will use the verdict from the trial in determining his future or lack thereof with our organization."

Or something like that. Something that acknowledges this is serious, acknowledges that any immediate risks are mitigated (with the suspension), and acknowledges how the investigation is being handled (through the legal system).

 

[Emp.Ice3]

Disclaimer 1: This thread is based on new rules at my gym, which are based on situations that have happened outside of my gym. To my knowledge, there have been no incidents or allegations of this type of misconduct at my gym. This is a proactive response my gym is taking in effort to avoid:

1. This kind of situation happening at our gym, which would hurt the students.
2. Fake allegations of this kind of situation happening at our gym, which would hurt the coaches.

Disclaimer 2: This thread is specifically discussing the secondary risk of these new measures. In cybersecurity, secondary risk is the risks that are introduced through security measures. For example, a harder password is easier to forget, which may impact your ability to login. It's the same idea as side effects in medicine: ibuprofen is great, but not if it gives you nosebleeds (like it does to me). Obviously the misconduct is far worse than any of the ramifications discussed in this thread. However, because this isn't a problem at my gym, the secondary effects become more noticeable.

The situation: Recently there's been many public allegations of sexual misconduct in BJJ between male coaches and female students, sometimes underage students. This has been public enough that IBJJF has published guidance on the situation. When this happens, there's a few problems at play:

1. The biggest problem: students who are directly hurt by the coach's misconduct.
2. The creation of a hostile training environment because of the misconduct.
3. The call into question of the ranking system: were promotions at this gym legitimate or were they the result of quid-pro-quo; and/or were people held back in rank because they did not accept unwanted advances.

IBJJF specified requirements (I'm not sure if new or reiterated) to help protect students and coaches:

1. All black belts in IBJJF must be SafeSport certified. (I do know there's a requirement that all IBJJF black belts have CPR and first aid training).
2. All black belts put into a teaching role in an IBJJF-affiliated gym must have a criminal history background check performed.

While this won't completely stop misconduct from happening, it will at least:

1. Give black belts training on how to spot misconduct from other coaches.
2. Reduce the chance of people with prior misconduct from being put into positions of power.

The new rule: The new rule at my gym, as of yesterday, which is designed both to protect the students and the coaches is this: if you are an adult male and you will line up on the coach's side of the line at the end of class, you are not to roll with female students in that class. Student-student there's no restrictions, coach-coach there's no restrictions, and I don't believe there's restrictions for female coaches.

A "coach" is:

• A black belt.
• An adult in the kids classes.
• A brown belt who has been designated as a coach in the gym. (Some brown belts line up coach's side, some line up student's side).

As someone in cybersecurity governance, and someone who has volunteered to perform background checks and security controls specifically to protect youth (in this case, for a church youth group), I believe these measures do a very good job of accomplishing the desired goal. However, because this kind of misconduct was not happening at my gym (to my knowledge) it creates the following secondary problems:

1. If the kids class is uneven, boys can roll with a coach, girls have to sit out for the round. This creates an unfair advantage for boys who get extra rounds and extra personalized coaching.
2. Often at my gym, the women are significantly smaller than most of the men. Coaches are usually the best at managing the size gap and giving the smaller student reasonable room to work. As the guy who has been the smallest in the gym for most of my tenure here (to the point where 90% of my rolls are 3+ weight classes up), I recognize the value in rolling with someone who will let you get some actual work in. Especially early on.
3. I know one big method professors use to evaluate students for promotion is by rolling with them. This way you can see how they respond to specific situations and overall get a feel for how they're using their pressure and leverage. This gives female students less opportunity to show their progress to a professor.
4. Upper-rank students now may have less opportunities for upper-rank roles. Our adult female students include mostly white belts. We have one purple belt who's been out for a long time due to injury. When she comes back, under this rule, she wouldn't be able to roll with most of the brown or any of the black belt men. Brown-purple is a different dynamic than brown-white or black-purple. But it still could be blocked by this rule.

Personally, I'm a little bit frustrated by this situation. As I've iterated numerous times in this thread, if the misconduct were happening at my gym, it would be reprehensible and should be squashed. But because it isn't happening, these new restrictions I feel have unfair negative effects specifically towards the women and girls in the class. However, I'm not the one who would need to deal with a lawsuit if one were to arise.

It is something that is on my mind, because I am planning on opening my own TKD school in the near future. However, Taekwondo is not nearly as intimate a martial art as BJJ, and so I think there's a lower primary risk in drilling or sparring with a female student during regular class. (I would implement policies to make sure coaches aren't alone with minors or with female students in which there's a power imbalance; including during opening, closing, and private lessons).

I covered this in my own thread I just posted somewhat, but I do want to offer a more concise answer which actually adresses your question. In my opinion if men can't control themselves when rolling with women, they need to be removed immediately. All this solution does is conceal a problem that may or may not exist. It also creates an environment which deincentivizes women from training BJJ, further making it male-dominated, and making these systems of accountability more difficult to implement. Kids should obviously be under supervision, preferably their parents, when they are training BJJ, and should never train privately.
This simply isn't a solution, period, end of sentence. This is a concealed attempt at oppressing women, instead of uplifting them in a sport where they are outnumbered and mistreated. Your gym needs to be having open conversations about these things, and their solutions need to be implemented in a way that is popular to students. These decisions being made unilaterally is unacceptable. If we are seriously so evil that we can't figure out how to roll with the opposite gender without assaulting them, and can't find any other solution to this besides segregation, we might as well just give up on BJJ and start playing lovely pickle ball.

 

[Kung Fu Wang128 159]

Male coaches can't roll with female students​

How about "Female coaches can't roll with mail students"?

It's not fair to assume that male is guilty and female is innocent. It can go the other way around too.

 

[Xue Sheng120 38]

As a man, a martial artist and a cop, this saddens me and pisses me off. And although I’ve never personally seen it first hand, I’ve been a student in a Jits dojo that was closed down because of it and the instructor prosecuted and found guilty.

My wife was training there with me. She never saw it either, it never happened when we were there, but it happened.

I know of a half dozen schools in New England over the years (all striking arts) that were closed and the instructor prosecuted and found guilty as well.

What sad and ugly things.

I know of 2 MA schools in my area, both TMA, that were closed for this, and IMO, both should have been beaten for it. One was caught with a student who was a minor. In the back seat of his car, behind his dojo, and the other got caught for giving alcohol and drugs to a minor and assaulting a minor… occurred in his dojo. I have no patience and no sympathy for rapists and even less for child molesters.

 

[Buka40]

This is a complicated thread, as it should be because it’s a complicated problem. And please don’t dismiss it by thinking “It’s not complicated at all, it’s as clear as black and
white!”

It’s only that clear after it’s over or during the end stages.

I’m fortunate to be able to look at it from experience in offending dojos, from experience as a cop, in experience through my wife’s and another senior female student’s eyes who were around it with me, experience from getting grappled into submission by several higher ranking female Jits students (almost every single time) and by teaching grappling to dozens of female students, a lot of whom were young with both their parents watching.

Important thread. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts.