Whitman Teacher and Crew Coach Arrested

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey Whitman rowing parent: I believe you.

I believe this:

It was because normal people cannot imagine the kind of behavior described

A decade ago, I sent my ex-husband packing when I learned that he had carried on an affair of many years with another woman.

Five years.

I wasn't "willfully blind."

I was intentionally and deliberately misled.

I was deceived and lied to.

and because I am a decent-enough person -- and sure, a little naive, still -- I don't imagine the worst about people.

I believed my ex-husband was at work.

This coach... There is a reason we call them "predators." They are cunning. They have tried, true methods. They operate by stealth and are skilled at covering their tracks. The longer they evade detection, the more effective they become: Because there is nothing out of the ordinary. It's just how he is. How he has always been. It's normal.

They are master manipulators. That is how they operate. They are charming and charismatic and very skilled at identifying and exploiting others' vulnerabilities. And creating vulnerability -- the better to exploit you all with, my dear.

Whitman rowing parent, everyone loves to think that it wouldn't happen to them, that they would have been the wiser, would not have been so easily duped.

You know better. So do I.

You would never in a million years intentionally put your child in danger (for a scholarship?? Are people mad?)

You were deceived, you were manipulated, you were lied to. You were intentionally and deliberately misled.

You were blind, yes. And now that everything is out in the open -- well, of course it seems unfathomable that you couldn't see it before.

We have an astonishing ability to see things in ways that match up with our expectations. And I know how awful it feels to have missed such a danger, knowing he was hiding in plain sight, all along.

Focus on healing, now. Sending love to you and your community.

Finish the sentence. It is because the children were not believed. MCPS, teachers and John McCarthy have a long history of not believing children and calling them liars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good questions from PP. Whitman rowing parent, it appears that you did not read the Post article from today? It makes very clear that the board parents knew perfectly well that there were several years worth of allegations from multiple girls discussing the toxic team environment, favoritism, and verbal abuse from Shipley. Even the lam-o investigator confirmed this in both of her investigations. It sounds like the board and investigator also knew there were allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior as well, if not the horrifying facts that have now come to light. The article made clear that there were 4 board members who had been there for years; they absolutely knew what was going on and absolutely bear blame for allowing Shipley to continue to have access to all these kids.

You say it wasn’t about the parents’ college admissions dreams for their girls, but I find that very hard to believe. Why else did parents allow him to turn a one-season club sport into an almost year round one with a schedule more grueling than most college programs? I’m not blaming you or any parent other than the ones on the board who willfully turned a blind eye to Shipley’s many abuses for what happened to the sexual assault victims. But I don’t understand how parents (or school officials) allowed the girls to participate in this clearly bizarre cult-of-Shipley situation year after year.

I read the article, but I see it through a different lens than you do.

I recognize that you find it hard to believe what I'm saying about scholarships and winning.

But it's the truth.

I am completely willing to believe that you or any other random Whitman rowing parent not in the inner circle had no idea that Shipley was an emotional abuser or predator. But you are really out of line with your comments about the Board. The article makes clear that several of them knew perfectly well that this guy was creating a very toxic environment at the very minimum, and they clearly had zero interest in protecting the girls who got together to write the letter.

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that he turned this club into an extraordinarily grueling year-long exercise of the sort most D1 coaches would find over the top, and no parents apparently said a peep about it other than the couple brave dissenters mentioned in the article.

I'm not out of line about in my comments about the board.
What I'm saying is the truth.
I'm sorry you find it so unsatisfying.

I’m more mystified than unsatisfied. If you want to defend the board, have at it, but why? The fact that the board members may be “hardworking” in some context means nothing when they failed to do any of the due diligence necessary to fulfill the most minimal responsibilities placed on board members. You are not speaking any truth that is relevant now that we all know the board members completely ignored all the complaints about Shipley. If you are actually just a parent who didn’t know what was going on, then you should stop defending those who did and decided, for whatever reasons, to turn a blind eye.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good questions from PP. Whitman rowing parent, it appears that you did not read the Post article from today? It makes very clear that the board parents knew perfectly well that there were several years worth of allegations from multiple girls discussing the toxic team environment, favoritism, and verbal abuse from Shipley. Even the lam-o investigator confirmed this in both of her investigations. It sounds like the board and investigator also knew there were allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior as well, if not the horrifying facts that have now come to light. The article made clear that there were 4 board members who had been there for years; they absolutely knew what was going on and absolutely bear blame for allowing Shipley to continue to have access to all these kids.

You say it wasn’t about the parents’ college admissions dreams for their girls, but I find that very hard to believe. Why else did parents allow him to turn a one-season club sport into an almost year round one with a schedule more grueling than most college programs? I’m not blaming you or any parent other than the ones on the board who willfully turned a blind eye to Shipley’s many abuses for what happened to the sexual assault victims. But I don’t understand how parents (or school officials) allowed the girls to participate in this clearly bizarre cult-of-Shipley situation year after year.

I read the article, but I see it through a different lens than you do.

I recognize that you find it hard to believe what I'm saying about scholarships and winning.

But it's the truth.

I am completely willing to believe that you or any other random Whitman rowing parent not in the inner circle had no idea that Shipley was an emotional abuser or predator. But you are really out of line with your comments about the Board. The article makes clear that several of them knew perfectly well that this guy was creating a very toxic environment at the very minimum, and they clearly had zero interest in protecting the girls who got together to write the letter.

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that he turned this club into an extraordinarily grueling year-long exercise of the sort most D1 coaches would find over the top, and no parents apparently said a peep about it other than the couple brave dissenters mentioned in the article.

As a parent, no way I would have let my daughter participate knowing it.

These things happen as coaches and others know the parents aren't involved or don't care and its all about the parents wishes/needs.

I don't get where MCPS/principal was.

The principal reported it. From the story, MCPS didn’t give the police all the details and they chose not to investigate, therefore MCPS compliance doesn’t feel the need to investigate. MCPS peeps haven’t been conducting full on investigations at all during the pandemic. If the police don’t care, they let it go. Principals have a lot of predators running amok as a result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please read the board letter to the crew team when they renewed his contract. Talk about willful blindness between the school admin, the board, the parents and the joke of an HR investigator these girls has no chance. They left them to fend for themselves with a child predator.

Yes. I'm a parent at a different Bethesda HS; this case is just horrifying. And the responsibility isn't just with the abuser himself - it's with the Whitman administration and the parents who turned a blind eye to what they explicitly understood was deeply problematic behavior by an adult entrusted with the supervision of young women. I'm totally disgusted.

+10000 As a parent if my child told me something disturbing, they would not be on that team and I'd pay what ever I had to for a private team. This was a ripe set up for abuse as the coach quickly realized it.

[Anonymous]

As a former competitive rower (D1 and clubs after college), it's an incredibly intense sport. If you want to be competitive, you have to train very, very hard. And if you buy into that culture, that aspect of what Shipley did would be a feature, not a bug. I'm honestly not sure I want my kids rowing in HS, if they express any interest, because of how intense it is--I worry it would be too much for young kids.

As for the parents who claim they didn't see it: most parents don't want to believe something like this could happen to their kids. Many don't have any kind of experience, personally or professionally, with sexual predators. And plenty are SO horrified by the thought that they bury their heads in the sand rather than learn the signs. Couple that with the uber-competitive nature of many parents in this area, and, yeah, it's easy to see how it happened.

People seem to be making the assumption that parents who push their kids into the "best" academics and the most competitive sports are caring, observant parents, but usually, they're doing so out of their own self-interest.

[Anonymous]

I’m still stuck on letting a grown man take all these girls to Airbnb’s for out of town trips with no other adults/parents present. No one working with children should be given this kind of access. There were signs that he was inappropriate and the signs were completely ignored because parents wanted the status and success and scholarship money more than safety for their children. Period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m still stuck on letting a grown man take all these girls to Airbnb’s for out of town trips with no other adults/parents present. No one working with children should be given this kind of access. There were signs that he was inappropriate and the signs were completely ignored because parents wanted the status and success and scholarship money more than safety for their children. Period.

The problem with this thinking is that it allows you -- us -- to imagine that we are all sooo different from those Whitman parents, that different parents -- better parents -- would have noticed the signs and put a stop to things long ago.

Forget the part where that's a pretty uncharitable caricature of the Whitman community -- but it doesn't keep anyone safer. The fact is -- and this is backed up by research, feel free to google -- that we're all susceptible to manipulation. Predators show up in all kinds of communities. We are all vulnerable, to different degrees. All of our communities are full of individuals and families that are goal-driven, hardworking, that are achieve this or that. Our kindness makes us vulnerable. Our tendency to believe the best of people makes us vulnerable.

There's a litany of human psychological traits that make us easy prey for the most nefarious among us.

So yes to safeguards, yes to learning lessons. But the blame/shame thing here is, at best, not very constructive. And at worst, it's cruel.

Stop wagging your fingers and open your ears. Every community has voices that are marginalized and not listened to. Find the voices at your school. trust me they are there.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone given a good reason why the Board handed over the letter of complaint to the Coach this past summer (before he was arrested)? Anyone had to know that would chill further complaints. The justifications in the article, such as that the girls had not requested confidentiality, seemed pretty weak. I believe that many of the crew parents did not have all the facts, but that one fairly recent decision by the Board members seems pretty indefensible given that these concerns had been raised before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone given a good reason why the Board handed over the letter of complaint to the Coach this past summer (before he was arrested)? Anyone had to know that would chill further complaints. The justifications in the article, such as that the girls had not requested confidentiality, seemed pretty weak. I believe that many of the crew parents did not have all the facts, but that one fairly recent decision by the Board members seems pretty indefensible given that these concerns had been raised before.

Just more evidence the board was not looking out for the students. The fact the gave him the letter is incorrigible. It’s insane they gave him the letter!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As for the parents who claim they didn't see it: most parents don't want to believe something like this could happen to their kids. Many don't have any kind of experience, personally or professionally, with sexual predators. And plenty are SO horrified by the thought that they bury their heads in the sand rather than learn the signs. Couple that with the uber-competitive nature of many parents in this area, and, yeah, it's easy to see how it happened.

This is an excellent point. We should definitely be educating ourselves and our children better when it comes to social predators (whether sexual or not!)

For example: The emotional "overshare" is a classic grooming tactic, whereby the predator "opens up" -- often in a calculated way. This increases the likelihood that a decent, empathetic young person will open up in return -- which makes them more vulnerable to future manipulation. E.g. The predator could use what is shared against the target. Or -- more often -- the predator uses the emotional vulnerability to ramp up grooming. this can happen very slowly, over a span of years... So you don't even notice.

Anonymous wrote:
People seem to be making the assumption that parents who push their kids into the "best" academics and the most competitive sports are caring, observant parents, but usually, they're doing so out of their own self-interest.

Look, there are lots of people who have drunk the achievement top-25-college Kool Aid. I agree that people make a lot of crap decisions in service of what is in my opinion fool's gold -- and I get frustrated in many contexts by parents whose worldview seems unduly narrow and inflexible. But some of my best friends are caring, observant parents who've drunk the chase-the-college-acceptance Kool aid... More often they are plagued by anxiety -- e.g. what will happen if we don't push? our kid will never stand a chance unless we do xyz -- and this is the part I believe we can address more constructively.

We need to be reassuring our kids and our communities that there are multiple paths to "success," multiple paths to good, to practice being honest with ourselves -- ruthless, even -- about our motivations and our fears. If nothing else, that work provides a relief map of our blind spots and vulnerabilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone given a good reason why the Board handed over the letter of complaint to the Coach this past summer (before he was arrested)? Anyone had to know that would chill further complaints. The justifications in the article, such as that the girls had not requested confidentiality, seemed pretty weak. I believe that many of the crew parents did not have all the facts, but that one fairly recent decision by the Board members seems pretty indefensible given that these concerns had been raised before.

It is truly amazing. He was calling the athletes he coached names to the board members regarding the letter and then they renewed his contract!

I have(had) multiple rowers who row out of TBC. Shipley being a creeper wasn't a secret even for the female athletes on other teams. What non-rowing parents may not know is that there are tons of teams down at TBC everyday during the fall and spring seasons. The kids generally know each other from neighborhoods, elementary school, other sports, friends of friends, etc. They see each other every day down on the water and most weekends at regattas. They all talk and gossip. It was well known on our team that Shipley was an asshole to the kids but got results so everyone put up with him. He was openly abusive to his athletes which made a lot the the females from other teams feel uncomfortable. Yes rowing is intense but he was definitely an outlier in his public treatment of his athletes. Our teams travel a lot too. Never would it just be a coach and the kids. Never. We would see Whitman at the travel locations and do just assumed parents had gone too-- like every other team! The whole program is completely toxic.

The good news this that the girls rowing out of TBC did really well this fall. So glad to see them loving the sport....and not being humiliated in public or worse!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m still stuck on letting a grown man take all these girls to Airbnb’s for out of town trips with no other adults/parents present. No one working with children should be given this kind of access. There were signs that he was inappropriate and the signs were completely ignored because parents wanted the status and success and scholarship money more than safety for their children. Period.

The problem with this thinking is that it allows you -- us -- to imagine that we are all sooo different from those Whitman parents, that different parents -- better parents -- would have noticed the signs and put a stop to things long ago.

Forget the part where that's a pretty uncharitable caricature of the Whitman community -- but it doesn't keep anyone safer. The fact is -- and this is backed up by research, feel free to google -- that we're all susceptible to manipulation. Predators show up in all kinds of communities. We are all vulnerable, to different degrees. All of our communities are full of individuals and families that are goal-driven, hardworking, that are achieve this or that. Our kindness makes us vulnerable. Our tendency to believe the best of people makes us vulnerable.

There's a litany of human psychological traits that make us easy prey for the most nefarious among us.

So yes to safeguards, yes to learning lessons. But the blame/shame thing here is, at best, not very constructive. And at worst, it's cruel.

Stop wagging your fingers and open your ears. Every community has voices that are marginalized and not listened to. Find the voices at your school. trust me they are there.

Wow! You need therapy that you need this much mental gymnastics to justify that you looked past all the evidence to keep “good admissions “ and left unwitting parents in a position to put their horns in the hands of a predator.

The board held back evidence, justified his actions, protected their interests and created a situation ripe for abuse.

I know a ton of people in high level sports. NOBODY sends students with a coach and no parental oversight. NOBODY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m still stuck on letting a grown man take all these girls to Airbnb’s for out of town trips with no other adults/parents present. No one working with children should be given this kind of access. There were signs that he was inappropriate and the signs were completely ignored because parents wanted the status and success and scholarship money more than safety for their children. Period.

The problem with this thinking is that it allows you -- us -- to imagine that we are all sooo different from those Whitman parents, that different parents -- better parents -- would have noticed the signs and put a stop to things long ago.

Forget the part where that's a pretty uncharitable caricature of the Whitman community -- but it doesn't keep anyone safer. The fact is -- and this is backed up by research, feel free to google -- that we're all susceptible to manipulation. Predators show up in all kinds of communities. We are all vulnerable, to different degrees. All of our communities are full of individuals and families that are goal-driven, hardworking, that are achieve this or that. Our kindness makes us vulnerable. Our tendency to believe the best of people makes us vulnerable.

There's a litany of human psychological traits that make us easy prey for the most nefarious among us.

So yes to safeguards, yes to learning lessons. But the blame/shame thing here is, at best, not very constructive. And at worst, it's cruel.

Stop wagging your fingers and open your ears. Every community has voices that are marginalized and not listened to. Find the voices at your school. trust me they are there.

NP. Neither I nor any of the parents I know would be comfortable with our girls staying at an air BNB with a male coach and no female parent chaperones. For whatever reason, this was an extremely poor and reckless choice.

Also, it's clear the board with the exception of the dissenting parent, choose anticipated success of well-being.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone given a good reason why the Board handed over the letter of complaint to the Coach this past summer (before he was arrested)? Anyone had to know that would chill further complaints. The justifications in the article, such as that the girls had not requested confidentiality, seemed pretty weak. I believe that many of the crew parents did not have all the facts, but that one fairly recent decision by the Board members seems pretty indefensible given that these concerns had been raised before.

Zero knowledge beyond the article, but if I had to guess, the coach and board members had longstanding, probably overly friendly relationships. The tactics this guy was using with teens are the very same tactics predators use to ingratiate themselves with the teens' would-be protectors. They're charismatic. Charming. They make you feel like you're all on the same team! They are masters at building an us-against-them environment. (See: national politics.)

So if I had to guess, the board members who shared saw the coach as a friend and an ally, and over the course of years -- without realizing what was happening -- had come to believe that there were people in the club who were dissatisfied, disgruntled jerks. They were definitely part of the problem -- in the sense that but for their trust in the coach he could not have operated so freely -- and also, they were duped.

I am certain that the toxic environment the rowers describe extended to parental relationships. 1000%. So those three kids, whose parents have been complaining for years? Again? Ugh damn I guess they really do have a vendetta. I should let Coach know what's coming, they're really out to get him this time.

--
Not justifying. Describing how such a thing comes to pass.

Obviously it looks different and damning from the outside, in hindsight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m still stuck on letting a grown man take all these girls to Airbnb’s for out of town trips with no other adults/parents present. No one working with children should be given this kind of access. There were signs that he was inappropriate and the signs were completely ignored because parents wanted the status and success and scholarship money more than safety for their children. Period.

The problem with this thinking is that it allows you -- us -- to imagine that we are all sooo different from those Whitman parents, that different parents -- better parents -- would have noticed the signs and put a stop to things long ago.

Forget the part where that's a pretty uncharitable caricature of the Whitman community -- but it doesn't keep anyone safer. The fact is -- and this is backed up by research, feel free to google -- that we're all susceptible to manipulation. Predators show up in all kinds of communities. We are all vulnerable, to different degrees. All of our communities are full of individuals and families that are goal-driven, hardworking, that are achieve this or that. Our kindness makes us vulnerable. Our tendency to believe the best of people makes us vulnerable.

There's a litany of human psychological traits that make us easy prey for the most nefarious among us.

So yes to safeguards, yes to learning lessons. But the blame/shame thing here is, at best, not very constructive. And at worst, it's cruel.

Stop wagging your fingers and open your ears. Every community has voices that are marginalized and not listened to. Find the voices at your school. trust me they are there.

NP. Neither I nor any of the parents I know would be comfortable with our girls staying at an air BNB with a male coach and no female parent chaperones. For whatever reason, this was an extremely poor and reckless choice.

Also, it's clear the board with the exception of the dissenting parent, choose anticipated success of well-being.

over on of well-being. Sorry!