This is how accusations should work. I agree with @hanyuufan5 that parents shouldn't have to wait for an abuser to be convicted before being removed from working with children. In most cases where adults work with children (teachers, coaches in sports with good anti-abuse rules, etc.), an accused person is put on leave for the duration of the investigation. If someone was truly innocent, a false accusation (which are incredibly rare) I don't think would have much bearing on their career.
Against my better judgment about wading into this situation, I would disagree with that false accusations are incredibly rare or that it wouldn't have much bearing on the accused's career. I know of multiple situations (not just one or two) where people made false accusations to "get rid" of someone else. In one case, a coach had multiple grievances filed against him by another coach's parents (i.e. different parents, so that it wouldn't just be "one person"), with each costing several thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to clear, until he quit that rink because they took up so much time (and money). No grievances were successful. (I know it from that coach's standpoint, so take it what you will.) That was before SafeSport, so today, it would likely have resulted in a SafeSport suspension if they were SafeSport-related.
You have to keep in mind that skating is a small but highly competitive world. Coaching can be a very lucrative job if you can attract enough students or have the reputation of being a good coach. Some parents are also going to be very competitive about their kids and want everyone to see their kids be seen as "the best" within a rink or whatever. Because it's a very expensive sport, very involved parents also want to see a good return on their money, so to speak (in terms of their kid's prestige). We'd like to pretend that everyone is going to "fight fair" but the reality is that's not going to be the case. Some will take the attitude of "whatever means necessary". And the more tools available to them, i.e. grievances, SafeSport, etc., the better.
Being suspended can also be a big impact to your career, even if it's only temporary, say 3 months, and then you're cleared. You're not allowed to coach, take students to competitions, etc. Your students are not just going to sit around and wait. They'll likely go to someone else. You still have to pay your bills. Because the accused is announced while the accuser(s) aren't, your own life is disrupted but everyone else's can continue on. Your life gets thrown into turmoil as you deal with the allegations, and they become a huge distraction preventing you from focusing on your students. Not just money and time but your mental focus. If it's competition season, you better find a good proxy coach for your students in the interim. In fact in the same way that U.S. presidential elections have "October surprises", a smart but unscrupulous coach or parents would throw in some SafeSport allegations around August or September or so just to throw their competitors off-kilter right before competitions start in October (i.e. Regionals). Even if you're cleared, rival coaches can still whisper around that you were investigated but perhaps cleared only because of insufficient evidence (wink, wink), or he-said she-said, etc., "are you sure you want your kid around that coach", etc. And parents will know anyway when the suspension is announced. Even if you're cleared, there will still be the stigma. You have to take time to build up a customer base again, etc. It's not a trivial matter.
I'm not saying that people will flippantly throw out false accusations, but that we have to keep in mind that the skating world has a lot of powerful personalities, among coaches, among parents, among rink administrators, etc., and unfortunately some will see things like SafeSport not as a way to protect kids but as just another tool in their toolbox to execute "power plays" against others. Hence, false accusations should always be considered a possibility.
One thing that comes to mind, and I genuinely don't know the answer, mostly because I don't really know how to search for it: Are there any USFSA/SafeSport suspensions/bans for someone making a false accusation against someone else? Because there are obviously suspensions/bans for SafeSport etc. stuff, so we know that the system "works", i.e. the system does (eventually) ban people for SafeSport stuff, even if it takes a long time and/or only a not-big-enough percentage of perpetrators are punished. But if no one has ever been kicked out for making a false accusation against someone else, then you're left with either 1) false accusations never happen, or 2) false accusations happen but the chance of getting caught and punished for it is currently
exactly zero. And I can state with certainty that they do happen, when I'm aware of multiple instances in just my own limited knowledge of the skating world, being a relative newcomer and not really keeping up to date on what's going on in this world, so I highly doubt that it doesn't happen in the vastly wider part of the skating world that I don't know about.
Having said that, SafeSport is in many ways put in a very difficult situation. On one hand, you want to protect athletes. On the other hand, you want to make sure that the tools used to protect athletes do not get abused or misused. But an investigation by definition is conducted under incomplete information -- you don't know what the result will be ahead of time. If they set the bar for suspension so high that a person isn't suspended until they're formally convicted, then that person can continue to prey on athletes during the investigation. But if the bar for suspension is so low that you suspend people at or near the beginning of an investigation, then it's more likely that it becomes a tool to disrupt other coaches etc.
And the worst case of all is when the result is that it's indeterminate. You can't really conclusively say that the person was guilty, nor that the person was innocent. Such as he-said she-said situations. Of course in a court of law, a person is considered innocent "until proven guilty" so there is no such gray area. A court of law however has the ability to subpoena phone records, have people testify under oath, etc., i.e. has much more power to get to the bottom of the matter. As far as I know, SafeSport has no such authority. As such, there will be cases in that gray area. In which case no matter how it rules, it's basically screwed either way. I certainly don't envy them.
And that's something to realize. SafeSport is imperfect. The criminal justice system is imperfect. SafeSport will never be 100%; there will always be mistakes, either in one direction or another. It doesn't mean that we don't try, but it does mean that it will fall down on the job from time to time. That's something that we have to accept and understand, unless and until someone comes up with a better system.
Thanks for the summary!
