<p>I’m sorry, hiring an attorney before confronting this guy just isn’t right.IMO. Tell your husband what happened and have him talk to this guy…in a not so friendly manner.</p>
<p>I don’t think that talking to him is going to change anything.
I am confident that staff volunteer or otherwise in a school have already undergone training about behavior including behavior that could open the school to a lawsuit.
Usually in schools behavior by staff is so tightly dictated, that anyone who is out of line should be obvious.
I think you can express admiration for the youth and vitality of young people without it being taken as sexual harrassment.
That word choice especially in combination is overtly sexual.</p>
<p>I have not ever heard my daughters coaches say anything with sexual overtones.
The head coach/Principal needs to informed in writing ASAP, with a request to be kept informed when action is taken.</p>
<p>Normally, I would be the last one to hire a lawyer, but in this situation, I think it’s a good idea. A girl, or even her parents, complaining about lewd comments might be easy to belittle or dismiss, but not an attorney’s letter. Unfortunately, you can’t count on a school administrator to do the right thing, and you want to nip this problem in the bud. You don’t want to get sucked into any nonsense, and involving a lawyer will probably get swifter action.</p>
<p>Long ago, everyone in my office had to attend ‘Sexual Harassment’ Training. The thing that stuck with me was this phrase, “It is not considered harassment if someone says something to you UNLESS you tell them that it is offensive.” You had to TELL them they were out of line before you could file a complaint.<br>
I wonder if that rule is still in effect? (It was a govt. office., and a long time ago.)</p>
<p>As the mother of a long-time female competitive swimmer, maybe I’m just being overly sensitive to the “coach” aspect of this situation. But in my opinion, no teenage girl should have to “tell” a coach at her school that his comments about her body are offensive before she can complain about them. It is just wrong, plain and simple!</p>
<p>Confronting someone like that will do absolutely nothing but make him defensive. The coach needs to be told and the administration of the school and he needs to be spoken to by them, 2 on 1.</p>
<p>Karen Colleges - my h took the sexual harassment training last year (he is a state employee). The short answer is that it can be considered sexual harassment even if the victim doesn’t say anything to anybody until much later.</p>
<p>You know what the saddest part of this type of situation is to me? It is rarely the daughters/sons of people like sewhappy, and most of the others shocked and sickened at the thought of what could potentially happen. The most vulnerable kids for predators are kids who are from dysfunctional families of one form or another…kids who crave attention, and don’t really know when boundries are crossed. Perhaps because they are starved for attention…and what comes to my mind is, when my young kids would have tantrums, people would tell me not to run over to try to calm them down, because bad attention is better then no attention to some kids…(I hope you could understand that line of thought) But what I mean is, for a vulnerable kid to get any sort of praise, accolades or extra attention from a coach, teacher, policeman…you name it, its possibly the “best” attention they get. I could easily see how a child could be lured into unsafe situations.</p>
<p>There was actually a huge scandal in a nearby school district a few years ago. A male teacher in his 30’s, married with 3 kids…coach of the girls soccer team(?) one of the girls sports teams, had a particular girl in his class and on the team. This girl is from the exact type of family situation I described before…kids on the team were uneasy because they noticed how much closer this girl seemed to be getting with the teacher…they were texting during class!!! He started to drive her home, etc…Well, a few of the girls on the team finally reported it to the administration…full investigation followed, teacher was found AT the girls home, watching the superbowl in her bedroom!!! While her mother was sitting in the living room (drunk). Needless to say, he is now in jail…his young family destroyed…the girls life is ruined. One of the ugliest parts of this story is, that once it all came out in the open, people were heard to say, they “thought” they felt something was inappropriate, but they weren’t sure, so didn’t want to ruin “HIS” life with false accusations. If these people had reported him right away, maybe he never would have ultimately molested this girl…Maybe he would have been scared “straight”. We won’t ever know, because people chose to look the other way instead.</p>
<p>Sad story…still pops up now and then in the local paper. What it has done in our community is to remind us, that if any of us feel something is inappropriate, its our job to report it. Let the proper authorities investigate and prove innocence or guilt. </p>
<p>I think we have to remember, not everyone has decent, loving parents looking after their well-being. We need to step up as a community to make sure all the kids are safe. If we suspected this “coach” of selling drugs to the kids, it wouldn’t be a hard choice to make…we’d report him in a New York minute!! Why is it so hard in these perv situations?</p>
<p>Please, please keep your daughter away from him!! I was in a very similar situation except he was the head of my softball league and it was also a very close community. Anyway, something terrible ended up happening to me and I don’t want there to be a chance that your daughter has to go through it.</p>
<p>I’m a lawyer–though this isn’t my area of expertise–so perhaps I just have a different “take” of what consulting an attorney means. The fact that someone CONSULTS an attorney does NOT mean the person is going to sue. MANY times, I’ve told people who were “gung ho” to sue that it would be a huge mistake. </p>
<p>I think lawyers can help you think through a situation and often they can both help you with your problem AND keep you from making a mistake in dealing with it that will get you into trouble. The down side, of course, is cost. But often you can get a low-coat initial consultation through a bar association legal referral service. </p>
<p>Legal counsel is what you seek when you have a problem and need advice. It shouldn’t be seen as a last resort.</p>
<p>jonri, we’re both lawyers, and I don’t think we disagree about this. (I had prefaced the statement you quoted by saying that talking to a lawyer was not a bad idea.) I was just reacting to what seemed to be a widespread feeling among people who had posted to that point that the OP had a variety of satisfactory legal remedies that ought to be pursued. I doubted that, and I doubted that pursuing legal remedies would be a great idea even if that were possible.</p>
<p>sewhappy, I am so glad that you retained an attorney. Once you added in that he is a part-time coach that amped up my concern. I was going to add that if you go to school authorities make sure you put everything in writing…your complaint, any follow-up etc. It is so important that there is a paper trail in any complaint against a school or school personnel issue. Obviously your lawyer will handle this.</p>
<p>It’s important for other posters out there who aren’t as alarmed (as most of us who have posted are) to realize that this kind of stuff happens more often than we all care to believe. At my own high school during the late 70’s we had a gay, male teacher propositioning boys (in very, very suggestive ways), a girls basketball coach having sexual affairs with team members (he was fired for that), a male English teacher having lunchtime trysts with female students in his classroom and an old codger who was notorious for coming on to the girls- me included, (until my BF told him to take his hands off of me- A wonderfully humiliating moment for the coot!), and who liked to give A’s to the girls who wore skirts and dresses. All the students knew what was going on, I’m sure the admin was aware of the rumors as well, but chose to turn a blind eye. For anyone who has similar stories with kids in schools today…MAKE NOISE!! DRAW ATTENTION TO IT!! ALERT THE AUTHORITIES!! Do Not let our sons and daughters become victims of these scumbags. There should be ZERO TOLERANCE for these pervs to be in ANY of our schools (colleges included).</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes, there has been a lot of reasonable and interesting debate on this thread, but your post brings home the reality of how our children can be harmed. Your experience must have been awful–hope you’re o.k. now.</p>