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How many of you are going to be accused of inappropriate lewdness?


Randomguy

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I was investigated for grabbing a 15 year old's breasts when I was a teacher/softball coach.

When I was coaching high school varsity softball around 1990, we had a girl, a Sophomore, who could windmill pitch very fast but was also very wild.  My assistant coach and I decided she would benefit by being demoted to the JV team, whose coach had coached her in rec leagues and was good with pitchers, and she would get a lot of innings of experience instead of sitting mostly on the bench behind the two ace pitchers on the varsity team - one got a full scholarship to Stetson Univ. in Florida the next year and the other got a scholarship the following year to local UMBC, where she became a Division I All American in her Sophomore year.  So our demoted girl wasn't going to get much of a chance to pitch if we kept her on varsity!

But when I took her aside and told her she'd be on JV from then on, she went ballistic.  I was standing with my hands on the chain-link fencing of the home-plate backstop, stretching my previously operated-on Achilles tendons that would bother me a little until I took up cycling a couple decades later.  She screamed at me for not being a good coach, having no heart, etc. and stormed away, heading for the gym.

Some minutes later, our Athletic Director walked down to our practice field and said, "We've got a problem."  The girl claimed I had grabbed her by the breasts and threw her down to the ground.  Her parents, her father was an Army Colonel working at the Pentagon, showed up and believed her unconditionally and wanted me fired.

The girls on the team were interviewed and said I never touched her.  But the Colonel apparently had some influence with the Board of Education and I soon found myself being investigated.  Our Principal said, "Mickey, this is so ridiculous I'm going to call Social Services because I want them to look into and declare it too ridiculous for them to bother with." He did and Social Services said they refused to investigate such a ridiculous thing further.

But the parents persisted, so we played a game for a couple months of meetings of the parents, Principal, Board of Ed Representative, Union legal Representative, and me. The asshole from the Board of Ed apparently had orders to not disappoint the Colonel, so each meeting ended with an agreement to a further meeting as "evidence" was gathered.

Finally, one of my varsity girls mother walked up to me and said, "That SOB Colonel is telling people you look up the girls shorts as they're stretching before practice. A few of us are prepared to testify he said that and that you do NOT do that."

I had been polite at every turn, but at the next meeting, I pointed at the Colonel and said to the Board of Ed Rep, "This character is going around slandering me by saying I look up the girls shorts while they stretch. I have parents who will testify to his lies and that I don't. Since I am the board's employee, what action are YOU going to take against this man for slandering me, your employee?"

The Board Rep stuttered and was at a complete loss of what to say.  So I said, looking at the Board Rep, "Well, I guess I'm going need a lawyer and go after the Board and this man (our Union Rep nodded in agreement) and, if that's what I have to do, you know to whom the Board will place ALL the blame, don't you?"

The meeting quickly came to an end. The next day I was informed by our Principal the parents had dropped their complaint. I suggested that I should go to the union for legal advice about suing the Board for not going after the Colonel for slandering their employee.  The Principal told me the most likely outcome would be that I would make enemies with people at the Board of Ed and achieve no personal gain.  So I dropped it.  But I sure learned the truth of the saying, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

The next school year, I was worried about what would happen when the girl came out for varsity softball again.  But one of my gifted and talented chemistry students, Ken, knocked her up over the summer. You don't know how much I wanted to buy him a present for doing that! The Colonel had his daughter home schooled and that was the end of her softball career!

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2 hours ago, Parr8hed said:

@MickinMD that's a horrible story.  One accusation can really doom someone that is innocent.  

It's going to be a balancing act going forward.  

On one hand, it's about time that women got a stronger voice in unacceptable behavior.  On the other, the world of fake news is a very dangerous place.  At present I'm very pleased about the former but a little nervous about what I imagine might be coming.

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