Warning: this post will be long and tangential in some ways, but telling this story is my way to process my emotions and thoughts in the best way I can.
For six years in the '00s, I was a coach for nationally competitive high school debate teams. Without trying to stretch a comparison between national circuit debate and figure skating (which wouldn't take much), I do think it's true that both are insular activities with strange power dynamics. Personal boundaries get blurred and broken and adults have access to vulnerable teenagers who want to be competitively successful but also socially accepted.
For most of the time I was coaching and six years after I quit, a very prominent debate coach ("Coach J") in the community was contacting very large numbers of teenage boys and paying them for sending him pictures of them, including sexually explicit pictures. I should say here as a disclaimer that there are substantial differences between the cases of Coach J and Coughlin. Coach J was undoubtedly guilty, the types of allegations are different, he went to prison, is still alive, etc.
I knew Coach J from 2003 to 2009 as a colleague. I saw him at tournaments and a summer camp where we both worked. He quickly became a prominent figure in the debate community because he seemed extremely nice and supportive of every coach and student. He would reach out to people from under-represented schools and areas and try to help them learn about national style debate. For most of the time I knew him, I admired him because he was such a strong advocate for students but also because I genuinely thought his presence as an out gay man in the community gave students the ability to see a role model or at least a highly respected adult who was queer and passionate about gender and sexual inclusivity.
There were a few questionable things I knew of, though. Most obviously, he would often have male debaters visiting him at college stay in his dorm room, take pictures of them together, and put that on blogs accessible to anyone in debate. This is hyper specific, but I remember on his Friendster page (now there's a throwback!) he listed a few questionable things under his "likes" including boys' bare feet, which turned out to be--from reading the media coverage of his arrest--alarmingly accurate. I did hear one vague rumor right before I quit coaching, but I didn't feel like there was much I could do aside from have a general talk with my debaters about being skeptical of adults in the community/etc. and trying to follow up on the rumor with trusted adults, which didn't lead anywhere.
Apparently between 2009 and 2015--when he was arrested--the subject of Coach J's illegal activity was well known, at least to a certain percentage of the community. I was completely out of touch with debate and had no idea about the "open secret," but that's how many people characterized it when the arrest became public. However, there were others involved in debate who thought Coach J's reputation was flawless. I read a quote from an area coach that said, basically, "I never heard anything untoward about him."
After he was arrested, there was a gigantic outpouring of support for Coach J by his students and their families. And here's why that surprised me: the news of his arrest included an extensive PDF file that included graphic conversations he was having on an app called Kik on which he pretended to be a high school student. Reading those transcripts was absolutely chilling because I could hear his voice and it made me question every interaction I ever had with him, every time I saw him, every time I wondered about his role in debate. It made me wonder if this story would exacerbate disgusting assumptions that gay men are abusers, especially gay teachers/coaches. And of course, it made me wonder if anything had happened to my debaters.
He was sentenced to what I thought was a very lenient amount of time in prison and has already been let out. I've had countless discussions about the case with dozens of people I knew, and here are some concluding thoughts:
Information and power (which, of course, are related) operate in very strange ways, perhaps especially in insular communities. In this case, people consistently reacted--or didn't react--in ways that I wouldn't have expected, including the lasting support for Coach J even at his sentencing. (The Times' report of it seriously sounds like the "o captain my captain" scene from Dead Poet's Society, and the idea of that happening at the sentencing of a convicted child pornographer is just unbelievably bizarre to me.)
Seeing someone I respected get caught and punished for abusing hundreds of people, including several I knew, is not only horribly depressing but also makes me question so many things. Of course, I wonder if I could have done something, but I also wonder if his criminal actions negate all the positive things Coach J created in debate and, from what I've consistently heard, as a teacher.
The deck is stacked against accusers and survivors--in coming forward, being trusted, feeling safe, etc.--in so many ways: structural, institutional, but also casual, minor, visible or invisible. At the same time, even though it means making people sadder/angrier/more accusatory, I believe it is worth discussing and implementing changes to help survivors even if they might make things a little bit more difficult for the accused.
Did that happen in the Coughlin case? I have no idea. It's certainly arguable, but that's not the point. Also, suicide further complicates everything, which is why I am intentionally not commenting on that aspect of the case.
