Elena Dostatni is the main coach; FlorDes' ISU bio lists Leif Gislason as a coach also.
Well, no one made her or anyone else pay the fine.
In case you were wondering how tightly linked this training group is to USFS and what the chances are that anyone within USFS knew of these teenage marriages: Leif Gislason is the husband of Lorrie Parker's daughter Kelsey Parker Gislason. Kelsey was hired by USFS as the senior director of high performance management after publicly supporting John Coughlin and disparaging his victims. Although she was removed from that role, she remained as senior manager of marketing projects and recently became senior manager of sport performance logistics.
And Leif's wife Kelsey is the one who was hired for an athlete development role in USFS and it was later revealed that she openly defended Coughlin and bashed his victims on her social media. The rot in skating runs deep.
1922 was the last year that a woman married to a US citizen automatically became a citizen upon marriage. Since then, all married people had to go through whatever residency and visa, currently green card, requirements were in place, plus moral character and, at various times, renouncing allegiance to the country of their actual citizenship, renounce titles, etc. in the interim before becoming citizens. The US also allows fiances to enter on specific visas, marry their US person within 90 days, and then file the paperwork to transfer their visa status to permanent resident/green card.
Getting married three months after meeting is insane in any circumstance, let alone at 18 and with this whole situation.
But getting married can make the process faster and easier. You pretty much are guaranteed to get a green card right after the marriage whereas without the marriage, you'd have to wait.
Given their own history, maybe they are looking at it with rose-colored glasses.
There's even a reality show about this!
The situation is horrid, period. These teenage marriages, misconducts and obvious violations. But come on, you cannot blame everything on so called former Soviet men.
I can understand this, these young men are here without supports and it’s a different culture when it comes to morality, what’s acceptable in Europe, especially Russia is frowned upon in America. They are also being financed by the girls parents. The coaches and parents have set this situation up.
How exactly is Desyatov a "former Soviet man"?
Oh, we should just lump all European men into the same bucket... Soerensen, Cipres... And then there are the basic white guys like Kerry, Coughlin... and their enablers Zimmerman, Fontana, Sappenfield, etc.
This. So much this. No matter what we think of the guys, they are pretty much enslaved as soon as they hit US soil as they have no support outside their enablers.
Yes, and it adds an entirely new psychological layer to the allegations of misconduct that have gotten Desyatov suspended at this moment. Not that it absolves him of any wrongdoing, but it certainly cannot have given him a healthy mindset or sense of control regarding his life.
Absolutely. I’m dumbfounded by this. And I think I speak for many that even before the SafeSport case, if I had known the circumstances of Flor/Des I would not have been a fan no matter how good they are. The situation reeks and the parents appall me.
that my husband had to remember the dates of my birthday and anniversary and the year we met and the names of family members etc because he has a terrible memory for dates in general. It’s not easy to get past the requirements.Tsarevski is a native-born US citizen, so that wouldn’t apply, but I also have been thinking about his split from Flores since this news broke. I recalled that we only ever heard about the circumstances of the split from Flores’ perspective, and now it occurs to me that there may have been pressures on him that we were unaware of at the time.
