Keeping Track of Criminal Cases & SafeSport Suspensions in Skating

He probably didn’t think of it that way. There might be some cultural differences at play, so I just want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is very young. Feel bad for him.
And you are the ice dancing parent that said Sorensen's accuser was probably lying because nobody can properly remember details of an event that happened 11 years ago (because of science). Right here is the rot we are talking about.
 
I'll be sure to pass along your advice when we attend our friends 55th anniversary and when their son celebrate their 30th.

Back to skating

Um okay why the hostility and anger?

At 18 your brain is not done forming yet. You're not mature. You haven't lived independently. You have very little idea of who you are. Idc how it was 55 years ago. Nowadays, most women go to college and that wasn't necessarily the case back then. Women married back then because they needed someone to take care of them financially.

It seems as if you're determined to justify these child marriages done for immigration reasons bc everyone around you got married that young. You're totally ignoring the potential for abuse, grooming, and coercion with marriages pushed by skating coaches and parents for sports purposes.
 
Well apparently he has very little family and possibly no close friends in the US. And can’t return to Belarus. I’d say he’s in sad shape whatever he did.

As far as cultural differences go, let’s wait until it is clear who his accuser is. I actually agree that signals can be misread between two people who don’t speak a common language well and who have different cultural expectations. I was almost assaulted by a foreign guy who didn’t understand that an American teenager behaves differently than the girls back home; fortunately I got him to leave.
 
And you are the ice dancing parent that said Sorensen's accuser was probably lying because nobody can properly remember details of an event that happened 11 years ago (because of science). Right here is the rot we are talking about.
I never said lying. That's your interpretation. After years of dwelling on it, it becomes mostly what you think of it and not the real facts. Sexual offenders usually have a pattern of repeating their behavior over and over again. No one else accused Nikolay of anything; that is also a fact. as far as I know. I respect the decision of the Safesport though. I do not have all the facts
 
Women married back then because they needed someone to take care of them financially.
What did women who didn't marry do? Starve on the streets?

It seems as if you're determined to justify these child marriages
These are not child marriages. Can we not get all dramatic and try to make things even worse than they actually are?
 
I never said lying. That's your interpretation. After years of dwelling on it, it becomes mostly what you think of it and not the real facts. Sexual offenders usually have a pattern of repeating their behavior over and over again. No one else accused Nikolay of anything; that is also a fact. as far as I know. I respect the decision of the Safesport though. I do not have all the facts
Don't you EVER tell a victim of past sexual assault that it's all in their head and they imagined it all wrong.
 
They went to school, had careers. But most women were SAHM's 50 years ago.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Since 1968, the percentage of employed women working full time has always been between approximately 72 percent and 75 percent."

You clearly did not grow up with the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Maybe most (white) upper- and middle-class women were. But working-class women have worked since the working class was called the peasantry.
And they didn't go to school or have careers; they just worked. As did most women, as the percentage of women with degrees was about 11% then.
 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Since 1968, the percentage of employed women working full time has always been between approximately 72 percent and 75 percent."

You clearly did not grow up with the Mary Tyler Moore show.


And they didn't go to school or have careers; they just worked. As did most women, as the percentage of women with degrees was about 11% then.

Whatever the case may be, options for women today are way more than they were 55 years ago. Economy is also very different. Getting married right out of high school is unusual, and we know more about how brains don't stop developing until they're 25.

But back to this case, if one skater in the group turned 18 and married their imported ice dance partner, whatever. The fact that we now know 3 skaters who did this? Definitely weird and idk why people are determined to make this seem normal.
 
Whatever the case may be
Uh huh.
and we know more about how brains don't stop developing until they're 25.
Mostly (some take longer), but what does that lack of development actually mean? No one actually knows, as the research hasn't translated into anything concrete, just some hypotheses.

Look at it another way--how many 18-year-olds would marry another person for citizenship purposes? I think that would be pretty unusual, too, which would seem to speak well of the judgment of 18-year-olds, underdeveloped brains and all.
 
But back to this case, if one skater in the group turned 18 and married their imported ice dance partner, whatever. The fact that we now know 3 skaters who did this? Definitely weird and idk why people are determined to make this seem normal.
Agreed. I know I find it unusual - and whatever assertions anyone wants to make that it IS normal... Well, statistics don't lie - it's a known, provable fact that the average age for marriage among both men and women has been rising steadily over the last 55 years.

This center has THREE senior level ice dance teams (one of which JUST moved up to senior level this season) and all three of the teams have the same scenario - young woman still in her teens married to her imported ice dance partner - that's NOT normal. The chances of that happening in the real world are exactly ZERO. And that is borne out by the fact that there is exactly one other contemporaneous example anyone can think of with this same scenario for an ice dance or pairs team training not just in the US but also in Canada. ONE. We can point to Lauriault/Le Gac. That's it.

If this was normal, we'd be able to point to a LOT of other examples of this happening. But it's not and it's not normal that it has happened with the only three senior level teams training under Elena Dostatni at WASA.
 
One thing I find interesting about this situation is that we've always had instances of parents buying their kid a partner often importing said partner from another country but usually in those situations, it seemed like the guy had all the power. He didn't live with his partner/their parents, he was given a generous allowance, maybe a car, etc.

This situation is so different and I don't get why. These kids have plenty of time. They should be working towards '30, not '26 so the need to take shortcuts isn't really there.
 
It's only six years to 2030. It can take a long time to get a green card and the citizenship ball rolling without marriage. In Ice Dance, with rare exceptions, it takes years to work your way up the ranks. Chock and Bates have been together for over a decade.

If they put off marriage until the next Olympic cycle, they might get a green card quickly, but they still have to meet all of the residency requirements and get in line for processing. There could be another pandemic and/or a new administration that throttles green card and/or citizenship processing.

From a practical standpoint, those marriages make sense, including the one in 2022, and they give all of the couples a competitive advantage, while those who are still spending a lot of time and money and being stressed out while dealing with the roller coaster of visa issues that Smolkin recently described.
 
I guess I am shocked that parents would be THIS desperate to get to the Olympics that they're willing to marry off their barely-legal daughters to guys they don't know at all.

Unfortunately this sort of thing happens in different places in the world for all kinds of reasons: so-called family honour, keeping the money in the family, fear of daughter doing something that might ruin so-called family honour, etc. It's shocking how horrible parents can be.

My apologies for going a bit off topic and I don't mean to offend anybody, but this is an important subject more people should be aware of, please treat each other with humanity:
Often people say this only happens in places like South Asia, or only with muslims, but this sort of thing happens with people in western countries too and with people of different religions. If someone asks for your help, believe her and help her. Some people told me: "If you live in a western country, I don't believe you can be in a forced marriage as you have more options." Well, even in a western country people have dominant abusive family members. Just help that person, please.

Some more information:
https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-april-2021/ (US)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/uncovering-problem-forced-marriage-u-s (US)
https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-forced-marriage-eu_en.pdf.pdf (Europe)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_marriage (Wikipedia details variatons situations, perhaps we should add forced marriages in figure skating if there is evidence that this indeed happens)
 
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I never said lying. That's your interpretation. After years of dwelling on it, it becomes mostly what you think of it and not the real facts. Sexual offenders usually have a pattern of repeating their behavior over and over again. No one else accused Nikolay of anything; that is also a fact. as far as I know. I respect the decision of the Safesport though. I do not have all the facts

Many victims of sexual assault are afraid to come forward and complain, because of attitudes like this.

No one else has filed an accusation against him. That doesn't mean there are no other incidents.

And if you respect the decision of Safesport, which had enough reliable facts to impose a penalty on Sorensen, why are you defending him?
 
I never said lying. That's your interpretation. After years of dwelling on it, it becomes mostly what you think of it and not the real facts. Sexual offenders usually have a pattern of repeating their behavior over and over again. No one else accused Nikolay of anything; that is also a fact. as far as I know. I respect the decision of the Safesport though. I do not have all the facts
I think when you say "dwelling on it" you might mean "reliving their trauma" or "feeling ashamed" or "unable to tell people for fear of not being believed". Just because no one else reported abuse doesn't mean that no one else was abused. Have you not seen the stats of the percentage of people who are abused and report vs those who don't? Your view is why people don't report. Check yourself.
 
If Desyatov is cleared, he can go on with his career. If the suspension is made permanent (because he abused someone!) he doesn’t belong in skating. He can find another job. He’s young, healthy, and has friends and family to help. And clearly, plenty of other people who will be ready to shrug off his behavior.

Are you sure about any of this? Desyatov is an orphan who is financially dependent on his partner/teenage wife's parents and whose legal status in the US is dependent on a sham marriage. "Going on with his life" probably means being deported to Belarus. Does he have friends, family, or a support system there? None of this is excusing what he allegedly did, just pointing out that this is a different situation to those we've seen previously.

We've seen from John Coughlin the tragic outcomes that these situations can have on the accused. I hope that Desyatov, even if guilty, has some support system in place. On the surface, his situation looks desperate. If his coach, partner/wife, and financial support system turn on him, what's left?

One thing I find interesting about this situation is that we've always had instances of parents buying their kid a partner often importing said partner from another country but usually in those situations, it seemed like the guy had all the power. He didn't live with his partner/their parents, he was given a generous allowance, maybe a car, etc.

This situation is so different and I don't get why.

Too many of the rent-a-Russians have profited off one family, then gone on to skate with another. This way gives the family much more control. They can't leave. It's probably designed to be this way.
 
If people were lying about the basis of the marriage and therefore will also lie about sex within that marriage, wouldn't that raise eyebrows anyway? :confused: Even if that's a lie, it would be alarming that an 18 year old girl who's known an adult male since she was younger than 18 is claiming to be in a romantic, sexual relationship with said male, and got married at 18. And it'd be on official record.

And if the officials didn't ask questions about sex lives, but did about other aspects, and the couple told lies that are believable to the officials in question, who's to say they are lies and never happened?

Anyway, this is rather unhealthy to read.
 
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From a practical standpoint, those marriages make sense
Do they?

If they don't pass muster with posters on a figure-skating board, will they pass muster with professionals at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who are on the lookout for suspicious marriages? Will these couples be able to show that they have been "living in marital union" instead of occupying separate bedrooms or even separate residences? What happens if one of the spouses develops a romantic relationship with someone else? And just how "practical" is it if U.S.C.I.S. blows the whistle and refers the matter for prosecution?

This is looking only at the practicalities, not at the psychological impact of forcing young people into marriage, even marriages of convenience.
 
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My objection is to use of "ick". If the word was inappropriate or unusual or something else that's different.

To me Ick is like stepping into dog crap. Ick is a slang word for sudden disgust.

It is inappropriate for an organization or parents to put the skater into a business arrangement.

What we know - 1. SafeSport acted on this situation quickly. 2. SafeSport rarely acts so swiftly. 3. They had been married for a short time and it was kept secret. 4. They abruptly, and i guess surprising to many here a partnership ended prior to a big competition (I seemed to remember big discussions). 4. There have been similar secret marriages within the camp.

Slang "ick" to me sounds like a "I can't imagine having sex with him". Think of Jimmy Fallon's obnoxious "Eeuuw" skits. You further stated no 18 year old is not able to make a marriage decision (your opinion).

It appears this club has a record of this. That along with SafeSport's apparent record of this should be grounds for investigation.
 

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