The survivor in the Sorensen case has come forward publicly. Lori Ward has an on-camera interview with her. It's paid subscribers only, so I've seen only the first six minutes.
The survivor in the Sorensen case has come forward publicly. Lori Ward has an on-camera interview with her. It's paid subscribers only, so I've seen only the first six minutes.
I opted to become a paid subscriber to listen to the whole interview - it's about 35 minutes long. It's a difficult but powerful listen and she's incredibly brave for making her name public. She's trying to start a foundation to help other abuse survivors. Here's a link to the fundraiser.
I also got a paid subscription. It's only $5 for a month or $36 for the year. It was worth it to watch the whole interview and support Lori Ward for her work. She's done so many good stories in figure skating already.
Like Former Lurve Goddess said, it's a powerful listen. She goes into exactly what happened the night of her assault and talks about the culture of silence in skating and why she thought coming forward would get her blacklisted in the sport.
Sending strength to her today!
I agree that she is incredibly brave for speaking out, although it’s sad that our society and sport are such that bravery is required to report assault. I also found her to appear highly credible and the circumstances under which the assault took place appear to leave no room for disagreement about consent. I hope she is able to heal and that her actions lead to meaningful changes for victims.
Several people here have been very vocal about this case, and I would strongly encourage all of you to subscribe to this Substack for 5 USD to hear the full conversation with Ashley Foy. It might help you understand why I believe organizations like SafeSport and OSIC have failed survivors and basically enabled someone like Sorensen to get away without consequences long-term.
She describes the investigation as a grueling, multi-year process that produced thousands of pages of documentation and took a massive toll on her life, including her job and her family. Even after all that, she expressed total frustration over the lack of clarity regarding basic processes and jurisdiction!! She asked a vital question that we should all consider: why would an organization put someone who has already been through so much trauma through nearly three years of investigations and tribunals if they didn't even have their jurisdiction figured out?
As she said, it simply is not acceptable. These organizations need to be either built on a proper legal foundation or abolished entirely and replaced with something that actually provides accountability. We cannot keep supporting a system that puts survivors through years of re-traumatization only to have the results overturned on technicalities they should have settled on day one.
While I generally avoid looking at X/Twitter these days, Christine Brennan has posted this from the survivor. An excerpt: "I never planned to come forward out of shame. But my childhood friend Bridget Namiotka lost her life after being bullied for coming forward. My friend Gabi Papadakis lost her job after coming forward. This needs to end."
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