DefinitelyDressage.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/spor ... ridge.html

Hap Hansen needs a smack upside the head with Aunt Esther's Purse. What a tool

The women who stepped forward deserve praise and huge Kudos to COTH for starting the public story

I read this this morning. Wow.

Hap Hansen is an @hole. Unfortunately his business won't suffer.

While article is documentation of something horrible, what is implied is even worse. For 37 years, parent threw their children away. I spent my college years in the show circuit and know that many of societies rules are suspended for consenting adults in the horse world. And yes I heard the occasional rumor of liaisons between teenage girls and adult men although the two I knew slightly, the young lady was the predator and the guy was enjoying the situation. These weren’t parents that were skimping to give their child a chance at riding glory, these were the “movers and shakers” and I bet a few of them could have crushed Mr. Williams with the stroke of a pen.

The pictures and paintings of Mr. Williams, who died in 1993, and the sterling trophies he won all vanished without a word recently from the clubhouse where he had spent many afternoons tipping back Champagne with some of Los Angeles County’s biggest and richest names: the parents of his young charges. . . . .

Yet none of the parents watched the children, none of them saw the truth, none of them followed up on a story from their own child or another’s child. What did the parent’s get for abandoning their little girls? I suspect this is the tip of a very ugly complex story that probably hopelessly tangled in greed and power.

From the time I was about 12, it would take both hands and almost all my fingers to count the number of predators I ran across in various aspects of the horse world.

I guess I'm very fortunate to have grown up in a very small part of the horse world where stuff like this doesn't happen.

Literiding - I agree... where were the parents????

Glad this was published in COTH, too, not just the NYT. Very powerful of stars like Anne K to tell this story, which we know is common across all kinds of youth experiences, especially for girls.