March 13, 2025 
Trigger warning: this story discusses themes of sexual misconduct and intimidation in the workplace that may be triggering for some individuals.
In 2023, I was part of a U.S. Center for SafeSport investigation into my former boss. I didn’t report him to SafeSport. My boyfriend did. But it was because of me and what happened while I worked for him.
And I wasn’t prepared for the fallout.
I wasn’t prepared for men, much more well-known and powerful than me, to threaten my career. I wasn’t prepared for the intimidation that followed. Or to go through it alone, without anyone backing me. I didn’t have my parents or a legal team or the resources to do it strongly.
And, at the time, I still had empathy for my former boss. I was afraid of what would happen to me if I followed through with the complaint. So, in April 2024, I dropped it.
And then after, I wasn’t prepared for people to be like, ‘Oh wow, he must be telling the truth because the SafeSport case disappeared.’ I wasn’t prepared for him to tell people that he spent 120 thousand dollars on lawyers to win the case. He beat me. I’m crazy. I’m a liar. He won, yada, yada, yada. When in reality, I walked away out of fear for my health and safety.
It’s been almost a year since I dropped that SafeSport case and now, I’ve re-opened it. I’m still scared. Terribly. But this time I’m better prepared. I know what to expect. I know it’s the right thing to do. And I know they won’t stop, if I don’t speak up.
The SafeSport process is confidential, so I’m not going to name my abuser or his accomplice. I am going to tell my story because at this point I think it’s the only thing that might actually help protect me and I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else in this industry that I love.
So, for that, I have to start at the beginning…
When I took the job with my former boss, it felt like a chance to get in on the ground floor of something exciting. I was given a good title and a hiring bonus. It felt like a big opportunity for my career.
And for the first few years, it was great. We were friends. We worked together. The barn was like my family.
Two years in, the dynamic started to shift. He started to make inappropriate comments. Any time I was alone with my boss, the subject of the conversation turned to something sexual. He would tell me that I’m the hottest girl that works at the barn. He told me that I should start an OnlyFans, and he should manage me, so I should send him pictures that I would use for that. He would make comments about my body—oh you’ve lost weight, oh you’ve gained weight, oh your boobs look big today, oh you lost your ass, things like that. He would ask me about my boyfriend and my sex life, if I sent him nudes, how often we had sex. Then he’d ask me to see the photos.
While it’s happening, you kind of just laugh it off because you’re uncomfortable and you don’t really know what to say. And he’s your employer, so who are you going to tell?
At same time, he was telling me that I wasn’t good enough to ride anywhere else, he’s doing me a favor. No one else would give me these opportunities. If I tried to leave and go anywhere else, he would make it impossible. He said if I started my own business in the state that he would take me down.
It was a build you up, tear you down thing. And this is the person I spent more time with than anyone else, so his opinion mattered more than anyone else.
In 2022, my boss gave me the ride on a former Grand Prix horse. He knew how much I loved the horse, and he told me, ‘You’ve earned this opportunity.’ I didn’t get to show a lot, maybe twice a year, here and there. But, it was a horse that I got to ride and felt like it was my own. It was everything that I had dreamed of until I learned the price that I had to pay to maintain it.
In June 2023, I was alone with my boss in his truck riding back to the barn after I had showed the horse when he told me that he wanted me to give him oral sex and that if I didn’t, this opportunity with the horse would go away.
The first time it happened, I kind of thought that was going to be it. Like it was a one-time thing and we were never going to talk about it again.
Then, he would let me show another horse or I would get some other opportunity, and he would be like now we need to meet up. Like, now you need to pay up.
It happened again and again and again. And there was never really space for me to say no.
If I said, ‘No, go home to your wife and your kid. This is not right, and I don’t want to do this,’ he’d retaliate. Now my workday is going to suck because he’s going to make do something shitty or he’s going to give me 15 horses to ride so I have to be there all day. He always would hang the chance to show over my head and he knew how much that meant to me. I was able to handle the workload regardless, but losing the chance to show was much harder to accept. He would also give me the silent treatment or be mean to me. And then he’d switch and be very sweet, ‘How can you forgive me? How can we fix this? I really care about you. I want the best for you. Maybe there’s this horse, this hunter that you can show.’
For me, as a young woman who can barely pay rent, you’re in a power imbalance with someone who has tons of money and tons of resources and knows that you’re either hungry to show or to get opportunities career wise and I certainly couldn’t afford to lose my job.
That was the sad part to me, honestly.
If you were to look at my Instagram or were to ask me during that time, I would have said, ‘I’m at the peak of my career. I’m showing and I’m winning. I’m finally making a livable wage. I’m respected at my job by clients and I’m getting to train.’ It was everything I’ve ever dreamed of. But the price I was paying to achieve it was my mental health. I was so empty and numb and unhappy and anxious. I was stuck. I was told that I couldn’t get out. I was told that I couldn’t leave. I was told that I wasn’t good enough.
And I believed him.
I started quietly reaching out for a new job that summer. But it wasn’t until my boyfriend discovered texts between me and my boss in November that I actually quit.
My boyfriend gave me an ultimatum: him or the job. Obviously, I needed to get out of that situation. The ‘safest’ position for me was to stay with the boyfriend, but he also got physical with me, and I was unsafe in that environment as well. But who was I going to call? I don’t have a support system. I don’t have people around me that I can go to. At that point, that person had been my boss.
So, I quit over text and I never went back. And then my life went to shambles after that.
My boyfriend reported him to SafeSport. They reached out to me, and I complied with the investigation. I felt like that was the right thing to do, but I was too scared to initiate it.
SafeSport issued a no-contact order to my boss three months into the investigation. But it didn’t stop him. He still called me. It was relentless.
He told me that he tried to take his life twice. He said, if I go through with the SafeSport case, that he will go through with that. He told me I was destroying his life, and I needed to think about his daughter. And then I was approached by his friend at a show, a powerful man in our sport, and he threatened my career. He said, “You’ll never be able to get a job. No one will work with you. No one will trust you because you’ve done this.” He said, “He’d make my life absolutely miserable and completely eliminate my career.”
The same friend cornered me again that night at the Grand Prix celebration, even though they both knew there was a no-contact order. I was forced to sit between him and my former boss. He told us that we needed to work together and that he needed to make it right for me because I was going to withdraw my complaint, but I had said no such thing.
His friend offered me a job in Europe to just go away and my former boss offered me money to make the case go away. He called me ten times from an unknown number and his personal cell the day before I dropped it.
I was scared. So, I took the money. I took $10,000 and I left the sport. I wish I hadn’t, I just felt I had no options left.
I did a lot of soul searching and had a lot of discussions with my family and friends in the six months after and I decided to re-open the case.
This time, I got help from an experienced attorney and I’m the one who made the report to SafeSport.
Today, I’m scared. It’s far worse than before. I just don’t know how concerned the Center is about my safety. The Center has been provided multiple complaints and evidence of the misconduct I endured and the 10k payment. They’ve done nothing to really help me. The Center did issue no-contact orders against my former boss and his friend, but that didn’t help me the first time and it certainly isn’t helping me now. I think that powerful people always get the upper hand at the end of the day and people like me who don’t have money, don’t have resources, don’t have support system behind me, they lose. They lose bad. I don’t know what will happen to me. That’s very scary to think about.
But at this point, it’s not even necessarily just about me. It’s about stopping this from happening to anyone else, especially young women, whether it be him or someone else in the industry. This is a problem and people have been getting away with it for a really long time, successfully, and will continue to do so.
When you make a report to SafeSport, you immediately have a target on your back. The first time, I succumbed to that fear, but now I’m realizing that that is a part of the problem. We need to stop that.
Because nothing is going to change if people stay silent. And no one should have to suffer or leave this sport like I did. No one should have to be scared to live their dreams.
If you have a reasonable suspicion of sexual misconduct, make a report electronically to the U.S. Center for SafeSport or call (720) 531-0340.
Need to talk? The specialized counselors at Athlete Helpline provide crisis intervention, emotional support, connection to resources and reporting guidances Monday through Friday, 12pm to 8pm Pacific Time. Call or text 1-888-279-1026.
