Roxanne Jones
April 8, 2018 22:17
Please read this entire post before signing our daughter up here. My 8 year old daughter started going to Riot Cheer and my 16 year old would come watch her. Riot Cheer encouraged my 16 yr old (almost 17 at the time) to join. Joe (the co-owner) stated that he wanted to make her a flyer and that he would like her to take private lessons to get her ready to join the team. It was explained to me that the "team" was made up of high school & college aged kids, so my daughter would be around kids her age. She was home schooled and I mentioned to Joe that it was really important to me that she meet kids around her age & that I wanted cheer to help her build confidence and social skills. He gave me this speech about how they're all family, do team building projects, work on self-esteem, etc. My daughter's very 1st lesson was a complete nightmare. Instead of building her confidence it left her ashamed and disgusted. A man from the "team" was there to help lift her during the lesson. I later found out this man is 38 years old. I was not in the room the entire time she was practicing but on the way home I could tell something was wrong. My daughter told me this 38 year old man made sexual comments to here during her lesson. While he was holding her up on his shoulders, Joe (co-owner) thought she needed to be standing straighter and told my daughter "if you squat down anymore you'll be sitting on his face". Very inappropriate comment. The 38 year old man holding up my daughter then started making sexual comments to her, such as "if you want to squat on my face we can do it outside of the gym". This man knew that my daughter is a minor and that he is almost twice her age. Not to mention that it's just disrespectful. Joe told us that this team consisted of teenagers and college aged kids. False. This 38 year old man and other older men are part of the team. We were lied to. Joe's response to the sexual comments during the incident was "she's not 18 yet" and laughed. Very unprofessional. He should have immediately told this man that his comments are unprofessional and disrespectful. No matter what age a lady is, sexual harassment is NOT okay. I was upset that Joe did not pull me aside the day that it happened to bring it to my attention. Instead he took a $300+ check from me and said nothing about the incident. My husband & I went in to speak to Joe about what happened and explained to him that our daughter was not comfortable being around this man. He admitted that all of it happened and, of course, tried to down play his role. His replied to our concerns by asking us how serious we were about cheer before deciding to ask this man to leave the team because "he's a good guy". He also stated his concern for our daughter being on the team because the girls on the team cuss a lot, talk about getting drunk and about sex. He felt it would not be appropriate for my teenage daughter to be around. Before he took my $300+ check this was a positive, self-esteem building environment with children around my daughter's ago. Then I find out that everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. I expect my daughter to hear cuss words, etc from girls her age. I'm not ignorant. That is much different than a grown man soliciting a minor for sexual acts. After being told that this 38 year old man was asked to leave the team, we tried scheduling our daughter's private lessons. They were constantly being rescheduled by Joe and I had to bug him more than once to lock in a date and time. He was never prepared and the couple of practices that happened were a joke. He then stopped replying to my texts to set up lessons and my calls were not answered. We never received all of the lessons that we paid for. I really feel that my daughter, the victim, was punished for this incident because she spoke up. UPDATE: Joe contacted me and stated that this man is 28, not 38. Either way, my daughter had just turned 17 and it was inappropriate. Being 28 still does not make it okay.