Was I "sexually assaulted" by my gym coach?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve sometimes wondered about this, although in full disclosure I can’t say it had any negative affect on me at all. But, I do remember it quite well after many decades, and it was only after many years past that it ever occurred to me that it might have been some form of sexual assault.

Sophomore year in HS (I’m 14), and we’re in gym class. We’re doing some sort of timed run that day, and only a few guys at a time can do the run so there is a lot of milling around. I’m already done and am shooting the breeze with my best friend, who was in my same class.

Coach* comes over and chats with us a bit. Then, out of the blue, he sort of loops his thumb over the waistband of my shorts. This is at my hip, so he’s not actually touching any “private area”, but it’s not that far away, and his thumb was inside my clothing. My reaction was pretty much to freeze, mainly because it was very sudden, and I didn’t especially want to draw attention to myself. The whole episode lasted maybe 10 or 15 seconds.

No one ever said anything to me and I never said anything to anyone else. I can’t say it bothered my a lot (but then, no one saw it or said anything to me about it), but it was… puzzling. And “puzzled” would be the best way to describe the way I felt at the time, since it was an odd thing to do. It would never have occurred to me to report this, but I wonder if in this day and age, he would have been guilty of some sort of sexual assault.

Also, Coach was not known to be any kind of predator or anything. There were always rumors about certain teachers that you knew to “stay away from”, but coach wasn’t one of them. And nothing ever happened again.

OTOH, I’m thinking: Well, I didn’t feel like I was assaulted, so it’s not sexual assault. Like I said, I was basically just puzzled.

OTOH, when you’re 14, you don’t necessarily understand all the ins and outs (no pun intended) of sexual assault, even if very minor-- and I’d call this minor, if it was indeed assault.

*We always called him Coach, and I don’t remember what his name was anyway.

2

I dunno what the legal definition of sexual assault is but I would definitely file that under bad touch. But I can see the consternation. It’s not ‘overtly’ sexual but I think it definitely counts as crossing a boundary.

3

Yeah, I definitely consider my gym shorts to be “a boundary”.

4

i think there is a bit of distance between crossing a boundary and a sexual assault. I wouldn’t dwell on this, and be happy nothing worse happened.

5

It was on some level sexual . . . probably as far as he could go, given the circumstances. What other reason could he have had, for putting his thumb inside any part of your shorts? I’m guessing that in his mind, your shorts were coming down. If you had responded positively, albeit subtly, it may have gone further at a later time. Good thing you froze.

6

If you’d have broken his hand or punched him in the nose and said that happened, most people would go “yup, good for you”.

7

Well, think about the same thing with a 14 YO girl. Skeevy, yes? It’s just as skeevy with a 14 YO boy.

8

By the definitions and statutes in my state it would not be sexual assault. The naughty bits must be touched for it to be criminal sexual contact.

9

The fact you froze and were puzzled is an indication that something wasn’t normal or right, and that sort of instinct is usually pretty good.

I agree that it wasn’t sexual assault, but it was approaching the concept.

I also agree that your reaction might have meant the difference between it stopping there and, if you had had a different reaction, going further.

Or maybe Coach suddenly realized where things might be going and stopped himself - there are people with unsavory impulses who nonetheless manage to avoid actually stepping over legal/ethical lines

10

Inappropriate interaction between an adult and a child. You should be ashamed of yourself for leading him on. FFS, it’s a joke, mkay?

Now that’s out of the way, there is a certain brand of physical humor that involves making people uncomfortable. Stuff like pretending not to notice you’re invading someone’s personal space, or, a favorite of my old platoon sgt: having a conversation with someone else of rank–preferably a heated or fairly important conversation that should not be lightly interrupted–while standing right next to a sitting person so that your junk is mere inches from their face. If there is no reaction from the sitter, you reach down and put your hand on their shoulder. During all of this, there is no break in the conversation. Next step is to start caressing their upper & mid back. The last straw is a barely perceptible and steady push against their back so they start heading face first into your zipper. Big laughs with the right crowd exactly because it is so irreverent and inappropriate. Maybe coach was considering just such a prank, and then thought better of it.

11

Just to be clear, this was out on the playing fields, with lots of other students around, so there was no chance it could have “gone further”. In fact, my buddy was standing right next to me and we were all chatting. It wasn’t like we were alone in the locker room or anything.

12

I’m a bit unclear as to what the fuck he was doing. Did he just walk up, start chatting and then stick his thumb thru the beltloop of your pants? And then what? Just kept talking? Did he make any sort of acknowledgement of it? The way you describe it sound pretty bizarre.

13

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

14

It could have been a grooming move. He did something slightly borderline to see how you’d react. If you caused a stink or reported him, he could have come with some sort of plausible excuse for this minor transgression. But if he someone got the vibe that he could escalate, he may have tried other things over time, with each one being a little more over the line than the last time.

15

Slightly borderline? That’s way the hell over.

16

I have a couple of stories that are somewhere in the same ballpark, for what it’s worth.

Senior in high school, my English teacher and I had some conflicts about a group project I didn’t want to participate in (I was willing to do all the work by myself, but I hated working in groups). Anyway, after that died down he expressed an interest in me in a way that I wasn’t used to from teachers - asking about my family, for example. Then one day he offered to drive me home, which I accepted and which he did. He stopped in front of my house, looked at the house, looked back and me and said good-bye. After that no interest at all. Nothing at all happened in the car but it always struck me weird.

Freshman in college, our swim class was in the nude (but the teacher wore trunks, presumably because he didn’t get into the pool). One day he was teaching a frog kick or something, and he had each of us get on a table, out of the water, and frog kick against his hands so that he could tell if we were doing it right (we were all still nude, of course). I was last, and when I was done he gave me an odd look that I couldn’t figure out. Nothing else happened.

I suppose I was hyper-sensitive about potential sexual situations because I was deeply closeted at that time and was terrified about being outed, at the same time being desperately lonely because of it. As a much older person now I realize there are all kinds of reasonable explanations for the things that seemed odd to me at the time, but they still stick in my psyche. No real effects other than that I am still curious after all these years.

17

That’s how it starts.

18

At one time, every predator was “not known to be any kind of predator or anything”. Some of them went decades before being known.

Anyway, it wasn’t assault, but it was a ‘what the fuck?!?!’ moment.

19

Yep. That’s exactly right.

Nope, no acknowledgement. At least none that I was aware of. But I think I was trying to pretend like nothing was happening so that none of the other kids would notice. And no one did.

20

I doubt that the action described would legally be considered sexual assault. The relevant laws vary from state to state, but I’d be surprised if any prohibited touching someone (even a minor) on the hip.

Just because it was (probably) legal doesn’t mean the coach’s behavior was innocent, though. As others have said, this sounds like exactly the sort of thing a sexual predator would start with. It was an action inappropriate enough that it struck you as weird and kinda embarrassing, but not inappropriate enough that you’d be likely to try to make trouble about it or that would be taken seriously if you did. He probably expected that you’d be too surprised or embarrassed to object to his behavior in the moment, and if you had made a complaint later then the other kids would have been witnesses for him. They were right there and either didn’t notice anything fishy or saw the coach briefly touch you without it seeming to bother you at all.