*Trigger Warnings: explicit accounts of child sexual abuse*
Everyone is aware that horrible things do happen in this world. They occur everyday and we hear about them on the news. We gasp and then move on with our lives.
But what happens when an extremely horrible thing happens to us? We become that story on the news. We are literally experiencing a tragedy. This article is different than any other article I have ever written. I will be reporting about an entirely true horrible thing that I am witnessing first hand in my life right now. First, let me give you some background information. My nine year old sister attends a local dance studio. She has been dancing there for seven years. I have even danced at that studio for 2 years in my past.
My little sister lives, breathes, and sleeps dance. It is safe to say that that studio is her home away from home. One of the classes she takes there is gymnastics. On October 29, 2015 our mother received a random and brief email from the owner of the dance studio saying that the gymnastics coach, Brian Townsend, was arrested for child pornography. You can imagine the utter surprise and frightening thoughts that came to mind. My sister spends hours at that studio without our supervision. Brian Townsend was her teacher, they worked together in extremely close quarters.
My family and I decided to investigate further into this situation, as any terrified family members would. We were able to access Brian’s records. Keep in mind that he has been employed at my sister’s dance studio and numerous other local dance studios for multiple years. We discovered that Brian Townsend was arrested for the first time in December of 1999 for issuing worthless checks, but the charges were dismissed. That was his first offense. His next arrest was in August of 2000, it was for forgery and he was on probation for 6 months. His following arrests were all drug related. In November of 2008 he was arrested for possession of marijuana (6 month probation) and possession of drug paraphernalia (6 month active probation). His most recent arrest before last week, was in 2010 where he was arrested for possession of cocaine and he was sentenced 3 years of hard labor.
That is a felony, if you didn’t know. Does this sound like the record of someone who is reliable enough to work closely with young children? If not, then why was he able to for so many years? Now, that is only his past. His most recent arrest, just last week, was for six counts of child pornography, production of child pornography, and 13 counts of video voyeurism. For those of you who don’t know, video voyeurism is the use of a recording device for the purpose of filming a person who has not consented to being filmed and it is for a lewd purpose. *I am now going to go into detail*. Brian Townsend secretly recorded a 9 year old girl undressing and changing clothes. He activated the video camera on his cell phone, hid the camera in a changing room, sent the young girl to go change her clothes, and then retrieved his camera. She was completely nude on the 13 videos he had of her.
She was unaware that she was being filmed (video voyeurism). Police officers seized Brian’s laptop, three compact discs, cell phone, and two external storage devices. On those devices, they found videos of young girls performing sex acts. Brian Townsend has been a children’s gymnastics coach for many years. He claims that he has never inappropriately touched a child during that time. My 9 year old sister wore a tight leotard to his gymnastics class where he instructed her on how to perform splits and other flexible movements. At the same time, he was going home and engaging in child pornography and even distributing it. He also filmed a 9 year old girl naked numerous times. I am horrified.
How was this man able to be my little sister’s gymnastics teacher when he had numerous arrests and even hard labor time on his record? Could all of this have been avoided if the dance studios had done a simple background check on him like I did? The owner of the dance studio held a parent meeting regarding all of this on November 2, 2015.
I attended this meeting along with a room full of parents whose children were coached by Brian Townsend. I will be changing the name of the owner of the dance studio in this article to Donna. Donna expressed to us that she was extremely close to Brian, he had even walked her down the aisle at her wedding. Donna said that she was in complete shock when she became aware of Brian’s arrest. She even became emotional when talking about it. Donna made it clear that the new gymnastics coach, herself, and one other teacher have gone through a Catholic safe environment program that teaches how to recognize signs of abuse in children.
That would be a good step, but Donna also said that she will not be performing any background checks on any other employees. I think it is obvious that that has proven to be an insufficient method. Donna has said that she is simply informing the dance studio children that coach Brian is just going away for some time. She is not going into any detail and will not entertain any talk about the details. I understand that because it is the parents jobs to educate their children on what has happened. This next topics I am going to talk about are absolutely infuriating. Brian was arrested 5 years ago for drugs (see paragraph 3).
He was 43 years old at the time of his arrest last week. Donna acknowledged that she was aware of his past drug arrests, but she dismissed them as normal teenage drug things. Brian was way past the age of a teenager at the time of those arrests. It is clear that she was aware of the arrests, but still hired him and disregarded the offenses. This leads me to question her judgement and the safety of my sister. Donna asked that we keep this whole situation quiet and refrain from posting about it on social media. I don’t think she will be too happy with me since I am not only posting about it on social media, but also writing about it in a magazine. I disagree completely with the idea of keeping an abuser like this on the down low. Donna even said that it is very unfortunate that Brian’s picture was blasted all over the news.
I hope that everyone sees his picture. I hope children see his picture and know to stay away from him if they see him in public. It is important that his story and his picture are released to the public. These things should never remain hidden! Donna also claimed that the reason she is urging the parents to not inform their children of the details is because the children don’t need this, she said that if they were maybe 16 then they could be explained all of this. Brian videoed a 9 year old girl, not a 16 year old girl. This pertains to the young girls. They are the victims. Why are we being urged to silence them and mislead them? The point of me writing this article is to shine light on the stigmas surrounding sex crimes against children. I witnessed all of this first hand. My sister could have been his victim.
My younger self could have been his victim. We should be blasting this story all over social media. We should be educating the children at the studios about the dangers of pedophiles and sexual abuse. My sister was closely involved with this man. I want everyone to know who he is that way no other 9 year old girl will ever be his victim again. I want everyone to understand this story. We should NEVER stay quiet on abuse. We should never be shamed for wanting to talk about this! Sex crimes are not something we should whisper about. We should scream about them. We shouldn’t mislead our children on this, they could be victims. We should demand better safety standards for our children.
We should be angry about this! I will never be silenced. We need to break the stigmas and talk about it. We need to educate our youth, not hide the facts. We should never ever be silent about an abuser. I hope this article brings awareness to people like Donna, who wish to stay as silent as possible. I hope this article can make a difference in how we treat sex crimes victimizing children. I hope my story can reach into others hearts.
References:
● http://www.fox8live.com/story/30392957/highprofilegymnasticscoachcharged withchildpornographyvoyeurism
● http://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=78
