You know, if I was Mike Jefferson/Danton's father, I would have been a bit more aggressive toward the guy who ruined at least one of my kids' lives like this. If I were in Steve Jefferson's place, I'd have this fucktard's balls in a vice and his dick in a blender. (Which is part of why I don't have kids. I can't guarantee I wouldn't do something crazy and criminal to a guy who pulled this crap with my kid.) And why would I not be surprised if this wasn't the only creepy-svengali-mentor-I'm-
your-everything guy in minor hockey? I wonder how many are out there, working on their stories with their charges even as we speak? I have two serious and deep hopes for this case. One is that I hope this blows the lid off of manipulative abusers like Frost and shows hockey parents some warning signs so they can avoid this kind of relationship with "coaches" and "agents" in the future without being needlessly fearful. (If the agencies involved improved their screening procedures so people like this don't slip through the cracks, more to the good.) The other thing I'm hoping for is that whatever happens and wherever he winds up, Mike Danton gets a sense of peace and identity out of all this. After watching that Fifth Estate piece, he sounds even more lost than I thought.
"Best American Sports Fiction series, and I don't know which one it was, but I know it was before 2004, about this very fiasco." Uh, come again...? This isn't fiction. You must have visted a clairvoyant. My mistype; the well-known series is, of course, the Best American Sports Writing. I did try to find the reference to the exact year, but couldn't -- their TOCs aren't searchable online. "It has been going on for a long time." Danton was arrested April 16, 2004. Danton played his last game a day earlier -- on April 15, 2004. To my recollection, there was no prior knowledge of this crime prior to that game in San Jose. The problem with quoting out of context is that it often removes a pronoun's antecedents; in this case, the antecedent to the pronoun "it". With context replaced, "it" clearly refers to "the Danton/Frost thing", and I don't know why you're so upset by my comment that "it" has been going on for quite some time, because it has. I read about this at least a year ago in some edition of Best American Sports Writing, which would have been the 2004 edition at the latest. Given the lead time on submissions for an anthology like that, the piece in question would have been written quite some time before that. That's all. I'm sorry that the whole thing makes you so overwrought, but once again, neither you nor your thread are under attack.
conversely, there could be perfectly good reasons not to, and if so, I am more than receptive to hear them. It breaks the formatting conventions of the site, which is a purely aesthetic thing, but I think it's worth consideration. Furthermore, it calls undue attention to the posts that use it, which leads to an arms race of formatting attempts******* to make sure you see my important thing*******. In all honesty, while I take your scanability point, I'd like to think this site is diametrically opposed to the "scan, don't read, post an inflammatory opinion" approach. If you want to make the topic of your post immediately obvious, wrapping it inside the post's link is a good way to do that.
i come down the side of lose the bold, but you can get the same effect by just hyperlinking those names/whatever to further relevant content. and man, this story is creee-P.
This is ridiculous. If it were a movie, you'd be staggered at its implausibility. How can Frosty-McTouchy over here, get away with this kind of manipulative crap? Yep, dammit this plot is terrible, I'm changing the channel. Hey if you wanna get traffic to your post - just post something interesting. We'll read it.
I hate to jump to conclusions, but those transcripts sure sounded like something out of a twisted, gay-love, Lifetime movie. That agent from other things I've read sure sounds like complete scum. The player on the other hand just sounds like a real messed up kid that has alot of issues. Not saying that gives him a free pass on calling in a hit on a guy, but if he was abused earlier in the relationship and couldn't think of a way to get free from the situation I almost understand his logic(being that of a troubled young man) troubled people make mistakes, sometimes serious ones. However in light of their situation sometimes they are maybe fairly understandable.
sorry if that post was incoherent way too much Crown Royal tonight.
Hey if you wanna get traffic to your post - just post something interesting. We'll read it. Amen.
The buildup was too much for Steve Jefferson to take, the same Steve Jefferson who told me in an 1999 interview that "Dave Frost was the best thing that ever happened to my kid." Seems like pops is little confused as well.
All it is going to take is Frost doing this same thing to the wrong kid and that kid's father is going to be doing life in prison for murder. #1, I would never allow someone to control my child like Frost controlled those kids. #2 If someone did have that much control over my son, I would beat the ever-lovin' shit out of the scum bag. What goes around comes around and Frost, one day, will get what is coming to him.
#1, I would never allow someone to control my child like Frost controlled those kids. Jefferson/Danton came up through the Major Junior system, though, didn't he? If that was the case, maybe that's part of the problem -- he would have moved away from home as a teenager, after which he would have been living with a host family, not with his own parents.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time this has surfaced in Junior Hockey.
lbb, from my understanding the vast majority of Major Junior and Canadian Hockey League players are billeted with absolutely no problem, aside from homesickness. I think the overriding bit of weirdness here is that Frost moved into the same neighborhood as the Jeffersons after he started working with Mike. I mean ... wtf? I give the parents a bit of slack because at first, it might have seemed like their son just had a really good relationship with his coach. Why they didn't just go apeshit after a while, though ... that's beyond me. Oh, another tidbit: Both Danton and Sheldon Keefe played for the Ontario Hockey League's Barrie Colts, the team in the town where I live. Last year was the team's 10th anniversary, and a card set was issued with the franchise's best players through that span. Conspicuously absent from said set -- Danton and Keefe. I was told the team was set by popular vote through the local newspaper, but that neither of them even had their names on the ballots through a direct order from management.
Oh, I'm sure, wfrazerjr -- I mean, in the general case, most people aren't rapists and abusers, so of course it's a minority situation. OTOH, it seems logical that an abuser would gravitate to a scenario where the kid is less likely to resist abuse (power situations) and the abuse is less likely to be detected. If parents send their kids into a situation that mixes authority figures with biiiiig carrots (you can go pro!), the parents have to be extra-special vigilant -- and they have to know what the danger signs are, too. I suspect in this case a lot of danger signs were simply not recognized when doing so would have done some good.
Ding Dong, the bitch resigned. Too bad Goodenow doesn't have to answer any questions.
