Jocko Underground: This Man At the Gym Sexually Assaulted my Female Friend. What to do?

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe This man at my Jiu Jitsu gym sexually assaulted my female friend. What to do? The skills and abilities you need to be a police officer today. How to get your parents to stop being overbearing. How to scale a private athletic coaching business. Or can you? How to easily get ahold of your diet habits to cut down in weight. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 146, sitting here with Echo Charles. We've got some questions from the hinterland.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  And we're going to answer these questions. We're going to learn a little bit about life, situations and scenarios. Let's go.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yep. Okay. Jiu Jitsu academies, we're all looking, looking at them, looking within, part of them even. So this has something to do with that. Okay. I recently encountered something very disturbing at the Jiu Jitsu Academy I train at. Something I never would have predicted. I had an open invitation by a mutual friend to train at a different gym. This friend is a newly promoted brown belt instructor and is now teaching a beginner's class. I really want to support him as he fills this new role. The gym is out of the way and takes serious commitment to make, make it happen when I can. After many attempts, I was finally able to train with my friend and his class. I found an awesome group of people, really enjoyed his style of teaching.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  I was starting to think through how I could regularly train there and the worst person I could think of just strolled in.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  I have another female friend who was sexually assaulted in high school. She opened up to me a few years ago and I think just needed someone to listen. When she told me the situ- the situation had happened a long time ago, beyond any real means to hold the person accountable. It was one of those situations where she was scared and ashamed and didn't know what to do. I listened, I listened and did my best to help her work through the trauma. It was hard to listen to how badly I wanted to track down the guy and make him pay. Fast forward to today and I'm watching this offender lazily walk around, making jokes with the other guys, even talking over my instructor friend at one point.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  To put it lightly, I was sick to my stomach. I was horrified that a guy like that would be learning a skill like Jiu Jitsu. I did my best to be attentive to the instructor friend. When it came time for open roles, I avoided him. He even had that let me get the new guy attitude, but I declined and played it off like I was sitting out the round because I was spent. Quite simply, I fear how I might have acted if we actually sparred. I'm really disappointed that this person is a regular at my friend's gym. I would like to go there, but I don't trust I could keep my cool. I would never embarrass my female friend by making it a situation, as I know that wouldn't help anything, nor would I want to put my instructor friend in a bad spot. I was hoping you might offer some thoughts on this situation.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Have you ever been in a situation where you had to navigate around a bad person on the mats? How would you handle this? If I don't go back, what should I tell my instructor friend? Any advice is much appreciated.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, obviously, that's very terrible to hear.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  Just awful to hear that. And it's awful to hear that encroaching into the jujitsu world. Yep, that's terrible.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And then it also, in order to kind of

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  recommend a way forward, honestly, I think I would need more context around the situation, like, how long ago did this happen? Right? Is it decades ago? Or is it five years ago? Or is it three years ago? Or is it 20 years ago? Like, is there any report at all that came from it, from your female friend? I'm just, again, I'm just trying to gauge, like, is this a situation where we pursue some kind of, some kind of legal activities? And, and then also, what, what exactly happened? Right? Because

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  was it like the guy was making verbal comments that were unwanted verbal comments and, you know, like verbally sexually harassing, which is a thing? Or was it inappropriate touching? Or was it grabbing? Or was it like forced or coercion to engage in some kind of sexual activity? Or was it like drug rape scenario? Or was it rape?

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  So, all those are totally wrong, obviously.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  But there's, there's escalations in there that kind of modulate the response. For instance, rapists should die. Right?

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  But you know, verbal, somebody that made a verbal comment, they don't necessarily need to die, right? They need to maybe get some physical re-education about some scenario. Uh, how old was the perpetrator at the time? Said it happened in high school. Is that 13 years old? Cause you're in high school, you're 13 years old. Or you can be 19 years old in high school. There's a big difference between what a 13 year old does. You take those two variables that I just put together, 13 year old, doing something that's obviously inappropriate, but not physical. That's a lot different than somebody that's 23 years old or 25 years

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  old, that's doing something that is physical. So that, those are kind of some of the things I'm thinking about that I would want to have more clarity on. And also, what are, what are all these relationships actually like? So, and I guess we're only talking about two relationships here. Uh, how good of a friend is the instructor? Cause is this a jujitsu buddy? Or is this like a, a friend, a real friend? How, how close of a friend is the female victim? Right? Is she, oh, for one thing, like, how much do you trust her? Do, do we, do you know

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  that she's telling you the truth? And that there's no like embellishment to the story? There's just got no reason for that? And, and we take her word at complete truth? Or is it someone that we don't know really well? And it's acquaintance? And maybe we don't have a hundred percent trust in her? Again, there's, there's a huge amount of variation there. So there's lots of questions. And the reason I, I would want more detail is because this is a severe situation, right? It's a sensitive situation. Um, and then depending on how some of those variables play out, like, are we reporting this guy?

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  Right? Are we reporting this guy? Are, are, were there any witnesses back in the day? Is there any evidence from back in the day? Like, those are legit questions.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  And then, does, would she feel comfortable going forward and get, taking legal action against this guy? Calling the police, something like that, filing a report? So that, that's like a whole, there's a whole range of options there.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, it, it was implied, I think, a little bit where she was saying that back then, when she, when it happened a long time ago, that there was, there was no real means to hold the person accountable, the perpetrator accountable, right? So, I would have to pull the thread on that a little bit. Here's another thing. If you're really good friends with the instructor,

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  you can roll in there and be like, hey, this guy that's coming into your school, he's a dirtbag, you shouldn't let him train here. And your good instructor, and your, your good friend goes, oh, Roger that, I'm kicking him out tonight. Boom, done.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  And, and that's if you feel comfortable straight up telling the instructor, hey, this is what's going on. I got a friend, this guy, this guy, uh, sexually assaulted my friend, this guy raped my friend. This guy's a dirtbag, it happened a long time ago, he needs to be punished. There's no legal thing, but you shouldn't be teaching him jujitsu. Okay, so that's a thing you can do.

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's another thing, people that are like this, people that are predators, they, they continue with these bad, this bad behavior. So, here's another, again, like, do you hire a private investigator and find out what this guy's got going on in his life?

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  If you're going hard in the paint,

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  do you do that? Tell me what's going on with this guy's life, make sure that he, because if, let's face it, if this guy's a total, uh, predator, a sexual predator, and you know it, well, let's gather some evidence current day and maybe we can get him locked up that, like, see what I'm saying? And, and look, I'm not going level nine vigilante, but if you hire a private investigator to pay attention to what this person's doing, it's, you see what I'm saying? So there's just so much, there's such a wide range of things to do.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you could send an anonymous letter to the school, to the instructor, saying that this guy, here's a picture of him, this guy, you know, you could get his, uh, his Facebook profile or whatever, his Instagram thing, this guy's a sexual predator, he's in your school, you should not let him train there. Boom. And then you find out where else he's training.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying? So there's all kinds of things that you could do.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  Um, I, I, I usually feel like someone that's like this, that's a, that's a predator of some kind, they, they, they burn bridges and they continue to burn bridges and they, they call, they leave a path of like destruction behind them. So they kind of, they entrap themselves eventually.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, so there's just kind of endless courses of actions that you can take. By the way, you can also just not go to the school anymore and carry on. Like that, depending on where all these other things lie out or fall out. And also depending on how much investment you want to take. How much investment of your life are you going to take? In, in getting this person, what you consider justice, again, depending on how well you know the, the girl.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  So there's just a lot of variables here that I have a hard time saying, oh, here's a course of action that you should execute. I can just tell you some courses of action that are possibilities depending on the specifics. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacoodunderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you. More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.