With the current wave of sexual predator outings rocking the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world, three stripe white belt Tim Stromberg has expressed his strong distaste for any abusers in the sport and for anyone trying to use the scores of isolated incidents to say there are structural causes for the immense protection those predators received. While stressing that he, personally, is very against sexual assault, he doesn’t think it is fair to tar the whole sport just because there are a few tens of outed abusers and groups of gyms who orchestrated cover-ups and victim-shaming to protect them.
“Listen, nobody takes these problems more seriously than I do,” said Stromberg. “As an uncle of nieces, I believe women. I’m just saying that I’m not ready to say it’s a cultural problem and not just some bad apples. None of the women at my gym have ever come to me saying that Professor did anything wrong, and the four of them know they could totally trust me to have their back. I’ve got a ‘Blue no matter who!’ patch on my gym bag!”
Before he can concede that the problem may be larger than he initially realized, all Stromberg asks is that you show him several dozen more accusations, provided they are credible and come with suitable reasons to accept they aren’t just people jumping on the trend to get attention and settle scores.