Cease and Desist THIS!
As you know from my recent articles on this blog, I have spent a considerable portion of the past 3 years investigating the sexual abuse of children in roller rinks throughout the West Coast.
In one case, I have been trying to get justice for a child who was sexually assaulted by a man named Richard Larghe in Westminster, Colorado, in early 2022.
This assault occurred during a beginner skating class that Larghe was assistant coaching. Although the child reported the incident to the main coach, no action was ever taken to remove Larghe from the Skate City roller rinks.
Just as Larghe was committing his heinous crimes, another man was formally sanctioned from participating in roller sports in Colorado.
This man, Shane Hayden, worked as a firefighter in Parker, Colorado. He was arrested in 2009 for attempting to lure a minor for sex through an Internet chat room.
Despite the fact that Hayden’s crime literally made the news in Colorado, he was still allowed to participate in roller sports in that state. He was not formally removed from participating in USA Roller Sports (USARS) until 2022.
The group that sanctioned Hayden, SafeSport, is the national body tasked by our government with keeping vulnerable children safe in amateur sports.
I emailed SafeSport a few weeks ago to ask them why Shane Hayden was allowed to participate in sports whose athletes are mainly children. Why was he allowed to participate in USARS, I asked, if he was on the Colorado sex offender registry as early as 2009?
SafeSport never responded.
Next, I called the Parker and Westminster police offices in Colorado. I asked them the same question — why are multiple known pedophiles being allowed to skate with children? Both police departments told me it was out of their jurisdiction, and there was nothing they could (or would) do.
I also asked the Westminster police officer why there had been no action taken against Hayden specifically. He was working as a firefighter at the time he committed his 2009 crimes. According to his LinkedIn page, he still is.
How can it be, I asked, that there is no mechanism in place to stop firefighters from sexually abusing children? Surely there must be some kind of reporting system designed to prevent this exact type of issue?
Again, the officer repeated that it was out of his jurisdiction. There is nothing he could (or would) do to investigate this further.
The owner of Skate City, Jeffrey Ingrum, has been harassing me online, via email, and via snail mail for the past few months.
A few weeks ago, I found out that personal pictures of my car (including my license plate number) and the interior of my apartment had been uploaded to Google Maps without my knowledge or consent. At the time I discovered this, over 2,000 people had already seen these pictures. One of these pictures included the location of my hide-a-key, which I have since removed.
Of course I cannot prove that the Ingrum family and associated cronies are responsible for the harassment I have experienced. It may well be the LaBriola family, or any number of my other haters.
I may never be able to prove who it was that uploaded my personal information to the Internet. But I can prove one thing, which is that Jeffrey Ingrum actually hired an attorney to send me a Cease and Desist letter last month.
Well, technically he sent it in November. But he sent it to the wrong email address. And to an old mailing address of mine from Colorado, even though I now live in California.
Jeffrey Ingrum’s attempts to intimidate me have been (and will always be) unsuccessful. I could never be afraid of someone so stupid.
But I would like to share the contents of that Cease and Desist letter, as well as my response, here.
Ultimately, the Ingrum family’s ongoing attempts to silence me all point to one thing — the fact that they are scared. Not of me, but of the truth. Not of what I say about them, but of facing consequences for their crimes. And, most of all, of the financial losses they are now experiencing and will continue to experience.
A few months ago, I asked SafeSport to explain where large quantities of their congressional funding are going. If this money isn’t going to help victims like the kids in Colorado, where is it going? They couldn’t tell me. So I reported them for fraud to the FBI. I also told them, and I stand by this, that I will not stop my research and advocacy work until their institution is “nothing more than a blight on our national memory.”
Well, I am only 33 years old now, so I could have another 5 or 6 decades ahead of me to do this. Considering what I managed to accomplish with SafeSport in 6 months, Jeffrey Ingrum should be scared. I will neither cease nor desist, until I have concrete proof that children in the Skate City rinks are safe.
To my public audience, please keep reading if you want to know more about Jeffrey Ingrum’s audacity. And to Jeffrey Ingrum, cease and desist THIS, why dontchya?
I Won’t cease and I won’t desist
For anyone interested, here is the actual text of the letter I received:
This letter “demands” that I immediately cease and remove all “Google reviews, Reddit posts, and any other online or social media posts.”
I have been making lengthy videos venting about the Ingrums et al on my Instagram (@carolynthefarnsworth). I posted a one-star review for every single Skate City location, and I included links to this blog on these reviews.
I posted a number of different threads on Reddit, particularly in R/Rollerskating.
In R/Rollerskating, the official Skate City account threatened me with legal action in early November. Jeffrey Ingrum (via his Reddit account) told me that I could expect to receive a Cease and Desist letter in the mail at any time.
The Skate City account also publicly outed me by my full name on Reddit, destroying any privacy or protection that you are supposed to have on that site.
Well, the Colorado Law Group obviously doesn’t know how to use Google or understand the concept of fact checking. I told them as much in an email and voicemail I sent them (neither of which have, to this date, been returned).
I responded to the Skate City post on Reddit by noting that Ingrum’s attorneys had failed to get the Cease and Desist letter to me.
I went on (this was my luteal phase, guys, have some sympathy) to list the names of “celebrity” roller skaters who tried to silence me in California — Candice Heiden, Dirty Deb, Nicole Fiore, et fucking cetera.
I further noted that what I am saying would only be libel if I were lying. I am not lying; thus, Colorado Law Group has no grounds to file suit against me.
I told Colorado Law group as much. I directed them to SafeSport, if they wanted to verify any of the information I have posted. And I informed them that I do have written documentation to support every single one of my claims.
The reason I have not (and will not) post this documentation online is because I want to protect the identity of the victims.
I have read so many stories and studies about the sexual abuse of children that go into explicit detail about the sex crimes involved. Many of these stories also reveal the full names and ages of the children affected.
I personally think this should be a crime in and of itself.
First of all, there is just no good reason to share explicit details of child sex crimes with the public.
Second, as a survivor of more than my fair fucking share of sexual abuse, I know how painful it can be to discuss these experiences publicly. I would never share another survivor’s private information unless they specifically asked me to do so.
All of the children impacted by these crimes have a right to privacy. If they want to stand up and speak out about this someday, that is completely up to them. It is not my place to make that decision for anyone else.
In other words, the fact that I am not including a lot of my documentation is intentional. I have sent relevant documentation to the appropriate authorities, who are legally required to keep these documents private.
The fact that I do not (and will not) publish these documents on my blog is a sign of respect to other survivors. I have already noted on my Instagram that any survivors who want to speak up are welcome to reach out to me for support. And I have left it at that, as we all should.
What the Fuck?
Since Jeffrey Ingrum’s attorneys are apparently as clueless as their client, I was not actually aware of the Cease and Desist letter until December 20, 2024. At that time, I immediately reached out to Ingrum’s attorneys.
I informed them that everything I said was true. I referred them to SafeSport and other agencies to verify any information contained in my allegedly libelous statements.
I believe the last words I spoke in my voicemail to Colorado Law Group were, “…and if you think I won’t come after you for this, think again! [Evil laugh.]”
And let me tell you, the minute I find an attorney who isn’t a lying, money-grubbing weasel with a hidden agenda, I will go after those buffoons.
In the meantime, I would like to point out that I have yet to be sued.
I said to Jeffrey Ingrum on Reddit — if I’m lying, why don’t you sue me?
Shortly after that, the R/Rollerskating mods deleted all of my posts. Their reason? They commented that my posts were inappropriate for the channel because I was calling people out by name.
This was weeks after the Skate City account called me out by name in the same channel.
Why is it OK for these skating overlords to invade my privacy and continue to harass me, all while denying me access to skating rinks and essentially flatlining my artistic roller skating career?
What have I done to deserve this treatment? To have not only my name dragged through the mud publicly, but also my physical safety and security repeatedly threatened?
As I noted in my previous articles, all I have done is report crimes to public agencies tasked with investigating them. In the SafeSport agreement I signed as an athlete with USARS, I specifically promised that I would do this.
All USARS athletes aged 18 and up are required, according to the SafeSport agreement, to report any child abuse. This includes child abuse that you witness as well as child abuse that you hear about.
In addition to attacks on my character, members of the artistic roller skating community have also spread my private health information around without my consent.
2022 was the first year when I saw a psychiatrist for a formal autism assessment. I was not diagnosed with ADHD or autism as a child, and I never received any support for these conditions until I was diagnosed with ADHD at 25.
I did not receive the autism diagnosis until I was 31, although I had certainly suspected I was autistic for the better part of a decade.
Most neurodivergent women do not receive diagnoses and support when we are children. This is because all of the diagnostic criteria are based on male symptoms. It is extremely difficult, as a woman, to get any kind of support whatsoever if you are neurodivergent.
Although I was very happy to receive my autism diagnosis, as it was a true relief to me after all these years, I was not necessarily ready to tell everyone about it. The decision to share this information was something I really wasn’t ready to make in 2022.
Nonetheless, multiple members of the artistic skating community shared this information without my consent. I have had multiple people tell me that, because I am autistic, I do not understand social situations — and thus nothing I say can be trusted. Because I am “retarded” or “slow.”
The thing is, 9 out of 10 U.S. girls and women with autism experience sexual assault. Personally, I do not know a single adult woman with autism who has been raped fewer than 3 times.
There is virtually no support out there for autistic women and girls. SafeSport doesn’t have any autism services. The police don’t. Attorneys don’t. The FBI doesn’t.
Girls with autism are perhaps the most vulnerable children in America, when it comes to the risk of sexual assault. As I came to understand the complete lack of support services for this population (including me), I became truly horrified.
When I asked SafeSport for an autism advocate, they told me that they did not have the budget for that. But I know that can’t be the whole truth, because they had a $3-million budget surplus last year.
SafeSport actually asked me to join one of their advisory boards, on a volunteer basis, to create a framework for autism support for their entire organization.
The irony — my God, the fucking irony — of being asked to create your own support (for free) by an institution that is actively in the process of discriminating against you.
If this is the experience that I — a 33-year-old, highly educated, well-connected, generally healthy — adult had, I just truly cannot imagine how any minority child has a chance of getting justice through SafeSport. Or through the police, or by any other means one could hope to get justice.
And this is why I will not cease, and I will not desist.
If I were lying, I would have been served by now.
I am not lying, so Jeffrey Ingrum cannot sue me. He also has no legal right to silence me.
On behalf of myself, and on behalf of all the other people (mostly children) that SafeSport has failed, I won’t let this go.
If we teach minority children that they deserve less, they will inevitably internalize that to some extent. By failing these kids, we are putting them at higher risk of future financial instability, mental health issues, and even suicide. By not holding perpetrators accountable, we are setting these kids up for lifelong revictimization.
Every child deserves to be safe. And every child — no matter the color of their skin, their gender, or their neurotype — deserves to be protected from sexual abuse.
Jeffrey Ingrum, the only person who should be ceasing and desisting right now is you. You should cease harassing and antagonizing me for speaking the truth. And you should desist operating a business for which you are so obviously unfit.
*Update as of 5:29 PM, PST, January 13, 2025 - I have been permanently banned from R/Rollerskating specifically because of posting this article. Coincidence? What do you think?
