Hall of Shame: Skate City Westminster
As my readers know by now, I have worked in biomedical editing and writing for well over a decade. The primary focus of my career has been on the promotion of healthcare equity. I have written and published numerous pieces on the history of biomedicine, the current state of the field, and future possibilities for advancing equal healthcare in America.
Contrary to popular opinion, I really love the work that I do. I am passionate about language and linguistics. And working in biomedical communications makes me feel like I am making a small but positive change in our world.
What many of you may not know is that, outside my work in biomedicine, I also happen to be very good at roller skating.
My mom taught me how to skate when I was 4 years old in Santa Cruz, CA. Some of my earliest and best memories include skating by the beach with my mom and my sister.
As a child, I was homeschooled within an isolated religious community. My best friend Cora’s dad was a Southern Baptist preacher, and he lived in a parsonage right by the church. Cora and I would get groups of kids together to play pick-up hockey games and race around the parking lot or down the nearby hill. I had as many skinned knees as happy days.
Growing up, I always had a pair of roller skates somehow. In most cases, we would just get used skates from Goodwill. The inline skates I had in college cost me $9.99 from Goodwill, and they were great.
In my mid-20s, I started playing roller derby with Gotham Girls in Brooklyn, NY. I moved to New York City for my job as a copy editor with Nature Methods. It was actually the journalist for Nature Methods who recommended I get into roller derby. (I do not think her suggestion was meant as a compliment.)
I played derby for a few years, but it wasn’t until I moved to Denver during COVID lockdown that I started to get serious about roller sports.
At one point, likely as a result of my COVID depression, I was simultaneously participating in roller derby, inline speed skating, and artistic roller skating. And working full time as a senior medical editor.
I finally gave up on derby after spraining my ankle (again). From there, it was between speed and artistic.
I did not expect that the reason I would wind up in artistic roller skating would turn out to be so dark. But what I learned when I was skating at Skate City Westminster set off a three-year investigation into the sexual abuse of children at the Skate City roller rinks.
In early 2022, a man named Richard Larghe committed a sexual crime against a child at Skate City Westminster. He did this while in the role of assistant coach.
In addition to his sexual crimes against children, Larghe sexually harassed me and at least one other woman at Skate City.
Although we all reported the incidents to the management and rink owner, Jeff Ingrum, no action was ever taken.
Larghe has been actively training and competing with Skate City ever since.
I had to quit inline speed skating because of this incident. Not only did Larghe take advantage of me, but I could never stomach participating in any kind of group where I knew that children were being abused.
As far as I know, all of the artistic and speed coaches for Skate City were fully aware of what happened. The managers and employees at Skate City Westminster are fully aware as well.
When I spoke with a group of teenage girls who worked at the food counter at Westminster, I asked them if they knew anything about Larghe.
They told me that Larghe attends public skating sessions by himself. He picks out young girls who are alone. He starts to skate with them and offers to “help them with their skating.” He purchases Icees, hot dogs, and other snacks or toys for them.
The fact that Larghe has been openly grooming and assaulting children at Skate City Westminster is an open secret.
In May of this year, I filed a report with SafeSport. This organization is responsible for handling the sexual abuse of minors in amateur sports, Olympic sports, paralympic sports, etc.
I reported incidents that I had personally experienced. But the main focus of my report involved the children who I had personally witnessed being abused at Skate City.
This report grew to include children in roller rinks in California, Colorado, and other states. All of these children have been abused within roller rinks. Despite reports of this type of abuse that go back to the 1970s, no one has ever taken any kind of substantive action to protect these kids.
I have waited to speak out about this publicly for a few different reasons.
First, my primary objective was to get justice for these children. I have reported these crimes to SafeSport, Colorado police, California police, the FBI, and so many more institutions/organizations.
I have also openly posted about this on public forums like Reddit, Google reviews, etc.
I have personally been sending text messages and emails to mothers I know in these rinks. I have told many of these women what happened, and I have encouraged them to pull their kids out.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not because I am an attention-seeking killjoy. I personally believe that everyone should have a pair of roller skates. I truly believe that opening more affordable and accessible roller rinks would decrease crime rates and boost our collective mental health.
But I absolutely cannot and will not support anyone who takes advantage of children.
Over my dead body, will I allow men like Richard Larghe to continue their crimes unchecked.
And how is it possible that this was able to go on for so long? When all of the coaches, rink staff, employees, and skaters know perfectly well what happened?
I suspect that this gross miscarriage of justice occurred for two reasons.
First, I believe that Jeff Ingrum is guilty of fraud (and I have already reported him for this crime to the Westminster police, who are investigating).
On his website, Ingrum claims that athletes who participate in his skating league are protected by SafeSport. According to his website, his son Jason is the “Director of SafeSport for the National Roller Sports Association.”
First of all, there is no such job as “Director of SafeSport.” Anyone who works for SafeSport would be affiliated with the official organization on their website. Jason and Jeff Ingrum are not.
Furthermore, the National Roller Sports Association is not under SafeSport protection. I know this for a fact, but you don’t have to take my word for it. You can contact SafeSport yourself here to learn more.
So what does this mean?
What it means is that Ingrum is a liar. He has been telling athletes and parents that, if they sign up with him, they will be covered under SafeSport. This means that all adults who are involved in the sport have to have a background check. It means that there is an automatic reporting system in place to handle abuse if and when it occurs.
When I was skating at Skate City, I was fully under the impression that everything was above board. I genuinely believed that the reports I made had been sent to the proper authorities (ie, SafeSport and the police). After all, Jason Ingrum is a retired police officer, so wouldn’t he know and follow the right procedures?
But it turns out that no one ever reported Richard Larghe to SafeSport, or to the police. All of the athletes and coaches were probably, like myself, under the impression that SafeSport knew about this. And did nothing.
So my money is on the SafeSport misrepresentation for the first reason behind the delay in justice.
However, that doesn’t explain why none of the coaches ever filed a report with the police. In Colorado, coaches are considered mandated reporters. That means that they are legally required to report child abuse (or suspected child abuse) to the police. In Colorado, they are legally required to do this within 24 hours of a child abuse incident.
None of the coaches across any of the Skate City rinks did this.
Violating mandatory reporting law is punishable by up to 6 months in prison in many cases. Besides that, people who violate this law are subject to fines, coaching restrictions, etc.
Based on what I know after 3 years of bitter research, I think that these coaches must have realized at some point that they fucked up.
Because I asked a lot of these coaches, some of them people I had considered friends, to help me. I have asked them to report Richard Larghe to SafeSport since 2022. I have asked them on many occasions to report Jeff Ingrum as well.
But all of my requests were ignored. In many cases, I was blocked and/or ghosted after making them.
What disgusts me most of all about this situation is the fact that so many adults are willing to put their egos above the safety of a child.
What pains me the most deeply is that so many people allowed their fear of getting punished for their own actions to stop them from doing the right thing.
And since I filed this report, I have been ostracized by the entire skating community. I cannot skate in any of the rinks in my area because of safety concerns.
Skaters across Colorado and California have spread rumors about me. Powerful figures in the skating community have encouraged these rumors, because they wanted to hurt me so much that they would stop me from seeing this report through to the end.
But they couldn’t stop me, because none of this was ever about me anyways.
One of the children involved specifically asked me to help them. And I looked them right in the eye and promised I would.
If you think I care more about my reputation than I care about a promise to a child, think the fuck again.
I didn’t speak out about this publicly before, because I didn’t want to hinder the investigation. And there are a lot of things that happened that I cannot legally talk about anyways.
Quite frankly, I never wanted to talk about this at all. My mental and physical health were literally shredded this whole year over this. I could not sleep at night, when I knew what I knew. And I will never understand why people allow things like this to happen and just turn a blind eye.
My earliest memories of roller skating are of light bouncing off the waves, sand, and seagulls. Of my mother holding my hand beside the ocean. Of freedom, and of peace.
But most of my memories are not as happy as those. As a child, the amount of abuse I experienced and/or witnessed within the religious community taught me that appearances are not necessarily what they seem.
When Cora and I summoned our raggedy little band of skaters, we were sharing a moment of stolen joy.
As a child, I did not have the ability to stand up for myself in the same way that I can now. But I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I would never become the kind of adult to overlook a child’s pain.
I don’t care if you are a pastor, a coach, or a member of law enforcement — if you participate in or cover up the sexual abuse of a child, you deserve every single thing you get.
That being said, I would like to point out that I am not the arbiter of justice in this country (much as I would like to be).
The only thing that I have done is report crimes to agencies that are tasked with investigating and prosecuting said crimes. What happens now is not up to me. I do not get to decide who gets sentenced with what, or whether sanctions happen or don’t happen.
If I had my way, I would have never had to report this at all. I would have much preferred for Ingrum et al to follow their legal obligations and keep children safe. I would much prefer to do things with my time that do not involve researching and prosecuting the sexual abuse of minors.
But I know the stakes. I know what will happen to these kids if no one intervenes, and I am all too aware of the physical and mental health impacts of childhood sexual assault. I just could not live with myself if I let that happen to someone else, when I had the chance to stop it.
If anyone reading this lives in Colorado, I would strongly encourage you to avoid the Skate City roller rinks. I would also encourage you to share this information with anyone you know who has children in the Denver area.
For anyone else involved in the skating community, I hope that this information encourages you to take action whenever you see acts of injustice (and/or crimes) in your own rink.
And for anyone who is experiencing or has survived sexual abuse, know that you are not alone. What happened to you was not your fault, and it is not your responsibility to carry the shame from that. The shame belongs to the abusers and their enablers, and as far as I am concerned they can keep it.
In addition to keeping ourselves safe now and in the future, survivors and allies can take action to help prevent crimes like these from happening in the first place. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Make a general nuisance of yourself.
If you know something, say something, no matter the cost. When it comes to child abuse, there is nothing more dangerous than silence.
