Megan Brown was taking her 8-week old daughter, Grace, for a walk when we caught up with her, asking her about her response to the sentence imposed on her former University of Guelph track coach, Dave Scott-Thomas. Brown was 16 when she met her coach, and her allegations against one of the most powerful people in running cracked open systemic abuse rampant in sport. Brown talked Ben Kaplan over FaceTime this morning.
How are you holding up?
As well as anybody. Just taking it one moment and day at a time, but it’s intense. Very intense. I’m out here walking and breathing and thankful to be near the ocean and mountains and all the resources I can use to process all this.
Did Dave’s punishment equal what he deserved?
I don’t like the word “punishment,” I haven’t been working from that place. For me, I work more from karmic resolution. I think there’s order to everything and as I move through this process I can see there’s a lot that needed to be resolved. I didn’t realize how much it was impacting me the fact that it wasn’t resolved.
What do you mean?
Moving through the stages: the story went out, and there was a lot of healing from that, and closure. Then the institutional stuff, and that impacted me less than maybe you’d think, but this piece is bigger than I thought it would be. It feels like the final necessary piece for karmic closure—for me at least.
Good.
I think it’s another level of internal peace. I didn’t go about this because I needed any of these outcomes. I didn’t think I needed them, but obviously on some level I did. I also think it sends a strong message out there. There’s no tolerance for this. Hopefully it brings athletes another level of safety and protection. That’s what everyone wants to feel—that they’re protected and people are looking out for them.
We need to know there’s justice in the world.
I see the much bigger picture in this. It’s impacting everyone on different levels and I hope it will bring people what they need on this, but the whole thing on a whole is really sad. Any victim of abuse will tell you there’s no punishment that will make things better for the level of pain you had to endure.
“Sad” as the overriding emotion.
It always comes back to “sad” that this happened, that this is the kind of world we live in. So hopefully this today will bring some. . . not “peace” to that sadness, but. . . I don’t know.
Of course, and everything obviously is tied up into this crazy global pandemic. It’s hard to make sense much of anything.
That’s the message when I talk about “karmic closure,” it’s about knowing that there’s nothing gets left un-dealt with. Yes, this took 16 years to resolve, but the universe doesn’t forget. Life doesn’t forget. Everything will come to closure. Everything will come to resolution. Justice, whatever that looks like will always be served. It’s knowing that, that’s the way life operates and healing will always happen and can happen – and that’s an important message for right now—everything is going to be ok
That’s a real nice message from you to us for right now.
Grace is a big 8-weeks-old today. She’s very attached to her mom and I don’t get much space or distance, which is fine for right now. We do a lot of walking; two sometimes three walks per day. Terry Fox has a route in Port Coquitlam, so we walk his route every day, which is neat.
You worried, being a new mom, in a pandemic? (This question sounds awful, and I apologize).
No, it’s OK and no, I don’t have a lot of fear around the illness piece of it it. I just feel this fear of the unknown and what all this is and what’s happening, but at the same time I believe that it’s going to be OK. It’s been intense. I moved across the country, then had a baby, then the story comes out and now the global health crises … I need a vacation.
From the universe, we all do. But for you in particular, I believe it will come.
Honestly, I feel like I’m getting the shit beat out of me every day.
I read a million people have lost their jobs.
It’s insane, but it’s almost so insane that you have to feel a sense of something bigger than any individual. I feel like its all going to be OK because were all in this together. It’s not a subset of people suffering, we’re all in this together and when has that ever happened? This is big and when I’m not engulfed in the intensity of whats happening, I feel hopeful of what’s going to come from all of this. Not Dave Scott-Thomas, but the world. We just have to steer the course and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
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