We’ve already talked about this extremely ugly topic enough so we’ll just pass this over Rener as soon as possible…
What it comes down to at the end of the day is that Rener Gracie, one of the younger, but probably the most popular of the newer generation of the Gracie family, recently made a video regarding the UGLY events that have been going on recently, we’re talking about the black belts/BJJ academy owners that were convicted of being sexual offenders… All 3 of these men were black belts under the great Rickson Gracie.
Information surfaced about three jiu-jitsu blackbelts who own schools, actual businesses but these guys have prior sexual assault convictions to their names… David Arnebeck, Scott Naugle and Romolo Barros. It’s crazy because I’ve met two of these three men in my jiu-jitsu life, and what’s crazy is on the surface there are very good people and you would never assume anything, but the concern is that as owners of a business that puts them not only in very close proximity to people and children but also in a situation where I know what high regard jiu-jitsu students place on their instructors in and I know how they idolize them and I know how they admire and appreciate them so much and that you know we’ll call it idolization of jiu jitsu instructors creates a very dangerous environment where these crimes can be recommitted by people especially if they display that type of behavior.
So it’s very concerning that people with sexual assault convictions are interacting with the public in this manner and unfortunately jiujitsu is an unregulated industry right so anyone can open up a school and start teaching unlike other industries where someone with a prior criminal record cannot engage in that industry.
This is not the case in martial arts and I think a lot of general public people don’t know that but it’s very unfortunate and it’s very concerning for situations like these and what we do as an organization is we do thorough background checks on every instructor who comes through the organization. We’ve been doing it for 10 years now certifying over 500 instructors 150 locations worldwide and we do background checks and many people have been denied instructorship opportunities because of this but that’s only for the schools that we oversee and it really boils down to the each individual organizations of jiujitsu to you know impose these mandates.