She is just 17 in the photo.

Intensely focused, she looks confident as the horse she is riding leaps over a fence in the ring.

For the young equestrian, appearing at the renowned Devon Horse Show in Pennsylvania was the culmination of years of daily, intense training and what she hoped would be her opportunity to break onto the national stage of elite equestrian competition.

But the summer of 1982 would actually mark the end of her career.

After being repeatedly sexually abused by her trainer who was more than twice her age, she alleges in a lawsuit, she stopped riding and gave up on her lifelong dream to be an Olympic equestrian.

The woman, now a 54-year-old insurance professional living in Morris County, filed suit last year against her former trainer, Barry Lobel, 73, of Bedminster.

Last week, Lobel was given an interim suspension from official equestrian activities by the U.S. Center for SafeSport. The national organization that investigates reports of abuse or harassment in Olympic sports said it could not confirm why it suspended him.

Barry Lobel’s attorney, Robert J. Beacham of Hillsborough, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The woman and several other former students of Lobel told NJ Advance Media he sexually abused them in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they were between 14 and 17 years old. Another woman who did not speak to NJ Advance Media said in a deposition that Lobel started a sexual relationship with her when she was 16 that lasted six years.

In an interview in February, the woman who filed suit under the pseudonym Jane Doe said she didn’t realize how the abuse would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“My parents didn’t come to horse shows. They thought I was in good hands,” Doe said.

She was one of many talented young riders in North Jersey at the time who trained with Sandy and Barry Lobel, the husband-and-wife training team well-known for helping riders win at regional and national shows.

“We wanted to be champions. All of us, we wanted to be champions,” said Jennifer Catanach, 53, another former student of the Lobels. “We wanted to have the training. We wanted our trainers to spend time with us, to be their superstar.”

The claims by the women are not uncommon in the world of elite sports, where coaches have outsized control over the athletes they train. Doe said she decided to come forward after the revelations that Larry Nassar had been abusing gymnasts for years.

The problem has long plagued equestrianism, like other sports, said Anne Kursinski, of Frenchtown, a former Olympian who now advocates for the U.S. Center for SafeSport. Kursinski and other well-known equestrians told of being abused by trainers in The Chronicle of the Horse magazine last year.

Trainers have so much power over their students, who can be “awestruck” and afraid to report abuse for fear of losing their mount or a place on a prestigious riding team, Kursinski said.

“It’s their abuse of power,” she said.

In addition to Barry Lobel, Doe is also suing Sandy Lobel and an employee who cared for the horses and lived at farm where Doe said she was abused. In the lawsuit, Doe claims they were aware of what was happening and did not intervene.

John Ursin, the attorney representing Sandy Lobel and the employee, said they did not know about any abuse and “would be the first to strongly condemn any type of abuse.”

Ursin said Barry Lobel is no longer involved with Ravens Wood Farm, the training business the couple operated out of properties in Bedminster and Ocala, Florida. The company’s website, before it was taken down in recent months, described Barry Lobel as an owner.

Ursin said his clients “take no position” about the truth of the accusations against Barry Lobel.

Sandy Lobel was the higher-profile trainer in the partnership, according to other trainers and former students who spoke with NJ Advance Media. But the women said Barry Lobel would also train jumpers and give lessons, especially if his wife was busy, and he was usually the one who traveled with the riders to weekend horse shows. His bio on the former website described him as a show judge and course designer who “made a name for himself” riding jumpers.

Doe’s lawsuit

The world of equestrian sportsmanship is an all-encompassing environment.

To compete at the top level, the teens trained for hours a day, heading off to the stables every day after school and for much of the weekend. During the show season, they spent weekends away at horse shows with their trainers, trying for blue ribbons, trophies and a chance to qualify for bigger shows.

Doe said that in the summer of 1982, she was attending big shows like Devon Horse Show with a goal of qualifying for two national shows. Barry Lobel started paying her special attention that spring and sexually abusing her in the summer, the lawsuit said.

That summer, her mother found a letter Doe had written about what happened and told her she had to stop training with the Lobels, the lawsuit said. But there was no way Doe was going to miss her biggest show season and a chance at nationals, she said, so she recanted.

“Just as long as I could keep going to the barn and riding and showing, that’s all that was important to me,” she said. “So I said I just wrote the letter for attention.”

Her lawyer, Daniel B. Shapiro of Montclair, said that need to keep riding kept Doe and other girls silent. “They didn’t want to speak up because if they told their parents, they might stop them from taking lessons,” he said.

In an interview in Shapiro’s office, Doe said she started riding at 4, competing at 9 and training with the Lobels at 15. Some horse shows required overnight stays and the riders’ parents didn’t usually go, Doe said. Sometimes Barry Lobel would provide alcohol to the girls at these shows, the lawsuit said.

Once, on the way home from a horse show, the lawsuit said, Barry Lobel noticed her sleeping in the passenger seat of the horse van and pulled her head into his lap. He stroked her hair, her back and then her breasts, the lawsuit said.

“I was kind of just lying there and not knowing what to do,” she said. “This person is an authoritative position over me. He’s like my parental, my father figure.”

At the Hampton Classic horse show in August, she said, things escalated. She said that she, Barry Lobel and other girls were hanging out in one of two adjoining hotel rooms and she was drinking and smoking. She said she remembered being high.

He took her into the other room and touched her breasts, buttocks and genital areas, according to the lawsuit. He did the same thing when she stayed overnight at the Lobels’ house before an early horse show, the suit said.

Later in the summer, the lawsuit said, Barry Lobel had sex with her twice in the sleeping area of the horse van. She described herself as “disengaged” during the acts; not protesting but also not participating or consenting.

Doe stopped training with the Lobels at the end of that show season, but the abuse continued to affect her for decades, she said.

“And I just kind of drowned myself in some bad behavior, for the next how many years,” she said. She said she only realized recently how the abuse left her floundering, “just trying to numb my depression.”

Doe has struggled with issues including post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts, fears of physical contact and intimacy, nightmares and terrors, according to the lawsuit. She self-medicated with alcohol at times, the suit said, and was hospitalized for “mental injuries arising from sexual abuse” five times between 1986 and 2008.

Other allegations

Several other women who spoke with NJ Advance Media said Barry Lobel touched them inappropriately around the same time.

Catanach, of Colorado, said she was 15 when she started training with Sandy Lobel. She said she immediately noticed Barry Lobel was “touchy-feely,” rubbing girls’ thighs as they sat in the saddle.

She said “the real creepiness started” when she started traveling to horse shows and Barry Lobel got into a hotel room bed with her and another girl. She said he tried to grope and spoon her when she was in bed, putting his hands on her body and trying to pull her against him.

“I grabbed his hand and pushed him away,” she said.

Another former student, Gail, who agreed to be identified only by her first name, said she trained with the Lobels from age 12 until she was 15. Like Catanach, she said no one talked about the things Barry Lobel did.

“He would give me a leg up [on a horse] and put his hand on my crotch. It was perverted,” said Gail, 53. It happened many times, she said. “One time I kicked him with my riding boot.”

In a court filing last year, Shapiro, the attorney, said that he spoke with five women he believed might have witnessed what happened to his client in 1982. He ended up hearing more stories of inappropriate contact, including, he wrote, from a woman who said Barry Lobel had sex with her when she was 13. That woman, he wrote, is “too disabled” from the abuse to testify.

Another woman was deposed in January as part of Doe’s lawsuit. She testified that Barry Lobel started a sexual relationship with her in 1979 when she was 16, and it lasted until she stopped working and riding at the farm in 1984 at 22.

In addition to suspending Barry Lobel from participating in any U.S. Equestrian Federation events, SafeSport has also restricted Sandy Lobel from contacting Doe as an interim measure, according to her attorney.

Doe said she was heartened to hear about the steps SafeSport has taken, and said she hopes the sport she once loved is changing for the better.

Just recently, Doe even started to get back in the saddle and take riding lessons again.

“It’s wonderful. It’s like therapy for me,” she said. “It just makes me realize how much I missed out on and that I didn’t want to stop riding.”

This story was updated from an earlier version to clarify that Sandy Lobel is only restricted from contacting Doe.

Update April 17, 2019: A judge has dismissed the civil complaints against Sandy Lobel and the employee previously named in the suit.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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