Athletics Ontario has rejected an appeal by an Ajax track and field coach who was suspended from the sport for two years after engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship with an adult athlete.

Randy Brookes is engaging in “a dangerous line of argument” in minimizing his affair with the athlete because it was consensual, according to the decision by Athletics Ontario president Dean Hustwick.

“The issue with engaging in a sexual relationship with a person over whom you have power is that consent cannot be considered truly voluntary,” Hustwick wrote in the decision, dated Jan. 3.

“Consent does not make the activity acceptable.”

Brookes, the 42-year-old head coach of the Gazelles athletics club — which serves Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area — was suspended for two years last October after an independent hearing into two complaints concerning harassment of an AO member. The panel determined the complaints were valid, based on a sexual relationship between Brookes and an adult athlete while he was acting as the athlete’s coach.

Brookes, who is married, immediately announced his intention to appeal the suspension.

“I’m suspended for having a consensual relationship,” he said at the time. “There’s lots of stuff going on, and it’s all to do with a scorned person. That’s it.

“I have nothing to hide,” he added. “I had an affair, it didn’t work out with this lady, and this is the fallout.”

In his written decision Hustwick rejected Brookes’s three main avenues of appeal — that AO failed to properly follow procedures; that the panel that ruled against him was biased; and that the decision to impose the suspension was “grossly unreasonable.”

“I find there to be considerable evidence, much of it in the public realm, of the harm that has evolved from (Brookes’s) decision to pursue and enter into a sexual relationship with a person who joined his club to obtain athletics coaching,” Hustwick wrote. “(Brookes) knew or ought to have known that his conduct was prohibited and in that manner cannot now succeed in classifying that conduct as ‘a minor infraction.’ ”

Hustwick also rejected Brookes’s request for binding arbitration. The decision also notes that “new information” about Brookes’s “recent conduct” will be investigated.

“AO will investigate this information to determine whether additional sanctions are warranted,” Hustwick wrote.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...