Ajax track and field coach Randy Brookes feels a two-year ban handed to him by Athletics Ontario is too harsh.

Athletics Ontario CEO Paul Osland suggests, if anything, it may be too lenient.

Osland spoke Tuesday about the decision, posted online late last week, to serve Brookes with a minimum two-year suspension as a member of Athletics Ontario and from all of its activities.

Brookes, the 42-year-old head coach of the Gazelles athletics club — which serves Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area — was given the suspension after an independent hearing into two complaints concerning harassment of an Athletics Ontario 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.

“There’s obviously an imbalance of power when it comes to athlete-coach relationships, and they’re forbidden,” Osland said. “Our codes of conduct are very clear; our rules are very clear about transgressions of harassment.

“I think, in all honesty, Randy’s is a very lenient sentence as related to harassment punishments out there,” he said.

Brookes, who is married and has two children in the club, believes the punishment is unjust, based on his contention the relationship was consensual for a period of more than three years. He said the complainant was of a similar age to him and was a coach, more so than an athlete with the club.

“I’m suspended for having a consensual relationship,” he said when contacted Tuesday morning. “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.”

The complainant was contacted by the News Advertiser but chose not to comment and did not wish to be identified.

Brookes said he planned to appeal the decision, and in the meantime, was hoping a separate club would be established so his Athletics Ontario athletes could continue with other Gazelles coaches. He is also looking into getting an exemption so he is allowed to watch his children compete.

He said he has received support from most of the parents in the club and will continue working with elementary school children not part of Athletics Ontario.

At the conclusion of the two-year suspension period, his coaching membership may be reinstated if he has not violated the terms of the sanctions, and contingent upon compliance to certain requirements, including the completion of courses and demonstration that he understands his wrongdoing and changes his behaviour accordingly.

Osland said the complainant was “under a separate, unrelated investigation that is not related to her relationship with Randy” but said that the name was being withheld in order to protect the victim in this case.

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“We have a responsibility, and our responsibility is that we have to deal with it and that we have to protect people so that other people won’t be afraid to come forward,” he said.

“I think the only thing that’s really, really important here is that we’re in a world where we have to have zero tolerance for any kind of harassment breaches and issues like this,” he said. “People have to be held accountable, otherwise we’re never going to break the cycle.”