Newsgroups claim credit for Sass dismissal
Fans of 2022 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion Brent Sass mad at the Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) and threatening to boycott the race because it banned him amid accusations of sexual assault might be directing their anger at the wrong target.
Propublica, a New York-based online publication, is now claiming credit for the firestorm that spurred Sass’s exit.
It turned to X, formerly Twitter, to suggest that its action drove the race to disqualify Sass from this year’s competition. The publication – which teamed with Alaska Public Media, the Anchorage Daily News and an Anchorage attorney representing two unidentified women to unveil the charges against Sass complete with prurient details – appears, however, to have ignored the old rule that correlation is not causation.
Be that as it may, the race did disqualify Sass while the publications were in the process of reporting on the story. But then again, Iditarod had known of the accusations against Sass for months and was aware the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race in rural Southwest Alaska asked Sass to withdraw from the competition there in January.
The accusations are just that – accusations. Sass has not been charged with any crime. There is, at least at this time, no indication the accusations are being investigated by law enforcement authorities though they could be even though the assaults appear to have happened years ago. There is no statute of limitation charges of first- or second-degree sexual assault in Alaska.
Without an investigation, it is unclear as to how Sass – who says he is innocent – can clear his name.
The Kusko’s decision to ask both Sass and Eddie Burke Jr., the 2023 Iditarod Rookie of the Year facing charges of domestic assault in Anchorage, to withdraw from the race (which both did) largely forced the Iditarod to confront these issues in a state that leads the nation in sexual assaults and is near the national leads in reports of domestic violence.
In early February, Sass ran and won the 2024 Yukon Quest Alaska 300, a shortened version of what was once an international, 1,000-mile race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada.
Heroic dog driver
Sass rose to fame in Alaska and the Yukon by three times winning the Quest prior to his lone Iditarod victory. One of the women now accusing him of sexual assault said the iconic status awarded Sass for winning those races helped to create the image of a “sunshiney, heroic” figure that made her unwilling to report Sass to authorities after she was assaulted.
Sass is adamant that he is innocent. On Feb. 23, he posted a letter to the Iditarod Trail Committee accusing the Iditarod of trying to “get rid of the problem instead of face it.”
The letter blamed the ITC for setting “a terrible precedent” that “gives future false accusers the green light to throw out outrageous and false accusations about anyone they want to destroy.”
Since the letter appeared, hundreds of people have engaged in a debate on Sass’s Facebook page with comments as to his guilt and innocence. Many there are sympathetic. Some say they have reason to believe the accusations of Sass’s unnamed accusers.
Craigmedred.news has communicated with more a dozen women who claim to know Sass well either because they worked with him as handlers, spent time with him during sled dog races or were friends in Fairbanks.
Some have said it is impossible Sass is guilty of the accusations lodged against him. Others say they have no doubts about the stories told by two women who says they were in consensual relationships with Sass that led to his forcing them into sex acts in which they did not want to participate. A few have said they think there are women yet unidentified who were assaulted, but no women have emerged to date to make further accusations.
O’hara-Jolley has told friends she was not one of those sexually assaulted. A number of former handlers, male and female, who worked for Sass say they witnessed no sexual assaults, but also paint Sass as something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Dr. Brent/Mr. Sass
Publicly, Sass is highly personable and well-spoken as he was in a more than hour-long interview conducted with Alaska media after he won the Iditarod. He is known for a big smile and the tears he regularly sheds when talking about his dog team.
That Sass is every bit, as he said in his letter to the Iditarod, “a well-respected and vocal advocate for the mushing community.”
But some of his handlers describe a far different character in private at his kennel. One, a man who met Sass at a clinic in Oregon, described the visiting musher as “the life of the party: cordial, inviting. Everyone wanted to talk with him and not just because he was “famous” musher though that certainly helped. Typically, I am an untrusting man. I don’t recall distrusting him and the only distrusting feeling I had was from seeing all the attendants try to soak up all his sunshine.”
When the acquaintance came north to work at Sass’s remote homestead about 150 miles northwest of Fairbanks, he found a different Sass.
“When we arrived, Brent had a female guest,” the man wrote. “I do not remember her name. I vaguely remember that she was introduced as a journalist or writer and was on assignment to write a piece about Brent and his kennel. I remember that the energy was odd. I don’t recall being informed beforehand that she would be there.
“When they came out to greet us it was apparent to me that they were having a physical
relationship but seemed to try and put on an air of professionalism. Odd energy. I would say she was there for a week or so.
“(And) while the writer was there, Brent was in high spirits. He was the same Brent we had met in (Oregon).”
When the woman – apparently the woman then filling the Snedden Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks – left, the man said, everything changed.
“He went from cordial to downright nasty with whiplash speed. He became a tyrant.
“One prime example: One night after Brent fed his dogs a bowl was left near a dog house. Typically bowls would be collected after feeding. Most, if not all, mushers would adhere to that sort of protocol.
“Since he fed the dogs and left the bowl out, we assumed this was done on purpose. One morning we were having a morning meeting to discuss the day’s to-do list. Brent was in a fine mood. Everything seemed normal.
“(But) when we had finished discussing the day’s tasks, things took a turn. I remember him starting a line of questioning around the bowl. It began with an accusatory tone. He began to yell and scream at us, calling us names, belittling our intelligence.
“We defended our actions. We didn’t pick up the bowl because we assumed he left it out for a reason. He said that he left it out as a test. At one point he charged at me screaming. For additional context, Brent is over 6 feet tall, around 200 pounds and strong from
woodland living. I am 5-foot-5, 160 pounds. I am strong, but we are absolutely not fighting in the same weight class. He charged at me as I stood with my arms crossed leaning against a table. He was spitting mad and screaming in my face. His nose was inches from mine and he looked down on me.”
The man said all he could do was laugh at the absurdity of the situation, which just sent Sass off. But he said the musher did calm down when it was explained that the laugh was a nervous reaction to such a blowup over a dog dish.
The handler left after a month, but said that in that month “I saw the portrait of a narcissist and what I would classify as a textbook sociopatch, a persona who when eyes are on him presents himself as picture perfect. When no one is looking, Mr. Hyde comes out.”
Another handler, a man who spent a summer working for Sass before leaving and marrying a musher, offered a similar account. He said in an email that he wanted to make it clear that he could not verify the accusations against Sass, but found the musher to have a seemingly split personality.
At Sass’s kennel, the man wrote, Sass would regularly disparage the sponsors he praised in public and sometimes threaten handlers with the idea he could be violent but didn’t plan to resort to violence.
Too strange
The handler described the latter behavior as “bizarre and unsettling,” and wrote that “in the end I left because I didn’t feel safe around him, and I wasn’t willing to be isolated with him during the winter on his remote homestead without a safe way out. The driveway is long and it takes a lot of effort to get back to civilization in the winter. His behavior when he was angry and the fact that he implied violence multiple times made me nervous.”
Another handler, a female who said she was not sexually assaulted, said that at home in Euerka, Sass “would laugh and boast about his ‘f—ing stupid supporters’ who ‘love him so much that they just throw money at him.’ He also bragged about his previous handlers fleeing in the middle of the night. I found suitcases and bags of clothing that they dropped in the woods as they ran out of there.
“He had zero care for his dogs. (He) emotionally and verbally abused his handlers (and) laughed at his supporters. I told people I felt like his only value of a woman was if he could have sex with them.”
All of the handlers described Sass as running a very business-like kennel or “dog farming” as another former Iditarod champion described building a winning Iditarod team. Female dogs that unexpectedly became pregnant were allowed to birth the puppies which were then disposed of, which is cheaper than having a dog aborted. Lower-tier dogs in training that suffered injuries often got no treatment and were left to “let nature take its course.” They would eventually either get better or be put down.
None of those things make Sass a rapist, but some of them do paint him as an individual with whom the Iditarod might want to disassociate itself given that The Last Great Race now bills itself as “all about the dogs.”
There may, likewise, be other mushers in the race who now operate kennels similar to the way Sass operates his, but such operations usually do not get talked about or if they do the people talking are quickly dismissed as animal rights activists who have slipped into a kennel to try to vilify mushing or the Iditarod.
From an Iditarod standpoint, the biggest problem with Sass might have been that the allegations of sexual accusations against him offered some protection for former handlers to make an issue of his dog care, and that is something Iditarod doesn’t want talked about.
Such talk could easily spread to discussions of other kennels.
Thus, despite Propublica’s claims, it is possible the ITC’s actions might involve more than just the sexual accusations against Sass. Iditarod might well have had reasons beyond and in addition to those accusations that led it to try to get as far away from Sass as it could.
There is no doubt the race’s timing was bad, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the animal rights organization now leading the attack on Iditarod, seems to have already moved on to what happens in the race rather than outside of it.
It today leveled charges that four-time champ Dallas Seavey, who was forced to shoot a moose that was stomping his team, prioritized “the event’s rules above a dog’s critical injury.” There is no evidence that Seavey ignored the dog’s injuries before gutting the dead moose as the rules require, but PETA made the charge anyway.
The dog was medevacked to Anchorage for emergency treatment. It remains in hospital at this time.
Seavey was today far down the trail from the scene of the attack and vying for the race lead as the top contenders reached the Kuskokwim River.
Craig, I have had extensive professional training and experience with assessing people, and I can sense when someone is not genuine. I cannot say whether or not Brent Sass sexually assaulted anyone – I just am not going to weigh in on that or conjecture. But I can tell you in every video I have seen Brent speak in, I have not experienced him as being genuine. I think there is something very phony about him. But that is my own experience I am naming. I think for me the final clincher is how he drove his team way too hard in the 2016 Iditarod and his dogs gave him the business by quitting on him in White Mountain. I thought – “Good dogs. Since he did not provide you all with the rest you needed, you decided as a pack to get the rest and by God you are not leaving the checkpoint until you are feeling ready to leave.” And thus they did, when they were ready — despite all of the pleading Brent tried to do with them.
The account provided by the male handler might indicate that Brent has a different persona in public than in private – but that is true for all of us. We all wear different hats – and to conflate that experience with Brent committing sexual assault or rape is a giant leap. We need to be careful with the comparisons we are making here. There are a lot of people who lose their cool – but that does not translate to rape.
As for the first woman who has accused him — she signed a sworn notarized statement, which is legally binding. So I think it is more than just an accusation she is making. But I also think at this point if the women are being truthful enough time has passed that they should both file charges. Brent has a right to defend himself if he is innocent, and if he is not then he needs to pay for what he did in accordance with the rule of law. When people make excuses to not do that – whether they think the criminal justice system is a farse or if they are feeling afraid to do that — they let the entire community down. We have to think beyond ourselves to do what is right – not just for us, but for others who are facing similar trauma.
When a woman stands up and does that, she empowers herself and other women to do the same. Alaska may have the highest sexual assault rate in the Country, but that will not change until women say no more – and hold the man who harmed them accountable for that. I am a woman. My own mother was sexually assaulted and brutalized by her own father. And it did not happen in an isolated location as where Brent Sass lives. It happened in a city neighborhood with houses close together. Her own mother was aware of what was going on, and so was my uncle. But my grandmother was from the old country and everyone was dependent on my grandfather for food, housing, clothing – everything. But my mom finally decided she had enough, and she got the hell out of that house. And the police helped her do that, and so did my dad – five years before I was born.
We all carried my mom’s wounds with her. I still do. It is difficult for me to forgive my grandfather. My mom is a saint – she did, despite everything he did to her. In the majority of rape and sexual assault, the assailant knows his victim. So it is easy for a man to say to a woman she should go to the police and then find fault with her or discredit her for not doing so. It depends on the situation and on the woman – but just because she does not go to the police does not mean the rape or sexual assault did not happen.
I have worked with domestic violence victims as a board certified professional chaplain. I know the grip that the perpetrators have on their victims. In the United States alone, 4,000 women die from domestic violence each year because they did not know or could not empower themselves to leave or to fight back.
As for Brent’s innocence or guilt – as I stated from the beginning, I cannot nor will I conjecture about that. I cannot dismiss the women’s allegations. They reported to an agency so these are not accusations. The only way the truth can be known is for the women to file charges against Brent and then this goes to court before a judge and jury. But people in our Country are innocent until they are proven guilty in that way. So that is where I want to leave this.
Thank you Craig for reading my lengthy comment, and for allowing me to share about my mother’s and our family’s experience with sexual assault.
So, near the end of the story the most important detail was listed… Sass was “dog farming” and culling the lot to produce “champion” level huskies.
Brent’s homestead was built by Ed and Willow Salter who were “dog farmers” for Rick Swenson & Susan Butcher in the 1970’s…so, Brent learned his ways from one of the “old timers”. This probably says a lot about his apathy towards dogs & potentially his apathy towards humans. I must say it is a little comical how the male handler said Brent was pissed after the female journalist left. It does appear Brent used his Irod status to get as much _____ while the getting was good…it also appears that females hooked up with Brent even though they knew his “bad boy” side, maybe because of it? Anyways, what’s important is another dog was seriously injured within 20 hours of the Iditarod this year. Legacy media like ADN worked hard to paint Dallas as a hero before the truth came out about how bad his dog is. I am sure the dog is close to death and they are trying to save it mostly for PR at this point. Years ago, that dog would have been shot by the side of the trail & the musher would have just continued. There is no reason to keep this mess of a dog farming situation going on year after year…the handlers are traumatized; the neighbors are traumatized from constant barking and the dogs are living a shitty life on a chain in various states of dis-ease. All for one person’s notoriety under the arches…enough is enough.
Steve- Very interesting. A little more on the history of these “dog farms” would be enlightening for all. Always assumed that these were run by the mushers themselves, not a third party.
The illiberal left is as Narcissistic and myopic as any swarm of #magats
Well there is that, and there is a lot of narcissistic behavior in our society today in general. There’s a reason we talk about it becoming an “all-about-me” society. Hell, the Probublica claim to having started all of this is itself narcissistic:
Hey, look at me! See what I did!
But maybe it’s my, old, Minnesota, Scandanavian roots showing. I grew up in such a strange environment that I was always embarrassed when someone praised anything I did. Not that it happened that often….