Women who are now former members of several Ohio-based YMCAs are speaking out after a trans-identifying woman exposed his genitalia in the woman’s locker room. The trans person was then found not guilty of indecent exposure and allowed by staff to continue to use the facility despite the women voicing their safety and privacy concerns.
Janell Holloway, Kateisha Young, and an Ohio mother who asks not to be identified to protect the privacy of her two daughters, told the Daily Signal that they have seen a man, who identifies as Rachel, fully naked in the women’s locker room at the YMCA.
Last May, the trans person was found not guilty of three counts of indecent exposure when he stripped naked at the facility in Xenia because his belly covered his genitalia.
“Quiet simply, the facts do not exist to support a find of guilt, as charged,” wrote Judge David McNamee. “(The trans person’s) genitalia was not visible as a result of other portions of (his) body covering same.”
Now, the women are sharing how they felt the man, with the permission of the YMCA of Greater Dayton, invaded their privacy.
Janell Holloway says she was swimming at the Xenia YMCA with her husband, Van, last September when she spotted the trans person at the pool.
She described his as “very, very obese” and wearing a woman’s swimsuit. She noted that he left the pool shortly before she did.
When she got to the locker room she said she “could sense that there was someone in the locker room to the right.”
She described, “I glanced over there and I could see the swimsuit that (he) was wearing… I just kind of froze.”
Holloway said she was in utter disbelief that the trans person was fully naked in the locker room. She quickly gathered her things and hid in a stall “completely in silence, just kind of processing it all.”
“He is a man,” she told The Daily Signal. “I was shocked that they could not know he was a man.”
Holloway, who had coached the young man back when he swam on her son’s swim team, told the outlet she waited 15 minutes in that stall until he left.
In distress, Holloway ran to tell her husband that her former male swimming student was naked in the women’s locker room.
“He has all his clothes off, and he’s in there. He’s fooling the (YMCA). We’ve got to let them know. They don’t know that there’s a man in there.”
But the couple says the staff took his side.
“He was given free access to the women’s locker room to undress and act out any fetishes or fantasies he wants in front of women and girls,” she told The Daily Signal. “And that’s what was happening. The men need to stay out of the locker room.”
An Ohio mom said on one occasion the same man was fully naked and “leering” when she and her daughters were showering and changing in November 2022.
And Kyle Kettering said he sent his two daughters to the bathroom and alleges his children saw the man naked from the back.
“I was sending my girls in by themselves!” the dad said. “That was pretty naive on my part, I guess.”
YMCA employee Kateisha Young worked at the neighboring Fairborn facility and became acquaintances with the trans person after hearing what was happening at the Xenia gym.
She explained she wanted to offer emotional support for his struggles living as a transgender-identifying woman.
But when Young met the man at a local Waffle House last December to provide emotional support, she alleged he assaulted her by groping her privates.
“I was wrong for overlooking the girls’ trauma at the Xenia YMCA,” she told The Daily Signal, “and I accept that. I learned a hard lesson through my own experience, and I regret my ignorance very much. I genuinely thought he had simply been in the locker room, not exposing his nudity. But even that, now, seems outrageous to me.”
The YMCA of Greater Dayton has acknowledged that they are in full support of the trans person and other trans-identifying individuals using the bathroom and locker rooms of their choice.
“The YMCA of Greater Dayton adheres to Ohio and Federal laws and anti-discrimination laws which allow all members access to its facilities and programs. In addition, the Greater Dayton YMCAs have a strong record of both protecting personal privacy and modesty in our facilities which are both safe and accommodating while serving and including all members of the community equally,” wrote Dale Brunner, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Dayton, in a statement.
He added, “In addition, we cannot investigate an individual’s birth gender identity and then, assign individuals to locker rooms. That would be counter to the law and counter to respect for all people.”
The women who have had locker room encounters with the biological male feel little support or justice from their community.
Stop abandoning women and girls by allowing an ideology to take precedence over fundamental safety and privacy. https://t.co/QBc0wuneBt
— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) August 29, 2023
“I feel stuck,” said the Ohio mom. “I don’t know what to do. I want to do something still to fight it. It just feels so wrong.”
And they are not the only ones.
As CBN News reported, an elderly Washington state woman was permanently banned from her local YMCA pool after telling a transgender employee to leave the women’s locker room.
And 17-year-old Rebecca Wheeler was showering at her local YMCA in San Diego when she encountered a naked man using the women’s locker room.
When Wheeler notified staff she said her concerns were brushed off.
“I was made to feel as if I had done something wrong,” Phillips said, adding, “The indecent exposure of a male to a female minor was an inconvenience to them.”
“The fact that we are now tailoring our privacy policies and bathroom laws around transgenders ignoring the blatant threat to safety that this poses is obscene,” Wheeler testified before her city council in January. “The safety of girls is on the chopping block…so I implore you all to take action.”
She added, “Everyone agrees that a grown man should not be showering next to an underage girl. It’s that simple.”
***Sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to keep up to date with the latest news from The Christian Perspective.***
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN