A former Cape Cod rowing coach who was charged last week with child rape was fired from a local club and investigated by police nearly two decades ago after allegations of misconduct surfaced, the Globe has learned.
Guy Monseair was let go by Cape Cod Rowing Inc. in 2009 after he led a group of girls on a rowing trip to South Africa, said Peter Smith, the president of the club at the time. Smith said Monseair admitted he had supplied the teenage rowers with alcohol and had them sit on his lap while he was driving.
Rowers also shared stories with their parents about incidents during the trip that were more sexual in nature, Smith said. He declined to share those details with the Globe, saying he wanted to protect victims’ privacy. But he said a group of parents was concerned enough about the content of the stories that they contacted police.
Barnstable police confirmed to the Globe that the department investigated Monseair 17 years ago, but “there just wasn’t that critical piece to move forward,” said department spokesman Lt. Kevin Fullam.
The 2009 investigation was “robust,” Fullam said, noting detectives conducted more than 10 interviews with rowers and their parents.
While there were concerns that Monseair had an inappropriate relationship with some of the rowers, “no one directly said they saw something happen and no one directly said that something happened to them that had occurred within our jurisdiction,” Fullam said.
Fullam said the charges filed last week were related to new information detectives received in October.
“I think that some victims [in 2009] didn’t disclose everything that was going on, and that’s the missing link here,” he said.
On Tuesday, Barnstable police denied the Globe’s request for records from the earlier investigation, saying they “relate directly to the subject of ongoing criminal litigation.”
Monseair, 57, is now facing four counts of aggravated statutory rape of a child, and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. The incidents allegedly occurred in 2007, 2008, and 2009 — during his tenure as coach at Cape Cod Rowing. Two of the alleged rapes happened two weeks after the trip to South Africa that resulted in Monseair’s firing.
He was arrested last week in the Bronx on a warrant from Barnstable police seeking to extradite him to Massachusetts.
A legal aid attorney listed for Monseair in court records could not be reached for comment.
The news of Monseair’s arrest last week “knocked me over,” Smith told the Globe.
“It brought back all these dark, ugly, terrible memories, which makes me think only of how traumatic it is for the girls that were involved,” Smith said.
Smith led the club in February 2009, when Monseair and a group of rowers who were no older than 16 went to South Africa to compete in several regattas. Shortly after they returned, Monseair called Smith and asked if they could meet for lunch, Smith said.
“He said, ‘The girls got a little out of control, there was drinking, you’re gonna hear some things, maybe I shouldn’t have let them sit on my lap,’ ” Smith said. “He knew that [expletive] was about to hit the fan.”
In the days that followed, Smith said, he and a group of parents met to talk about Monseair’s conduct during the trip. Stories involving sexual activity began to circulate as rowers opened up to their parents, he said.
Smith decided Monseair needed to be fired, he said, and retained a lawyer to advise the board of Cape Cod Rowing. Still, at a subsequent board meeting, parents were divided on whether to terminate Monseair, according to Smith and another high-ranking person in the organization who requested anonymity.
Other members of the board at the time did not respond to requests for comment this week.
During the board meeting, Smith said, he presented evidence of Monseair’s misconduct in South Africa, such as his alleged facilitation of underage drinking. Smith also raised other allegations, he said, including that Monseair had asked the board to write him a check to cover broken rowing equipment belonging to a club in South Africa, but the club said it never asked for the funds.
Smith said Monseair was ultimately fired for general misconduct.
“There was proven misconduct that there was direct evidence for, and then there was further insinuation of other more serious types of misconduct that, at that time, there was not direct evidence for,” Smith said.
After Monseair was fired in 2009, he immediately spun off a new team, Phoenix Racing — based in Hyannis — consisting of several girls from his Cape Cod Rowing team in neighboring Barnstable.
He later coached at the Pelham Community Rowing Association outside New York City starting around 2012. He formed his own team, City Island Rowing, in 2014 in the Bronx, where he was living when he was arrested last week.
Monseair appeared in a Bronx courtroom Nov. 6. His next hearing is scheduled for Thursday. He remains in custody in New York, officials said.
In a motion to seal the records that detail the allegations from the public, Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert J. Galibois said prosecutors are “engaged in an ongoing sexual assault investigation which may not terminate in the near future” and that other potential victims have been identified.
Fullam, the Barnstable police spokesman, said the department wants to “do right by our community.”
“If there are other victims out there, we want them to feel supported to come forward,” he said.
On Nov. 5, USRowing permanently banned Monseair and barred him from all future competitions. The US Center for SafeSport, an independent nonprofit charged by Congress with investigating misconduct and abuse, added his name to a public disciplinary list, saying he is under temporary suspension.
Smith said he hopes Monseair’s arrest and the ongoing investigation lead more victims to come forward and help bring them closure. But he worries about how many other potential victims there might be.
“My worry is, what has he been up to the last 17 years?” he said.
Aaron Leibowitz can be reached at aaron.leibowitz@globe.com. Follow him on X @aaron_leib. Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.