---
title: "A Rowing Coach Fired on Cape Cod in 2009 Now Faces Child Rape Charges"
description: "Police looked into Guy Monseair 17 years ago and found too little to charge. He went on coaching girls on Cape Cod and in New York"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-11-12T11:02:57.769Z
modified: 2026-11-13T01:28:34Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/a-rowing-coach-fired-on-cape-cod-in-2009-now-faces-child-rap-d71ea5
language: en
tags: ["crime", "police", "abuse", "education", "sports", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# A Rowing Coach Fired on Cape Cod in 2009 Now Faces Child Rape Charges

*Police looked into Guy Monseair 17 years ago and found too little to charge. He went on coaching girls on Cape Cod and in New York*

By Nate Ledger · November 12, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/a-rowing-coach-fired-on-cape-cod-in-2009-now-faces-child-rap-d71ea5

## In brief

- Ex-Cape Cod Rowing coach Guy Monseair, 57, faces four counts of aggravated statutory rape of a child and one indecent assault count
- The alleged incidents date from 2007 to 2009; he was arrested in the Bronx and has waived extradition to Massachusetts
- Cape Cod Rowing fired him in 2009 for general misconduct after a trip to South Africa; a police probe then brought no charges
- He went on to coach girls in Hyannis, at Pelham and at City Island Rowing, a club he founded in the Bronx in 2014
- USRowing has banned him permanently, and the DA says other potential victims have been identified

Guy Monseair, 57, used to coach youth girls’ rowing at Cape Cod Rowing. He now faces four counts of aggravated statutory rape of a child and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. Prosecutors say the incidents took place in 2007, 2008 and 2009, while he was coaching the club. He was arrested last week in the Bronx on a Barnstable police warrant, and on Thursday he waived extradition at a hearing in Bronx Supreme Criminal Court, [the *Boston Globe* reported](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/11/12/sports/guy-monseair-child-rape-charges/). The Globe could not reach the legal aid attorney listed for him in court records. He has not been convicted of anything.

According to [Boston.com](https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2026/11/06/former-cape-rowing-coach-arrested-child-rape-charges/), a Barnstable detective got the warrant from Barnstable District Court on Nov. 4, and Barnstable police and the NYPD took Monseair into custody the following day. In its statement, the department said detectives [received reports in October](https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/cape-cod-rowing-coach-guy-monseair-arrested-child-rape/) of sexual assault and rape tied to his years coaching on the Cape.

The odd thing about the case is that it isn’t new. Barnstable police looked at Monseair 17 years ago. The club fired him. What took 17 years is the gap between those two facts.

## What the club could prove

In February 2009, Monseair took a group of rowers, none older than 16, to South Africa for several regattas. Peter Smith was president of Cape Cod Rowing at the time. He says that soon after the team got home, Monseair rang him and suggested they meet for lunch. Smith’s account of that lunch:

> “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.’ He knew that \[expletive\] was about to hit the fan.”

![A watercolor shows a table with two plates, water glasses, and a whistle between wooden chairs, overlooking a lakeside dock with a rowing boat and oars.](https://rews.cc/img/59b93e5166e3a4194b32be13172fef26a4128039.webp)

Over the next few days Smith met with a group of parents. As the rowers talked to their families, he said, stories involving sexual activity began to come out. Speaking to [CAI, the Cape and Islands public radio station](https://www.capeandislands.org/local-news/2026-11-12/former-cape-cod-rowing-coach-charged-with-four-counts-of-child-rape), the Globe’s Aaron Leibowitz said Smith and the parents took what they had to Barnstable police. Smith concluded that Monseair had to go and hired a lawyer to advise the board. Smith and another senior figure at the club, who asked not to be named, say the parents at the board meeting were split on whether to fire him. Other board members from that time did not reply to requests for comment.

At the meeting, Smith says, he set out the evidence from South Africa, including Monseair allegedly enabling underage drinking. He also raised a money question: Monseair had reportedly asked the board for a check to pay for broken rowing equipment belonging to a South African club, and that club said it had never asked for any money. In the end Monseair was fired for general misconduct. Smith explained the distinction this way:

> “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.”

That sentence describes how the decision got made. A volunteer board running a youth sports club can act on what it is able to document: drinking, the lap-sitting he admitted to, an equipment invoice nobody asked for. It doesn’t have to prove the worst allegations to fire someone, and it didn’t. A firing, though, only resolves things inside the club. It tells nobody outside the club what happened.

![A watercolor coastal boathouse with weathered double doors and a leaning oar casts a long shadow beside grasses, rocks, and calm sea beneath cloudy skies.](https://rews.cc/img/02874467d842639c8b0dec77eef2e760b6200333.webp)

## What the police could prove

Police are held to a stricter test, probable cause, and in 2009 they didn’t think they had it. Lt. Kevin Fullam, a Barnstable police spokesman, told the Globe the investigation then was “robust,” with detectives conducting more than 10 interviews with rowers and parents. People were worried that Monseair had an inappropriate relationship with some of the rowers, but “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. Without “that critical piece,” the case stopped.

“I think that some victims \[in 2009\] didn’t disclose everything that was going on, and that’s the missing link here,” Fullam said. According to the Globe, two of the rapes now alleged took place two weeks after the South Africa trip that cost Monseair his job, which puts them inside the period that first investigation covered.

## Where he went next

Monseair started coaching again almost immediately. Right after he was fired he founded Phoenix Racing in Hyannis, and several girls from his Cape Cod Rowing squad in neighboring Barnstable joined him. In the CAI interview, Leibowitz said Monseair had a forceful personality and a “hold” on rowers and their families. From about 2012 he coached at the Pelham Community Rowing Association outside New York City. In 2014 he started City Island Rowing in the Bronx, which Boston.com describes as an all-girls club, and he was living in the Bronx when he was arrested.

![A watercolor coastal scene shows an enormous wooden oar resting across three small docks, with rocky shores, calm water, and waterfront buildings beneath cloudy skies.](https://rews.cc/img/a433a7ffc5c56ea1b5ff48db3a718bb916f5fd90.webp)

Within a day or so of the arrest, the sport responded. The Globe reports that on Nov. 5 USRowing permanently banned Monseair and barred him from all future competition. The US Center for SafeSport, the independent nonprofit Congress charged with investigating abuse in sport, put him on its public disciplinary list as temporarily suspended.

Prosecutors suggest the case may grow. Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert J. Galibois has moved to seal the records setting out the allegations. In the motion he said his office is “engaged in an ongoing sexual assault investigation which may not terminate in the near future” and that other potential victims have been identified. On Tuesday, Barnstable police turned down the Globe’s request for the 2009 investigation files, saying they “relate directly to the subject of ongoing criminal litigation.”

“If there are other victims out there, we want them to feel supported to come forward,” Fullam said, adding that the department wants to “do right by our community.”

Smith told the Globe that the arrest “knocked me over” and “brought back all these dark, ugly, terrible memories, which makes me think only of how traumatic it is for the girls that were involved.” He hopes the case brings more victims forward and gives them some closure. He is also left with the question that hangs over a 17-year gap in which Monseair kept coaching girls:

“My worry is, what has he been up to the last 17 years?”