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EXCLUSIVE: The mother of three former Yale swimmers has come forward with alleged details about her children’s experience at the school to Pakinomist Digital after the Ivy League giant’s athletic department saw a few unflattering document leaks in recent days.
Kim Jones, the mother of two former Yale women’s swimmers and one former men’s swimmer, said she had to experience her daughter and her son being forced to compete with transgender athletes of the opposite birth gender while at Yale.
Pakinomist Digital is not naming her children at her request, but has confirmed that they competed at Yale during her stated time frame.
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Her older daughter, who attended Yale from 2018-23, competed against infamous UPenn trans swimmer Lia Thomas during Thomas’ 2021-22 reign, both in the regular season and at the Ivy League championship. Then she had to watch her son, who attended Yale from 2020-25, share a team and locker room with a biologically female trans swimmer, Iszac Henig, who switched from the university’s women’s team to the men’s for the 2022-23 season.
“I would say it felt like North Korea,” Jones said of her children’s experience at the time.
“I would say the athletic department as a whole was a horrible place to be.”
The experience of seeing her older daughter face off against Thomas, and Yale’s handling of these contests against Thomas, caused internal strife and trauma for her family.
“They terrorized the girls … they dragged them to mandatory meetings. They intimidated, coerced, threatened and emotionally blackmailed them,” Jones alleged.
“They were told that they would be, that they would be held responsible for any harm that came to people in their communities who identified as transgender.”
Jones said she doesn’t believe the women involved even “realized” what they were going through.
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“I think it will take even more time than what has passed for many of the young women to look back on this and realize how coerced and abused they were during this,” she said.
Jones said her daughter should never share a locker room with Thomas. But her son had to share one with Henig.
“It destroys camaraderie. Of course you’re going to change the way you talk, you’re going to change the way you act when you’re in a different environment with people of the opposite sex. The guys didn’t feel like they could go to the athletic department and say ‘this is uncomfortable, we don’t want a woman in our locker room,'” Jones said.
Still, Jones said her son maintained all the same friendships with the other men on his team.
But the mother said the worst part of her son’s alleged treatment from Yale was that it allegedly prevented him from running for the women who were to compete against Thomas.
“It’s emasculating, it takes away their conviction to stand up for what’s right in front of their eyes, to speak up when they’re uncomfortable,”
“You can’t stand up for women. You can’t stand up for what’s right right in front of your eyes. And then an athletic director comes down and crushes any, anyone, and any dissent that wants to sweep something under the rug.”
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas (C) smiles with Yale University swimmer Iszac Henig (R) after winning the 100 yard freestyle during the 2022 Ivy League Womens Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool on February 19, 2022 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
The Jones family still sent their younger daughter to start college at Yale in 2024, but she transferred just a year later in 2025.
Jones is currently the co-founder of the women’s rights organization Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), known for funding Riley Gaines’ lawsuit against the NCAA over the inclusion of Thomas and other trans athletes in women’s sports.
Her son’s alleged quarantine experience turned him into ‘a skeleton’
Jones’ son began his college career during the school’s lockdown period amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
And as a mother, Jones still has the image in her head when he came home after his first semester.
“He looked like a skeleton, he had lost so much weight,” Jones said.
She called the university’s alleged handover of COVID “disastrous.”
“He was a freshman and on campus he was confined to his dorm,” Jones said. “They delivered their food to them. There was no, the athletic department didn’t look at their student athletes and say ‘oh my God, you’re a bigger person, you need food’. Like my son is 6’4.”
Jones also lamented the university’s vaccine requirements and alleged demands for constant cheek swab COVID testing.
“It was incredibly oppressive,” she said. “Overseen by mask-wearing and mandatory vaccines and constantly being tested, it was much worse than anything that was going on in the outer word.”
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During the fall 2020 semester, Yale University implemented stringent COVID-19 protocols to enable a partial return to campus, which included a phased, three-step, month-long quarantine process for students upon arrival, according to The Yale Daily News.
Undergraduate students in residence and graduate/professional students in high-density housing were required to undergo asymptomatic testing twice a week. Strict social distancing measures were enforced, including limiting gatherings to 10 people and mandating face coverings.
“An environment that, as I said, looks like North Korea”
Jones alleged that one day during Thomas’ reign at UPenn, her older daughter came to her to warn her about a social media comment.
“I had written, ‘women deserve to be able to celebrate their incomparable physical limits’ or something like that,” Jones said.
“My daughter said, ‘take it down. People notice, we don’t have to say anything.” And I said, “I thought that was a pretty benign comment,” you know? And she said to me like, ‘We were told that our first priority above ourselves, above anything else, has to be, to basically maintain … the position that the school and the league are taking.’
Jones is not the first person formerly associated with Yale to speak out about the athletic department’s alleged intent to “silence dissent.”
A letter signed by former Yale hockey coach Keith Allain addressed to Yale President Maurine McInnis alleged that current Yale Athletic Director Victoria Chun has created a “toxic environment” for the university’s sports teams. Pakinomist Digital published the letter Monday after confirming with Allain that he emailed the letter to McInnis in October, shortly after his retirement.
“My name is Keith Allain, I just retired after 19 years as the men’s hockey coach, and I am writing to you at the request of several head coaches in our athletic department. They told me that you asked for feedback from a few coaches regarding the contract extension of our athletic director, and are concerned that with the culture of fear that may be receiving, you will not begin to get feedback from the athletic department.”
The letter later wrote: “Vicky’s unique talent is self-promotion and has created a toxic environment in the department where she is isolated by a cadre of administrators whose main job seems to be to silence any dissent,” the letter continued.
On Tuesday, Pakinomist Digital reported on emails showing a former Yale University administrator telling a lawyer for former Yale strength and conditioning coach Thomas Newman that he was being taped during a meeting.
“A former employee recorded part of a meeting with your client without the university’s knowledge,” reads part of an email sent to Newman’s attorney, Alan Granovsky, from a Yale deputy attorney, who now no longer works at the university.
The attorney’s email was sent in response to an August 13, 2025, letter with the subject line “Continued Reputational Damage and Error Messages Regarding Thomas Newman.”
The lawyer’s email also included the lines, “The University has not made any defamatory statements to anyone regarding your client,” and “The University has not disclosed any medical information inappropriately, the University has not said that your client left the University involuntarily or is the subject of an investigation.”
Newman’s attorneys at Granovsky & Sundaresh Employment law sent multiple emails to Yale regarding the matter and Newman’s eventual departure from the university in 2021, a source provided to Pakinomist Digital.
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Newman confirmed to Pakinomist Digital that emails were exchanged between the university and his lawyers, but declined further comment.
An Oct. 10 email from Granovsky to the lawyer makes the following allegations:
“You now admit that a former employee recorded part of a meeting with Mr. Newman,” read part of the email, which later said: “Despite knowing the recording was unauthorized, the involved parties — specifically [Executive Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer of Athletics] Ann-Marie Guglieri and [Athletic Director] Vicky Chun – tried to use the recording for disciplinary purposes.
Pursuant to Connecticut General Statutes § 52-570d, it is unlawful for any person to record a private conversation without informing and obtaining the consent of all parties involved.
No current or former Yale employee has been indicted in any illegal activity.
Pakinomist Digital has reached out to the Yale president’s office and athletics department for comment, but has not received a response.
