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EXCLUSIVE: The mother of three former Yale swimmers revealed alleged details about her children’s experience at the school to PK Press Club Digital, after the Ivy League giant’s athletic department noticed two unflattering document leaks in recent days.
Kim Jones, mother of two former Yale swimmers and a former male swimmer, said she had to watch her daughter and son be forced to compete with transgender athletes of the opposite sex while at Yale.
PK Press Club Digital is not naming his children at his request, but has verified that they competed at Yale during the allotted deadline.
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Her older daughter, who went to Yale from 2018-2023, competed against UPenn’s infamous trans swimmer Lia Thomas during Thomas’ reign in 2021-2022, both in the regular season and in the Ivy League championship. Then she had to watch her son, who went to Yale from 2020 to 2025, share a team and a locker room with a biological trans swimmer, Iszac Henig, who moved from the university’s women’s team to the men’s team during the 2022-23 season.
“I would say it was like North Korea,” Jones said of her children’s experience at the time.
“I would say the athletic department as a whole was a terrible place.”
The experience of watching her eldest daughter compete against Thomas and Yale’s handling of these competitions against Thomas caused internal conflict and trauma for her family.
“They terrorized the girls…they dragged them into 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 caused to people in their community who identified as transgender.”
Jones said she doesn’t believe the affected women even “realized” what they experienced.
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“I think it will take even longer than what happened for a lot of these young women to look back on this and realize how much coercion and abuse they were during this time,” she said.
Jones said her daughter never had to share a locker room with Thomas. But his son had to share one with Henig.
“It ruins the 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 boys 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 his son maintained the same friendships with the other men on his team.
But the mother said the worst aspect of her son’s alleged treatment at Yale was that it allegedly prevented him from defending the women who were expected to compete with Thomas.
“It’s emasculating, it takes away their convictions to defend what is in front of them, to express themselves when they are uncomfortable,”
“You can’t stand up for women. You can’t stand up for what’s right, right in front of you. And then an athletic director comes in and crushes all the dissent by wanting to sweep anything under the rug.”
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas (center) smiles with Yale University swimmer Iszac Henig (right) after winning the 100-yard freestyle during the 2022 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool on February 19, 2022 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
The Jones family still sent their youngest daughter to begin college at Yale in 2024, but she transferred a year later, to 2025.
Jones is currently co-founder of the women’s rights organization, the 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.
Son’s Alleged Quarantine Experience Turned Him Into ‘A Skeleton’
Jones’ son began his college career during the school’s quarantine period amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
And as a mother, Jones still has that image in his mind when he comes home after his first semester.
“He looked like a skeleton, he had lost so much weight,” Jones said.
She called the university’s alleged handling of COVID “disastrous.”
“He was a freshman and on campus he was confined to his dorm,” Jones said. “They were delivering their food to them. No, the athletic department wasn’t looking at their student-athletes and saying ‘oh my God, you’re a bigger person, you need food.’ For example, my son is 6’4.”
Jones also deplored the university’s vaccine requirements and the alleged requirement of a [nasal] carry out COVID swab tests.
“It was incredibly oppressive,” she said. “The policing of mask wearing, mandatory vaccinations and constant testing were far worse than anything happening outside.”
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During the fall 2020 semester, Yale University implemented strict COVID-19 protocols to allow a partial return to campus, which included a three-step, month-long phased quarantine process for students upon arrival, according to the Yale Daily News.
Residential undergraduates and graduate/professional students living in high-density housing were required to undergo asymptomatic testing twice per week. Strict social distancing measures were enforced, including limiting gatherings to 10 people and making face coverings mandatory.
“An environment which, as I said, resembles North Korea”
Jones alleged that one day during Thomas’ reign at UPenn, her older daughter came to her to warn her about making a comment on social media.
“I had written, ‘Women deserve to be able to celebrate their incomparable physical limitations’ or something like that,” Jones said.
“My daughter said to me, ‘Take that off. People notice, we’re not supposed to say anything.’ And I said, ‘I thought that was a pretty harmless comment,’ you know? And she said to me, ‘We were told that our first priority, above ourselves, above anything else, should be to basically maintain… the position that the school and the league are taking.'”
Jones is not the first person previously connected to Yale to speak out against the athletic department’s alleged intent to “silence dissent.”
A letter signed by former Yale hockey coach Keith Allain to Yale President Maurine McInnis alleges that current Yale athletic director Victoria Chun created a “toxic environment” for the university’s athletic teams. PK Press Club 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 have just retired after 19 years as a men’s hockey coach and I am writing to you at the request of several head coaches in our athletic department. They have told me that you are seeking feedback from a few coaches regarding our athletic director’s contract extension and that you are concerned that with the culture of fear that permeates the athletic department, you will not receive candid feedback,” the letter begins.
The letter later wrote: “Vicky’s singular talent is her self-promotion and has created a toxic environment within the department where she is isolated by a cadre of administrators whose primary task appears to be to silence all dissent,” the letter continued.
On Tuesday, PK Press Club Digital reported emails showing a former Yale University administrator telling the attorney for former Yale strength and conditioning coach Thomas Newman that he was recorded in a meeting.
“A former employee recorded part of a meeting with your client, without the knowledge of the university,” read an email sent to Newman’s attorney, Alan Granovsky. from a Yale deputy general counsel, who no longer works at the university.
The attorney’s email was sent in response to a letter dated August 13, 2025 with the subject line “Ongoing reputational harm and inaccuracies regarding Thomas Newman.”
The attorney’s email also included the following lines: “The University has not made any defamatory statements to anyone regarding your client” and “The University has not inappropriately disclosed any medical information, nor has the University stated that your client left the University involuntarily or is under investigation.” »
Newman’s attorneys at Granovsky & Sundaresh Employment Law sent several emails to Yale regarding the issue and Newman’s permanent departure from the university in 2021, which were provided by a PK Press Club Digital source.
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Newman confirmed to PK Press Club Digital that the emails were exchanged between the university and its lawyers, but declined further comment.
An October 10 email sent by Granovsky to the attorney includes the following allegations:
“You now acknowledge that a former employee recorded part of a meeting with Mr. Newman,” part of the email reads, later clarifying: “Although they knew the recording was not authorized, the parties involved, particularly [Executive Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer of Athletics] Ann-Marie Guglieri and [Athletic Director] Vicky Chun attempted to use the recording for disciplinary purposes.
Under 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 incriminated in any illegal activity.
PK Press Club Digital reached out to the president’s office and the Yale athletic department for comment but did not receive a response.
