When athletes experience abuse or misconduct, the choice of whether or not to report can often be harrowing. The U.S. Center for SafeSport provides an alternative reporting choice for over 11 million athletes.¹ But the Center’s future seems unclear in the face of scrutiny from inside athletic communities and Congress.
Since its founding in 2017, the Center has faced a barrage of complaints, from advocates protesting a perceived lack of due process rights for respondents to victims’ advocates who argue SafeSport provides insufficient protection for athletes or is not trauma-informed. The most frequent complaint about SafeSport is that about a third of all the cases received are administratively closed. This outcome, or lack thereof, means that abusers are free to continue to participate in their sport with no final ruling on their culpability.
The Center’s 2024 Code addresses a portion of this concern by clarifying that cases in which victims choose not to participate or there is currently insufficient evidence to move forward are only “administratively held,” instead of closed. Still, almost 36% of reports in 2023 were administratively closed. Only 11.8% of all cases found any violation of the Code.
In July 2023, over 100 U.S. soccer players signed a letter to Congress calling for reform to SafeSport. The signatories asserted that the rate of administrative closures and the Center’s exclusive jurisdiction over sexual abuse claims makes responding to claims of sexual assault difficult for National Governing Bodies (NGBs), who have no power to protect victims on their own. The letter came on the heels of U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates’s investigation into abuse in soccer, which recommended that U.S. Soccer not rely on SafeSport because it is too slow to act.
SafeSport has also been criticized by attorneys for interfering with law enforcement investigations, although it is meant to defer to police when asked.
Far and away, the single largest criticism of SafeSport has been its lack of transparency in systems and in funding. SafeSport is funded in part through the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to the tune of $20 million a year. The USOPC charges fees to its member NGBs to raise this money. These fees are based on the volume and type of cases reported to SafeSport from each NGB, which some advocates consider a possible cause of corruption.
In theory, NGBs with a high volume of cases could discourage victims from reporting to save themselves the cost. However, the National Governing Bodies Council rejects the idea that NGBs would dissuade reporting due to costs, citing that this would put the NGBs’ certifications at risk and open them up to the possibility of being reported to Congress. But SafeSport has previously reported USA Badminton and USA Hockey to Congress for such violations, which does seem to disprove the NGBC’s claim.
Experts agree that for SafeSport to be effective, the Center must build trust and connection with athletes and sporting communities. In order for victimized athletes to trust SafeSport with their reports, they need to view SafeSport as a credible, competent organization that will handle their case with care and expediency, and not as an extension of the USOPC, which before 2017 had a more than disappointing history of handling sexual abuse cases.
In the SafeSport system, athletes and coaches have little insight into the investigation process. Claimants and respondents are unsure of their expectations, and timelines for investigations and issuance of decisions are, at best, convoluted. While confidentiality of case details is of great benefit to victims, failure to clarify the reporting and investigation process works against the Center’s goal of ending abuse in sports. Sporting communities must have trust in SafeSport if they’re meant to engage with it meaningfully, but how are they supposed to trust a process they have no insight into?
So…what? Do we scrap SafeSport altogether and leave athletes to fend for themselves in the criminal justice system? Of course not.
Although the Center faces criticism and challenges, it is a massive step up from the pre-2017 system of allowing individual NGBs to handle their own investigations. NGBs were incentivized to protect their money-makers, big names, and golden-era heroes, essentially throwing young, naive athletes to the wolves. On top of that, NGBs lack the staff, the expertise, the time, and the resources to properly handle safeguarding and reports of abuse. NGBs have a responsibility and opportunity to make boots-on-the-ground cultural change that supports victims and prevents further misconduct, but that work must be done in conjunction with SafeSport, not in lieu of it.
Would George Morris have faced justice had US Equestrian been in charge of investigating him? Or would Nike’s Alberto Salazar have faced consequences without the Center? Rumors swirled about both these famed coaches, and many others, for years; justice only happened because the Center for SafeSport gave victimized athletes somewhere else to go. It takes all kinds of kinds to keep athletes safe.
Stopping abuse in sports will be a community effort from athletes, coaches, parents, fans, the USOPC, SafeSport, NGBs, the NCAA, the federal government, and countless other stakeholders who are dedicated to making sports safer for athletes at all levels. Certainly, stopping abuse starts with you and I and proactive prevention. But the war against sexual abuse will not be fought on only one front. Healthy culture and accountability together can make sports safe and sexual abuse-free; neither one can achieve that goal itself.
Likewise, we should follow court cases in which the Center is being sued, though we may cringe at indignant perpetrators. Like Title IX, SafeSport will need to be molded and formed in court and in Congress over decades to become more workable than it is now. There is definitely more work to do; as is reflected in the above graphics, athletes still feel more must be done to protect them and their teammates. But the organization is less than six years old. Let’s sort out the kinks before throwing it away altogether.
If you are experiencing abuse in sport, the Courage First Athlete Helpline is here to help. For more information, please check out #WeRideTogether’s Resources page.
¹ For adult victims of sexual violence, the choice to report or not is always yours. SafeSport does not require self-reporting for victims in any circumstance. However, for minor victims, the adults around them are required to report if they are aware of or have suspicion that child abuse, including child sexual abuse, is taking place. To learn more about these nuances, read Know Your Rights: SafeSport.
Madison Smith
Communications Manager at #WeRideTogether
