The problem of sexual abuse in youth sports is more like a DNA marker than an acknowledged crisis. Consider the fate of the official player in this game with the tools to address it: last year’s report by the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. In the dance of inaction that is our legislative branch these days, the recommendations of the commission have been benched by the very coaches who drafted them for their rosters. (In 2015, a Government Accountability Office audit of federal legislation governing sports abuse turned into a turgid book report that was universally ignored.)
The latest blip confirming long-proposed reforms held in a permanent holding pattern was the April sacking of Ju’Riese Colón, CEO of the U.S. Center for SafeSport. Colón was the second boss of the agency, which was set up in 2018 to adjudicate claims of abuse by coaches in Olympic sports national governing bodies. Her predecessor, Shellie Pfohl, quit in the middle of her three-year contract.
For Colón, the last straw was news that a SafeSport investigator, Jason Krasley, had been arrested twice at his previous job as a vice officer in Pennsylvania – once for stealing money from a drug bust and once for rape and sex trafficking.
During the ritual expressions of disappointment and outrage from congressional oversight figures, there wasn’t a peep of reference to the commission’s 277-page report, “Passing the Torch: Modernizing Olympic, Paralympic, & Grassroots Sports in America.”
Following years of study, interviews, solicitation of public comments and hearings, the commission, which included famous former Olympic stars female and male, proposed an overhaul of America’s youth sports system. Specifically, the commission urged Congress to gut the 1978 Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act to get the Olympic Committee out of the business of running youth sports programs at the grassroots level. Additionally, the commission recommended federal funding of the SafeSport center, which has been plagued by corruption and case backlogs, to get it out from under the malign financial support and influence of the Olympic bodies.
A few major newspapers gave the report a couple of polite paragraphs last winter. For its part, the New York Times didn’t even tell its readers that such a report had been published.
In January 2024, a group of senators, led by Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat who then chaired the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, upbraided Colón in a lengthy letter bemoaning the shortcomings of SafeSport. And on March 20, 2024, Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who then chaired the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, held a hearing entitled “Promoting a Safe Environment in U.S. Athletics.” Colón testified. So did commission co-chair Dionne Koller, a sports law specialist at the University of Baltimore. However, notice of the hearing didn’t even mention the commission report, released two weeks earlier.
Reporting on all this congressional kabuki theater is the equivalent of what in swimming is called a trials and finals meet. It’s a two-stage process, at least. I started with Cantwell. After all, she had sponsored the commission’s enabling legislation and appointed some of its members, including co-chair Koller.
(Koller hasn’t spoken on the record about the commission’s failure to penetrate public consciousness. Sources close to commission members have told me that they hope their report will have an impact across time and guide eventual toothful reforms.)
Cantwell’s office punted my query to Tricia Enright, a Commerce Committee staffer. She said the “leads” on the youth sports safety issue were Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan. In 2019, as chair and ranking member (respectively) of the consumer protection subcommittee, they introduced the legislation for the commission.
“Our consumer team was consistently in touch with stakeholders on the progress of this bill,” Enright said. Blumenthal and Moran “have been clear they are leading any legislation in the Senate for further reform – that bill has yet to be introduced.”
I then went to Blumenthal, with the note that Cantwell was deferring to him on this issue. Blumenthal replied through communications director, Maria McElwain, who turned around these 150 words of insalata caprese:
Keeping athletes safe is a nonnegotiable priority — and meeting that challenge requires a commitment from all stakeholders, including the National Governing Bodies. SafeSport is tasked with an immense, difficult, and delicate responsibility — to adjudicate cases of abuse and help correct decades of imbalance in a system that protected predators instead of athletes. SafeSport hasn’t always gotten it right, and I have been critical when I felt the Center was not taking strong enough action in response to athlete concerns. A lack of communication, particularly with survivors, paired with slow response and resolution times have led athletes to lose trust in the Center — and that lack of trust has a material impact on the Center’s ability to do its job and keep abusers out of sport. That is why I am working with Congressional colleagues, athletes, survivors, and NGBs on reforms. I look forward to urgently proposing and enacting these changes.
To follow up, I asked whether Blumenthal specifically supported the two pertinent recommendations of the congressional commission. If a response ever arrives, I’ll let you know.
Blumenthal is well-versed in the two-step of grandstanding without follow-through. (To be fair, so are many politicians of all parties.) He got elected to the Senate in 2010 over Linda McMahon, erstwhile CEO of Connecticut-based WWE, the pro wrestling company. Blumenthal had been the state’s attorney general for years, and during the Senate race his office launched an investigation of WWE’s abuse of independent contractor categories, a tactic that both blocks full benefits for employees and robs government coffers at all levels of payroll taxes. But as soon as he won the election, the WWE audit was dropped. If he’s done anything about independent contractor abuse while serving in the Senate, I don’t know about it.
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What I do know is that in 2017, when Donald Trump nominated McMahon as head of the Small Business Administration, Blumenthal made sure he was photographed smiling with her at her confirmation hearings. McMahon’s importance in 2010, it seems, had nothing to do with operating a scofflaw corporation; it was simply because she was a Republican opponent. McMahon has refused to go away; under Trump 2.0 she is what passes for secretary of education.
On the problem of youth sports sexual abuse, Cantwell, Blumenthal, et al., are just the latest reminder that when it comes to stemming crimes committed in the name of the flag-waving USOPC and its feelgood TV content-producing national sport governing bodies, reticence about taking on the Olympic brand is bipartisan. In 2014, Rep. George Miller of California, House Democrats’ self-appointed “lead” on the issue, sent a letter to the FBI that might read today as if ChatGPT had written it. The bureau virtually laughed it off. After Miller retired, his successor, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., did exactly nothing before she, too, retired.
The stopwatch on lane 3 tells us that Republicans don’t appear to care at all about the existence of platforms for sexual predation on young people, fortified by the Olympic movement. In lane 4, Democrats are doing much better: At least they pretend they do.
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