Sexual abuse watchdog SafeSport fires CEO amid ongoing congressional probe

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The U.S. Center for SafeSport fired CEO Ju’Riese Colón on Tuesday after five years leading the organization, which is responsible for reviewing allegations of sexual misconduct at all levels of U.S. Olympic and Paralympic sports.

SafeSport said April Holmes, the group’s board chair and a Paralympic gold medalist, will lead an interim management committee until there is a replacement for Colón.

In a statement, the center thanked Colón for her leadership and said it will continue to focus on its “core mission of changing sport culture to keep athletes safe from abuse.”

Colón’s firing comes at a turbulent time for the Denver-based watchdog, which Congress established in 2017 and that oversees more than 11 million people. 

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley recently opened an inquiry into the organization’s hiring of Jason Krasley, a former Allentown, Pa., police officer who SafeSport brought on in 2021.

SafeSport fired Krasley in November after his arrest for allegedly stealing $5,500 during a drug bust while he was a police officer.  

The Associated Press broke the news of Krasley’s firing in December, and detailed about a dozen criminal allegations against him, including rape, assault, sex trafficking, tampering with evidence and harassment. Those alleged incidents date back to at least 2015.

Krasley was arrested on the sex crime charges in January, and Grassley announced his investigation in February. Colón told Grassley in March that her organization did not know of Krasley’s alleged criminal history when it hired him.

“As a CEO, I am profoundly disappointed that a former staff member has been accused of such misconduct,” Colón told the AP in a statement at the time. “We take this matter seriously and are assessing the situation to determine what, if any, additional vetting could have prevented this individual from being eligible for hire.”

In a March 31 letter to Colón, Grassley pushed back on her assertion that SafeSport was unaware of concerns surrounding Krasley’s hiring. Grassley said Colón previously acknowledged that, before hiring Krasley, the center looked into allegations that he coerced trafficking victims into making false allegations during his time with the Allentown Police Department. 

“You neglected to tell me a key detail I asked for regarding how or from whom you learned of these allegations,” Grassley’s letter said. “I am disappointed that you remained silent on this point, and I expect to learn about this in your next letter. Worse, SafeSport retained Krasley for two months after learning of these allegations as well as an ongoing criminal investigation against Krasley.”

Grassley’s letter included a list of questions for Colón and SafeSport regarding Krasley’s hiring. He set a May 1 deadline for their responses, and SafeSport told the Associated Press after Colón’s firing that it still plans to meet that timeline. SafeSport later rolled out various changes to its ethical guidelines.

Since its creation, SafeSport has also drawn criticism from athletes and their families for its case backlog and lengthy resolution process. 

The 2024 congressional commission on the state of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics (USOPC) said in its final report that “it became clearer with each new piece of evidence that SafeSport has lost the trust of many athletes.” 

A 2020 analysis by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that SafeSport closed 4,150 claims between February 2018 and the end of 2020, but more than a third of those investigations ended without any formal decision.

Of the 2,460 cases SafesSport closed between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020, only 262 resulted in sanctions of any kind, the report said.

SafeSport’s public disciplinary database currently lists 2,394 people who are “either subject to certain temporary restrictions pending investigation by the Center or are subject to certain sanctions after an investigation found them in violation of the SafeSport Code.”

The database includes 918 individuals deemed permanently ineligible to compete by the national governing bodies, local affiliated organizations or USOPC, dating back to 1990.

SafeSport has dealt with consistent funding and staffing shortages since its creation. It relies on funding from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, but receives no direct funding from Congress. 

The congressional commission said that model threatens SafeSport’s independence. It noted USOPC charges governing bodies “high volume” fees if they submit a large number of complaints to SafeSport for review. 

Rather than pushing the governing bodies to prevent misconduct from happening in the first place, the commission said the practice “incentivizes governing bodies to deter participants from coming forward if they have been abused or encountered other forms of misconduct.”

When asked about Colón’s firing Wednesday, Dionne Koller, a University of Baltimore law professor who co-chaired the congressional commission, said SafeSport’s problems run far beyond its leadership. She said it has fundamental structural issues that only the government can fully address.

“On one hand, we are in a much better position because we recognize (abuse and harassment) are issues, and we are taking steps to address it,” said Koller. “But on the other hand, because Congress has not gone forward with some other changes to make sure SafeSport can do the job it’s sent to do – and also to get at the root causes of why athletes are vulnerable to abuse – I think, unfortunately, that these things will continue to happen.”

(Photo: Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

This news was originally published on this post .

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