In an order clearing an athlete’s criminal record, a judge in Florida accused the U.S. Center for Safe Sport of acting in bad faith, intentionally and with malice in proceedings involving a female high school water polo player, violating “her constitutional right to due process.”
The saga began when the athlete filed a complaint in 2022 with SafeSport about several teammates, saying they bullied her, distracting the teen from focusing on the sport for which she already had been named to a college team.
But SafeSport flipped the narrative, making her into the defendant rather than the plaintiff in two different cases, with the teammates accusing her of sexual assault. As a result, she was humiliated, marched out of school in handcuffs.
When the Florida States Attorney looked into the matter, however, no cause for action was found, and the case was dropped. As a result, the original complainant sought to have her name expunged from court records.
In granting that request, Seminole County Court Judge John Woodard stated in his decision filed Tuesday that SafeSport “provided an incomplete file, withholding exculpatory information and withholding witness statements potentially favorable to the defendant.”
He noted, “the court, the State, and the defendant operated in good faith, but was repeatedly blocked for over two years. SafeSport repeatedly and knowingly interfered with the investigation.”
SafeSport is a non-profit Center authorized by Congress in 2017 with the goal of ending sexual, physical and emotional abuse involving athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic movement. The Center did not reply to a request for comment on the situation.
The organization has been under duress recently. The judge’s decision comes in the wake of a letter to SafeSport from U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asking the Center to explain how it hired an investigator who faces criminal charges, including rape and theft. That investigator was not involved in the Florida case.
Steve Silvey, an attorney for Athletes for Equity in Sport –- which seeks reform of inequity in SafeSport policy and procedures – said of SafeSport, “They’ve lost their way.”
He added “to our knowledge, what’s reflected in that order (from the Seminole County judge) is the first public outing of standard practice for SafeSport.”
He said it follows “last year’s ruling by an Olympic arbitration panel suggesting that it was not a question of if SafeSport violates due process, but when a court will find the operation defective.”
There are 76 equestrians on SafeSport’s centralized disciplinary database, with most offenses listed including sexual misconduct.
Discussing the way SafeSport operates, Silvey contended, “On a day-to-day basis, they don’t do anything even remotely close to what their core mission is. If their core mission is protecting amateur athletes from sexual abuse in Olympic sports according to some concept of due process, they’re not doing that.”
He maintained “SafeSport is built upon a defective and unconstitutional foundation.They get away with it because no one is holding the organization accountable, and the organization openly says it is immune and persists in that position.”
The attorney said that of the nearly 6,000 files opened by SafeSport last year, “the overwhelming majority had nothing to do with sexual misconduct in Olympic or amateur sports. The overwhelming majority of cases are exactly what (SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese) Colón speaks to in public: `This is a culture change.’
“No, Silvey continued, “that’s not your job. They’re misguided, spending their limited resources trying to get involved in children wrestling in a locker room or coaches yelling at their charges. And that’s where they’re lost. They’re not even close to protecting abuse victims. At this point, they are an abject failure for everyone; victims, the sporting community, the NGBs (National Governing Bodies) and the USOPC (U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.”
He noted the water polo player “was a victim. She was the one who called SafeSport and said, `My teammates are bullying me, distracting me from focusing on my sport’. They flipped the script and Safe Sport participated in flipping that script and turned (the water polo player) into the respondent, rather than the victim.”