The U.S. Center for SafeSport has released its 2024 annual report, showing a 7.5% increase in reported cases from 2023.
Of the 8,098 complaints to the center in 2024 (based on number of cases, not number of reports), 2,654 were found to be violations, while 214 were found to not be violations.
Most reports to the Center do not result in a ruling, by the Center, of a violation or not. National Governing Bodies retain jurisdiction over many times of allegations, while The Center for SafeSport focuses primarily on cases of sexual misconduct, where they have exclusive jurisdiction. The Center also has discretionary jurisdiction in cases of non-sexual child abuse, emotional and physical misconduct, other criminal charges or dispositions, MAAP violations, or violations relating to abuse of process.
When the Center declines jurisdiction, that often sends cases back to NGBs to adjudicate, which often results in warnings or education rather than formal violations if the issues at hand are not considered serious or severe.
In some cases, the Center places the cases on hold, waiting for the individual to re-enter the Olympic Movement over which it has jurisdiction. Those are listed under “Jurisdictional Hold.”
The two most prevalent categories for allegations are “Emotional/Physical Misconduct,” which make up about 43% of cases, and “Sexual Misconduct,” which make up about 21% of cases.
Emotional/Physical Misconduct reports are up almost 47% from 2022, while Sexual Misconduct cases saw an 8.6% drop from 2023 to 2024. Note that the breakdown of outcomes does not include a mapping of which allegation types result in which outcomes.
Reports over time:
Individuals in the Centralized Disciplinary Database
There are current 2,224 individuals listed in the USCFSS’ centralized disciplinary database, which is available to the public. Of those, the status is:
- Ineligible – 49.5%
- Permanent Ineligibility – 40.9%
- Suspension – 3.5%
- Temporary Suspensions – 3.3%
- Temporary Restrictions – 1.4%
- Suspended from all contact with minors – 1.4%
A small number of individuals listed in the CDD are on probation or have a limited participation restriction, though some coaches on probation, like University of Virginia coach Gary Taylor, are not listed in the public Central Disciplinary Database.
Training
The US Center for SafeSport has seen an increase in online course completions every year since launching in 2017. In that first year, only 7,219 online courses were completed; in 2024, that number was more than 1.5 million. In total, 7.4 million SafeSport online courses have been delivered to 3.6 million individuals since 2017.
2024 also saw 886 attendees at 19 live trainings.
Funding
The USCFSS continued to receive its legally mandated $20 million in annual funding from the USOPC. 2024 saw an additional $2.9 million in grant funding from the Department of Justice Keep Young Athlets Safe grants.
The U.S. Center for SafeSport fired its CEO Ju’riese Colón earlier this year after a number of scandals, including a U.S. Center for SafeSport investigator being arrested on rape and other sexual assault charges in 2024. April Holmes took over as interim CEO.
The report includes upgrades that were enacted in 2024 as part of an effort by the Center to increase transparency into its activity. The Center has continued to face criticism for its lack of transparency in specific cases – with rules around secrecy designed to protect the process proving at times to be a double-edged sword.
For every 1 coach, there’s maybe 30-40 parents. So there are going to be more abusive parents than coaches. I dont know what the answer is, but if these comments by jilted coaches are an indication something needs to be done.
Willing to bet the number of times coaches get unfairly “stressed” is much higher than any other sub-group.
https://tenor.com/view/team-america-world-police-eye-of-the-needle-its-about-trust-spottswoode-gary-johnston-gif-25499392
Is the behavior of parents/swimmers/administrators toward coaches covered in any of this?
Theoretically it could/should be. I believe if you are in a SS org, anyone including parents can be reported to SS. A lot of club coaches take a lot of .. stress .. from parents and boards. Does it constitute abuse or warrant reporting? Who knows – words are tossed around so recklessly these days it’s hard to gauge the gravity of a situation at times.
I’d be interested in finding out what constitutes emotional abuse. I’d really be interested in reading some of the cases or something, just for context. I know there are truly awful cases and I don’t know that I have an interest in reading that, but I’d kind of like to know if there is a common textbook emotional abuse case.
It’s tough because unlike sexual abuse where it’s pretty obvious when someone has crossed a line, what constitutes emotional abuse isn’t clearly defined, and varies wildly from person to person. It has also become obvious that some parents have figured out that emotional abuse complaints, due to their nebulous nature, are very easy to weaponize against coaches they just don’t like.
Personally, I tend to be suspicious any time the nature of the complaints are particularly vague (“the coach was always yelling”), whereas I’m far more inclined to believe specific examples (“the coach called me a f****** p**** after my race”).
I think the Teri McKeever case is a perfect example of when someone crosses a line that… Read more »
^^This is a good comment.