Government funds not usable for abuse probes
DENVER >> A growing sexabuse problem in Olympic sports has led to a steady stream of Congressional hearings and a three-year grant worth $2.2 million.
Yet not a penny of those federal funds can be used to fight the actual problem: Investigating or resolving more than 800 open cases, many brought by victims.
That leaves an ever-growing backlog for the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the organization that opened 20 months ago to investigate sex-abuse complaints in Olympic sports.
“We didn’t realize until the (bid instructions for the grant) came out that we would not be able to use it for performing investigations,” SafeSport CEO Shellie Pfohl said. “Clearly, that is a need, and we are continuing to look for more robust funding, both from government sources, as well as from outside of government.”
SafeSport’s mission is to investigate cases and serve as an independent clearinghouse for educating about abuse, with the authority to ban athletes and coaches across organizations that run Olympic sports in the United States. It is backed by the U.S. Olympic Committee, which took steps to decertify USA Gymnastics this week for botching an organizational rebuild following the sexual abuse scandal involving now-imprisoned team doctor Larry Nassar.
To be sure, the money — SafeSport will use $1 million in the first year, $875,000 in Year 2 and $378,000 in Year 3 — represents a significant infusion for an office operating on $6.4 million in 2018. But according to the rules of the Justice Department grant awarded last month, it must all be directed toward prevention and education programs, and for auditing national governing bodies’ work in sex-abuse prevention — not the most acute needs for an operation that has struggled to hire investigators to look into the 1,622 complaints, an average of 85 a month, that have come its way.
The backlog is growing steadily, with spikes coming whenever sex-abuse and assault cases make big headlines.
Not long after opening, when the #MeToo movement and Nassar allegations were in the headlines, the number of reports coming into the center rose from 20 to 30 a month to that same number each week. Over the two weeks that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation topped the news because of sexual assault allegations that he denies, the center received 135 calls.
The center has 14 employees on its response and resolution team, including six full-time investigators and another dozen who work on a contract basis. According to numbers provided by the center, full-time investigators handle an average of 10 active cases at any time and the contractors handle between three and six. That means no more than 132 of the 800plus cases are being investigated at any given time.
The $2.2 million grant won’t help resolve any of those manpower issues.
“We’re looking at all kinds of strategies of knocking down that backlog,” Pfohl said. “It’s not just throwing bodies at the workload. It’s also being very strategic about the type of people we’re hiring who can help folks from the time they call us to submit a report.”
The Senate subcommittee hearings being chaired by Sen. Jerry Moran, RKansas, may lead to revisiting the law that formed the USOC, potentially reshaping the relationship between the USOC and the
50 national governing bodies it oversees. More stringent language about handling sex-abuse cases could be added.