Report Details ‘Systemic’ Abuse of Players in Women’s Soccer - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/sports/soccer/us-soccer-abuse-nwsl.html?te=1&nl=updates-from-the-newsroom&emc=edit_ufn_20
Those details and others fill a highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer that found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.
The report was published Monday, a year after players outraged by what they saw as a culture of abuse in their sport demanded changes by refusing to take the field. It found that leaders of the women’s league and the United States Soccer Federation — the governing body of the sport in America — as well as owners, executives and coaches at all levels failed to act on years of voluminous and persistent reports of abuse by coaches.
All were more concerned about being sued by coaches or about the teetering finances of women’s professional soccer than player welfare, according to the report, creating a system in which abusive and predatory coaches were able to move freely from team to team at the top levels of women’s soccer.
“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims,” Sally Q. Yates, the lead investigator, wrote in the report’s executive summary. “Abuse in the N.W.S.L. is rooted in a deeper culture in women’s soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players.”