MyKayla Skinner gives voice to SafeSport’s pro-coach critics

The storm sparked last week by former Olympic gymnast MyKayla Skinner’s YouTube rant has once again thrust the US Center for SafeSport into the spotlight of controversy.

In Skinner’s now-deleted video, the 2020 vault silver medalist criticized the work ethic of Team USA’s current generation of gymnasts and blamed SafeSport – a congressionally authorized oversight organization created in the wake of the Larry Nassar sex scandal – for making coaches too afraid to effectively train world-class athletes.

“Because of SafeSport,” Skinner said, “coaches can’t influence athletes. They have to be very careful about what they say, which in some ways is really good, but at the same time you have to be … a little bit aggressive and a little bit intense to get to where you need to be in gymnastics.”

Skinner’s comments sparked swift and widespread criticism from gymnasts and athletes’ representatives. In a Threads post that appeared to refer to Skinner, Simone Biles wrote, “Not everyone needs a microphone and a platform.”

Skinner subsequently took down the video and retracted or explained her comments on social media, an attempt that did little to quell the controversy.

In a post on X, former Olympic gymnast Rachael Denhollander – the first of Nassar’s victims to come forward – criticized Skinner’s specific criticism of SafeSport, saying the company makes the argument that “the win is worth the abuse.”

But Skinner is not the only one to suggest that SafeSport – which has long been criticized for being too lenient with abusive coaches – has overcorrected.

“The reaction to Ms. Skinner’s comments is understandable, but I understand a point she was trying to make,” said Florida attorney Russell Prince, who is currently representing plaintiffs in three separate lawsuits. “Coaches are right to be afraid of the U.S. Center for SafeSport and USA Gymnastics because the rules of both organizations require that coaches’ conduct be evaluated using objective standards.”

SafeSport, which did not respond to a request for comment, was created in 2017 through bipartisan legislation signed by then-President Donald Trump in direct response to the Nassar scandal. The center’s original mission was to investigate allegations of sexual abuse against athletes in the U.S. Olympic movement and to impose suspensions or bans on perpetrators.

Over time, SafeSport’s scope expanded to include other forms of athlete abuse, including emotional and physical.

According to its 2023 annual report released last month, SafeSport received 15,631 allegations of abuse between 2021 and 2023, of which 5,879 involved emotional/physical behavior, compared to 3,660 involving sexual misconduct.

“The Center has demonstrated an inability to fairly investigate and adjudicate allegations of coaching misconduct,” Prince said. “Complaints arising from sport-specific coaching decisions should rightly be handled by national governing bodies in all situations where there is no clear conflict of interest. Unfortunately, the Center continues to dramatically increase its caseload in physical and emotional misconduct cases while failing to adequately and timely investigate and resolve sexual misconduct cases – thereby failing victims and defendants alike.”

SafeSport has been criticized for most of its eight-year history for sparing coaches from outright punishment. A 2020 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that within a year, the center imposed sanctions in 262 of 2,460 cases it had “resolved.” In 2022, an 18-month investigation by ESPN and ABC News uncovered a number of cases in which SafeSport allowed serial offenders to return to work as coaches without an entry on their official record.

Earlier this year, the Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Games highlighted SafeSport’s “numerous deficiencies” in a 277-page report on the USOPC’s governance. According to the commission, SafeSport’s shortcomings – including its financial dependence on the USOPC, its large backlog of cases and its “policy of administratively closing many cases” – explain why “many athletes continue to have little confidence in the system designed to protect them from abuse.”

This familiar criticism is now joined by a small but growing chorus of voices arguing that Olympic exercise coaches must also be similarly protected from abuse – by SafeSport.

One of Prince’s clients is Alexis Moore, a former Nassar abuse victim who now works as a gymnastics and dance coach in Michigan. Last July, Moore and her mother, Nanci, filed a lawsuit in federal court against SafeSport after they were placed on probation following complaints of physical and emotional misconduct. SafeSport later reduced the sentences for the mother-daughter duo, but by that point, the lawsuit says, the reputational damage had already been done.

“Alexis was abused by Dr. Nassar for ten years and she and her family endured the civil and criminal litigation that followed,” the lawsuit states. “Now they have been harmed by the very organization that is supposed to serve individuals in sports…”

In April, New Jersey gymnastics coach Roger Walker sued SafeSport and USA Gymnastics after he was suspended for three months for emotional conduct on the eve of regional championships. In his lawsuit, filed in federal court, Walker accused SafeSport of being “a predator rather than a protector” through a four-year investigation that resulted in “the equivalent of an irrevocable death sentence for the business.”

According to Walker, “The United States Congress has designated the U.S. Center for SafeSport as an entity to protect amateur athletes from abuse by upholding due process standards. In practice, however, SafeSport routinely imposes sanctions and judgments without a hearing before disqualification.”

SafeSport defended itself in court on the grounds that its eligibility decisions had “absolute immunity” and thus could not be subject to judicial review.

“Membership in the Olympic and Paralympic Movement is a privilege, not a right,” SafeSport wrote in a November motion to dismiss the Moores’ lawsuit. “All decisions by the Center regarding an individual’s eligibility to participate in the Olympic and Paralympic Movement are the exclusive authority delegated to the Center by Congress.”

Whether that argument will prevail in court has not yet stemmed the tide of litigation. Prince said he plans to file three more lawsuits against SafeSport in the next few months. The trial lawyer argues that his clients’ position that SafeSport is doing too much is not incompatible with that of others who argue that SafeSport has not done nearly enough.

“Our athletes, coaches and participants desperately need the U.S. Center for SafeSport to protect our communities,” Prince said. “Currently, it is not doing that and it is not getting better. The problems go far beyond what the Center portrays as a paper tiger or a rudderless ship. They are large and systemic and require a restructuring of the entire organization if it is to survive.”

SafeSport currently argues that at least the budget needs to be expanded. In its most recent annual report, the organization called for an additional $10 million in annual funding due to economic inflation and the increasing number of abuse cases.