U.S. Soccer has released the full independent investigation by Sally Q. Yates into allegations of abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women’s professional soccer.
The report states that abuse was pervasive and systemic at the highest levels of women’s soccer in the United States, and includes new details about disturbing incidents involving several former coaches in the NWSL.
Former U.S. Attorney General Yates was brought in by U.S. Soccer in October 2021 following a series of allegations of abuse and sexual misconduct against multiple NWSL coaches.
“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,” Yates said in her report.
“Abuse in the NWSL 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. The verbal and emotional abuse players describe in the NWSL is not merely ‘tough’ coaching.”
The 173-page report not only reveals specific incidents of abuse but also details how power brokers within the game opted to protect themselves instead of root out abuse in the game.
Yates says that NWSL and U.S. Soccer “appear to have prioritized concerns of legal exposure to litigation by coaches …. over player safety and well-being.”
“[T]hey also failed to institute basic measures to prevent and address it, even as some leaders privately acknowledged the need for workplace protections,” the report continued. “As a result, abusive coaches moved from team to team, laundered by press releases thanking them for their service.”
U.S. Soccer’s recommendations
“This investigation’s findings are heartbreaking and deeply troubling,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone in a statement. “The abuse described is inexcusable and has no place on any playing field, in any training facility or workplace.”
In response to the report, U.S. Soccer’s offered three recommendations:
“The Federation will immediately 1) establish a new national Office of Participant Safety, 2) publish soccer records from SafeSport’s Centralized Disciplinary Database, and 3) mandate a uniform minimum standard for background checks for all U.S. Soccer members,” U.S. Soccer said in a statement.
The full Yates report can be read HERE.
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