Rory Dames Disappeared From The SafeSport Database And SafeSport Isn’t Saying Why

At one point in time, Rory Dames was mostly known as a longtime women’s soccer coach, leading the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars for about a decade as well as overseeing Chicago-area youth powerhouse Eclipse. But more recently, he’s become known as a coach whom players repeatedly reported for emotional abuse and manipulation. Those reports by players did not immediately diminish Dames’s power; he only resigned when those accounts began becoming public. The ensuing 234-page Yates report into systemic abuse across women’s soccer included his name hundreds of times.

U.S. Soccer, which oversees the U.S. Women’s National Team as well as sanctioning the NWSL, suspended Dames’s coaching license and, per USA Today, the federation reported him to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the organization created by Congress to investigate sexual abuse across Olympic sports. SafeSport doesn’t have any jurisdiction over the NWSL, but Dames’s presence in the database still mattered, especially given his continued prominence in Chicago-area youth soccer. (The NWSL also banned Dames for life.) SafeSport opened an investigation into Dames, and anyone who searched its database would have found his name.

Now his name is gone, with no explanation as to why.

Nancy Armour broke the story last week over at USA Today. In response, SafeSport told her “the center does not comment on matters to protect the integrity of its investigations.” It’s similar to the comments myself and other reporters have received over the years, which is to say almost no comment at all. SafeSport, functionally, acts like a black box. There is very little it has to tell reporters or the public beyond its yearly reports. And, yes, it does handle a lot of sensitive information and difficult investigations with very real privacy and retaliation concerns. But this near total silence also means the details that do become public about SafeSport’s inner workings come from people who, after being victimized, also must be willing to speak up again about the SafeSport process. What they have to say is often not flattering. Those who have spoken out have described SafeSport as unprofessional, drawn out, or even harmful.

To be blunt, I have lost count of the number of congressional hearings I have watched and articles I have read (or even written myself) that all circle around the idea of: What do we do about all this abuse in sports? And why are so many coaches who are accused of abuse still coaching? Yet here we are, years later, with a coach with a long history of abuse disappearing from the SafeSport database and no public explanation (at least not yet) about why.

To be fair, SafeSport was set up to fail. Its budget is too low; its case load is too high. It’s still mostly funded by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the same USOPC from which it’s supposed to be independent. Even in the best of circumstances—and when does that ever happen for any government agency?—it was given a nearly insurmountable task: end sexual abuse in all Olympic sports. Now it’s not working and Congress, the branch of government that made this mess because it made SafeSport and it oversees the Olympic movement in this country and it received a 277-page report earlier this year saying many athletes don’t even trust SafeSport, is shocked, shocked to find that SafeSport isn’t working very well.

The questions that loom over all this is what does the United States owe its athletes, be it the ones who bring us Olympic glory or the person who tops out at a pretty good in college or even the kid who is just doing this for fun? What level of safety? What quality of coaching? And, yes, at the highest levels, what compensation? But those are much thornier questions and, for now, it’s understandable if people are upset that they can’t even find out why Dames isn’t in the SafeSport database.