Rory Dames’s SafeSport Suspension Has Ended

Rory Dames—the women’s soccer coach currently banned for life from the NWSL, and who has been accused of abuse by more than a dozen former youth players—is no longer listed in the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s centralized disciplinary database.

According to a document reviewed by Defector, Dames was removed from the database because a one-year suspension by SafeSport has ended. Per the document, he remains on probation for five years and under a no-contact directive, but those sanctions do not limit his involvement in soccer. The document did not say if his probation started after his suspension ended, or if it ran concurrently.

A person who was interviewed for SafeSport’s investigation told Defector they were informed about the sanctions against Dames on July 28 of last year, at which point the former coach and SafeSport were already embroiled in a legal battle. The interviewee was therefore under the impression that the decision was not final, and that the one-year suspension had not started yet.

There is no way to tell from the database when someone leaves it, so it’s unclear when exactly Dames was removed from it. Per tweets by Andrew Eastmond, it was between sometime in the month of August and September 5.

Neither SafeSport nor Dames’s lawyer, Susan Bogart, responded to requests for comment. This story will be updated if they provide any meaningful comment.

Safesport was started by Congress to investigate sexual abuse in Olympic sports. Its database lists people “connected with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Movements” who are or were under investigation by the nonprofit and therefore have an active restriction or sanction on their ability to participate.

SafeSport is allowed to operate with very little public transparency, making it difficult to understand who is currently under suspension and for how long. When Dames’s name could be found in the disciplinary database last year, the listing did not say how long the suspension was for, and included the label “subject to appeal / not yet final.”

There are more than 38 pages dedicated to Dames’s behavior in Sally Q. Yates’s 2022 report to U.S. Soccer about abuse and misconduct in women’s soccer. He is also named more than 350 times in the NWSL and NWSL Player’s Association joint investigation report from the same year. Chicago Stars players said that he verbally and emotionally abused them, and blurred lines between professional and personal relationships.

Athletes who played with his youth club, Eclipse Select Soccer Club, reported similar hostile behaviors, as well as “a sexualized team environment [that] crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent,” per the Yates report, which described his conduct as an open secret for decades. Dames’s wife, Sarah Dames, currently serves as the executive director of Eclipse.

The Yates report said that in 2019, SafeSport told U.S. Soccer it got a report “alleging that [Dames] had a relationship with a former player, while she was a player on his team, and subsequently married and had a child with her.’” That investigation was closed, per the Yates report, due to “insufficient information.”

SafeSport opened an investigation into Dames in 2022, after U.S. Soccer suspended his coaching license. He was removed from the SafeSport database in 2024, which was first reported by USA Today. The Washington Post soon added that SafeSport had put his case on hold without delivering any sanctions. Hours after the Post report published, SafeSport reopened the investigation.

Dames is suing SafeSport. On March 25, 2025, he filed a lawsuit saying the organization went beyond its jurisdiction in investigating accusations of events that occurred before SafeSport was empowered by Congress and did not give him due process. Twice, a judge has approved SafeSport’s motion to dismiss the case, calling Dames’s claims “meritless” in both decisions. Both times, Dames filed a subsequent appeal. The result of the latest appeal, filed on Feb. 2, is pending.