SafeSport Fires CEO Amid Scandal

The U.S. Center for SafeSport is seeking new leadership after the agency fired CEO Ju’Riese Colón on Tuesday. 

Colón was hired in 2019, two years after the agency was created by Congress in response to a series of major sexual abuse scandals in Olympic sports, including Larry Nassar abusing young gymnasts for years. It has struggled to fulfill its mission in its eight years of existence, with detractors complaining about slow handling of cases.

This past fall, Colón came under intense scrutiny for the hiring of Jason Krasley, a former Pennsylvania vice squad officer, whom Colón brought in as an investigator in 2021. In November 2024, SafeSport learned Krasley was arrested while on the force in Pennsylvania for allegedly stealing money from a drug bust he was part of. The center kept the revelation quiet until it was publicly reported by the Associated Press. Earlier this year, Krasley was arrested again for rape and sex trafficking among other allegations.

SafeSport said April Holmes, its board chair, would lead the agency in the interim while they look for Colón’s replacement. 

“We are grateful for Ju’Riese’s leadership and service,” Holmes said in a statement. “As we look ahead, we will continue to focus on the Center’s core mission of changing sport culture to keep athletes safe from abuse.”

The Krasley situation led Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to open an inquiry into SafeSport’s handling of it. 

“Accusations of rape and other sex crimes against any SafeSport investigator are especially concerning given SafeSport’s mandate to protect athletes from similar abuse,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Colón. 

It was later revealed Colón knew Krasley was the subject of an internal investigation for stealing drug money when vetting him, but decided to hire him anyway.  SafeSport said it had no reason to believe Krasley compromised any of the investigation he handled while employed by the agency.

The Krasley situation was far from Colón’s only issue, as the agency was frequently criticized for investigations that dragged on for years.

In October 2017, Gracie Gold told a U.S. Figure Skating official that she had been raped by another athlete and told the same person she believed there were other victims, including minors. 

But it took seven years until Brendan Kerry, an Australian figure skater who Gold named as her attacker, had any action taken against him when an arbitrator upheld a permanent ban on his ability to skate in the U.S. 

The agency has also been criticized for giving coaches light punishments. A 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office discovered that SafeSport only imposed sanctions on 262 of 2,460 cases it “resolved” in a one-year period. Two years later, an investigation from ABC News and ESPN found multiple instances where SafeSport allowed serial sexual abusers to return to coaching without any indication on their records. 

One example was soccer coach Rory Dames, the former NWSL coach who was banned for life in 2023 for abuse and harassment of his players that stemmed back decades. In September 2024, The Washington Post reported that Dames’ SafeSport case “quietly disappeared” and was no longer listed in the agency’s disciplinary database due to an “administrative hold” lifting any previous restrictions on Dames despite the case being open for only a few weeks. 

At the time, Colón told the Post that SafeSport takes “every report seriously. … In instances where additional information becomes available, we reserve the right to reopen a case.”

Seven months later, she’s out of a job.