There has never before been “so much demand to change SafeSport" -- the organization tasked with rooting out sexual misconduct in sports in the U.S. -- or “so many people proposing ideas for how,” according to Louise Radnofsky of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. That includes SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colón, who said that the organization has “spent months listening and preparing to overhaul the way it functions.” A commission on the future of the U.S. Olympic movement gave “withering descriptions” of the system and said that it has “failed to win anyone’s confidence.” Lawmakers are hauling SafeSport in front of back-to-back congressional hearings this week to ask how it "plans to right the ship." SafeSport has “struggled since its inception” -- first to get the funding to open its doors in 2017, and next to “get enough investigators in place to handle the reports that flooded in, and then piled up.” In the last few years, the "biggest criticism has centered on how long it takes to get a resolution in a case" and how often that resolution has "turned out to be inconclusive." Colón and SafeSport General Counsel Jessica Perrill said that they are “rolling out new processes that will mean faster decisions about which complaints go to a full investigation.” There will also be a “commitment to provide regular updates to people involved in the cases” as well as “more details about the outcomes of many cases.” But Radnofsky notes that the changes proposed to SafeSport “don’t cover everything sought by the sports governing bodies,” some of which have said that there are cases “they can handle faster and more effectively themselves” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/20).
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