Hot Take: Allegations of Sexual Coercion in NWSL by Former Head Coach
In this hot take, Shireen Ahmed and Brenda Elsey discuss the horrifying story that Meg Linehan and Katie Strang reported on 9/30 in The Athletic about the allegations of sexual coercion and harassments by former head coach of the North Carolina Courage, Paul Riley.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Shireen: Hello, flamethrowers. Shireen here. I'm joined by Dr. Brenda Elsey, and we're here to talk to you today, a hot take on the horrifying story Meg Linehan and Katie Strang reported in The Athletic on Thursday, September 30th, which was about former coach Paul Riley of the North Carolina Courage and the allegations of sexual coercion that have emerged. We're also going to talk about the response from the league, as well as response from players. Brenda, initial thoughts?
Brenda: Well, reading the story is harrowing. Like, any time you really delve deeply into these stories, it's not like the headline indicates. It's not…It feels like more than the word “harassment.” It feels like more than the word…You know, these players were groomed, they were manipulated. There were patterns of abuse. So, it's great reporting. The way in which it's written really highlights that fact that we know is the case in almost all of these situations, but just doesn't get conveyed when there's these very brief headlines that just don't delve into the story. And that's why really good journalism can help elucidate all of this. So, initial reaction was that came across so clear to me, that this was over the course of years. This was an entire manipulation of a culture on a team. He would take them out drinking, he would build up their confidence, crush their confidence. There was a total lack of professionalism on his part, any way that you see it, any way that you see it. And it affected the entire team. It affected these women's lives tremendously. And, you know, it's really frustrating that he was allowed to continue to coach.
Shireen: That's one of the things that I think is really important to note, is that he was hired, he was hired immediately after the Thorns let him go, the Portland Thorns. And I think this is something that needs to be said. And in a statement yesterday, the Portland Thorns actually said, “We take all complaints about harassment extremely seriously. Immediately upon receiving a complaint from a player in 2015, we conducted a thorough investigation advised by an outside law firm and placed Riley on administrative leave. And while the findings did not show unlawful activity, they did uncover clear violations of our company policies. Based on this, we chose to sever ties with Riley. The findings and investigations were fully shared with the NWSL league office.”
So, that's part of the statement from the Thorns on this. And there's something else that, you know, when we talk about patterns of abuse, we talk about the way that the system persists, and that he was hired elsewhere immediately. He went immediately to the Courage, and had a very successful career at the Courage. Won coach of the year, they won the championship, I think. But all of this is percolating. It never goes away. And Brenda, before we started recording, you made a really good point that the whisper network has been murmuring the story for a very long time. This isn't new but, again, there's not that…Unfortunately, Meg – fortunately, rather – Meg is one of the only full time women's soccer writers in the United States. So, there was no dedication to the story. Places may not have the resources to dedicate to the months and months of reporting and the time and the energy it took to do this story. So, I mean, it's not just one bad thing. The system is fucked up.
Brenda: Yeah. I mean, it is fucked up beyond repair. And Burn It All Down is named appropriately for this. I mean, so there's a couple of things here that I'm interested in, and one is why no one said they should go to the EEOC, right? We have in the US the equal employment opportunity commission. This is where a lot of these complaints should be going. And so I do think to a certain extent the fact that football has this kind of labyrinthine-like governance structure makes people feel like there must be a place to report this that will be adequately heard and independent. And the truth is, in US Soccer, as we've talked about time and again, there isn't such an independent body. So, for those of you that don't know, if you're experiencing any kind of sexual harassment in the workplace, and that includes hostile environment, the EEOC – you can Google it, you can go to the government, you can put in where your local office is. You can file a report, they will walk you through it.
I'm not saying there aren't problems there, but obviously we can say obviously soccer cannot fix itself. It is not able to do that. It's incredibly disappointing to know that Lisa Baird had these complaints six years ago and that he's still coaching. It's also incredibly disappointing that there are nine assistant coaches at the Courage and only one is a woman. So, who are you going to go to? Someone else that was complicit in his behavior? I don't know. Maybe they weren’t. I'm not accusing anyone, but I'm saying. It's going to be very hard to earn those players’ trust back and to create that safe environment that they keep talking about. And that might bring us to SafeSport, question mark?
Shireen: I mean, it's funny you just said that. I was just looking for that, while our team was looking to discuss this, Jessica pointed out that she couldn't be here today, but she really wanted to point out that SafeSport was looped in, and the reason is because perhaps there's a way a system, despite the lack of ability to report safely – and I do want to remind everybody that NWSL did not have a safe reporting system, and many federations for sport do not actually have that. So, you know, looping in SafeSport would be allegedly helpful so that he wouldn't get hired again. And coaches don't get hired again, which is what happened with them. And which is what many coaches in situations who are abusive and who are predators, they do get hired again. They go hopping from one place to the other. And, you know, the idea is that this would prevent that. However, Jessica did point out that Aly Raisman recently actually trashed SafeSport at the congressional hearings that she testified at.
Brenda: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. She said it's a mess.
Shireen: It's a mess! And I think one of the things that this points to is that this system is not only flawed, it isn't even meant to…It isn't even meant to be better. It's like this was an afterthought, and it remains an afterthought, even so much…And I'll parallel this to abuse that happened with the Afghanistan women's national team. There was no way to report it, because the person doing the abusing was the head of the entire federation. This is a pattern, not only with Paul Riley. This is a pattern with men in power in soccer all over the place. And then we see this. So it's imperative that there be safe channels. I mean, if you read the story…And Bren, my next question to you is what's the most horrifying part? One of the most horrifying parts for me is the fact that Morgan and one of the players went to the club, went to the Thorns and we're imploring them, and then went to the league and implored them, please do this. I can imagine the emotional labor and turmoil and psychological stress that that would have endured on top of these elite athletes.
Brenda: It's hard to parse out what I find the most horrifying. I guess it's kind of sad for me that I always thought of Portland as a particularly feminist and pro-LGBTQ place for women's soccer, you know, having like one of the biggest bars, having this amazing supporters group who I'm sure are up in arms right now. I guess I had a different…I would have been less surprised if this was at the New York Flash way back when, you know, I would have been less surprised…I guess I'm somewhat surprised that the Thorns knew what they did, when they did, and that they just sat on it, I guess because in some of my naivety of thinking that Portland is like the motherland for women's soccer in the US, that I thought they would never risk that, because that's so anti-brand. You know, that's actually like, even from a marketing, capitalist point of view, that's not the place you want to come off as a sexist club.
Shireen: And I have an honorary citizenship to Portlandia. And I absolutely agree with you. It literally destroys this progressive ideal that we have of soccer and who protects it and who are guardians of the game. This is a fucking disaster that is league-wide, and the reverberations of this have been affected…It’s destroyed the careers of not just Sinead and Mana, it has destroyed the careers possibly of many more who have not reported, because who are they going to go to if literally they have Alex Morgan on board advocating for them – undoubtedly one of the world's biggest stars, and even back then was notable – and still can't get attention? Like, for the players that are on the bench, for the ones to whom…And this was noted in the piece as well, when Tobin Heath, Christine Sinclair and Alex Morgan were at the Thorns, because they were at the same time, I just want to remind everybody.
Paul Riley didn't go for them because they weren't going to be coerced by him in the same way, their level and their prestige and their status was higher. So he was preying on those that were on the cusp, that would have been on the bench or might not have been starters. And that's what we see. He was psychologically tormenting them and abusing that power. So even if they got someone to try to advocate for them – in this case it was Alex Morgan, and it still didn’t hit. It still doesn't land. It makes you wonder for all the people that didn't report.
Brenda: Oh, absolutely. Fuck yeah, Alex Morgan. You're such a hero. I love her. I love her. She's always out there making statements. I love to see that behind the scenes she made good on that, that she actually did try to facilitate contact and use her kind of star power to protect her teammates, to the extent to which she could – which, you're making the point, she couldn't even. It's really sad, frustrating, disappointing to see that she's really the only player that would go on the record. Not disappointing like they're bad because they're not going on the record, but disappointing because it means they're still afraid for their jobs as well. So, this is still ongoing. They don't have faith that if they come out by name that they're going to be protected. And I'm sure that they're right about that. So yeah, I mean, okay…But can we just talk about the fact that the US Soccer Federation should already have launched an investigation, like, back in 2015, for many reasons. And Richie Burke included, and lots of other people will be coming down the pipeline.
Shireen: And just so we know, Richie Burke, former coach of Washington Spirit, is still not listed on SafeSport. Remember that SafeSport thing we talked about? Still not listed there.
Brenda: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the fetishization British men who hold the majority of the coaching positions – and not to dog on British women's football, which is quite good, but they haven't won anything to speak of compared to the US system. So why on fucking earth are there not US women coaches in US women's coaching positions? I don't fucking know. This idea that British people know about football is…I don't know, like, 1897 is calling you, because they haven't won shit. So for those of you that only–
Shireen: With the exception of Bev Priestman, who is a British woman, and team Canada. That's the exception to this, but she's not a man, obviously.
Brenda: That’s because you’re colonial subjects, it’s not my problem. [laughs] Listen. Point stands. The fetishization of Brits as knowing this is part of it. It's like this idea of this “mystique” that this “genius man” is going to swagger in and solve football problems, it leads to this kind of abuse because these women really believed in him and it's really painful to read that they felt like this was the person that could bring out the best in me, this was the typecast, you know? We have this as the image in our head, and I think we really need to break that because I think these predators are really using that.
Shireen: That's a really good point, and the fact that he used and knew of his power…And the dynamic here is so dangerous. I think there's one thing that I do want to point out in addition to the sexual coercion. There was also psychological torture and maltreatment here. And this is something we really need to pay attention to, is that the way in which elite athletes rely heavily on a coach for guidance and to help their game. And we as a society have a tendency to think that elite athletes, because they're so physically strong, will not be impacted the same way. That is untrue, and it needs to be debunked, because there's a vulnerability here as an elite athlete, as a player. And I mean, one of the things that was the most harrowing for me – and you're right, you can't parse that out specifically.
But one of the things that made me lurch, like physically react when I read this piece, was his insistence that Sinead actually perform sexually for him, otherwise the team would have to undergo suicide drills. That literally made me lurch. Because not only is he putting that horrible pressure on them, they're responsible for their team in that moment, and putting them in a position to have to, they felt like, protecting their team from doing this unnecessary, arduous and grueling physical drill. You know, all of it is horrible. All of it, all of it is fucking terrible, but that particular moment, because I could...And this also speaks to the writing of Meg and Katie, is I felt that fear and that distress in that moment of those players, I absolutely felt it. And it was awful. Like, you just can't fucking…It just made me really fucking angry.
Brenda: It's disgusting. And I just want to say one more time, we just had an episode on new cases of sexual assault, and I just want to say though this is not necessarily – I don't know – sexual assault, it hasn't been properly investigated. So, we really don't know. But what we do know is that this lies on a continuum of misogyny and sexism. So you can blow off stuff like equal pay and say that's not the same thing, but in fact there's this spectrum out there of normalization of women being less than, being objects in, being victims of, et cetera, et cetera. Right? And on the one hand, you might have something like, oh, we just don't schedule women's games very well. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have things as serious as assault. And it's like, all of those things work together.
Whether it's like, here's the “ha ha, not a big deal” sexism, to the incredibly pernicious. And it doesn't mean that every person is capable of lying within that spectrum, but that by blowing off one thing you are enabling and normalizing the other. Do you know what I mean? By saying just, oh, who cares about that NWSL? All that shit, that leads directly to it being more and more difficult to say, “This is my workplace, I deserve to be treated fairly. There should be against the rules.” I mean, that's just the way I feel about that. [laughs]
Shireen: And it's true. And it kind of leads into the next point I was going to make about this, was that one of the things that we felt, and you feel while reading – and this is something that Meg conveys in the piece – is that the reluctance of the players to report in the first place to not air dirty laundry because the league wasn't sustainable anyway. And I think that this is something that really hit me, because you want to grow the game. You don't want to draw negative attention to it. And I can understand why the players would have hesitated, because they don't want to draw negative attention to it, and the conundrum there, and the torturous choice that you make. And we have reconciled on the show that we'd look at things critically and then we we talk about them because we want to grow the game, but we're not in a position of being professional athletes where our professions are thereby affected by this. And that was brought forward, and it made me think a lot about what they have to endure. One of the last things I'm going to ask is what do you want to see happen, Brenda? You know a lot about soccer governance. You're our expert on this. What do you want to see here happen?
Brenda: I want to see the EEOC open a case. I'd like to see this go to the government level and say this is too big, it’s too common, it’s too endemic to US Soccer, period, to be handled by the Federation. Yeah. I think if you have a workplace like this, you know, you remember the Nike cases a few years ago and things like that. I mean, at a certain point, the government needs to regulate this if the industries are unable to do it. So, the football industry, I think, has shown itself to be entirely incapable of providing a safe working environment for women, people of color, LGBTQ players. And so I'd like to see those connected as a hostile workplace. And I'd like to see them stop hiring British male coaches that have a history of abusing their players. That seems to be like the fucking minimum.
Shireen: Absolutely. I mean, the intersections of sexism, homophobia–
Brenda: [laughs] It’s so stupid, saying that.
Shireen: Like, the bar is in hell, right? The intersections of the racism, the misogyny, the violent misogyny, the homophobia here are wretched. And I agree with you. Let's not hire terrible British men. I mean, all I need to hear is “Phil Neville is coaching an NWSL team” when he gets fired from Miami and then I'm like, no, I'm done.
Brenda: I mean, are we not waiting? I mean, whatever,. It’s just like, you shake your head and you're like, again, it's on the spectrum of things. But going ahead and just hiring people without the experience, without the care, without the groundwork is part and parcel of just not taking women's sports seriously.
Shireen: Absolutely. And on that, I wanted to thank Meg Linehan and Katie Strang for this reporting.
Brenda: Totally.
Shireen: And I reached out to friend of the show, Meg Linehan to ask for a comment on what this was like reporting on the story, and her thoughts specifically. And Meg told me this this morning – we're recording on Friday.
It was always about making sure that Mana and Sinead were comfortable and had trust between us both ways. This reporting has gone on for months. And I think the deeper I got into it, obviously it was enraging, and many, many other adjectives, but I think yesterday was very instructive as to some of the ways that they have been telling me about, since the very minute we spoke for the very first time, about institutional betrayal and how the systems have failed, time and time again.
So I think that getting some of the statements of the day the story dropped and about seeing the fallout on Thursday only spoke to the institutional betrayal that they were talking about. So again, I thank Meg Linehan for sharing that with us. The story is terrible, and from this has emerged other commentary from other players. Nadia Nadim also tweeted what happened with her and how her signature was forged, you know, in a process of this. It's horrific. And, you know, we hear about the lack of response and accountability for the sexual abuse of players in Haiti. We are hearing about this constantly. And at Burn It All Down, our thoughts are with the survivors and the ones who have spoken and who have not spoken. And, you know, we continue to love this game and want to protect the players.