US Center for SafeSport fires CEO Ju'Riese Colón, the latest sign of crisis for the Olympic watchdog

DENVER — The U.S. Center for SafeSport fired CEO Ju'Riese Colón on Tuesday in the latest and most visceral sign of a crisis that began after revelations the center had hired an investigator who would later be charged with rape.

The center told The Associated Press about Colón's removal in an email. It brought an abrupt end to a tenure that began in 2019, when she was hired to help the then-2-year-old center, which was established to combat sex abuse in Olympic sports, bring its operation to full speed.

The center said its board chair, April Holmes, would lead an interim management committee composed of board members while they search for Colón's replacement.

''We are grateful for Ju'Riese's leadership and service,'' Holmes said in the statement sent to the AP. ''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.''

Colón did not immediately respond to a text message from the AP seeking comment.

In her five-plus years at the Denver-based center, Colón failed to fully untangle its struggles with long delays in processing an ever-growing caseload, or the stream of complaints from both accusers and accused who had been dragged through a resolution process that could take years.

No issue, however, illustrated the center's struggles more than its handling of former Pennsylvania vice squad officer Jason Krasley.

Krasley was hired as an investigator for the center in 2021 but was fired last November when the center learned he had been arrested for allegedly stealing money from a drug bust he was a part of while with the police force.

The center made no public mention of that until the AP reported about the connection on Dec. 26. Then, two weeks later, Krasley was arrested again, this time for rape, sex trafficking and other crimes — an episode Colón to conceded was ''devastating'' for the center, which implemented changes in its hiring process.

The AP reporting led Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to open an inquiry into the center's handling of the Krasley affair.

In a letter to Colón, he wrote: ''Accusations of rape and other sex crimes against any SafeSport investigator are especially concerning given SafeSport's mandate to protect athletes from similar abuse.''

It was an obvious conclusion made more jarring by the fact he had to write it at all.

Colón's response to Grassley last month revealed more about the case, including that the center hired Krasley despite knowing he was the subject of an internal investigation. Grassley sent another list of questions to Colón, answers for which were requested by May 1. The center said it plans to deliver the answers by the deadline.

After Krasley's arrests were made public, the center reached out to people whose cases he handled, offering them counseling and a chance to share questions and concerns about the interaction with the investigator. Though the center has said there was no reason to think any of Krasley's cases had been compromised, the outreach triggered another set of problems.

One person who was contacted, Jacqui Stevenson, told the AP that the notification retraumatized her and made her wonder if her case, which resulted in her abuser receiving a one-year probation, could end in his penalty being voided.

The entire episode brings into question the viability of this 8-year-old experiment borne out of the U.S. Olympic movement's inability to deal with wide-ranging abuse crises at USA Swimming, USA Taekwondo and, most notably, USA Gymnastics involving now-imprisoned doctor Larry Nassar.

Fueled by congressional hearings that included heart-wrenching testimony from abuse survivors, a consensus grew that an independent entity was needed to do the work the U.S. Olympic Committee and its sports subsidiaries could not.

Congress passed laws requiring most of SafeSport's money (the center reported nearly $24.8 million in revenue in 2023) come from the organizations it oversaw. Despite its funding source, the center insisted on independence. It placed big demands on the sports organizations — requiring resource-consuming annual audits and claiming first right of refusal on cases involving their sports.

It led to a lack of trust but also a fear of speaking up at both the Olympic committee and inside the individual sports agencies, lest anyone be accused of undermining the center, even if it wasn't performing well.

Others, though, did speak up.

Among the most common complaints the AP fielded from dozens of accusers, accused, witnesses and attorneys who reached out over the past 24 months were that everything the center did took too long and left too many people in limbo.

This was a symptom bedeviling an organization that, at last count, was receiving more than 150 new reports a week but had fewer than three dozen full-time investigators to sort through them.

Colón insisted the center's mission to deal not only with Olympic-level sports, but all those sports down to the grassroots — a remit that covers some 11 million athletes — was the right one. She steadily pushed for more funding to beef up the operation.

Though disagreements over the center's mission and its ability to deliver given the budget constraints underscored a lot of the day-to-day wrangling about its future, no single episode undermined it the way Krasley's hiring and firing did.

While the center defended its vetting process, critics viewed the hiring of an alleged rapist to investigate sex abuse as a devastating error for an agency handed such an awesome and delicate responsibility.

Grassley's initial letter to Colón emphasized the low bar the center had failed to clear when it hired the ex-cop.

''Claimants and respondents alike deserve impartial, fair investigators who have not been accused of sexual misconduct of their own,'' the senator wrote.

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