SafeSport: The Great Congressional Betrayal Stop firing abusive offenders. Start arresting them.

In 2017, Congress looked the American public in the eye and promised to fix the rot in youth sports. With the passage of the Safe Sport Authorization Act, they claimed to have drawn a line in the sand against abuse. They claimed they were finally prioritizing the safety of children over the reputations of institutions.

They lied.

They did not draw a line in the sand; they drew a suggestion in the dust. They created a mandate without muscle, a set of rules without consequences, and a system that predators treat as a minor administrative inconvenience rather than a threat to their freedom. The U.S. Center for SafeSport was designed to fail because Congress built a bureaucracy when we needed an enforcement agency. They built a maze of paperwork, tribunals, and arbitrary rulings, hoping it would somehow scare off predators. It hasn't.

SafeSport is a human resources department fighting a criminal war. It issues suspensions, not subpoenas. It hands out bans, not indictments. It processes forms while predators process victims. When a predator violates the rules today, they lose their coaching card. They should be losing their liberty.

The fundamental flaw in the current system is the collective delusion that child abuse, grooming, and boundary violations are "sporting violations." They are not. They are crimes against society, and they must be treated as such. We are currently treating the grooming of a child with the same administrative severity as using an illegal stick curve or arguing with a referee.

Currently, the SafeSport Code of Conduct outlines critical boundaries: rules against one-on-one travel, rules against late-night texting, and rules against isolation. These are the red flags that precede the destruction of a child’s life. Yet, when a coach violates these rules, SafeSport can only investigate them as policy breaches. This is insanity. We need to face the reality that a coach who violates the "electronic communications" policy to secretly text a 16-year-old is not being "unprofessional," they are hunting. A coach who violates the "travel policy" to get a player alone in a hotel room is not "disorganized," they are maneuvering for an assault.

By keeping these violations in the realm of administrative law, we are allowing predators to "test the waters" with zero risk of prison time. If they get caught grooming, they get suspended. They move towns. They change leagues. They start over. If these violations were federal crimes, they wouldn't be moving towns; they would be moving to a federal penitentiary.

We have already seen the catastrophic cost of trusting governing bodies to police themselves. The horror of the Larry Nassar scandal in USA Gymnastics was not just the failure of one doctor; it was the failure of an entire ecosystem that prioritized "protecting the brand" over protecting the children. The 2017 Act was Congress’s knee-jerk reaction to that horror. They passed it to tell the cameras they had "solved" the problem. But they missed the point entirely.

Nassar happened in the most highly scrutinized, elite tier of American athletics. If a predator can operate with impunity for years under the bright lights of the Olympic movement, surrounded by the supposed "best" administrators in the world, what do you think is happening in the dark corners of a private travel baseball league in Ohio? What is happening in an unsanctioned hockey tournament in Minnesota? What is happening in a strip-mall martial arts dojo?

This brings us to the most glaring failure of the current legislation: The Olympic Blind Spot. The current SafeSport mandate is fatally narrow. It focuses almost exclusively on National Governing Bodies (NGBs) under the US Olympic Committee umbrella. This is a joke. Millions of American children play in leagues that have absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics. AAU basketball, private travel hockey, independent soccer clubs, elite cheer gyms, and dance studios often operate as private businesses. Because they are not "Olympic" sports, they often fall outside SafeSport’s jurisdiction entirely.

This creates a dangerous two-tier system of safety. If you play for a USA Hockey team, you have at least the illusion of protection and a reporting mechanism. If you play for a private "unsanctioned" club down the street, you are in the Wild West. A predator does not care about jurisdictional boundaries. They do not care if a league is "Olympic certified." They care about access. By limiting SafeSport’s authority to Olympic sports, Congress has effectively told predators: "Stay away from the national teams, but feel free to set up shop in the private sector."

Furthermore, we must strip away the euphemisms regarding "locker room antics." For decades, we have allowed a culture of hazing to masquerade as team bonding. This is where the line doesn't just get blurred; it gets obliterated. We are seeing incidents that defy logic and decency, teammates pinning players down, "bare butt spankings" as punishment for being late to a bowling outing, and ritualistic humiliation.

These are not pranks. If you walked up to a stranger on the street, pulled down their pants, and struck them, you would be arrested for sexual battery. Yet, put a jersey on the victim and a whistle in the bystander’s mouth, and suddenly it’s just "boys being boys." It is criminal behavior normalized by authority figures. The most damning part is often who is watching. When a coach stands in that room, watches a child get assaulted by peers, and does nothing, or worse, laughs, they are not a passive observer. They are an accomplice. Under current SafeSport rules, that coach might face a suspension for "misconduct." Under a criminal statute, that is Aiding and Abetting.

The solution is not to hire more investigators at SafeSport; the solution is to update the United States Code. We must take the existing Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies (MAAPP), the rules regarding one-on-one interactions, electronic communications, travel, and locker room monitoring and transpose them directly into Title 18 of the U.S. Federal Criminal Code.

Currently, these rules exist as a civil contract between a coach and a governing body. We need to elevate them to the status of federal law.

Imagine what that reality looks like. Under the current system, if a coach is caught sending hundreds of sexualized text messages to a 15-year-old, he is guilty of "violating the electronic communications policy." He gets suspended. Under a Federal Criminal Code amendment, this behavior would constitute "Attempted Criminal Grooming." It would carry a mandatory felony classification. The phone isn’t just evidence of a policy breach; it is the instrument of a crime.

Consider the "Travel Policy." Currently, if a coach creates a situation where he is alone in a hotel room with a minor, he has "violated the travel policy." Under the new federal standard, this would be codified as "Solicitation and Endangerment of a Minor." The burden of proof shifts from a SafeSport arbiter deciding if it was "inappropriate" to a federal prosecutor proving intent.

By placing these rules in the Federal Criminal Code, we bypass the jurisdiction of the US Olympic Committee entirely. Federal law applies to everyone. It applies to the unsanctioned travel coach, the private skills instructor, and the volunteer dad. If you break federal law, it does not matter who you work for or what league you are in. The FBI has jurisdiction everywhere.

SafeSport cannot force a witness to talk, but the DOJ can compel testimony. SafeSport asks for screenshots, but the FBI seizes hard drives. A predator does not fear a spot on an "Ineligible List," but they absolutely fear a federal felony conviction.

We are approaching a critical election cycle. Every politician will ask for your vote, and they will all claim to care about "family values" and "protecting our future." Do not let them get away with empty platitudes. The protection of children is not a partisan issue; it is a moral baseline. But right now, our representatives are asleep at the wheel. They passed a law in 2017 and patted themselves on the back while the abuse continued. We must force them to wake up.

This is your call to action. Do not just read this and nod your head. Do not just share it on social media and scroll past. You need to pick up the phone. You need to write the letter. You need to look your Senator in the eye at a town hall and ask them a simple question: Why is violating SafeSport rules not a federal crime? Why are we trusting a database to do a prosecutor's job?

We are done treating the safety of children as a "condition of employment." It is time to treat it as a condition of liberty. If you cannot follow the rules of the Code, you do not belong in a rink, a gym, or a field. You belong in a cell. Tell Congress to finish the job. Tell them to give SafeSport the only thing that predators respect: Handcuffs.