How do these pervs and losers keep getting hired? Doesn't anyone do background checks?? Or are parents so desperate to play for a "winning" program that they are willing to ignore the danger signs?
Former NWSL coach Rory Dames was accused by youth players of misconduct decades ago, records and interviews show. He coached his way to power and prominence anyway.
Last fall, when players in the National Women’s Soccer League publicly accused prominent coach Rory Dames of verbal and emotional abuse, Megan Cnota was immediately transported to two decades before, when she was a teenager playing for Dames in suburban Chicago.
Yes, she recognized the behavior the players described, she said. But she also recognized something else: The NWSL players said they had twice before raised alarms about Dames, only to see him continue coaching.
Cnota and her teammates tried to do the same, she said. In 1998, a police officer in Arlington Heights, Ill., investigated after a former player complained that Dames had touched her inappropriately on her upper thigh when she was a minor, according to a police report obtained by The Washington Post.
Cnota spoke to police too, she said, telling them Dames had made degrading sexual jokes about her. Other players on Dames’s club, Eclipse Select, reported similar comments, according to the police report: One told police that Dames would “talk about foreplay and ‘*******s’ and often referred to male climax as ‘snowing.’” Others reported that Dames, who was 25 at the time of the report, would talk about sex and their bodies, and multiple players told police they were concerned that Dames spent too much time with young players outside of soccer.
But police closed the investigation after the accusers decided not to file formal complaints and prosecutors declined to pursue the case. Just as he would decades later, Dames kept his job.
“We tried to make it come to light 25 years ago,” Cnota said, “and nobody believed those teenagers.”
Police investigated Dames after a player complained about his conduct in 1998. The investigation was eventually dropped. (Police report)
Dames spent the next two decades wielding significant power in girls’ and women’s soccer: building the youth club he owned, Eclipse, into an elite soccer powerhouse in Chicago and going on to become the NWSL’s longest-tenured coach. In November, he resigned from the Chicago Red Stars as The Post prepared a story about allegations of verbal and emotional abuse against him, part of a wave of male NWSL coaches who left their jobs while facing allegations of misconduct.
But a subsequent Post investigation found that allegations against Dames surfaced decades before in the youth soccer system, with the 1998 police report. And the mistreatment alleged by youth players, in the police report and in interviews with The Post, went beyond the verbal and emotional abuse described by NWSL players.
One woman told The Post that Dames cultivated an inappropriate relationship with her from age 14 — conduct she now sees as “grooming.” Once she turned 18, the woman said, he used his power over her soccer career, and the control he had long exerted in her life, to have sex with her as she was still playing for him at Eclipse in the early 2000s.
“I felt like I didn’t have a choice,” the woman told The Post.
‘Nobody cares’: NWSL players say U.S. Soccer failed to act on abuse claims against Red Stars coach
The 1998 police report also includes statements from two other players who accused Dames of “batteries”: a girl who said he pinched her when she refused to give him a massage, and a boy who said Dames punched him in the stomach.
Fourteen of Dames’s former youth players told The Post that he was verbally and emotionally abusive toward them as teenagers, for many in ways that they say left lasting psychological damage. Their allegations in many ways mirror those that were raised and ultimately dismissed by authorities in 1998. They include body-shaming and public humiliation of girls as young as 10. Among the names multiple players said Dames called them and their teammates when they were teenagers: “c--t,” “fat ass,” “p---y,” “retarded.”
In an email to The Post, a lawyer for Dames, Susan Bogart, said the allegations of sexual harassment and grooming against Dames were false. She said Dames never called players names and that allegations against him from the 1998 police report were “unfounded.” Bogart did not specifically address the former player’s allegations of Dames abusing his power to have sex with her, saying she could not respond to anonymous allegations. She declined to make Dames available for an interview.
“Mr. Dames has a reputation as an excellent soccer coach over 25 years of coaching thousands of soccer players. With the exception of a few players disgruntled for one reason or another, the vast majority of players have thanked Mr. Dames for investing in them as players,” Bogart said. She accused The Post of “damaging and destroying” Mr. Dames’s reputation “with false allegations of sexual misconduct for which there are no facts and relying on anonymous sources.”
Bogart also pointed out the decision by the U.S. Soccer Federation, which twice heard complaints from NWSL players, to not discipline Dames, including after a 2018 investigation conducted by the governing body. “U.S. Soccer cleared Mr. Dames,” Bogart said, “issued no sanctions against him and expressly permitted him to continue coaching.”
Blackistone: The NWSL is a symptom. U.S. Soccer is the problem.
A spokesman for U.S. Soccer declined to comment on its past investigation of Dames or the allegations against him, citing an ongoing investigation of the NWSL. The organization did suspend Dames’s coaching license, it said in a statement, but Bogart said it occurred only after The Post contacted the federation with some of the allegations in this story.
Mike Nesci, who replaced Dames as president of Eclipse Select after Dames resigned from the Red Stars last year, said he was not aware of the 1998 allegations. Dames “voluntarily ceased” coaching at Eclipse in October, Nesci said, but he did not respond to questions about whether Dames still owned Eclipse or was involved in its governance. The club referred to Dames as the owner of Eclipse in news releases as late as last year.
Rory Dames left his position as the Chicago Red Stars' head coach last year, after coaching against the Washington Spirit in the NWSL championship match. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
The wave of allegations against NWSL coaches last year, especially revelations of failures by the NWSL to address sexual misconduct by a former coach, led to the commissioner’s resignation and triggered multiple investigations of the league. But the allegations against Dames by former youth players are another signal that “systemic abuse” alleged by NWSL players is rooted in the much larger elite youth soccer system, which includes thousands of players nationwide.
Opinion: What will it take for allegations of abuse against women to be taken seriously?
Two other NWSL coaches publicly accused of abuse last year, Paul Riley and Richie Burke, were also once prominent youth coaches. Dames’s sway in youth soccer, though, was especially significant. In 2009, he and Eclipse were among the founding members of the Elite Clubs National League, a breakaway group of exclusive youth clubs that produces many of the country’s top girls’ players; Dames sat on the league’s board of directors. He and Eclipse have produced players who have earned coveted Division I scholarships, professional contracts and roster spots on all levels of the U.S. women’s national teams.
It was that influence, many of his former players said, that kept them for years from speaking up about the mistreatment they said they experienced — afraid that Dames could ruin the chance at a scholarship or a spot in the professional league.
“I will never be able to fully explain the power that [Dames] had over everybody, adults included,” said Lauren Hall, who said Dames verbally abused her and repeatedly mocked her weight in front of teammates when she played for him, beginning in 2009. “[I’ve thought] ‘Why, why did we let this happen?’ But the monopoly over Chicago soccer, our belief that his connection to the college world was the only connection we would have — he used all of that to get away with doing and saying whatever the hell he wanted to us.”
Lauren Hall, 27, in Chicago. Hall said she was body-shamed by Dames as a teenage soccer player. (Taylor Glascock/For the Washington Post)
‘What do you do?’
Former NWSL coach Rory Dames was accused by youth players of misconduct decades ago, records and interviews show. He coached his way to power and prominence anyway.
Last fall, when players in the National Women’s Soccer League publicly accused prominent coach Rory Dames of verbal and emotional abuse, Megan Cnota was immediately transported to two decades before, when she was a teenager playing for Dames in suburban Chicago.
Yes, she recognized the behavior the players described, she said. But she also recognized something else: The NWSL players said they had twice before raised alarms about Dames, only to see him continue coaching.
Cnota and her teammates tried to do the same, she said. In 1998, a police officer in Arlington Heights, Ill., investigated after a former player complained that Dames had touched her inappropriately on her upper thigh when she was a minor, according to a police report obtained by The Washington Post.
Cnota spoke to police too, she said, telling them Dames had made degrading sexual jokes about her. Other players on Dames’s club, Eclipse Select, reported similar comments, according to the police report: One told police that Dames would “talk about foreplay and ‘*******s’ and often referred to male climax as ‘snowing.’” Others reported that Dames, who was 25 at the time of the report, would talk about sex and their bodies, and multiple players told police they were concerned that Dames spent too much time with young players outside of soccer.
But police closed the investigation after the accusers decided not to file formal complaints and prosecutors declined to pursue the case. Just as he would decades later, Dames kept his job.
“We tried to make it come to light 25 years ago,” Cnota said, “and nobody believed those teenagers.”
Police investigated Dames after a player complained about his conduct in 1998. The investigation was eventually dropped. (Police report)
Dames spent the next two decades wielding significant power in girls’ and women’s soccer: building the youth club he owned, Eclipse, into an elite soccer powerhouse in Chicago and going on to become the NWSL’s longest-tenured coach. In November, he resigned from the Chicago Red Stars as The Post prepared a story about allegations of verbal and emotional abuse against him, part of a wave of male NWSL coaches who left their jobs while facing allegations of misconduct.
But a subsequent Post investigation found that allegations against Dames surfaced decades before in the youth soccer system, with the 1998 police report. And the mistreatment alleged by youth players, in the police report and in interviews with The Post, went beyond the verbal and emotional abuse described by NWSL players.
One woman told The Post that Dames cultivated an inappropriate relationship with her from age 14 — conduct she now sees as “grooming.” Once she turned 18, the woman said, he used his power over her soccer career, and the control he had long exerted in her life, to have sex with her as she was still playing for him at Eclipse in the early 2000s.
“I felt like I didn’t have a choice,” the woman told The Post.
‘Nobody cares’: NWSL players say U.S. Soccer failed to act on abuse claims against Red Stars coach
The 1998 police report also includes statements from two other players who accused Dames of “batteries”: a girl who said he pinched her when she refused to give him a massage, and a boy who said Dames punched him in the stomach.
Fourteen of Dames’s former youth players told The Post that he was verbally and emotionally abusive toward them as teenagers, for many in ways that they say left lasting psychological damage. Their allegations in many ways mirror those that were raised and ultimately dismissed by authorities in 1998. They include body-shaming and public humiliation of girls as young as 10. Among the names multiple players said Dames called them and their teammates when they were teenagers: “c--t,” “fat ass,” “p---y,” “retarded.”
In an email to The Post, a lawyer for Dames, Susan Bogart, said the allegations of sexual harassment and grooming against Dames were false. She said Dames never called players names and that allegations against him from the 1998 police report were “unfounded.” Bogart did not specifically address the former player’s allegations of Dames abusing his power to have sex with her, saying she could not respond to anonymous allegations. She declined to make Dames available for an interview.
“Mr. Dames has a reputation as an excellent soccer coach over 25 years of coaching thousands of soccer players. With the exception of a few players disgruntled for one reason or another, the vast majority of players have thanked Mr. Dames for investing in them as players,” Bogart said. She accused The Post of “damaging and destroying” Mr. Dames’s reputation “with false allegations of sexual misconduct for which there are no facts and relying on anonymous sources.”
Bogart also pointed out the decision by the U.S. Soccer Federation, which twice heard complaints from NWSL players, to not discipline Dames, including after a 2018 investigation conducted by the governing body. “U.S. Soccer cleared Mr. Dames,” Bogart said, “issued no sanctions against him and expressly permitted him to continue coaching.”
Blackistone: The NWSL is a symptom. U.S. Soccer is the problem.
A spokesman for U.S. Soccer declined to comment on its past investigation of Dames or the allegations against him, citing an ongoing investigation of the NWSL. The organization did suspend Dames’s coaching license, it said in a statement, but Bogart said it occurred only after The Post contacted the federation with some of the allegations in this story.
Mike Nesci, who replaced Dames as president of Eclipse Select after Dames resigned from the Red Stars last year, said he was not aware of the 1998 allegations. Dames “voluntarily ceased” coaching at Eclipse in October, Nesci said, but he did not respond to questions about whether Dames still owned Eclipse or was involved in its governance. The club referred to Dames as the owner of Eclipse in news releases as late as last year.
Rory Dames left his position as the Chicago Red Stars' head coach last year, after coaching against the Washington Spirit in the NWSL championship match. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
The wave of allegations against NWSL coaches last year, especially revelations of failures by the NWSL to address sexual misconduct by a former coach, led to the commissioner’s resignation and triggered multiple investigations of the league. But the allegations against Dames by former youth players are another signal that “systemic abuse” alleged by NWSL players is rooted in the much larger elite youth soccer system, which includes thousands of players nationwide.
Opinion: What will it take for allegations of abuse against women to be taken seriously?
Two other NWSL coaches publicly accused of abuse last year, Paul Riley and Richie Burke, were also once prominent youth coaches. Dames’s sway in youth soccer, though, was especially significant. In 2009, he and Eclipse were among the founding members of the Elite Clubs National League, a breakaway group of exclusive youth clubs that produces many of the country’s top girls’ players; Dames sat on the league’s board of directors. He and Eclipse have produced players who have earned coveted Division I scholarships, professional contracts and roster spots on all levels of the U.S. women’s national teams.
It was that influence, many of his former players said, that kept them for years from speaking up about the mistreatment they said they experienced — afraid that Dames could ruin the chance at a scholarship or a spot in the professional league.
“I will never be able to fully explain the power that [Dames] had over everybody, adults included,” said Lauren Hall, who said Dames verbally abused her and repeatedly mocked her weight in front of teammates when she played for him, beginning in 2009. “[I’ve thought] ‘Why, why did we let this happen?’ But the monopoly over Chicago soccer, our belief that his connection to the college world was the only connection we would have — he used all of that to get away with doing and saying whatever the hell he wanted to us.”
Lauren Hall, 27, in Chicago. Hall said she was body-shamed by Dames as a teenage soccer player. (Taylor Glascock/For the Washington Post)
‘What do you do?’