USWNT and Orlando Pride striker Alex Morgan on Tuesday called for the National Women’s Soccer League to end the systemic failure that led to a decade of alleged sexual harassment of players by some league coaches.
The North Carolina Courage last week fired coach Paul Riley amid allegations spanning over a decade of sexual coercion and inappropriate comments about players’ weight and sexual orientation.
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The announcement came after The Athletic published an investigation in which it talked to more than a dozen players from every team Riley has coached since 2010 — including two named players, Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly, who went on the record with allegations against him.
Shim and Farrelly joined Morgan on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday to speak out about the league’s failure to take action.
Morgan called on the league to be proactive in setting up policies to protect players.
“I’m here to support Mana and Sinead and to continue to amplify their voices, and just show the systemic failure from the league and how wrong they did in handling Mana’s case and complaint and investigation and where they failed Mana and Sinead, and probably many other women,” Morgan said.
“When I look back, I tried to be as good a friend and teammate as possible to Mana in helping her file a complaint, when at the time there was no anti-harassment policy in place, there was no league HR, there was no anonymous hotline, there was no way to report.
“We’ve now started to put these things in place, by demand of players, not by the league being proactive. Something we ask is for the league to start being proactive, not reactive. We’re asking for transparency.”
Shim called for better policies and player protection and spoke of the harassment she endured under Riley.
“He’s a predator. He sexually harassed me, he sexually coerced Sinead, and he took away our careers,” Shim said. “From early on, there was a…
Source : espn
