Temporary punishments permanently damage athletes' careers

Reputational harm is immediate and long-lasting. Combined with time away from training, "temporary" sanctions are indistinguishable from lifetime bans.

The US Figure Skating Federation’s announcement on September 16, 2024, confirmed what many in the sport already knew: the ice dancing pair of Ivan Desyatov and Isabella Flores was one to watch in the build-up to the 2026 Winter Olympics. USFS gave Desyatov and Flores a headline berth in October’s Skate America Grand Prix, a prestigious competition and career milestone. They were more than medal contenders—they were potential breakout stars, the type that every Olympic sport hopes will emerge to bring their sport wide attention and appreciation.

Exactly one month later, the pair withdrew from the Grand Prix. On October 18, the day before they should have taken the ice, the US Center for SafeSport announced that Desyatov was temporarily suspended from all sporting activities based on allegations of misconduct.

One month after that, it was Flores’ turn to confirm what everyone already knew: their season was over. Left unsaid: Desyatov’s career, and therefore maybe her own, was almost assuredly over.

“It takes only two weeks for an elite athlete to start feeling the effects of detraining,” said a former Team USA ice dancer, who wishes to remain anonymous given the controversy around Desyatov. “Most skaters will only take one full week off at a time, usually right after the season ends. After that week off, they are back training to learn the routines for the next year of competition.

“Without consistently placing high in competitions for multiple seasons and actively competing against the other skaters fighting for those few spots on the Olympic team, it is almost impossible to make it to the Olympics.”

Congress designated the US Center for SafeSport, an independent non-profit, as the national sport safeguarding organization in 2018 in the aftermath of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal at USA Gymnastics. With no oversight or external review, the Center implements “practices, policies, and procedures to prevent the abuse...of amateur athletes participating in amateur athletic activities through national governing bodies.” Over 11 million Americans are under the Center’s jurisdiction, mostly through their membership in sport federations.

The Center can take someone out of sport without any finding of fact via “temporary measures.” Indefinite is more accurate. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in six years, the Center might remove those sanctions, or make them permanent. Whether they do so is almost irrelevant.

One of Congress’s few specific requirements for the Center was to “publish and maintain a publicly accessible internet website that contains a comprehensive list of adults who are barred by the Center.” What it takes to get on that list—the Centralized Disciplinary Database—and share space with Larry Nassar is wholly at the Center’s discretion.

About 2,500 people are on the Centralized Disciplinary Database, with about 140 under temporary sanctions. Desyatov is in the top quartile of tenure on the temporary list. Ahead of him are 10 individuals from 2022, one from 2021, and one still-temporary case from 2019.

“The suspension, publication of a name, and slow process management are sloppy and cruel. It would violate even the most basic employment standards in any organization in the United States,” a person close to the Flores family said.

Sport is no safer

From its origins in the Nassar case, the adage “hard cases make bad law” is insufficient for any commentary on the US Center for SafeSport.

Other cases’ temporary status validate the full range of the Center’s critics.

Few people have experienced as much of the US sport safeguarding system as Nanci Moore. Her daughter, Alexis, was sexually abused for 10 years by Larry Nassar. Alexis was part of the FBI’s investigation into Nassar, and the subsequent criminal and civil trials.

In 2020, the Center acted upon a complaint and began investigating Nanci and Alexis Moore. Those investigations would go on for three years. The Center suspended both Moores from sport in March 2023 for allegations of emotional and physical misconduct. The following month, the Center determined that Nanci had violated the terms of that suspension, which they added to her record. Alexis was fully cleared of all allegations by an arbitrator in June 2023, while Nanci has stayed on the Centralized Disciplinary Database—temporarily—ever since.

The Moores have been tied up in federal court since that July, suing the Center and USA Gymnastics for breach of contract, tortious interference with a business, and defamation, among other counts.

At the other extreme of the sympathy spectrum, Sean Gardner had been a gymnastics coach since at least 2004. The Center placed him on the Centralized Disciplinary Database in 2022 over allegations of sexual abuse.

This August, the FBI arrested Gardner on child pornography charges.

In one sense, the safeguarding system worked. Within four months of receiving a complaint against Gardner, the Center separated him from sport so he could no longer groom or abuse potential victims in athletic settings. That his suspension remained “temporary” for three years had no impact on his status within sport. Gardner is now permanently banned: being arrested for a sex offense is, in itself, a violation of the SafeSport Code. The terms of his permanent suspension are the same as those of the temporary.

Despite being taken out of sport, Gardner was not taken off the streets—law enforcement did not have a predicate to act. Young athletes were, in this case, protected by the safeguarding system. But the broader population was not.

More importantly, neither Gardner nor his accusers have received justice.

This is a discomfiting part of the Gardner story for safeguarding advocates: it shows there is no substitute for the criminal justice system. Only now that some of Gardner’s accusers have gone not to the anonymity-assuring, non-adversarial non-profit but to the police will we learn, in open court, whether Gardner is a sex offender. If so, he will receive the punishment he deserves and society will be protected from him.

Justice is the missing element from any situation involving the US Center for SafeSport.

The Center’s lawyers and advocates will be quick to agree. If the Center were in the business of justice, then all the constitutional protections of our judicial system—pre-deprivation hearings, presumption of innocence, opportunity to call witnesses—would be in play. Instead, they argue that their policies and their ability to publicly banish you are merely the terms and conditions of membership in private organizations.

Drone strikes, but for athletes’ careers

There is almost no chance of justice for anyone in the Desyatov case.

The Center can impose a temporary sanction upon receiving an allegation. It does not have to perform any level of investigation, inquiry, or even double-checking. The “seriousness of the allegation”—not its credibility, and certainly not its veracity—is the Center’s basis for temporarily suspending Ivan Desyatov.

By imposing a temporary sanction, the Center shifts the burden of proof to the accuser: the allegations are presumed to be true if the accused wishes to go to arbitration.

To clear his name from the Center’s blacklist, Desyatov now has to affirmatively prove that he did not assault French ice dancer Solene Mazingue in Zagreb, Croatia, in December 2023.

In the nine months after the alleged incident, Mazingue quietly venue-shopped her accusation. She informed the Estonian federation (her ice dancing partner is Estonian), a Canadian figure skating training academy, and the Paris police. None of them have jurisdiction over an incident that took place in Croatia. Accordingly, none have acted upon her complaints.

Finally, in the US Center for SafeSport, she found an organization with unrestricted jurisdiction over an American athlete.

Three days after USFS announced that they had selected Desyatov and Flores for the Skate America Grand Prix, Mazingue posted an Instagram Reel alluding to a sexual assault by an athlete. She filed her complaint with the Center the following week, on September 26, 2024. While it took the Center four months to temporarily sanction Sean Gardner, the Center placed Desyatov on the Centralized Disciplinary Database in less than one month.

After a blitz of social media posts and a sympathetic feature in France’s Mediapart, Mazingue’s lawyer and PR agent from 2024 have gone quiet. It’s unclear if either are still representing her. Her lawyer at the time was Nabil Boudi. Boudi’s other clients last year included Islamic State fighters and Olympic gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif in his suit against J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. If there was substance to this transnational case, Boudi’s record suggests he would be eager and adept to exploit it.

Desyatov’s case showcases the perils of delegating so much authority to an unsupervised quasi-governmental organization.

Unlike X, I’m willing to link to another publication and trust you to come back: U.S. Center For SafeSport Shows The Dangers Of Delegating Power To Private Entities (at The Federalist)

The actual but unprosecuted criminals on the Centralized Disciplinary Database are still getting away with their crimes, whether they are under “temporary” or “permanent” sanctions. Falsely or maliciously accused individuals suffer career-ending, life-long, and sometimes life-ending damage the moment the Center adds their names to the Centralized Disciplinary Database.

“Jordan” was spared the public blacklisting because he was a minor when the Center temporarily suspended him from sport.

Like Desyatov and Flores, he was recognized by his sport’s federation and media as a Team USA hopeful, in his case for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. He was one of a few dozen youth athletes invited to a training camp that showed them how the professionals train, and to lay out the expectations and development program to get them from youth to pro.

“This was the first year I had really seen myself on that path,” he says, modestly: articles on him being part of “the next generation” go back to before he could even drive.

As a high school senior, Jordan had an offer on the table from a team in Europe, along with admissions letters from several top academic universities.

“I hadn’t solidified the pro deal. If I could be on a highly competitive European team, I can’t really go to college. Maybe an online hybrid sort of thing. But I thought if I could be really good at this sport, I want to give it a real shot and see what I can do. College is something I’m interested in, but it was like a backup.”

The pro team withdrew the offer when news of the suspension made its way through the sport. Other teams he had been speaking with started ghosting him.

“I wasn’t going to commit to college if this might all be resolved the next day, or within a few weeks. We’re just in this holding pattern. I’m taking classes part-time at a local college. That lets me train and live at home. I enjoy it and I’m making it work, but my goal is not to graduate from there. I just have no idea what will happen with all this or when.”

Unlike ice dancers, Jordan has more flexibility in the facilities and equipment he needs to train. “I don’t think too much of my fitness has dropped off. I have a pretty good understanding of training. I’m a coach as well, so I understand what kind of workouts I need to be doing. But without competing, you lose the mental sharpness that only comes from competition. That’s pretty hard to replicate when I’m training by myself with nothing on the calendar.”

Permanent damage to careers and reputations

A one-year ban is considered the “death penalty“ in college team sports. Desyatov’s career, and the Desyatov-Flores team, could not—and did not—survive a few months.

“Ivan retired, and he misses it. He is fighting to clear his name, and if there is a chance to come back, he may consider it. But could he come back today and pick up where he left off? No. He has no world standing and would need to get support of a federation. If he found a partner, they would likely need to spend one year just building the ability to skate well together, before years of working together to be truly competitive,” the person close to the Flores’s said.

“Isabella is also fighting to continue her career. This season she has been working with another skater in France. It’s too early to tell if they have the makings of a competitive team. It just takes time to work together and get their skills aligned. At the higher levels, assuming you can find two athletes with the right skills and experience, they may not really know if they are competitive until do some competitions.”

Even if it somehow all came together from an sporting perspective, the reputational damage of spending even one day on the Centralized Disciplinary Database gives the lie to the idea of temporary.

In a subjective sport like ice dancing, both skaters would carry the stigma of the sanction into every competition. “The accusation, the blacklisting, and the media coverage all leave lasting damage to a skater’s reputation, which will affect how the judges view them. Again, not just for the accused skater, but for the partner. She will be criticized and punished for not condemning and breaking ties with her partner.” Reddit forums still blast Flores for not immediately disowning Desyatov.

Jordan’s sport is more objective when it comes to competitions, but the national team selection process comes down to the federation’s decisions.

“He’s been competing in this sport since he was seven. This is his life,” Jordan’s father says. “This is what he does. He doesn’t really socialize on weekends. He hasn’t been to parties. All week, he trains before school or after school. It’s just devastating to me as a parent to see this happen.”

Most of our careers would survive a disruption of a few weeks or months. Athletes have this unique vulnerability. However, few careers—to say nothing of families and psyches—can survive the stigma, humiliation, and calumny of being added to a public database built for and headlined by child sex offenders.

The Center’s sanctions sometimes protect athletes, but they always inflict permanent damage. With authority unconstrained by accountability, the Center has made American sport a justice-free zone.