DENVER — The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into how a former police officer landed an investigator’s job at the U.S. Center for SafeSport despite sex-crime allegations that littered his past, while also asking if the center knew he had been accused of newer crimes when working there last year.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter Monday to the sex-abuse watchdog’s CEO, giving her a month to answer 13 questions related to how the center missed red flags about former Allentown, Pennsylvania, vice officer Jason Krasley.
Krasley has been arrested multiple times over the past three months for crimes he allegedly committed between 2015 and 2024, including rape, sex trafficking, soliciting prostitution, theft and, most recently, harassment.
The center fired Krasley in November after learning of his initial arrests, which were covered by local media looking into broader corruption inside the police department. Not until The Associated Press revealed in December that Krasley had left policing in 2021 to join SafeSport, which oversees sex-abuse allegations across America’s Olympic sports, was the connection involving the officer, the center and his termination from his job as an investigator there made public.
“Claimants and respondents alike deserve impartial, fair investigators who have not been accused of sexual misconduct of their own,” Grassley wrote in his letter to CEO Ju’Riese Colon, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
“Investigators must be professionally and morally qualified to perform their duties,” the letter said. “Accusations of rape and other sex crimes against any SafeSport investigator are especially concerning given SafeSport’s mandate to protect athletes from similar abuse.”
A spokesperson for SafeSport said the center had received the letter and would respond to Grassley’s questions.
Though most of the charges against Krasley stemmed from incidents that allegedly occurred before SafeSport hired him, Grassley’s letter also included information about the ex-investigator’s largely overlooked arrest for an altercation with a real estate appraiser who said Krasley caused $2,500 in damage to his car in June, while Krasley was still working for the center.
For that case, Krasley appeared in court in December and agreed to an “accelerated rehabilitative disposition,” available to first-time offenders, to resolve charges that included harassment using lewd and threatening language.
That was a month after the center fired him when reports emerged of his arrest for allegedly stealing $5,500 of money seized in a drug bust he was part of while at the Allentown Police Department.
In January came the charges of rape, sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution. Krasley’s attorney, James Burke, says his client denies those allegations.
One of the questions Grassley sent to the center was about the exact date of the investigator’s firing.
Grassley asked whether SafeSport had received any indication before November that Mr. Krasley was under investigation for alleged offenses in June, when he was still working at the center.
“If so, why did SafeSport refrain from suspending him from investigations or terminating his employment at the time SafeSport learned of these alleged actions?” Grassley asked.
As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, Grassley helped steer bipartisan legislation through Congress that established the SafeSport Center.
He convened the first congressional hearing on abuse scandals involving Larry Nassar and others that enveloped the U.S. Olympic movement and led to the establishment of the center itself.
As chair of the same committee again, Grassley can have a significant impact on shaping the center’s future.
A bipartisan bill proposed in the House during last year’s session attached changes to the center’s operations to a prospective funding increase but didn’t touch on the hiring process that has thrown the center into crisis in the wake of the Krasley arrests.
“SafeSport has an important role to play in protecting young athletes, preventing misconduct and rooting out abuse,” Grassley said in a statement provided to the AP. “To ensure SafeSport fulfills its mission, it must guarantee its investigators are subjected to high standards of screening and are properly qualified to perform their duties.”
In earlier statements, Colon said the center had a “robust” background check program in place, which included social media screenings, reference checks and multiple interviews, along with continued checks on employees after they started with SafeSport. She said the center has since reached out to other companies that do screenings “to see if there’s something else we can do with our staff.”
In a January “State of the Center” call with interested parties, Colon said Krasley’s arrests were “devastating news for us, for the movement, for athletes, for survivors. It’s just terrible.”
Colon outlined a number of changes, among which were the hiring of a third-party firm that has begun reaching out to people involved in Krasley’s cases to see if any were mishandled. The center has said it does not have reason to believe Krasley was involved in wrongdoing in his role at the center.
The senator asked for more information about those cases, including how many Krasley handled and whether people he dealt with have lodged complaints or accusations of inappropriate conduct.
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
