DENVER (AP) — It took time, patience and months of therapy before Jacqui Stevenson could leave behind the anxiety and suicidal thoughts stemming from an ordeal involving her childhood swim coach that stretched out for more than two decades.
A glance at her phone earlier this month forced some of those feelings back to the surface.
"I checked my email and just had a total panic attack,” Stevenson said.
The Feb. 12 email from general counsel Jessica Perrill began: “I’m reaching out about a recent incident involving the investigator who was assigned to your U.S. Center for SafeSport (the Center) case, Jason Krasley.”
Thus began an angst-infused spiral for Stevenson, whose story serves as a bracing example of the potentially devastating ripple effect the former police officer-turned-SafeSport investigator’s arrest for sex crimes — and the center’s response to it — can have on the people whose cases he handled.
Before receiving the email, Stevenson had viewed Krasley, a former vice cop at the Allentown, Pennsylvania, police department, as the only person who really had her back when she reported abuse in December 2022. She still believed that when the case was quietly resolved and closed, some 14 months later, with the coach receiving a one-year probation after admitting to inappropriately kissing Stevenson when she was a teen.
When Perrill’s email landed with a jolt, informing Stevenson that Krasley had been arrested and charged with rape, theft and other crimes she started rethinking everything.
Stevenson, now 38, living about an hour southwest of Philly and working as a director for a major software company, said she also has grave doubts about the center’s position, stated in Perrill’s email, that “we don’t currently have reason to believe” Krasley had been involved in wrongdoing over the three years he worked at the organization.
She wonders if expressing her doubts to the third-party auditing group the center hired to collect information about cases Krasley handled might lead the center to reopen her case and, in turn, give the man she accused, who still coaches kids, a chance of having wrongdoing wiped off his record.
“He’s probably looking at this and going, ‘Sweet, I’m off scot-free,’” Stevenson said. “And all of this is just confirming to him that he can do whatever the hell he wants.”
Investigator’s three years with SafeSport ended abruptly
The center said it asked for the third-party audit out of an abundance of caution, to ensure fair and proper handling of cases.
“We recognize the emotional toll revisiting cases may have, so we have been working closely with experts to ensure any outreach to parties is done in a trauma-informed manner, including offering support resources,” CEO Ju’Riese Colón said.
According to Perrill’s email, the center fired Krasley on Nov. 15, 2024, immediately upon learning of his arrest for allegedly stealing drug money seized from a raid he was involved in as a vice cop in 2019.
Two months later, details emerged of new arrests for allegations of rape, sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution – allegations that dated to 2015. Krasley’s attorney says his client is innocent of those charges.
The center has not divulged how many cases Krasley handled over his three years working there, though that was one of the questions Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked when he opened an inquiry on the center earlier this month.
Stevenson worries the arrested investigator places the center in jeopardy
Stevenson said after getting the email, she reevaluated the hours she had spent on the phone with Krasley, the friendly vibe he gave off that bordered on oversharing, and memories of him telling her that “I’m not a therapist, but I’m here for you and we’re gonna get this (expletive).”
She regretted having sent him pictures of her, cuddled up on the couch with the coach – her abuser – from back when she was 14 and the coach was 21.
She started wondering if Krasley — a man people put their trust in to get to the bottom of sensitive cases, some involving sex abuse and harassment — had appropriately handled other evidence she and a friend had offered of what they said were more recent instances of the coach abusing minors.
After finding no help from police in investigating her abuser, she worries that the center – which was opened in 2017 to combat sex abuse in Olympic sports, and which Stevenson once considered her last line of defense – could disappear in the wake of a sordid episode like this.
“And now, everyone who dealt with him has to deal with that,” she said. “What he did in his previous role has now tainted everything he touched at SafeSport. And this could bring down an organization, and then what? SafeSport’s not perfect, but at least it’s there.”
A tale of a coach whose behavior didn’t change
Stevenson’s concerns date to the early 2000s, when she came under the influence of the same coach she would turn in to the center nearly 20 years later.
She said the interactions between her and the coach involved marijuana, alcohol, late-night parties and kissing as part of a relationship that she said spiraled into inappropriateness that she could not truly recognize until many years had passed.
More than 15 years later, she reconnected with the coach at a swim club near her old hometown where she herself became a coach, then a member of the club’s board of directors. She still viewed the coach in a decent light, but when she saw him exhibiting some of the same behaviors she experienced as a kid, red flags started going up.
Eventually, the swim club fired the coach — who is not being identified by AP because he never landed on SafeSport’s Centralized Disciplinary Database, nor was he charged by police — sparking his defenders to retaliate by starting a petition to have Stevenson removed from the board.
That sent her into a tailspin that she said included thoughts of suicide and a guilty conscience because she saw kids were in harm’s way and felt helpless to do anything about it.
“The hardest part for me was getting Jacqui to the finish line, and I felt like we got her across the line, and then she gets smacked in the face with this,” said Mike Scime, a friend of Stevenson’s who helped her cope with the mental-health issues that set in as the case evolved.
When police wouldn’t help, SafeSport seemed the place to turn
Stevenson’s own bad experience with the police is an example of what led the SafeSport Center, which touts its independence from traditional legal channels as one of its strengths, to argue that it will often go further than law enforcement and other investigative bodies to ensure athlete safety.
It took about two months for the center to assign an investigator to the case after Stevenson reported it. That investigator turned out to be Krasley.
Stevenson said the former police officer had a way of making her feel he was the only person who truly understood her problems.
“When I think about it,” she said, “it felt hauntingly similar to what (the coach) did to me when I was 14.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
Eddie Pells, The Associated Press
