Multiple Women Say They Were Sexually Abused by Soccer Coaches at One Club

A Washington woman said her coach raped her when she was 16 years old. She sued her soccer club in Thurston County and has now secured a $7.5 million settlement—one of the largest sexual abuse settlements in Washington history, and only the latest in a string of settlements involving the Blackhills Football Club, according to the woman’s lawyer.

So far, the Blackhills Football Club has paid out $12.75 million in four settlements related to allegations of multiple coaches’ sexual abuse, according to a press release by the Washington woman’s law firm. Last week, a fifth woman also sued the Blackhills Football Club, alleging that she too was raped by her coach, the Seattle Times reported last week.

The alleged rape at the center of the latest settlement took place in 2005 in an Oregon hotel room, during a soccer tournament, after the coach said he needed to have a captain’s meeting, according to the press release.

“This coach was so brazen in this rape that he basically dared her to say anything,” Darrell Cochran, one of the woman’s lawyers, said in the release. “When her mom sensed something had gone wrong and confronted the coach, he screamed at the mother and daughter and then vanished. And not a soul from the club asked why he left or what had happened.”

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The coach, who has not been criminally charged, has previously denied that the rape occurred. The coach is also not named in the lawsuit because, Cochran told the Olympian, his team doesn’t believe he can pay any damages. Instead, the lawsuit names Blackhills Football Club and two other coaches as defendants. It alleges these coaches were told about the alleged rape in 2012 but did not report it, the Olympian reported.

The woman, now 33, told the Seattle Times that she was “suicidal for years.”

“I went from being this little girl who was always laughing, always cracking jokes, outgoing, a total social butterfly, to not wanting to leave my room,” she said. “It broke my life, it broke my soul. I lost who I was and my parents had no idea what to do.”

The woman told the Seattle Times that, during the alleged rape, the coach told her she was only on the team because she was pretty. Eventually, the woman stopped playing soccer.

After struggling with drugs and alcohol, the woman is now a social worker.

Blackhills Football Club didn’t immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment. But in a statement to the Olympian, the club said that settlement “resolves a legacy claim.”

“The Club takes the safety of the children who play for the Club very seriously and has robust policies in place aimed at preventing sexual abuse,” the statement reads. “The Club hopes the settlement will allow it to move forward and focus on providing a safe and supportive environment for youth soccer.”