Sports Legal: Tennis prodigy Kylie McKenzie wins $9 million sexual assault lawsuit against USTA

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Tennis prodigy Kylie McKenzie wins $9 million sexual assault lawsuit against USTA

Kylie McKenzie, a 25-year-old tennis player from Arizona, was award $9 million in a federal lawsuit against the United States Tennis Association, in which she claimed the organization failed to kee…

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Tennis prodigy Kylie McKenzie wins $9 million sexual assault lawsuit against USTA​

By
Social Links forJenna Lemoncelli
Published May 7, 2024, 1:51 p.m. ET
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Kylie McKenzie, a 25-year-old tennis player from Arizona once considered a prodigy, was award $9 million in a federal lawsuit against the United States Tennis Association, in which she claimed the organization failed to keep her safe from being sexually assaulted by her former coach, Anibal Aranda, at the USTA’s training facility in Florida in 2018, according to The Athletic.
McKenzie said she was assaulted by Aranda when she was 19 and he was 34 while on a back court at the USTA’s Orlando training center in a lawsuit filed against the organization in 2022 — which stated the USTA had failed to disclose that Aranda had assaulted one of their employees years prior.
The suit was filed after the U.S. Center for SafeSport found that it was ”more likely than not” that Aranda touched McKenzie’s vagina over her clothes and groped her under the guise of showing her a serving technique in 2018, according to The New York Times, which reviewed a copy of the final ruling at the time.
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Tennis player Kylie McKenzie, middle, with her attorney Robert Allard, right, and victim advocate Jancy Thompson, left, speaks to reporters at a news conference in Phoenix Tuesday, March 29, 2022.AP
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Anibal Aranda is shown at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla., Dec. 12, 2017.AP








Aranda denied ever touching McKenzie inappropriately in his testimony during a SafeSport investigation — and a USTA spokesperson said they immediately acted to suspend and fire Aranda.
The coach also said he did not recall touching another USTA employee inappropriately.
That USTA employee came forward with her allegations against Aranda amid the investigation into McKenzie’s claims.
McKenzie said she suffered anxiety, panic attacks and depression as a result of the incident.

​

A jury on Monday awarded McKenzie, who is trying to revive her tennis career, $3 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in punitive damages — “determining there was a conscious disregard for the rights and safety of others, given in part attempts by the USTA to keep McKenzie’s case quiet,” following a week-long trial in Orlando, according to The Athletic.
“I feel validated,” McKenzie told The Athletic Monday from Florida. “It was very hard, but I feel now that it was all worth it. I hope I can be an example for other girls to speak out even when it’s hard.”
USTA spokesman Chris Widmaier said in a statement the organization would “pursue all avenues of appeal,” although it is sympathetic to what McKenzie went through.
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Kylie McKenzie at the US Open.AP
“The court ruled that the USTA was liable because one of its employees — a non-athlete — had an obligation to report her own experience with this coach to the USTA, an incident that was unknown until after the USTA removed the coach. This sets a new and unreasonable expectation for victims, one that will deter them from coming forward in the future,” Widmaier said.
Robert Allard, an attorney for McKenzie, said the jury made clear that the USTA had failed to regulate itself.
“They don’t put athletes first,” Allard said. “There needs to be a complete change in the organization so victims are not silenced but encouraged to come forward.”

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McKenzie was once ranked in the top 10 in the U.S.
If you have been sexually assaulted and live in New York, you can call 1-800-942-6906 for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the state, you can dial the 24/7 National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

 

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Colón fired as CEO of U.S. Center for SafeSport

The U.S. Center for SafeSport fired CEO Ju'Riese Colón on Tuesday in the latest and most visceral sign of a crisis that began after revelations the center had hired an investigator who would later be charged with rape.

www.espn.com

U.S. Center for SafeSport fires CEO Ju'Riese Colón​

• Associated Press

Apr 22, 2025, 07:17 PM ET


DENVER -- The U.S. Center for SafeSport fired CEO Ju'Riese Colón on Tuesday in the latest and most visceral sign of a crisis that began after revelations the center had hired an investigator who would later be charged with rape.

The center told The Associated Press about Colón's removal in an email. It brought an abrupt end to a tenure that began in 2019. She was hired to help the then-2-year-old center, which was established to combat sex abuse in Olympic sports, bring its operation to full speed.

The center said its board chair, April Holmes, would lead an interim management committee composed of board members while they search for Colón's replacement.

"We are grateful for Ju'Riese's leadership and service," Holmes said in the statement sent to the AP. "As we look ahead, we will continue to focus on the Center's core mission of changing sport culture to keep athletes safe from abuse."

Colón did not immediately respond to a text message left by the AP.

In her five-plus years at the Denver-based center, Colón failed to fully untangle its struggles with long delays in processing an ever-growing caseload, or the stream of complaints from both accusers and accused who had been dragged through a resolution process that could take years.​

No issue, however, illustrated the center's struggles more than its handling of former Pennsylvania vice squad officer Jason Krasley.


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Krasley was hired as an investigator for the center in 2021, but was abruptly fired last November when the center learned he had been arrested for allegedly stealing money from a drug bust he was a part of while with the force.

The center made no public mention of that until AP reported about the connection Dec. 26. Then, two weeks later, Krasley was arrested again, this time for rape, sex trafficking and other crimes -- an episode Colón to conceded was "devastating" for the center, which implemented changes in its hiring process.

The AP reporting led Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to open an inquiry into the center's handling of Krasley's hiring and employment.

In a letter to Colón, he wrote: "Accusations of rape and other sex crimes against any SafeSport investigator are especially concerning given SafeSport's mandate to protect athletes from similar abuse."

It was an obvious conclusion made more jarring by the fact he had to write it at all.

Colón's response to Grassley last month revealed more about the case, including that the center hired Krasley despite knowing he was the subject of an internal investigation. Grassley sent another list of questions to Colón, answers for which were requested by May 1. The center said it plans to deliver the answers by the deadline.

After Krasley's arrests were made public, the center reached out to people whose cases he handled, offering them counseling and a chance to share questions and concerns about the interaction with the investigator. Though the center has said there was no reason to think any of Krasley's cases had been compromised, the outreach triggered another set of problems.

One person who was contacted, Jacqui Stevenson, told AP the notification retraumatized her and made her wonder if her case, which resulted in her abuser receiving a one-year probation, could end in his penalty being voided.

The entire episode brings into question the viability of this 8-year-old experiment born out of the U.S. Olympic movement's inability to deal with wide-ranging abuse crises at USA Swimming, USA Taekwondo and, most notably, USA Gymnastics involving now-imprisoned doctor Larry Nassar.

Fueled by congressional hearings that included heart-wrenching testimony from abuse survivors, a consensus grew that an independent entity was needed to do the work the U.S. Olympic committee and its sports subsidiaries could not.

Congress passed laws requiring most of SafeSport's money (the center reported nearly $24.8 million in revenue in 2023) come from the organizations it oversaw. Despite its funding source, the center insisted on independence. It placed big demands on the sports organizations -- requiring resource-consuming annual audits and claiming first right of refusal on cases involving their sports.

It led to a lack of trust but also a fear of speaking up at both the Olympic committee and inside the individual sports agencies, lest anyone be accused of undermining the center, even if it wasn't performing well.

Others, though, did speak up.

Among the most common complaints the AP fielded from dozens of accusers, accused, witnesses and attorneys who reached out over the past 24 months were that everything the center did took too long and left too many people in limbo.

This was a symptom bedeviling an organization that, at last count, was receiving more than 150 new reports a week but had fewer than three dozen full-time investigators to sort through them.


Colón insisted the center's mission to deal not only with Olympic-level sports but all those sports down to the grassroots -- a remit that covers some 11 million athletes -- was the right one. She steadily pushed for more funding to beef up the operation.

Though disagreements over the center's mission and its ability to deliver given the budget constraints underscored a lot of the day-to-day wrangling about its future, no single episode undermined it the way Krasley's hiring and firing did.

While the center defended its vetting process, critics viewed the hiring of an alleged rapist to investigate sex abuse as a devastating error for an agency handed such an awesome and delicate responsibility.

Grassley's initial letter to Colón emphasized the low bar the center had failed to clear when it hired the ex-cop.

"Claimants and respondents alike deserve impartial, fair investigators who have not been accused of sexual misconduct of their own," the senator wrote.