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Alen Hadzic of the USA (left) fences Max Heinzer of Switzerland at the Peter Bakonyi Men's Epee World Cup on Feb. 8, 2020, in Richmond, Canada.
In October 2013, the lawyer of a fellow member of USA Fencing, who was also Hadzic’s teammate at Columbia University, told top officials that a month before, the university had suspended Hadzic for a year following a formal investigation into her claim of sexual assault. In a letter to USA Fencing, the woman’s lawyer advised USA Fencing to bar him from competitions, writing that “Mr. Hadzic’s conduct does not comport with the standards set by USA Fencing.”
In their response, the organization explained that it had reviewed all of the documents but would not take any action because Hadzic had not violated any of its policies. Because the then-college athlete was not a coach or authority figure, and because “the alleged conduct” did not occur at a USA Fencing event, the organization said it was not in the position to take any disciplinary action against him.
The woman’s attorney pushed back, calling the decision an “intentional misreading” of the organization’s own Athlete’s Code of Conduct, which prohibited sexually inappropriate behavior between athletes.
“A plain reading of this Code of Conduct excerpt renders Mr. Hadzic unfit and thus ineligible to participate,” the attorney wrote. “How can the [United States Fencing Association], in good conscience, claim its hands are tied and permit the participation of a known rapist into its athletic midst?”
The organization never wrote back. Due to the ongoing investigation into Hadzic, USA Fencing cannot comment about Hadzic’s case, but top officials have reiterated that at that time, the organization didn’t have a policy that specifically addressed what to do if an athlete abused a peer. Also, they argued, the athlete code of conduct only applied to the national team, which Hadzic was not yet on. However, USA Fencing’s bylaws at the time did state that “it is a violation of USFA policy for any employee or member of the USFA to engage in sexual harassment.”
On Thursday, Ekeren, who signed the correspondence to the woman’s lawyer as interim USA Fencing CEO, told BuzzFeed News that she wishes things had been done differently.
“As a woman and a parent, this has been heartwrenching,” she said in a statement. “Back in 2013, USA Fencing's policies led to the determination made with regards to Mr. Hadzic. I truly wish that our policies at the time had been different. Our organization has since revised them, and had we been operating under the current policies back at that time, a different decision may have been made.”
In the following years, Hadzic would go on to compete in and continue to excel at a slew of national and world competitions, despite being temporarily suspended in 2019 for other bad behavior at a competition in Columbia. His position on the US Olympic team placed him at fencing’s highest level, and he has said he is now aiming to again compete in the Paris Games in 2024.
Whether he is banned remains in the hands of SafeSport, which has yet to deliver a verdict in the high-profile probe, which began in May. The situation is another example of how, despite years of development and a recent doubling of its budget to $20 million, the national system is still imperfect and not up to the task of running timely investigations across the wide, complicated world of US Olympic sports organizations.
To be fair, SafeSport was set up to fail. Created by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to enforce anti-abuse policies, the agency was meant to streamline the reporting and investigative process, taking power away from individual national governing bodies, who were failing to properly punish and get rid of abusers within their ranks. But it launched with just three full-time employees to investigate thousands of complaints, which were filed without any statute of limitations. It now has 100 employees, has gotten through 40% of its backlog, and has sanctioned 1,100 people. So far this year, the center has received close to 3,000 reports, which must be handled by 30 full-time investigators and about a dozen contractors. Cases like Hadzic’s, where the allegations took place before the center existed, can be the hardest to tackle.
There is still no timeline for when SafeSport will conclude its probe. In emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News, an investigator told parties involved last week that “the case is still ongoing and that information from the involved parties is still being gathered.”
“Investigations into sexual misconduct are sensitive and often complex, particularly those that involve allegations going back many years and that predate the Center — getting it right must be the priority,” Daniel Hill, a SafeSport spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News.
Hill declined to comment specifically on Hadzic’s case.
Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman participates in a Senate Judiciary hearing on the FBI's handling of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse on Sept. 15, 2021, in Washington, DC.
Last month, gymnastics star Aly Raisman said at a Senate hearing that in spite of the intentions for SafeSport to be independent, she doesn’t trust it because it was created and funded by the very organization it's supposed to be keeping in line: the US Olympic Committee.
“I’m trying to be respectful here: I don’t like SafeSport,” she said. “I hear from many survivors that they report their abuse and it’s like playing hot potato, where somebody else kicks it over to somebody else and they don’t hear back for a really long time.”
Nearly 10 other fencers who filed complaints with SafeSport against their coaches and peers told BuzzFeed News the same thing. Their cases drag on for months, usually without any communication or updates, leaving both parties in limbo, according to emails and case files reviewed by BuzzFeed News. In one instance, a woman filed a report against a referee in January 2020 and was assigned an investigator, but it took 14 months before they started the interview process. She ended up dropping her case in April because waiting was too much for her to handle.
“It is evident that SafeSport generally misunderstands the complicated nature that is sexual assault,” Lena Johnson, an athlete whose case against another Olympic fencer took almost a year to conclude, told BuzzFeed News. “SafeSport is like one big HR department that’s trying to monitor all sports across the nation. How is that supposed to work?”