Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the North Carolina Courage fired Paul Riley on Thursday.
This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2021. View the full list.
On a July night in 2014, in the waning minutes of a NWSL regular season match between Portland Thorns FC and the Chicago Red Stars, Sinead Farrelly collapsed on the field at the Benedictine University Sports Complex. She had stepped up to defend an opposing player only a moment before, but was nowhere near the ball when she fell. The commentator for the game noted she had done plenty of running, but there was no clear explanation for why she had gone down. After a few moments, she was able to walk off the field under her own power, with the Thorns’ athletic trainer beside her. She was not limping; she was not examined for a head injury; there was nothing that might have hinted at why she collapsed.
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Farrelly was a regular starter for Portland. She was 24 years old, firmly in the prime of her career, a box-to-box midfielder who had maintained a place at the highest level of women’s soccer, even as one professional league folded and another was formed. She had twice been invited to U.S. national team camps.
She arrived in Portland at the start of that 2014 season; the third team she had played for coached by Paul Riley. He selected her with the Philadelphia Independence’s second overall pick in the 2011 Women’s Professional Soccer College Draft. Then, in 2012, when WPS folded and Riley moved to coach a semi-pro team on Long Island, Farrelly joined him there. Then, they reunited again in Portland.
“He really ingrained in my brain that I had a lot of potential, was one of the best players he’d ever seen — but I needed the right coach to get me to where I wanted to go,” Farrelly said. “And that’s what he did, he took players and he made them great.”
In Philadelphia, during her rookie season, Riley gave her special attention and gradually lowered the boundaries between player and coach. When he took the team out drinking, he’d sit next to her at the bar. He’d hand her cash to buy shots. He’d tell her she was beautiful, that the guys who tried to buy her drinks weren’t good enough for her. On those nights, he asked her probing personal questions, and he really seemed to care. She shared information about her past relationships, how she got along with her parents, and his responses shored up her confidence, “making me feel like I was really rare and special,” she said.
But Riley could also be surprisingly harsh. While he raved about Farrelly’s performances to the team and to the media, during training he would send her off with the substitutes, telling her he still was unsure about her abilities. He’d then start her the next game, and repeat the cycle again. It made Farrelly long for his approval. She felt like she was “his” player, even if she had to prove herself over and over.
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Early during her first season in Philadelphia, Farrelly accepted a call-up to the U.S. women’s national team. Riley told her when she returned to the Independence that she had been disloyal to her actual team and to him. She deserved to be on the national team, Riley said, but only if he was coaching it. A couple of weeks later, when the U.S. team’s coaching staff called again, she turned them down — and gave up the final spot on the 2011 World Cup roster.
At the end of that season, after the Independence lost the WPS championship, and following hours out drinking and commiserating over the loss as a team, Farrelly said she felt that Riley, who at the time was 47 years old and married, coerced her into his hotel room and they had sex.
After WPS folded in early 2012, most of the Independence — including Farrelly — went to play for Riley on a Long Island semi-pro team, where the alleged sexual coercion continued, Farrelly said. She had sex with him and a teammate on one occasion, she said, also following a night of excessive drinking. After each encounter, she tried to pretend it had never happened, and repeated Riley’s mantra, told to her after their first night of sex, that they would be “taking this to their graves.”
After that season, Farrelly joined FC Kansas City in the newly formed National Women’s Soccer League, but Riley haunted her mentally and emotionally. When he became the coach of the Thorns in December 2013, Farrelly knew he would trade for her. She could feel it coming.
That July night in 2014 on the field at Benedictine University, the weight of it all came crashing down on her. She wouldn’t play another minute for the rest of the season, even as Portland made the playoffs. She got checked out by doctors; she underwent a brain scan.
“They told me I had migraines, and nothing was medically wrong,” Farrelly said. “I realize now I was not okay. I couldn’t function under him. I couldn’t function to play soccer anymore.”
“Like a god”
For most of the last two decades, one of women’s soccer’s governing mores has been a willingness to stay silent. As the sport tried, failed, and tried again to gain traction in the United States, any controversy was viewed as a threat to the sport’s existence, with the potential to shut down a team or even an entire league. Women in the sport felt disempowered, understanding that they were to keep quiet about disrespectful coaches and mistreatment by front office staff, about poor pay and substandard facilities. Speaking about some personal relationships was also discouraged. And it was more than just hiding the truth, it was putting on a happy face while doing it.
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The NWSL (the third professional women’s league to surface in the U.S.) is now in its ninth year, but the players feel far from secure. About 75% of them earn under $31,000 a year, which is more than $15,000 below the median income for women in the U.S. The vast majority feel like underpaid, replaceable cogs, one missed tackle or one misstep off the field from a career dashed.
“There definitely has been this shared idea that because two leagues have folded in the past, the NWSL is kind of the last hope for a women’s soccer league,” U.S. national team forward Alex Morgan said. “Because of that, I feel like there’s this idea that we should be grateful for what we have and we shouldn’t raise important questions — or ask questions at all.”
But over the past 14 months, more and more players and team employees have breached the code of silence, asking questions and speaking out against alleged wrongdoers. Last year, Dell Loy Hansen was pressured into selling Utah Royals FC after reports of racist comments and a sexist culture in the club’s front office. Utah also placed head coach Craig Harrington on administrative leave; sources told The Athletic that Harrington made comments of a sexual nature to staff, which he has disputed. In August, an assistant coach for the Washington Spirit left the club following inappropriate comments made to players at a party. Spirit head coach Richie Burke was put on leave pending an investigation into allegations of verbal and emotional abuse of players; on Tuesday, the NWSL announced that he was terminated for cause. In July, Gotham FC dismissed general manager Alyse LaHue following the results of an investigation related to the league’s new anti-harassment policy. She has denied any wrongdoing.
There was not one trigger. It was incident after incident, building upon themselves, revealing the scope of the sport’s problems and leading the players to understand that the only way to bring about great change was to refuse to be silent.
“What we are seeing this season is the beginning of a reckoning,” NWSL players’ association director Meghann Burke (no relation to Richie) told The Athletic last month.
Paul Riley, a native of Liverpool, England, got his start coaching men’s college soccer, then men’s lower-division soccer. He made the leap to the women’s game in 2006, taking over the Long Island Fury in the second-division Women’s Premier Soccer League before moving to the Independence in 2009. Riley earned his U.S. Soccer Pro License in 2018 as part of the third class to complete the year-long process for the country’s highest coaching license. Current USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski was in the same class. Riley has also been in contention to coach the national team at various points.
Riley won a championship in 2016 with the Western New York Flash, before they relocated to North Carolina. He then won back-to-back NWSL coach of the year awards in 2017 and 2018, and the Courage lifted the NWSL championship trophy in 2018 and 2019. His success, his credentials and his wealth – generated mostly from a successful youth club and soccer school – made him, as one former player put it, “like a god.”
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The Athletic spoke to more than a dozen players representing every team Riley has coached since 2010, plus an additional 10 sources throughout the women’s game. The majority asked to remain anonymous because of fear of repercussions given Riley’s influence in the sport. In addition to his alleged sexual coercion of Farrelly, Riley led Farrelly and Portland Thorns teammate Mana Shim back to his apartment after a night of drinking in 2015 and pressured them to kiss each other as he watched, according to Farrelly and Shim. Riley told them the team would avoid a grueling conditioning session if they granted his request. He also sent an unsolicited lurid picture of himself to both women, Farrelly and Shim said, and he once invited Shim to a “film session” in his hotel room and then greeted her there wearing nothing but his underwear. Farrelly, Shim and several other Thorns players from 2014-15 said Riley also made inappropriate remarks about their weight and sexual orientation.
Members of the Independence, Fury and Thorns told The Athletic about several evenings when Riley drank heavily with his players. In 2015 and 2016, he held week-long “retreats” at his 10,992-square-foot home on Long Island. Players swam in his pool and drank alcohol he provided. Many women said these were not voluntary gatherings; when they or their teammates tried to go somewhere else during the week (to New York City for a night or to visit family or friends nearby), Riley told them they were not allowed to leave.
“He really commands the kind of social culture he wants on the team,” one player who played for him in Portland said. “He has the authority. People don’t really push him on it, everyone accepts that’s just how he is. You’re trying to survive in his hierarchy.”
Riley responded to a list of 23 questions about his alleged conduct with an email in which he stated that the majority of the allegations are “completely untrue.” He wrote: “I have never had sex with, or made sexual advances towards these players.” He said he sometimes socialized with players and occasionally picked up bar tabs, “but I do not take them out drinking.” He conceded that over the course of his career “there’s a chance I’ve said something along the way that offended someone,” but he added “I do not belittle my players, comment on their weight, or discuss their personal relationships.” He also denied holding film sessions in his hotel room.
The North Carolina Courage said in a statement Wednesday: “When we hired Paul, we made perfectly clear the expectations of the job and the values of our club, and from what we know, he has lived up to those expectations. If there are any players or staff that wish to come forward in accordance with NWSL league policy, we encourage them to report any inappropriate behavior as we will continue to uphold the standard of maintaining a safe and positive environment for all at the club.”
On Thursday, the Courage fired Riley. The club said in a statement: “In light of today’s reports, the North Carolina Courage have terminated head coach Paul Riley, effective immediately, following very serious allegations of misconduct.” Sean Nahas was named interim coach. Additionally, U.S. Soccer announced that it was suspending Riley’s coaching license.
On Sept. 16, 11 days after the end of the 2015 season, Shim filed a complaint with the Portland Thorns front office concerning Riley’s behavior. Shim also disclosed his behavior to Morgan, who confirmed the exchange to The Athletic. The Thorns investigated and, on Sept. 23, announced Riley’s contract would not be renewed. On Wednesday, Thorns owner Merritt Paulson said the 2015 probe found violations of team policy, which factored into the decision to let Riley go. Paulson added: “Everything was shared with the league.”
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Riley was hired by the Flash five months later.
After the NWSL adopted a new anti-harassment policy earlier this year, Farrelly and Shim contacted the league to ask for a new investigation into Riley’s behavior. League commissioner Lisa Baird thanked them for raising their concerns but informed both former players the 2015 complaint was “investigated to conclusion,” and that she could not share any details. This week, when informed of The Athletic’s reporting on Riley, including the allegations made by Farrelly that were not part of the 2015 Thorns probe, Baird chose not to respond. An NWSL spokesperson said in a statement: “The league was contacted earlier this year regarding an investigation that was completed in 2015. Absent any new or additional information, the matter was closed. That said, the behavior described by former players has absolutely no place in our league and will not be tolerated.”
Baird and others within the league have come under criticism recently as teams have pushed out coaches and other employees without explicitly stating, or obfuscating, the reasons. For example: The Spirit initially announced Richie Burke would resign from his position for health reasons and move into a front-office role; one day later, a Washington Post story led the team to change its official explanation and announce an investigation into alleged misconduct.
“I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit,” Portland Thorn Meghan Klingenberg wrote on Twitter in the wake of the Spirit’s handling of Burke. “As a veteran player, I demand the NWSL, the owners and GMs keep players safe. On the field, in the locker room and on the road. It’s not ok to just let an organizational member resign and sweep things under the rug. What happens to the next set of players that play under that coach?”
“I felt claimed”
About 40 miles outside of Philadelphia, in the borough of Downingtown, there is an extend-a-stay hotel along Route 30, amidst big suburban shopping centers and across from a Wegmans supermarket. This is where, in 2010 and 2011, the Philadelphia Independence housed some of its players, along with Paul Riley.
It was close quarters, with the feel of a college dormitory. The environment led to lowered boundaries. One player said she saw teammates “crying outside (Riley’s) door at night.” Two players said that after another Independence player suffered a serious injury, Riley had the injured player sleep in his room with him. (Riley denied this in his email.)
He would also regularly go out drinking with the team at an Irish pub, Kildare’s, in nearby West Chester. This was not just a casual drink or two, but long nights of excessive consumption with Riley frequently picking up the tab.
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“Paul would be there buying everybody drinks,” a former Independence player said.
Farrelly lived at her parents’ house that season; it meant a slight bump in her salary since the team didn’t have to pay that cost. While she wasn’t in the environment of the extend-a-stay hotel, she was a regular at Kildare’s. Despite the size of the place, and the presence of a dance floor, most nights she said she ended up seated next to Riley at the bar, where he would ask her probing questions. “There’s this sense that he wants to control your life outside of the stadium as well, whether that’s what you’re eating or who you’re seeing,” one Philadelphia player said.
Eventually, Farrelly began to share deeply personal information with Riley. He gave her a nickname, Shea, and his attention made her believe he genuinely cared for her.
“He would make comments about people’s relationship status and their sexual orientation, everything to him mattered, that it would affect the performance of the game depending on what you did outside of practice,” Farrelly said. “He wanted to know everything, and it felt normal to share that stuff.”
In May of that season, at a game in Atlanta, Riley pulled Farrelly from the match at halftime, a humiliation she didn’t understand. She would find out after the game that in the stands that day was an assistant coach for the U.S. women’s national team, who had flown to Atlanta to bring Farrelly into national team camp on short notice to replace an injured player.
There were expectations that, despite little pro experience, her call-up signified a real chance of sneaking onto the 2011 World Cup roster. There were only two camps remaining until the team left for Germany, and the rest of the roster had been named.
When Farrelly got back from that national team camp a few days later, she met with Riley in his office. He was upset that the federation had called her without involving him, she said. Ten players across Riley’s coaching tenure described how he would “bash” and “shit-talk” the national team, and he has frequently spoken about his frustration with the team’s schedule and how it affects club play. Farrelly didn’t miss an Independence match because of the call-up, but she said Riley told her that she had been disloyal to him and her Independence teammates.
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U.S. Soccer called her in to the final camp before the World Cup, set for June, but Farrelly surprisingly declined, saying she wanted to remain in Philadelphia. The next training session, “I could tell he was proud of my decision.”
By the end of the WPS season, Farrelly had 14 appearances with the club, starting 13 matches. The Independence finished second in the regular season standings, then defeated magicJack 2-0 in the semifinal of the playoffs — a major upset, considering the national team players on the Florida team (who were enduring an owner who had instructed players to refer to him as “Daddy”).
In the final on Aug. 27 in Rochester, a stacked Western New York Flash team defeated the underdog Independence via penalties. It was a heartbreaking loss, and after the game the Philadelphia players and staff went out as a group to drown their sorrows. Multiple players recalled someone from the Independence front office renting out a bar. “Free alcohol, no boundaries,” one player said.
The players then decided to travel back to their hotel en masse to keep the party going. The players remember cramming as many people as they could into a rented passenger van, to the point where people started sitting on others’ laps. Farrelly climbed in, headed for the back of the van, where she said Riley was sitting.
“This is the thing. He’s with us, right? He’s part of this with us,” she said.
She said she sat on his lap, though even in that moment it felt weird to do so. She said Riley then grabbed her hips, and she immediately felt the touch crossed a line.
“I felt claimed. That word honestly describes it perfectly for me, because I have this feeling that he went around and he looked at his prospects, and he zeroed in on me. He claimed me; that’s what his touch felt like. I just remember thinking: Is anyone else seeing this?” Given her age and where she was in her career, from that moment on, “I felt under his control.”
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The party moved to the hotel lobby. The numbers kept dropping as people finally called it a night, heading back in ones or twos to their respective rooms in the team’s hotel block, all on the same floor. Farrelly and Riley ended up in front of his room, she said, and they both went in. Farrelly said that she felt Riley coerced her into having sex with him, and she spent the night in his room. The next morning when she woke up, she said he told her that she had followed him into his room and, “Shea, we’re taking this to our graves.”
“That moment changed my whole life,” Farrelly said. “As a person and as a player, I was never the same.”
She tried to pretend like it hadn’t happened, and swore she would never speak about it again. But she said that Riley kept bringing it up with her. He didn’t help her bury their secret. He kept it alive.
“The first panic attack I ever had”
That September, Farrelly went back to the University of Virginia to finish her final semester. Despite a light course load and being back in familiar territory, she found no comfort. Her friends had all graduated the spring before and she was left alone in a dorm room to simmer in the secret.
“It really did not matter where I was, it was just like a haunting,” she said.
Riley texted her frequently during this time, Farrelly said. At one point, he called her and told her he was going to be in Charlottesville for a coaching conference. He invited Farrelly to dinner, saying they should meet to discuss her contract for the 2012 season — even as WPS teetered on the edge of collapse.
They went downtown; Farrelly remembers wearing a shirt and skirt combination, something any college student would have worn. Before dinner, they ran into that same USWNT assistant coach who had picked up Farrelly for camp, and Farrelly remembers feeling as if that coach gave them a strange look. (The coach did not recall seeing them but said they did attend the conference.)
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At dinner, Riley ordered a bottle of riesling. After dinner, Farrelly said the two of them drank shots at a bar. At the end of the night, Riley took her back to his hotel room in Charlottesville, and she said she felt coerced into having sex with him again.
After wrapping up that final semester in December, Farrelly went to Washington, D.C., to train with a friend ahead of the 2012 season — but Riley called to inform her that WPS was folding. She returned to her parents’ house in Philadelphia, and she was in the basement of that house when, she said, Riley sent her a photo of himself in nothing but compression shorts. She didn’t know how to reply, so she didn’t.
Riley went to Long Island to coach the Fury, this time in a new, semi-pro division of the WPSL that planned to take in a handful of WPS teams. At first, Farrelly declined Riley’s offer to join that team, but her former Independence teammates swayed her. She reported later that season than everyone else, but a teammate came through with a place for her to live — there was an extra bed with her host family.
On and off the soccer field, she never felt settled. There was a week off during the season and she went out drinking every night on her own. She called her behavior “reckless.” After that break, she drove herself to the first training session, but she couldn’t bring herself to get out of the car.
“That was the first panic attack I ever had,” she said. “I remember looking up at the sky and wishing I didn’t exist, thinking, I can’t do this anymore. And then it looked like I was a shitty teammate because I didn’t show up to practice, when I would have done anything for my teammates.”
Farrelly tried and failed to keep her distance from Riley, and she also watched as he grew closer to another player on the Fury. Eventually, Riley started taking the two of them out drinking together.
One night during the summer of 2012, after the trio had relocated from a bar to a hotel lobby on a road trip, Riley stepped away from the bar to book a hotel room for the night. (Riley doubled up with an assistant coach on some road trips.) Riley nodded back at the two players to follow him, and they did. The three of them never spoke, Farrelly said, but they went into Riley’s room, where he had sex with both of them.
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After that, Riley brought up the evening with Farrelly, but with her teammate “We never talked about it. Nothing was ever said.” (The other player did not respond to a request for comment.)
Despite all that was happening, Farrelly remained convinced that appeasing Riley was instrumental to her career. For her, Riley was the central figure, not just in her confidence on the field, but for her livelihood as a player with his influence in the new professional league that was forming. He called the technical staff of FC Kansas City ahead of the first NWSL season in 2013, helping her land a roster spot. There were parts of that first season she did enjoy, but she was still struggling — even if she looked okay from the outside.
In December 2013, Portland hired Riley to replace Cindy Parlow Cone. Portland was the franchise Farrelly most wanted to play for, a winning team that played before record crowds of more than 15,000 people. But more than that, she had fallen in love with the city on road trips; she could see herself out in the nature of Multnomah County, the peace it might bring her.
“Paul said he would get me to Portland, and I thought I would figure it out when I got there,” she said.
By January 2014, Farrelly was a Thorn.
“I felt from the beginning like I owed him”
Before the start of the 2014 season, Thorns general manager Gavin Wilkinson called Meleana “Mana” Shim into his office.
She was coming off a breakout rookie campaign after earning a spot with the Thorns through an open tryout after being passed over in the league’s inaugural college draft. Despite an experienced midfield, Shim became a regular starter under Parlow Cone, scoring five goals and adding two assists. She started both playoff games as the Thorns went on to win the title. Shim was only 21 years old and earned a call-up to the U.S. under-23 national team.
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It was a surprise when she was left unprotected in the 2014 expansion draft. In addition to her talent, Shim had become a fan favorite: unabashedly herself, vocal and tough, the little spitfire from Hawaii. She never tried to be anything but her authentic self, a virtue held in particularly high regard in the city of Portland. She was aware that her honesty rubbed some in the Thorns organization the wrong way, though, and that the Thorns had a stacked roster, but she never thought of herself as expendable.
When the Houston Dash selected her with their fourth pick in the expansion draft, she was gutted. She loved living in Portland and had signed a lease on a new apartment with her partner. She’d have to uproot her entire life to go to Houston. She reached out to the Thorns’ new head coach, Paul Riley, to ask if there was any chance that the team could make a move to keep her. He promised to do what he could. One week later, she was traded back to Portland as part of a deal during the College Draft.
“I felt from the beginning like I owed him something because he worked to get me back,” Shim said.
The meeting with Wilkinson in his office was, Shim assumed, to discuss her role on the team for the upcoming season. Instead, she said Wilkinson instructed her to not be as vocal about off-the-field matters. Shim had come out publicly one day before the 2013 NWSL Championship; she had also discussed her anxiety around the expansion draft in 2014. She said Wilkinson’s tone was genial, but the message was clear: We don’t talk about being gay or having pride. We play soccer. Wilkinson also praised one of the team’s best players and her reticence to discuss anything but soccer in interviews.
Shim said she sat in that office, flabbergasted. Even in liberal Portland, in the league’s premier franchise that just won the title, silence was valued.
Shim told her partner at the time as well as a teammate, Morgan, about the meeting and Wilkinson’s instructions; both women told The Athletic they recalled those conversations. On Wednesday, Wilkinson said it was “bullshit” that he would tell Shim or any other player not to publicly discuss her personal life. “It was many, many years ago,” he added, and then said his behavior over 10 years with the Thorns and Timbers speaks for itself. The team added, in a statement: “Gavin categorically never communicated to Mana, or any Thorns or Timbers player for that matter, to not discuss political or personal views.”
The 2014 Thorns roster included some of the league’s top players (Morgan, Christine Sinclair, Tobin Heath). For Paul Riley, this created a different dynamic than at his previous stops. Those players weren’t going to get drunk with him at the bar; they didn’t owe their careers to him. So he mostly left them alone, eight Thorns players said, focusing on women on the edge of the team sheet.
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Shim was one of those fringe players, but Riley didn’t engage with her much his first season in Portland, except to belittle her. “He made me feel small. He said things that made other people pause and wonder what was going on, why didn’t he like me,” Shim said.
He would call her and other players on the team “idiots” and “motherfuckers” and “fucking embarrassments.” He also commented on her weight, a frequent topic Riley turned to with his players. Four players said he would immediately comment if a team member put on even a couple of pounds. He told one player she would never achieve her dream of making the national team because of her weight. He also once berated a Portland player in front of the team for bringing her child to the match, saying the Thorns had lost because of it. (Riley called that allegation one of many “fabrications” in this story.)
Riley would, at times, encourage and support players, but it was often the hot and cold approach he used with Farrelly in Philadelphia — praise and criticism mixed in a way that kept them off balance, constantly worried about losing playing time and a midseason trade that would uproot their lives.
“It’s almost like an abusive relationship, even when it’s not crossing the line of sexual, because he gives and takes,” one former Thorn said. “The girls just want to please their coaches, they want to do the right thing. Paul said he’ll invest in you, then he takes it away.”
Shim said she worked harder and harder, even as she lost playing time, but she felt like nothing she did would earn Riley’s respect. Meanwhile, she watched as Farrelly joined the team in January 2014 and resumed her place near the center of Riley’s orbit, and in the starting lineup. One Thorns player described the Riley/Farrelly dynamic in Portland as “almost like in a weird parental way.”
During the 2014 season, Farrelly began dating one of her teammates. Riley became fixated on that relationship. One Thorns player said he pulled her aside and asked her to look out for Farrelly; that Farrelly couldn’t be gay and needed to be protected from the teammate she was now dating. He also repeatedly brought it up with Farrelly, telling her she was “too hot to be a lesbian” and not a “real lesbian” because she had been with a man before. He brought up Farrelly and the woman she was dating with others as well, according to Shim and three other team members.
Riley and Farrelly never had sex while she was in Portland, but she said she never stopped feeling like he could, at any moment, put her in position where she couldn’t refuse him.
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“I would have these daydreams about getting hurt and not having to play again,” Farrelly said.
Then, in July, she collapsed on the field against the Red Stars. Shim and others on the team recall hearing it was a “medical” issue and not an injury. Farrelly returned to training and attended the team’s games, but she did not appear in a match for the remainder of the season.
“I remember when I collapsed, it felt like a relief.”
“He was instigating us”
Ahead of the 2015 season, the Thorns traveled to Arizona for preseason preparations. The team stayed in rooms at a hotel/casino, and some members of the team gambled at their hotel during the day around training sessions, then went out drinking and gambling at night, sometimes with Riley. One player got so intoxicated she was kicked out of the casino.
Farrelly was there, and she hung out a bit with the team in the casino, drinking. She was trying to hold on to her career, wanting to be away from Riley but also still feeling her future in the game depended on him.
While the partying in Arizona and over that season didn’t often include the top players, a good portion of the team, including Shim, became entangled in the “social culture” that Riley had cultivated at previous stops. “I don’t know any other way to describe it. … There were not good boundaries from the get-go (that season),” Shim said.
It was in Arizona that Riley shifted his approach with Shim, she said. After a season of tearing her down and at times ignoring her completely, she almost suddenly became a favorite. He joked around with her more. He said that she had potential; he gave her a to-do list of elements of her game to work on. She was in the in-group, finally. He would mention her name during film sessions, bring her up during pre-game talks. They were small signs, but she noticed them all. Her confidence grew.
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Heading into the first week of the NWSL regular season, Riley started talking her up to the media. After the team’s opening match, a 4-1 win over the Boston Breakers, Riley said, “As we said in preseason about Mana, she came in great shape and looks like a different player from last year.”
As with Farrelly, Riley would build Shim up, but then he would suddenly switch, heaping criticism she felt was unfair.
Riley also started to text Shim more often, she said. He asked her to get coffee with him while they were on road trips. He requested her presence to watch film more often. But Riley would sometimes change the time and location of their film sessions, moving them from his office at the stadium to his apartment (in a building across from Providence Park) after hours.
“He did it really casually. It was just like, ‘Hey, I’m kind of busy, let’s switch this,’” she said. She felt like she didn’t have a choice, even though she knew it was inappropriate.
That May, after a draw at home in Providence Park against Washington, much of the team headed to a bar near the stadium called The River Pig Saloon. Riley gave the bartender his credit card; “Get the girls whatever they want,” he said.
Eventually, the only members of the organization left in the bar were Riley, assistant coach Skip Thorp, and Shim and Farrelly. The two women had grown closer over the course of the 2015 season in no small part because Riley assigned Shim and Farrelly to share a hotel room on road trips.
After the bar closed, as the quartet walked along a street near Providence Park, Shim desperately sought an establishment where she could use the restroom. As they walked, Riley once again brought up Shim’s and Farrelly’s sexual orientation, the two women said. After a bit, Riley offered up the bathroom in his apartment for Shim to use. Thorp walked up to the apartment with them, but left soon after. (Thorp did not respond to an email seeking comment.) Shim and Farrelly were now alone with Riley in the apartment.
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Shim went to the bathroom. Both players remember Riley fetching more alcoholic drinks from the fridge. Farrelly sat down on his sofa, waiting for Shim to return. When she did, Riley handed her a drink. Farrelly recalls Riley turning on one of the music channels on his television, and then he requested that Shim dance with him.
“I was frozen, I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know, it was just so weird,” Shim said. The two women said that Riley came up behind Shim and was trying to “grind” against her. “It was really uncomfortable: What’s happening? Do you think this is okay?”
Riley stepped away to use the restroom himself, and Farrelly and Shim discussed the easiest way to leave. They headed for the door, but worried if they left without saying goodbye that Riley would be upset. When Riley returned, he asked if the two women hooked up on road trips. They did not, they told him.
“He was instigating us,” Farrelly said. Riley asked them to kiss each other before they left. He gave them an incentive: kiss, and the entire team wouldn’t have to run the suicide mile that week. “Everyone hated this fucking fitness drill.” Farrelly said.
Farrelly and Shim looked at each other and, feeling like they were boxed in, they kissed briefly. He then asked them to stay, but they turned him down and left. In the lobby of the apartment building, Shim was in disbelief. She told Farrelly that she wanted to tell her partner what happened. Farrelly told her that they would simply forget it ever happened and move on with their lives. They agreed to not tell anyone.
At training later that week, when Riley told the team they wouldn’t be running the suicide mile, one player joked to him: “What happened? Did you just wake up and have the best day of your entire life?”
After that night, Shim said Riley trained even more attention on her. The texts got more frequent, and he upgraded from asking her out to coffee to asking her out to dinner.
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Most nights, she made excuses to avoid meeting up with him, but one evening he convinced Shim to go to dinner. He took her to Serratto, an Italian restaurant in Portland. Shim said she tried to dress up enough that she wouldn’t look out of place.
“I remember feeling very uncomfortable, because my coach was trying to take me on a date. He told me we were going to talk about game stuff, because that’s what he always said,” Shim said.
At the restaurant, he encouraged her to order a drink; he told her to order whatever she wanted. She drank white wine and ordered ossobuco.
“He was trying to be very flirtatious and out in the open. Portland was smaller than it is now. This was a mile from the stadium. … But I was also like, what is this guy doing? It’s so obvious. He was flirting with the server and really treating me like I was his date, saying, ‘Oh, whatever the lady wants.’”
Shim told her partner at the time that she was meeting up with her teammates, and she was terrified someone from the team would see them out together. “I was doing the best I could to hold the line to maintain my job and make sure I didn’t upset him, while not totally compromising myself,” she said. After dinner, Shim said Riley asked her for a ride home, but she declined.
Shim was already worried about how to manage saying no to him again. It was more than just the threat of losing playing time or the possibility she could then get traded. Riley had worked to keep her in Portland after she was picked in the expansion draft. She owed him.
His focus on her continued. He would ask her to swap seats with others on airplanes so she would sit next to him. He texted more frequently, even as Shim didn’t always reply. Again and again, he turned the conversation to Shim’s sexual orientation.
“It was just gross,” she said.
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Finally, on a road trip in June, when they shared a hotel room, Shim told Farrelly the extent of what was happening with Riley, and that he had requested Shim’s presence for a film review session at the hotel.
“I was terrified for her and wanted to protect her,” Farrelly said. ”I was terrified of it being so close to the secret that I was taking to the grave that I had stuffed down to this point.”
Shim showed her a photo Riley had sent. It was him, in his compression shorts.
“My stomach dropped. My body was having a trauma response. I’ve been there, I know this,” Farrelly said.
At that moment, Farrelly did not share with Shim that she had previously received a similar photo, or her own experiences with Riley. But they worked to come up with a plan to manage his request that Shim watch film in his room: If Shim didn’t return from Riley’s room within a few minutes, Farrelly would knock on his door.
Riley had asked Shim to bring him a bag of chips, so she stopped by a vending machine on her way. When she got to his room, Riley opened the door so that he was behind it, and Shim had to step all the way in. He closed the door behind her, and when she turned around, she saw that he was only in his underwear, which were white briefs.
Shim said Riley told her to get on his hotel bed to watch film, but he hadn’t prepared anything for her to watch; he had been watching another game on TV when she arrived. She told him they had a game tomorrow, and she had to prepare. He tried to persuade her to stay, but she walked out of the room.
Riley’s advances and the partying continued, including during a team retreat at Riley’s spacious Long Island house during a June break for the 2015 World Cup. Riley catered food and provided alcohol. One night, he hired a psychic medium to provide dinner readings for the players. Some players got drunk and swam in his pool. “Everybody else (in the NWSL) is going on vacation at this point, and we’re in this house castle on Long Island,” one player said. And Riley wouldn’t let them leave, according to four players there. (Riley denied that, saying he never prevented players from going out at the team retreat.)
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After that week, Shim went to Canada to attend a World Cup match with Riley, who had been lobbying to go for weeks, offering to pay for her hotel and ticket. Shim believed he would try to have sex with her there. While she traveled to Vancouver for the quarterfinal match between England and Canada, she made sure she was never alone with Riley during the trip.
In July, as Riley’s focus on her continued, Shim reached a breaking point. She called her sister and shared what was happening and her confusion about what to do next. Her sister confirmed Shim’s mid-season disclosure to The Athletic, and remembered Shim recounting the invitation to the World Cup and the incident at the hotel when Riley was in his underwear. Shim then also told her then-partner, who recalled Shim telling her about the kiss and then, later, about some of Riley’s other behavior. The next day, at her partner’s urging, Shim contacted Riley via email, asking him to leave her alone.
He texted back that he wanted to meet with her, Shim said, and she declined.
Shim also told Morgan about some of Riley’s behavior. While Morgan couldn’t remember the exact timing of the conversation, she recalls hearing how aggressively Riley pressured Shim to go to Vancouver and being alarmed by that. She vowed to help Shim make an official complaint to management. But the two women couldn’t figure out how to do it in a way that would protect Shim from potential retaliation.
“I tried everything to find an HR contact, a way through the league to anonymously report an incident, any sort of contact that would not be traced back to her because it would potentially jeopardize her job to report this sort of incident,” Morgan said.
Eventually, Shim and Morgan identified Nancy Garcia Ford, the Thorns’ HR director (Portland’s first full-time one), but there was no way to submit the complaint anonymously. Toward the end of the season, Shim (with her partner’s help) started working on an email detailing the major incidents between her and Riley. After the end of the regular season, on Sept. 16, 2015, she sent the email to Merritt Paulson, the team’s owner, Wilkinson, Garcia Ford and Riley. She also forwarded it to Jeff Plush, who was then the NWSL commissioner.
Shim did not recall getting a response from Paulson. Plush emailed back at two points: later that day, telling Shim that he would follow up soon, then a few days later to say that he had spoken with Paulson and the league was monitoring the Thorns’ investigation. Wilkinson emailed her on behalf of himself and Paulson, stating that they took her complaint seriously. Garcia Ford responded via email, asking for a meeting.
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Garcia Ford was the only one present at that meeting, which took place within days. Shim said Garcia Ford took notes as she described the allegations involving Riley. Shim said that Garcia Ford expressed that Shim did not have a legal claim because Shim was unable to provide any corroborating evidence. She had deleted the texts from Riley on her phone and on her iCloud account earlier in the season. He had encouraged her to do so, she said, and she complied, in part, because she worried about her partner finding them. Garcia Ford offered to connect her with an IT staffer at the team, but Shim told her she had already been to Apple in an attempt to recover the texts, and they were unable to do so.
Farrelly was also interviewed by Garcia Ford, a meeting that lasted about 20 minutes, Farrelly said. She detailed the incident with herself, Shim and Riley in his apartment where he had persuaded them to kiss each other, and she confirmed that she had seen the inappropriate photo Riley had sent Shim, as well as other texts from him. She said nothing of her own experiences with Riley. Morgan said no one from the team contacted her, even though she was listed on Shim’s complaint as a person with knowledge of Riley’s actions toward Shim.
On Sept. 23, the Thorns announced that Riley would not be retained for a third season. From the outside, it looked like the poor results (the team finished in sixth place, missing the playoffs for the first time) had forced Portland’s hand — and that Riley wanted to return home to Long Island, to his family and youth clubs. On Wednesday, Paulson acknowledged that the findings of the investigation factored in the team’s decision.
“Immediately when we became aware of these allegations at the end of our 2015 season, Paul Riley was placed on administrative leave and a thorough investigation advised by outside counsel was conducted, working closely with the NWSL league office,” the team said in a statement provided on Wednesday. “The investigation found no unlawful activity, but that Mr. Riley had violated our policies. As a result, we chose not to renew his contract. The findings of the investigation were shared with the NWSL league office.”
In regards to the probe into his alleged behavior in Portland, Riley wrote in his email: “I was aware of a complaint. I was interviewed and cleared by the team after an investigation. My contract was not renewed because our results were not very good and I was interested in returning to the East Coast for a host of different reasons, including marriage and businesses.”
One month after Riley’s exit from Portland, Farrelly was traded to the Boston Breakers. At the urging of her partner, she emailed Wilkinson, asking about the reason for her trade. They met in his office the next day. Farrelly said Wilkinson told her the trade had nothing to do with Riley or the investigation into his behavior, but when she brought up Riley’s potential to coach in the league again, Farrelly said he avoided answering.
Shim went on loan to Japan that offseason, and when she returned to Portland for the next season, she said no one ever talked to her about Riley’s alleged behavior again.
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On Feb. 19, 2016, the Western New York Flash announced Riley as their new head coach.
How was a coach who, according to his team, had been fired, at least in part, for the findings of an investigation into alleged misconduct, able to return to an NWSL sideline so quickly?
Flash vice president Aaran Lines, who hired Riley, wrote in an email: “Prior to his hire, the club was aware of an internal investigation involving Paul while he was the head coach of the Portland Thorns. No unlawful activity was found through the investigation, and the Flash followed all league protocol in the hiring process and contract approval in conjunction with the NWSL league office.”
Former NWSL commissioner Jeff Plush, who according to his 2016 email to Shim was “monitoring” the investigation and who Paulson said was fully informed of the probe’s findings, declined to answer questions about Riley. Plush, who stepped down from the NWSL in March 2017, is now CEO of USA Curling.
“There’s nothing that protects the player”
This season, Riley’s North Carolina Courage are currently in third place in NWSL and, despite struggling through their last four games, are likely to again be a threat in the playoffs. Over the past few years, Riley has — as one Carolina player phrased it — “laid low.” Some of his disturbing behavior persists, two players said, especially commenting on players’ weight and bodies. And another Long Island retreat took place during a break in the 2016 season.
Riley, now 57 years old and separated from his wife, recently had his first child with a woman he met while in Utah for the 2020 Challenge Cup (“I have just become a father for the first time and am delighted to be a Dad,” Riley wrote). One source said that he had been asking Courage players at training about newborns, like how many diaper changes are typically required each day.
As Riley’s stature within the game has risen over the past few years, Farrelly and Shim quietly exited the sport. Farrelly was involved in a car accident in the offseason before heading to Boston, and she ended her career not long after. She now lives in California and works two jobs while running her own side business.
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The death of Shim’s father in January 2016 hit her hard, and under new Thorns coach Mark Parsons, her minutes dropped again that season. In August 2017, Portland waived Shim so she could head to Sweden, where she made two appearances for Växjö DFF. The next season, she finally ended up playing for the Houston Dash, but her rookie season in Portland remained her career high point. She retired in July 2019. She is now in law school in Hawaii.
“It took me years away from the game to gain the awareness of how power imbalance works and to be able to tell people close to me what happened,” Farrelly said.
The #MeToo movement, and later the introduction of Angel City FC into the NWSL, helped Farrelly find a wider perspective. She looked at the Angel City FC ownership group, with women from multiple industries and former players, and thought, “This is what the league should be about.”
She knew that she had to tell Shim what had actually happened, the full extent of how their paths crossed with the Thorns. Farrelly was at her apartment in Portland when she spoke with Shim over the phone, finally sharing the secret she had been told by Riley to take to her grave.
“My first reaction was: Holy shit. This all makes sense. This guy has a pattern. Holy shit. He’s still coaching in the league. We have to do something,” Shim said.
The two women got into a group chat with Morgan and discussed how to prevent abuse from happening to others. One key question emerged from those chats: Why was there no real league policy governing the treatment of players?
“I asked for a player handbook last year,” Morgan said. “It was an eight-page document, and I asked specifically to see the protections of the player in it. There’s absolutely none. There’s nothing that protects the player. There’s something about social media, there’s something about protecting the league, protecting each club, nothing about player protection. I was shocked, but at the same time, if we don’t absolutely claw and fight for ourselves, we’ve seen that we’re not going to get anything.”
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With Morgan acting as the organizer, 240 players signed a letter that was sent to Baird, the NWSL commissioner, on March 9. The players asked for nine specific elements to ensure safe and inclusive workplaces, including multiple avenues to submit complaints and assurances that the league would protect any player from retaliation.
Six days later, Shim emailed Baird directly. Attached to her email was the original complaint she shared with the Thorns in 2015. She asked Baird to address the “apparent failure” of the original investigation into Riley’s behavior in Portland.
Baird responded the next day, to thank her and to tell her she planned to meet with Morgan and other players to listen to their overarching concerns about player safety. She did not address Shim’s request to revisit her original complaint. Shim replied, asking Baird to confirm an investigation would take place. She did not get an immediate response.
Within a month, the NWSL’s Anti-Harassment Policy for a Safe Work Environment was in place, though it was not publicly announced until April 13. The policy is 16 pages long, and prohibits harassment, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct — as the document reads, “Sexual misconduct may occur where effective consent cannot be given to an encounter because of lack of consent, sexual exploitation, or the use of Coercion, Force, Intimidation, or a Power Imbalance.”
Shim continued to press Baird for a response. On April 9, Baird wrote to her that the league had “reviewed (their) files,” and that she could confirm that Shim’s 2015 complaint was investigated, though she was not at liberty to share any further information. She then touted the new anti-harassment policy.
On Apr. 28, Farrelly sent her own email to Baird and cc’d the HR email address listed in the anti-harassment policy for complaints and reporting. She wrote that she had “not only witnessed but also experienced firsthand extremely inappropriate conduct” from Riley, and that she had participated in the 2015 investigation conducted by the Thorns. She claimed that the Thorns had not investigated troubling behavior by Riley she detailed in her meeting with Garcia Ford, which included “harassing comments about my personal relationships and sexual orientation.” She also wrote that “numerous instances of severe misconduct” by Riley had taken place prior to the NWSL’s formation.
She added that she was available for an interview, and that she was “deeply concerned” for the safety of Riley’s North Carolina Courage players.
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NWSL’s senior management of talent and administration, Aries Pickett, replied from the HR email account stating the league took Farrelly’s email seriously. Pickett had also copied the NWSL’s general counsel, Lisa Levine, into the email thread. Pickett’s reply said the league would investigate and provide next steps. Farrelly then got another reply, stating that Baird would reach out directly.
Baird’s email to Farrelly on May 5 covered much of the same ground as her previous exchange with Shim: the Portland files were reviewed, the investigation had been completed and she could not share any details. Once again she touted the new policy. “Thank you again for your email and I wish you the best,” Baird signed.
Farrelly and Shim were practically shouting at the league to do something, to open a new investigation into Riley, to dig into his alleged behavior, even knowing they’d have to relive what happened. And that is what the league — women’s soccer — has always lacked: transparency. League and team officials who ask not for silence, but who care about the game and its future as much as the players, and thus are willing to face the consequences no matter what the sunlight brings.
“There’s this term,” Farrelly said, “it’s called institutional betrayal, and I learned it because of this.”
Katie Strang also contributed to this story.
To follow the reactions to this investigation, please click here.
(Top photos: Carolyn Fong)
