LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Taylor Starr had a difficult decision to make.

Serving as the team chaplain for Racing Louisville FC in the club's inaugural season in the National Women's Soccer League, one of the team's star defenders told her over coffee that she'd been sexually abused by the club's head coach, Christy Holly.

In an interview Tuesday with WDRB News, Starr recalled the "burden" she felt as she weighed what to do with Erin Simon's story. Starr — who now works at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville — said she struggled with the right thing to do, she told former U.S. attorney general Sally Yates, knowing that Simon's "career was on the line if someone found out." 

"She didn't understand how any of that would play out," Starr said. "How does this get protected?"

Erin Simon

Racing Louisville FC defender Erin Simon works against a defender in a 0-0 draw with Kansas City on May 15, 2021 in Lynn Family Stadium.

"It messed with me mentally," Starr said. "It was such a big deal. ... I cared so much about the well-being of Erin."

In a 179-page report released Monday, Yates found that U.S. Soccer executives, NWSL owners and officials at all levels of the game ignored or otherwise sought to suppress reports of abuse from players for a number of years.

The bombshell report alleges sexually inappropriate, potentially criminal, behavior on the part of Holly toward Simon, a defender who played for Holly at SkyBlue and joined Racing Louisville when the club selected her in the 2020 NWSL expansion draft.

"On April 21, 2021," it says, "the head coach of Racing Louisville, Christy Holly, requested that a player, Erin Simon, attend a game film session with him alone. She knew what to expect. When she arrived, she recalls Holly opened his laptop and began the game film. He told her he was going to touch her for 'every pass [she] (expletive) up.' He did. Simon reports that he pushed his hands down her pants and up her shirt. She tried to tightly cross her legs and push him away, laughing to avoid angering him. The video ended, and she left. When her teammate picked her up to drive home, Simon broke down crying."

Holly, the report alleges, also required Simon to come to his home to watch game video, then played pornography instead, masturbating in front of her before she left.

During that July 2021 meeting, Simon made Starr promise she wouldn't tell anyone.

Download PDF Sally Yates' U.S. Women's Soccer Report

"My heart broke in the moment," she said. "I kind of freaked out, if I'm being honest. I've worked with students the majority of my adulthood, and so in a moment a student confides with you something like that, I knew what to do."

Pattern of abuse

In late 2020 and early 2021, when Holly and Simon were both at SkyBlue, she said he asked her to begin using WhatsApp to message with him, because such messages are encrypted, and that he also sent photos using Snapchat, which automatically deleted.

She reported that his texts became more numerous. She would tell him she lost her phone, that she never got the messages, “I tried to deflect in every single way.”

Simon said she believed that Holly may have had a part in her getting an opportunity to play for the NWSL’s Houston Dash, and the text messages continued while she played for that team. When Racing Louisville took her in the expansion draft in November of 2020, Simon said she texted Holly that the treatment would have to stop, because he would soon be her coach.

"I’ve got until January 1," she said he responded, responding to his official start date as coach.

But the abuse only got worse. He invited her to his home to watch game film, and showed her pornography instead. He told her he wanted to have a threesome with her and another player. When she tried to leave, she said the coach began masturbating in front of her, and grabbed her wrist and forced her to touch him. She eventually freed herself and ran out of the residence.

"She's overcome a lot but she has grown a lot," Starr said.

It all culminated in that April 21 film session, after which, Simon said she avoided Holly. When he confronted her, she said she told him that the advances had to stop. But at that point, Simon told investigators that Holly became verbally abusive to her. He ripped into her in front of the team, refused to slap hands with her when she came off the pitch and wouldn't tell her whether she would be in the starting lineup or not.

"He would just berate her," Starr said. "And when that shift happened ... from just her performance as an athlete to just the way she carried herself, so much insecurity came over her.

"You could just see this darkness that was over her."

The incidents in Louisville and others form the framework for a damning picture of women's soccer leadership not only in Louisville but around the U.S., which allowed coaches facing accusations of abuse to move from job to job, while being less than forthcoming about abuse once they discovered it.

"People's lives are deeply affected by this," Starr said. "Erin's life was deeply affected by this but the good news is that doesn't define who she is."

Louisville fired Holly on Aug. 31 of last year, announcing he had been terminated for cause but refusing to discuss the circumstances of his dismissal, citing a non-disclosure agreement it had signed with the coach.

In her report, Yates was critical of Louisville and other NWSL franchises for not assisting more in her investigation, writing, "Racing Louisville FC refused to produce documents concerning Christy Holly and would not permit witnesses (or even former employees) to answer questions regarding Holly's tenure, citing non-disclosure agreements."

Racing Louisville has not responded to a request for comment on the report.

"I don't think in that moment of her sharing with me, she knew that we would be where we are right now," Starr said. "I think her biggest thing was just get it out and off of her chest because she was holding onto it so tightly."

Simon agreed to have her name used publicly in the report, saying in a statement through a spokesperson: "There are too many athletes who still suffer in silence because they are scared that no one will help them or hear them. I know because that is how I felt. Through many difficult days, my faith alone sustained me and kept me going. I want to do everything in my power to ensure that no other player must experience what I did. This report allows our voices to finally be heard and is the first step toward achieving the respectful workplace we all deserve. It is my sincere hope that the pain we have all experienced and the change we have all brought about will be for the good of our league and this game we all deeply love."

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