{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/news-releases/domestic-violence-in-professional-sports_-mccaskill-grills-league-representatives-", "Domestic Violence in Professional Sports - McCaskill Grills League Representatives", "2014-12-02", "2014", "2014-12", "Democrat", "House", "MO", "Claire McCaskill", "M001170", "www.mccaskill.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Domestic Violence in Professional Sports - McCaskill Grills League Representatives  \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t Senator: for pro athletes and leagues, \u2018with great power and influence comes great responsibility\u2019 \u2018Professional sports must do a better job of setting an example to young people and to victims\u2019 \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTuesday, December 2, 2014\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWASHINGTON\u2014U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today grilled representatives from the four major sports leagues on the rate of domestic violence in professional sports, and whether the leagues are adequately protecting victims and holding perpetrators accountable.\r\n\u201cThe bright light of public attention needs to be turned on at a very high wattage at a problem that exists in the shadows in a very dark and scary place,\u201d said McCaskill, a former sex crimes prosecutor. \u201cWith great power and influence comes great responsibility\u2026 professional sports must do a better job of setting an example to young people and to victims of domestic violence, who face very difficult decisions as they struggle with holding their abusers accountable.\u201d\r\nMcCaskill continued: \u201cThere has been little or no effort to independently get the facts, rather just use the predictable outcome that very few who are abused will have an adequate support\u2026 to come forward and hold their abuser accountable. And so by and large professional sports teams have relied on the failure of the criminal justice system to get convictions as their excuse as to why very few players have been held accountable.\u201d\r\nAt today\u2019s hearing, McCaskill posed a number of questions to representatives from the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League\u2014on whether the leagues are adequately addressing, punishing, and adjudicated cases of domestic violence.\r\n\u201cWhat we really have to do here is look to see what you are doing independently to investigate these cases, and independently determine what the facts are, because that\u2019s how the NFL got in trouble. Because Roger Goodell didn\u2019t see it as his responsibility to ask the question, \u2018is there another tape, and I need to see it before we do punishment?\u2019 And I think we should say for the record that Major League Commissioner Bud Selig had never sanctioned a player for domestic violence. Never, in 22 years. Now, teams have, but at the commissioner level that has never occurred.\u201d\r\nMcCaskill has also focused on issues of abuse in college sports, using a recent Commerce Committee hearing to grill NCAA President Mark Emmert on the professionalization of college sports. McCaskill recently sent a letter to the NCAA, along with Senators Jay Rockefeller and Cory Booker, questioning whether the NCAA is exercising proper oversight of its member institutions to ensure that they are taking the necessary steps to protect student-athletes from exploitation. She joined Senators Rockefeller and Booker in sending a separate letter to 65 schools that are members of the top NCAA conferences asking similar questions about school policies.\r\nEarlier this year, McCaskill announced the results of her unprecedented nationwide survey of how sexual assaults are handled on college campuses, which demonstrated a disturbing failure by many institutions to comply with the law and with best practices in how they handle sexual violence against students. The survey, which represented 440 institutions currently educating more than five million students across the country, found that 22 percent of institutions give athletic departments oversight of cases involving athletes.\r\nVisit mccaskill.senate.gov/violence to learn more about McCaskill\u2019s work to curb domestic and sexual violence.\u00a0\r\n###\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPrint\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tEmail\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t  \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTweet", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/news-releases/domestic-violence-in-professional-sports_-mccaskill-grills-league-representatives-"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5261790249496698, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}