Big win for Nancy Hogshead over Rick Butler! Victory for athlete & women's sports advocates!

Sexual Abuser Rick Butler’s $250 Million Lawsuit Against Nancy Hogshead, Champion Women, and Deb DiMatteo Dismissed. In a Decisive Win, the Federal Court Declared Women’s Sports Advocates Have the First Amendment Right to Warn Their Community of the Risks of Sexually Abusive Coaches.

Chicago, Illinois — The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has granted summary judgment in favor of Nancy Hogshead, Champion Women, and Deborah DiMatteo, Defendants in a lawsuit brought by Rick Butler, Cheryl Butler, and their company, GLV, Inc., d/b/a Sports Performance Volleyball. The court found that Nancy Hogshead, Champion Women, and Deb DiMatteo were exercising their constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights to speak about a matter of public concern and controversy: namely, the risk of harm that Rick Butler posed to young athletes. Numerous findings of fact determined that Rick Butler had sexual intercourse with girls under 18-years-old while in a position of authority over them, serving as their coach.

This decision represents a complete legal victory for the Defendants, who are girls’ and women’s sports advocates. Nancy Hogshead and Champion Women spearheaded a campaign to share public records of Rick Butler’s long-term record of sexual abuse of his minor athletes with the volleyball community, targeting commercial sponsors, sports facilities and clubs, and colleges and universities that recruited from Rick’s Sports Performance Volleyball program. Deb DiMatteo encouraged the volleyball community to boycott GLV, Inc. events and publicly admonished Mizuno for reestablishing its sponsorship of Sports Performance Volleyball after new allegations of Rick Butler’s misconduct were publicized in 2017. While Deb DiMatteo generally supported Champion Women’s initiatives, DiMatteo and Nancy Hogshead only met after being named as Co-Defendants in the lawsuit, in December of 2021.

In their Complaint, Rick and Cheryl Butler sought a staggering $250 million in damages. The Butlers also sought a permanent injunction to prevent Hogshead and DiMatteo from continuing to allegedly disparage Rick Butler and his volleyball businesses. The Butlers sought to blame lost financial revenue streams on the Defendants, rather than on the natural consequences flowing from Rick Butler’s history of sexual abuse of his underage athletes. 

For decades, the public debate over whether Rick Butler should be permitted to coach following his sexual misconduct played out across journalistic reporting, mainstream news media, social media forums, public statements by his former players, publicly-filed lawsuits, and State and Federal Congressional Hearings. And yet the Butlers blamed the Defendants for his loss of business.

Meanwhile, the Butlers tried mightily “to convince sports organizations and schools to allow Rick to coach minor girls at their tournaments, camps, and/or facilities and to persuade parents to entrust their children to his care.” (Opinion, p. 38).

The court held that Hogshead’s comprehensive narrative, assembled to educate the public and remove Rick Butler from coaching girls, included reputable sources such as sports governing body disciplinary records, official court records, and media investigations.

The court held that Deb DiMatteo was largely sharing her opinions, which constitute protected First Amendment speech. Ultimately, the court determined that Defendants’ speech-based protections trumped any alleged harm felt by Rick and Cheryl Butler.

From Defense Counsel, Danessa P. Watkins, Partner at Amundsen Davis, LLC:

The grant of summary judgement for the Defendants reinforces an important principle: disguising a speech-based claim as some other tort – here, “tortious interference with business relationships” - does not eliminate free speech protections. The court’s decision confirms that discussions about athlete safety occupy a critical place in public discourse. Nancy, Deb, my legal team and I fought this battle with the understanding that the outcome had the potential to influence the future of sport by promoting transparency and safer environments for athletes across all levels of competition. Our hope is that this decision will empower athletes, advocates, organizations, and the public to continue raising concerns about the safety of sport, without undue fear of retaliation through litigation.

We could not have achieved this result without the active participation, steadfast focus, and teamwork of Nancy and Deb, both staunch advocates for girl and woman athletes. Representing them and their right to free speech was an honor. I also want to thank Sarah Powers-Barnhard who, despite being dismissed from the case in 2022, showed incredible strength in her testimony as a survivor and advocate for athletes.

From Nancy Hogshead, Olympic Champion, Civil Rights Lawyer, and CEO of Champion Women:

Although I wish we had met under different circumstances, Deb DiMatteo was the best co-defendant I could have hoped for. Deb was wrongfully dragged into this case simply for sharing her opinions about how the volleyball community should cease support for Rick Butler after the findings that he sexually abused his minor players. Despite extensive discovery through documents productions, subpoenas, and depositions, Rick and Cheryl Butler could not locate a single piece of evidence to support their claim that Deb and I conspired to destroy their business. Deb and I found we shared the same dedication for promoting the equality and safety of girls and women in sport, and I have gained a lifelong friend through this experience.

I am eternally grateful for our defense team, who shared our passion and understood the importance of protecting speech like ours. Danessa Watkins, in particular, led the charge, leaving no stone unturned despite the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s. She tracked down every lead, coordinated with Rick Butler’s survivors, and secured the cooperation of USA Volleyball through vital subpoena requests for records and testimony. Danessa not only protected our interests; she defended the broader rights of victims and reporters of sexual abuse under the SafeSport principles. For example, when the Butlers publicly filed highly confidential information regarding the identities of SafeSport reporters, Danessa immediately moved to seal the records, educated the Judge on the implications of the violation, and successfully achieved a sanction award that required the Butler’s to compensate the reporters for invading their privacy and cover our legal fees expended on their behalf. Danessa is not only a highly skilled litigator, she dedicated herself to our defense and broader cause with a vigour that gave me the utmost confidence that I had a true teammate in this fight. My admiration is boundless.

The Butlers failed to present any evidence that the Defendants acted with “actual malice” – a legal term meaning that Defendants knew they were making false statements or even entertained serious doubts about the truthfulness of their assertions – including as to Hogshead’s descriptions of Rick Butler as a “pedophile” and a “rapist.” Instead, the court found that the Defendants’ speech relied on extensive, publicly available materials, including Rick Butler’s prior disciplinary decisions, court findings, sworn victim statements, and media reports.

Those public records included, but were not limited to:

• A 1995 Illinois Department of Children and Family Services finding of "credible evidence" supporting allegations of child abuse by Rick Butler.
• A 1995 USA Volleyball Ethics and Eligibility Committee determination that Rick Butler had sexual relationships with three athletes while they were minors and under his supervision.
• Subsequent lifetime bans and disciplinary actions imposed by USA Volleyball, the Amateur Athletic Union, the Junior Volleyball Association, and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, based on new allegations that surfaced in 2017.

     “For decades, Rick Butler has talked his way out of the consequences that should have flowed from the findings that he sexually abused his minor athletes; he could be very convincing. While substantial evidence existed that would have enabled reasonable people to conclude that Rick Butler posed a serious danger to girls, it was difficult for families and the volleyball community to accurately assess that risk,” said Nancy Hogshead. “That record is now plain for all to see.”

The court’s ruling in Butler et al. v. Hogshead-Makar et al. affirms that sports organizations, advocates, survivors, journalists, and nonprofits have the legal right to present a record of abuse, even when the coach is operating outside a specific sports arena.

     “Survivors, whose coach has been found to have sexually abused them, deserve more than the abuser’s name posted on a little-known database at the U.S. Center for SafeSport,” said Nancy Hogshead. “The federal protections we acquired for athletes[1] are inadequate when the sports community does not proactively share their available records and evidence when they learn a banned coach continues to have access to athletes. Disciplinary findings must be shared both widely and in a targeted fashion, as Champion Women did here. We must deny abusers access to athletes. It is highly distressing that Rick Butler continues today to coach young girls.”

From Deb DiMatteo, 37-year professor of sports marketing and management, volleyball coach, principle at Midwest Juniors Volleyball Inc, and Director of the Annual Asics Junior National Volleyball Championship:

I join Nancy in thanking our legal counsel at Amundsen Davis. Those of us with a front-row seat to 4.5 years of dogged legal work have been left inspired. As we say in the sport of volleyball - Danessa Watkins left nothing on the court.

Importantly, the Butlers produced no evidence in support of their claim that we engaged in a “conspiracy to destroy them.” Yet the Butlers dragged us through the courts for 4.5 years, requiring us to expend an unreasonable amount of time, money, and energy on our defense, distracting us from other, more positive initiatives on behalf of girls and women in sports. 

That said, protecting children and athletes should never depend on the efforts of a small nonprofit, like Champion Women, or the courage of survivors willing to come forward, again and again.

To better address tragic cases in sport like Rick Butler, there must be a change to the statutes of limitations, which are far too short. Murder has no statute of limitations, while numerous states give child victims just two years or until age 23 to file criminal and civil charges. This is the work of CHILD USA, please support them here: https://childusa.org/.

“This decisive win in Butler et al. v. Hogshead-Makar et al. brings closure to one lawsuit, but it is not the final word on accountability in sports,” said Nancy Hogshead. “The fight against abuse in sport continues; every athlete deserves a safe environment in which to train, compete, and thrive – it is our noble purpose.”