Ron Rivera responds to Washington Post report detailing toxic culture within organization

Ron Rivera responds to the report of a toxic culture with the Washington NFL franchise.

Washington head coach Ron Rivera didn’t know he was walking into an organization with a culture rife with sexual harassment and abuse.

After a report from the Washington Post revealed 15 different women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment, Rivera felt he needed to say something while his boss, owner Daniel Snyder, had yet to acknowledge or speak on these ugly allegations that threaten his stance as the majority owner of the franchise.

“Biggest thing is we have to move forward from this and make sure everybody understands we have policies that we will follow and that we have an open-door policy with no retribution,” Rivera said, via John Keim of ESPN. “Plus my daughter works for the team and I sure as hell am not going to allow any of this!”

This is a bit of a hollow statement from Rivera, who may be trying to say something without saying something at the same time. It’s really fruitless and doesn’t speak to power like you would want to see in this situation. He could be saying something stronger behind the scenes, or perhaps he could be saying something vanilla like this to avoid retribution. But I find the last sentence to be a little odd. Wouldn’t he still want to make sure as hell that he isn’t going to allow any of this if his daughter didn’t work for the team?

It’s like when people say, “as a father of a daughter” before they say harassment, abuse and sexism is bad. It’s bad whether you have a daughter or not. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a daughter, because you can recognize what is right and what isn’t right.

In this case, the franchise has been forever stained with 15 courageous and brave women coming forward to tell their stories and share their truth with the hope that in doing so, this cycle of abuse will stop.

This story is still developing and there are sure to be more shocking revelations. The team changing its name looks like a half-hearted attempt to curry good favor, but in light of this news, there’s no coming back from it.