Solo proved her skills in the first game of the World Cup, but her domestic-violence issues raise the question of whether she should be on the field at all. PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN C. COX / GETTY

On Monday, Hope Solo proved once again that she is the best goalkeeper in women’s soccer. It was the U.S.’s opening World Cup match, against Australia, and she started making her case right away. In the fifth minute, the Australian midfielder Emily van Egmond drove the ball toward the upper corner of the goal. Even with a defender blocking her view, Solo moved decisively, unfurling her body and diving up and back just in time. I had hunched over, by this point, into a sort of tense, frozen shiver by my television. But when the ball ricocheted safely out of play my arms shot out just as quickly to celebrate. And then, instead of cheering, I started to groan. Am I going to have to root for Hope Solo if I want to root for Team U.S.A.?

Solo has long been a divisive figure, not only among soccer fans but even to her fellow-players. (During the 2012 Olympics, for example, Solo lambasted the analyst and former national-team member Brandi Chastain. And yes, the tweet is still there.) I never minded Solo’s antics much, and I nodded along to questions about whether a male athlete would receive the same amount of scrutiny for having a brash, competitive attitude. But I’ve certainly felt a lot warier about watching Solo—or at least about enjoying watching her—ever since she was arrested, last June, for domestic violence. Then a report from ESPN’s Outside the Lines, published Sunday, made it that much more uncomfortable.

The report, drawing on police records, depositions, and interviews, recounted the night of June 20, 2014, when Solo, apparently intoxicated, arrived at the home of her half-sister Teresa Obert, in Kirkland, Washington, and proceeded to get into a fight with Obert’s son, who was seventeen at the time. The fight escalated from insults to physical violence; according to the son’s sworn deposition, Solo lunged at him first and took a swing at him. The two tussled until eventually, he said, Solo “jumped on top of me and started bashing my head into the cement.” At that point, Obert tried to restrain Solo, she told Outside the Lines, but “she started punching me in the face over and over again." Solo repeatedly told police, “I did not hit anyone. He hit me with a stick”—everyone agrees that, at one point, Obert’s son did strike Solo on the head with a broom handle. Shortly before 1 A.M., the son called 911. When the police showed up, both Obert and her son were still screaming at Solo to get out of the house. All three people were upset and emotional during interviews with the police, and, after seeing injuries to Obert and her son, the police concluded that there was probable cause to arrest Solo. She was charged with two counts of domestic-violence assault.

The news that Solo had been arrested was old, but the details were new. It was also the first time that the Oberts had spoken to the media.* Since the arrest, in court and in public, Solo has maintained that she was the victim that night. (Solo, who had talked to an ESPN reporter for an earlier, more flattering piece in the network’s magazine, declined to be interviewed by Outside the Lines.) The OTL piece presents, at the very least, a public-relations nightmare for Solo—while no arrest looks good, she doesn’t help her image by telling one of the officers that her necklace is worth more than his annual salary. But the revelations in the report about U.S. Soccer’s response to the incident were just as troubling. Obert said that no one from the federation ever reached out to talk to her or her son about the case, and, according to OTL, they never contacted the police for information before deciding to allow Solo to play while facing charges.

On Thursday, Senator Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, wrote a letter to U.S. Soccer urging the federation to conduct a more thorough investigation. “If the Outside the Lines reports are correct,” he wrote, “U.S. Soccer’s approach to domestic violence and family violence in this instance is at best superficial and at worst dangerously neglectful and self-serving.” (When contacted, U.S. Soccer had no comment in response to either the OTL report or Blumenthal’s letter.)*

Other sports organizations have been excoriated for not thoroughly investigating the off-field behavior of their players. Ray Rice, of course, has become the archetype, but multiple N.F.L. teams of late have decided not to interview alleged victims of their players, or potential players, and have had that decision questioned by fans and the press. George McCaskey, the owner of the Chicago Bears, signed Ray McDonald in the off-season after he was cut from the Forty-Niners following an accusation of sexual assault, which followed a previous arrest for domestic violence a few months earlier (charges were not filed in either case). Before making a final decision, McCaskey interviewed McDonald and McDonald’s mother, among others. But he didn’t talk to the victim of the alleged sexual assault. He told the Tribune, “An alleged victim, I think—much like anybody else who has a bias in this situation—there's a certain amount of discounting in what they have to say.” That a player’s alleged victim is any more biased than his mother is debatable. In any event, McDonald was arrested yet again in connection with domestic violence late last month, and cut from the team.

U.S. Soccer, fortunately, has less experience with domestic violence issues than the N.F.L. does. (Last year, on October 29th, Major League Soccer, which is sanctioned by the federation, suspended the Columbus Crew midfielder Daniel Paladini, after learning police had been called to his home over a domestic dispute earlier that day. Columbus declined to pick up his contract, no other team signed him, and Paladini later pled guilty to a misdemeanor.) But U.S. Soccer, which seems not to have any protocol for this sort of situation, has been slow and passive to respond in Solo’s case, and the lack of transparency in how they considered the charges and decided to let Solo play sets a troubling precedent. Three months passed since Solo’s arrest before the head of U.S. Soccer, Sunil Gulati, issued any meaningful statement about the case: “U.S. Soccer stands by our decision to allow her to participate with the team as the legal process unfolds.”

Unlike the criminal-justice system, U.S. Soccer, as a private organization and much like other sports leagues, is under no obligation to presume Solo’s innocence until proven otherwise. And fans are under no obligation to root for someone just because she hasn’t yet been proven guilty by the courts. The charges against Solo had been dismissed, but on procedural grounds rather than for lack of evidence. Prosecutors are appealing, and the case could still very well go to trial.

It’s not as if U.S. Soccer is particularly averse to handing out punishment—or even handing out punishment to Hope Solo. When, in January of this year, Solo’s husband, former N.F.L. player Jerramy Stevens, was pulled over driving a national team van while intoxicated, Solo was suspended for thirty days for making “a poor decision that has resulted in a negative impact on U.S. Soccer and her teammates,” the head coach, Jill Ellis, said. The suspension ended just in time for Solo to join the team at the Algarve Cup, in March, and it appears that the team has never looked back.