On Wednesday, a chapter of the National Women’s Soccer League’s past was finally closed as the league agreed to a historic settlement with the attorneys general of D.C., New York and Illinois over violations of state and local human rights laws. The settlement and related investigation stemmed from the 2021 revelations of abuse, harassment and coercion across the league.

The players’ experiences of abuse and the failures of leadership to prevent and address them were retold in a press conference this week and were yet another accounting of all the sins of the past. After three investigations — the attorneys general’s, the one done by NWSL and the league’s players association (NWSLPA) and the initial investigation by former United States Attorney General Sally Yates — perhaps this will be the last one that will feel like a reopening of the same wound or prodding at the same stain.

This time comes with more than painful memories as the league must set up a $5 million restitution fund and report to the three attorneys general twice a year over the next three years.

The NWSL of 2025 is also not the NWSL of 2021, due to a change in leadership and procedures aimed at player safety. This is the first time, however, that the players have been offered some form of restoration, imperfect as it may be. Money won’t erase what happened. It shouldn’t.

“This $5 million restitution fund is not a gift, nor is it justice,” Tori Huster, deputy executive director of the NWSLPA, said Wednesday. “This fund is an acknowledgment of the league’s failures and the harm suffered by players. It’s a testament to players’ courage and a necessary step toward accountability. If the NWSL is safer today, it is because players fought to make it that way. But true accountability means ensuring this never happens again.”

The pivotal reporting of 2021 uncovered several allegations of abuse dating back as far as the formation of the league. The revelations included the league’s lack of policies to protect players from abusers, especially in ways that removed the fear of retaliation. Multiple coaches were found to have used sexual coercion, verbal abuse, racist statements and harassment. By the end of that season, more than half of the NWSL’s 10 teams dismissed a coach or front office executive. Former coaches Rory Dames, Paul Riley, Richie Burke and Christy Holly were banned from the league for life.

The most powerful words spoken during Wednesday’s settlement press conference came from players, including former Racing Louisville defender Erin Simon. Her details of how former coach Holly abused her were the opening lines of Yates’ final report following the investigation commissioned by U.S. Soccer.

Simon is more than that one moment, a horrific story captured forever in a PDF. She owed us nothing to speak on Wednesday, but she still did.

“While (this agreement) doesn’t change what happened — or the pain caused to all the women named, unnamed, and still suffering from what happened to them — it is a massive step,” Simon read from a prepared statement. “This is a continued fight that we cannot abandon because vigilance to protect the players should never stop.”

There’s a difference between a chapter closing and the end of the story.

We still need to ask ourselves: how will we remember these darkest days of the NWSL, the league’s failures and how the players fought for accountability?

“Honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago, which is not to say that anything has been forgotten,” Huster told  this week. She was elected NWSLPA president in 2020. As a player, she spent every season of her NWSL career with the Washington Spirit. Last month, following her retirement, she was announced as the NWSLPA’s deputy executive director. “It feels almost like an out-of-body experience at that point for me.”

Huster’s experience of the reckoning across the league had levels. As a player and captain of the Spirit, she saw her team go through investigations of abuse and harassment by then-head coach Burke followed by a public feud over the majority ownership stake of the team. At the same time, she had been elected by the players across the NWSL to serve as the president of the players association. She said a friend helped shift her perspective as everything unfolded. She said she had been called to serve her fellow players, to set aside the fear that could result in her own silence.

Huster called that work a mission. It’s one she’s still on.

“This announcement and settlement and creation of a restitution fund, you could consider it progress,” Huster said. “But I think of it in terms of how it’s just again, the protections we had been asking for the whole time. This work will never be finished, and we have to continue to hold the league accountable, not let people forget.”

On Wednesday, Simon called the players association “a sanctuary for players in a time of need.” For Huster, the work of remembering has to be centered on players.

“That is a consistent thing we’re always saying,” Huster said, “but it’s a consistent thing that’s always forgotten.”

It’s more than just the growth of the NWSL from new media deals and expansion fees, but turnover across the commissioner role, the league’s front office and team ownership. There have been reforms and policy changes addressing player safety and hiring practices as well as the first collective bargaining agreement in 2022 (which the players were prepared to strike to get across the line) followed by the current CBA ratified in 2024.

Largely, these have all been positive developments, but they also allow for some distance from 2021. If those now running the league think, ‘Well, that wasn’t us’, or, ‘This has all been fixed’, it allows for forgetfulness. Time has softened some of the worst details, at least for those who didn’t live through it. The league has changed with time, forced into action by the players.

And history has been weaponized before, by those who built the NWSL.

“There definitely has been this shared idea that because two leagues have folded in the past, the NWSL is kind of the last hope for a women’s soccer league,” U.S. national team forward Alex Morgan said in 2021. “Because of that, there’s this idea that we should be grateful for what we have and we shouldn’t raise important questions — or ask questions at all.”

But those days are done for the NWSL.

“We spoke out about abuse, coercion and systemic failures that had been ignored for years. We demanded accountability,” Huster said during Wednesday’s press conference. “It wasn’t leadership that fixed this. It was the players who refused to accept silence as an answer.”

And it’s clear from Huster and Simon that the union can be a sanctuary, but it also must serve as that crucial link to history — a vessel for stories to be kept and shared.

“Not done in a way where you should be fearful or anything,” Huster said, “but we just want to make sure we don’t go backward. The way you do it is to know where you come from.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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